Ewok

That's exactly what the team are hoping to address through Operation: FLGBKYBYGT. Setting up in a safe house with a farm will not allow you to survive indefinately. There are a lot of ideas being thrown around, and they don't involve death that is outside the player's control - hordes and NPC threats being recurring themes.
 
The idea is that it will be incredibly difficult to survive long term and turtling will not be an option - but that survival will still come down to player skill and not luck.
 
The reason to play will be the increased challenge.
 
Now, as for age - I'd say aging in game is not worth it. The plans are to make things very difficult to the extent that long-term survival, long enough for aging to make a difference, is a non issue.
 
Sure - you could survive for 50 years. Then again, you could complete Dark Souls without dying once. You'll be in the 0.0001% though...
 
As for the proposed idea of starting as an older character and having more skills, increasing skills slower, having different moodle reactions... I'd still say no, as the game has been designed around a 'blank slate' character and inserting this would likely have serious consequences on balancing. Plus, I like the idea that everyone starts out essentially the same, it keeps things even.
 
I think 'age' should be an aesthetic thing only. I'd welcome a few more character creation options to reflect this, but I can live with what's there.

"Right, here's the plan..."

"Right, here's the plan..."

Yup. "Needs more rockets" is how I generally approach most of my KSP related problems.
 
Won't each orbit? - Add more rockets.
 
Runs out of fuel on Mun return? - Add more rockets.
 
Staging is messed up, forgot to add parachutes and electricity runs out? - Sort staging, add parachutes and batteries. Oh, and while you are at it, add more rockets!

Here is a picure of the behaviour debugger doing its thing poking into the brains of AI NPCs brains:
 

 
For more details on how behaviour trees work, look here: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ChrisSimpson/20140717/221339/Behavior_trees_for_AI_How_they_work.php
 
At this point most of the survival behaviours are in. NPCs can loot for food, barricade, will stockpile water, hang sheets on curtains, change dirty bandages, sew deep wounds, and all the stuff to keep them alive (am currently coding in specific looting targets based on items the characters want, say going specifically to Cortman Medical for medical gear). Their combat skillz ain't too great, but since there is a big combat rewrite incoming with the new animations there is zero point in working on zombie (or npc -> npc/player) combat as it'll all need rewriting once that goes in (and that will be released before NPCs, almost certainly), so at the moment am focusing on group interactions.  Group interactions use an entirely different system built based on inspiration from Crusader Kings 2 using xml driven event chains to describe story beats in kind of mini-plots that will be stitched together..
 
Currrently writing an event chain for when a group walks toward a safehouse of npcs. What happens if a patrolling guard spots you, what happens if a guard at a window sees you, what happens if you get spotted while trying to jimmy a window on the safehouse, what happens if you're spotted inside the safehouse. Each of these will lead to their own consequences, branching events based on the personalities of the people both in the safehouse, and the people approaching the safehouse. From a stand off with shotguns to begging for help dealing with some raiders, there will be all manner of outcomes based on numerous factors. We're going to have all these 'storylets ' that branch in numerous ways, and pieced together we hope they will make for a Walking Dead story like experience that's different each time*
 
Idea is to build a whole metric ton of branching possibilities for single events, so that they can play out dramatically different.
 
* without actual game wide plot arcs considered and discussed and written by a team of writers, the results are unlikely to be as narratively sound and tight as a TV show story or purposefully written main quest game story, however we hope for enough variation that it feels like a unique story each time.
 
NOW WHAT'S IN THE BOX?

I think there are plans to introduce maps into the game - but they will be real world items, rather than 'game mechanics'. I think the zooming out in the way suggested would break aspects of realism.
 
I also think there are some technical limitations not related to the 'detail' element. From observing previous discussions about the technical aspects, I believe only a certain area of the game is loaded at any one time - so anything outside a certain radius of a player simply doesn't 'exist' at that time.
 
If I'm wrong then I'm sure someone will pop by and correct me.

I think there are plans to introduce maps into the game - but they will be real world items, rather than 'game mechanics'. I think the zooming out in the way suggested would break aspects of realism.
 
I also think there are some technical limitations not related to the 'detail' element. From observing previous discussions about the technical aspects, I believe only a certain area of the game is loaded at any one time - so anything outside a certain radius of a player simply doesn't 'exist' at that time.
 
If I'm wrong then I'm sure someone will pop by and correct me.

Yup. "Needs more rockets" is how I generally approach most of my KSP related problems.
 
Won't each orbit? - Add more rockets.
 
Runs out of fuel on Mun return? - Add more rockets.
 
Staging is messed up, forgot to add parachutes and electricity runs out? - Sort staging, add parachutes and batteries. Oh, and while you are at it, add more rockets!

