Climate Control

[Wally-kun]

Is there a possibility of making something for controlling temperature in an interior other than using fires? I mean, fires do work, but the problem is fueling them and having to micro-manage them throughout the process. An indoor heater that runs in a similar way to the charcoal forge, but with batteries, would make winter a lot more convenient for well off survivors. That and walking around in full fur getup in your own home seems…bothersome. Especially considering these are the people that built a rolling fortress for themselves and should be able to at least heat the thing.

That, and I’ve always liked the idea of a walk-in freezer. Minifridges can be kinda rare and are just one tile. They’re also vehicle exclusive.

A power grid of some kind would make all this very nice and cozy, but a battery-powered heater/cooler structure also seems like a very nice addition.

[Coolthulhu]

The implementation of fire heating is a bit hacky and wouldn’t easily support neither uniform heating nor cooling.

This is a recurring feature request (like vehicles-in-vehicles), but unfortunately it would be quite hard to implement well.

Current implementation works like this: fields of hot air gas are created, then they spread around like smoke.
This works, but is slow (major reason of why fires are so CPU-intensive), wouldn’t stabilize nicely in big rooms, wouldn’t work in moving vehicles and makes hot air rather “viscous” (opening a window doesn’t make it escape well).

A more proper solution would be making temperature spread around in a similar way to smell. Smell spreading mechanics will change soon (will be going 3D), so “proper” heaters and any coolers would also have to be rewritten.

So it is probably going to get in, but not necessarily soon.

[Schilcote]

Would it be too hard to have a hacky form of vehicle climate control that just automatically heats/cools the player if it’s on and the player is within 2 tiles of the source or something? It’d be a decently accurate simulation of how vehicle climate control works if you’re sitting in the driver’s seat and the vents are blowing straight on you; it doesn’t really matter what’s going on elsewhere in the vehicle if hot or cold air is being directed right at your face.

[KA101]

Would it be too hard to have a hacky form of vehicle climate control that just automatically heats/cools the player if it’s on and the player is within 2 tiles of the source or something? It’d be a decently accurate simulation of how vehicle climate control works if you’re sitting in the driver’s seat and the vents are blowing straight on you; it doesn’t really matter what’s going on elsewhere in the vehicle if hot or cold air is being directed right at your face.

Pretty confident that’s how it currently works: if in a powered & enclosed veh, you’re Comfortable or close to it.

[Wally-kun]

I just had a thought: as time goes on and the world starts to change, what kind of climate-related changes to the environment will happen? The fungus will likely cause some big greenhouse effects because of the nature of their spore clouds, and it seems like the triffids would appreciate a tropical environment of some kind.

As the difficulty of the world ‘scales’ with one’s ‘progress,’ to me it stands to reason that climate shift will start to become very apparent. Then maybe we can see heat start to become something that is worth worrying about outside of lava rifts or magma chambers. It would also give a place for acid rain, which I have yet to see occur naturally in my game (I assume it’s disabled for development reasons).

At some point it seems like surviving in a sort of coasting state isn’t going to be possible. The cataclysm demands change and such.

Is anything like that planned? Because later in the game I’m really interested to see how the world is going to start to shift around me.

[Schilcote]

I believe the plan for now is “no, there is no way to meaningfully fight back against the cataclysm, there’s no winning or long-term survival period.” So I don’t imagine they’ll be implementing any long-term effects simply because there’s not supposed to be anyone around to see them. I suppose someone could mod them in though.

[KA101]

I believe the plan for now is “no, there is no way to meaningfully fight back against the cataclysm, there’s no winning or long-term survival period.” So I don’t imagine they’ll be implementing any long-term effects simply because there’s not supposed to be anyone around to see them. I suppose someone could mod them in though.

There’s no way to Save The World™. You can totally fight back, and might even be able to keep a pocket free of fungus/triffids, maybe figure out a way to burn the blob out of the water table in that area, at rather expensive cost.

In the end, humankind is gonna need to adapt or die, much like the blob does with its zeds and the Mycus does with its local guides. There’s no ascension or other “good job, we’re taking your character, try again” win condition, true, but soft wins (let you know you did something meaningful, and can keep playing if you choose), sure.