Mold and its effects

Game Talk The Drawing Board
21

I do like the idea of having areas in the game with environmental hazards.

Having to wear a gas mask to poke around a city or underground bunker would be quite cool, especially if eye encumberance restricted your vision perhaps, so wearing a gas mask could reduce your sight radius, or only let you see in the direction of travel or something.

It would add to the feeling of claustrophobia, if and when cities make it into the game I do think they should be places that once you get into them, it takes a while to get out again. Having an environmental hazard to deal with adds to that feeling of being stuck in the place.

22

The only species effected by the slime stuff from the lab seem to be Insects and - strangely - Humans.
Oh. And Fungaloids of course.

It would make some sense that Fungaloids (Fungus) and Mold (Fungus) are mutated, and grow way faster than most other lifeforms, but Mold can’t grow randomly in houses.
You could add like a “CANGROWMOLD” flag on apples, bread and other foods, so that they start mold infections if you leave them too long on the floor.

23

But mold does grow randomly in houses. /looks down in basement/
It really does. Although usually it is a symtom of standing water/little light/stuffy air/few people. Some of these were already there before the apocalypse, and some only came about afterwards.

24

I want giant mutant mold creatures taking over towns with flying mold clouds which fly around you head, and do not directly attack, but try and infect you with mold. Also, attacking mold creatures would spew mold everywhere.

On another note, before we get mold we should have a way to power fridges, because from experience 90F or higher temp + bread on counter = Moldy bread. Basicly, we would need a way to prevent mold that doesn’t rely on RNG wanting to be nice or not.

Also, hybrid fungaloid mold creatures would be AWESOME (but would make the worst disease EVER)

25

Er, dealing with mold doesn’t mean you need power for refrigerators, it means you need to switch to reasonable food preservation techniques <_<

You COULD get a refrigerator running, and it’s essential for some things, but not basic food preservation. Also it’ll be quite expensive, maintenance-wise, because you need to keep it powered, and refrigerators eat a ton of power, especially if they’re not in a climate-controlled environment.

Anyway, long-range monster attraction, then generators.

26

Mold is fungus. I have always thought the fungaloids were either people infested with mold, or mold creatures.

Also mold definitely grows in houses. Your house has mold in it guaranteed In fact a bulk of the dust that accumulates in most houses is the settled particulates generated by mold. Any time water comes in contact with drywall or carpet or upholstery you will get mold unless that area is in contact with direct sunlight. Mold is not always present in large visible quantities but it is generally there anyway. And these can grow into full blown colonies when the environment isn’t managed by ordinary human presence and airflow/light/temperature control.

I do think that it would be nice if spoiled food increased the ambient mold level but I’m not sure if objects can affect the environment like that.

27

I think the champ’s making a point. If I get to meet you, Hyena Grin, I’ll be sure to call you Fox Molder.
The great thing about this game is that it communicates with the player, regarding character’s senses. “Really step into that thick smoke?” could turn into “The stench coming from there is really foul and the air is very old. Are you sure?” The real deal here is to know that non-preserved food, therefore groceries, start to rot after ten days or so - and the mold is a part of that. To counterpart your statement, Hyena, that “everything molds” - I left some bisquits on my coffee table, away from the sun and in the way of all atmospheric conditions that vary in closed quarters - the airflow, people passing about, cooking smells, being amongst other edibles - for more than six months. It was stale, but still I ate it. Now, I’d never eat something that was in a wet cellar and wasn’t packed. So be careful when you define where to find actual, you call it dangerous, “festering” mold - living quarters are places where everything moves and everything’s done. But if it’s dark, lacks oxygen and is high in humidity, it’ll give birth to a little bundle of joy. I mean, mold. ;-D

28

I didn’t say ‘everything molds.’ I said that every house has mold in it. Under your carpet, behind your drywall, in the confines of your furniture. Small (and large) amounts of mold are everywhere. It is extremely hard to prevent it from happening in climates that experience humidity.

Certain foods have preservatives in them specifically to prevent mold from developing. Food isn’t really a large concern - food can become hotbeds of mold but the real concern is water leakage into materials that are not meant to get wet and have a hard time drying out.

Carpet, drapes, upholstery, leather, wood products, clothing, paper, cardboard, books, rags, drywall, cloth, ceiling tiles, ductwork, paint, wallpaper, and household dust - all of these can and will support mold colonies given the right environmental conditions, and houses are absolutely full of these things. Carpet is a big one; if a house leaks water then the carpets can become hotbeds of mold that you can’t see, and when you walk around on it, the mold gives off spores into the air. It’s not uncommon for carpets to be taken out and huge colonies of mold found beneath. Same goes for drywall. And this is in houses people have been living in for decades not realizing they had a mold problem. Mold will grow practically anywhere. They’re everywhere, you’re breathing their spores right now, they are on your food, your body is fighting them right now; they are constantly waiting for the right time to bloom into a full colony. It’s disgusting. D=

I think the way I’d handle warnings and stuff, is on the bottom right you could have a constant air quality alert; If an area could have mold (but doesn’t necessarily) then the air is musty. If it’s clean then the air is fresh. If it’s very bad then it just flat out smells moldy. You can smell mold if there’s a lot of it. It’s a very distinctive odor and it leaves no doubt. No need to be coy about it.

Musty air could impart no exposure at all (the air is just stale) or it might be kinda bad. How the player would get a sense for that is how often their character is sneezing, coughing, and getting itchy eyes. These messages would pop up with a frequency depending on how much exposure they are receiving (so modified by environmental protection), and would give the player a sense of how much exposure they are getting, and give them a sense of whether the house they’ve chosen to live in is safe or not. In genuinely moldy areas these messages might be supplemented by periodic hacking and burning eyes. These things don’t actually happen with mold acute exposure, but for the sake of gameplay I think it makes sense as a warning mechanism.

29

I was thinking air quality, then I remembered I want a scent indicator (what you’re smelling right now) anyway, so you’d smell e.g. rot from zombies (or maybe just a dead animal or rotting food?). Mold would fit right into that.
Need to chat With GalenEvil about that, he’s been working on a system for fast diffusion of player scent, and we can hopefully reverse it and apply it to environmental scents to figure out what the player is smelling.

30

Oh nice, that’d be awesome. And could let you toss in new mood modifiers and stuff. Spending too much time around stinking, rotting corpses can be rather demoralizing. Boomer vomit could also be unpleasant to be around, etc. You might be able to smell a smoker before you can see the smoke traces, etc.

31

Oh yea, no idea why I didn’t think of it influencing mood, that’s a good one.

32

And drugs, never forget drugs.
“You smell … burning rubber.”
“You smell … your mother’s favorite perfume.”
etc, etc