I think there are plans to introduce maps into the game - but they will be real world items, rather than 'game mechanics'. I think the zooming out in the way suggested would break aspects of realism.
 
I also think there are some technical limitations not related to the 'detail' element. From observing previous discussions about the technical aspects, I believe only a certain area of the game is loaded at any one time - so anything outside a certain radius of a player simply doesn't 'exist' at that time.
 
If I'm wrong then I'm sure someone will pop by and correct me.

So *if* you find a supply of high quality metal, *and* a forge, *and* an anvil, *and* a grinder belt, *and* (most importantly) to "know what you are doing".
I mean, how long would it take for the 'average joe' to learn how do that, given thay they'd have to be completely self taught.

I'm sorry but I have to disagree with this.
 
I don't think that the fact that there is an 'active SCA group' does not mean that it's going to be easy finding combat ready weapons. I mean, active could mean 3-4 people in the whole area (or less!). The idea that there is a group of medieval hobbyists does not support the idea that knowledge of classical weaponry and blacksmithing is commonplace in the area.
 
As I said earlier in the thread, because of the nature of how we play games, all players will persue a skill if it exists in the game and gives them an advantage. This means on MP servers nearly every player will be an expert blacksmith, running around in a full suit of platemail and wielding a claymore... which, frankly, is just plain daft.
 
If it's something that only one in a thousand people (less, in this case) would have any knowledge of then there is no way it should be included as it'll break the realism the game is going for.

Hint: I'm not really an Ewok.

While I totally agree with the priciple of diminishing emotional effects as time goes on and your avatar becomes acclimatised to killing, I do feel the need to point out that John Rambo is fictional...

Here's a 2-man SSTO wot I built.
 

 

 

 

So I have decided to open source the code that was used for the website this year. If you want to look at a nice page go here: http://connall.github.io/SecretSantaWebsite/
 
If you want to look at the source code go here: https://github.com/Connall/SecretSantaWebsite
 
The code won't look great since this was my first kind of web project that involved PHP so it was a bit of a learning experience but I'm always up to critiquing anyway. I changed some things to make it more generalised rather than having it tied to The Indie Stone. I will probably work on this over the year and if we end up doing this next year, I will use the cumulative work for it.
 
If you have a suggestion you feel should be implemented for fix, feel free to raise the issue through the GitHub issue system or here if you wish.
 
If you want to make a pull request, clone etc then go nuts. Anywaaayyy. Enjoy.

Alright guys, I think everything that can be said about this, has been.

Thanks for your help.

Wishlists should be updated by now, I'm going to start rolling assigning Secret Santas now.

People won't read it though. Can you add an interactive tutorial, or some sort of visual or audio indicator that would get the point across

Hint: I'm not really an Ewok.

Hint: I'm not really an Ewok.

I'd like to see it, but it's not going to happen - at least not for a long time. This post from another thread sums up the why's and wherefore's quite nicely: -
http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/4222-a-question-or-two-about-the-3-d-engine/

They won't though. Ideally, all tutorial aspects should be interactive and tell you what to do at the time you are doing it. Obviously that's not something that can happen overnight, and a lot of early access games leave that kind of stuff to last.
 
Unfortunately, you can put the information there but a large amount of people aren't going to let a bit of text hold them up from their playing experience, and the few that do bother to look at it will probably skim it. The modern user isn't interested in game manuals and instruction text, they want to pick up and play so you need to teach them how to play while they are doing it.

I think the fact that humans are more observant to their other senses at night is more to do with consciously concentrating on them. Zombies on the other-hand would use 100% of their sense capacity at all times, regardless of day or night.
Also worth noting is that humans are very sight orientated - which is unusual in nature.
Our sense of smell and hearing is stronger than most people probably realise, but we 'override' the sensory input with sight input and don't concentrate on it as much. This is probably why you hear of blind people's other sense getting stronger to compensate - obviously it's physically impossible for your sense to 'improve', they were always there you just weren't 'using' them.
Perhaps zombies lack this limitation and concentrate on all sense equally - which would mean that effectively they are better at using sound and smell to hunt than a human would be? If they are operating on pure animal instinct instead of puny human logic then that's perfectly reasonable to think.
So yeah. Got distracted. Zombie hearing and smell shouldn't 'get better' at night, IMHO - but it should be 'better than human' and they should be better at hunting at night than you are, since they are less sight-reliant.

PZ should expand the map to include Mars.

I want to float calmly over the apocalypse, far above, in perfect safety. Apart from the fact my balloon is filled with hydrogen I split off of water using electricity.
 
This might not be totally serious