Winter Wonderlands

[KA101]

I saw LazyCat implemented some form of snowfall in the MGS mod. I’m curious how xe did so, and whether that would allow for more creative winter-type architecture & crafting, so I thought I’d open a thread to ask.

[Rivet]

crafting>snowballs - train your throwing
crafting>snow + tasty beverages = snow cones for maximum enjoyment
construction>snow + hat = snowman - maybe it would distract zeds temporarily
construction>snow fort

Actually a good snow fort could be of use in Cataclysm. Soak the walls enough and it would be a slippery fortification that most common zeds probably couldn’t even surmount - the perfect place to sit while you pick them off with your hunting rifle.

[DWC]

Snow shoes, skis and tire chains could be a thing too. I dunno how much it snows in New England but i’d imagine without anybody plowing the roads your car would not be going anywhere for the duration of winter without the latter. Maybe even with the latter depending on how thick it is.

Like a real snowy winter could be it’s own sorta game within a game, if zombies and animals are not as active and you need to stockpile food to survive the duration, or end up trudging through waist deep snow everywhere.

Maybe zombies could hide under the snow too, until you basically step on them. That’d make winter real interesting.

[Rivet]

I’ve never been there, but from what I hear New England winters are positively brutal. Special equipment to navigate the cold months of winter would be an excellent addition to the game. Crafting snowshoes/skis/tire chains to make travel easier would be a wonderful bit of detail that I’d love to see included.

The Unreal World is a roguelike that does an exceptional job of simulating harsh winter; it’s a real test of your preparedness to survive it, and a smart player spends the warm months planning for the cold ones. The foolish players end up being poked with sticks by Njerpez children when the snowbank their frozen corpse ended up in thaws out.

I do have to question whether zombies would be active in freezing temperatures, though. If they’re dead they should freeze solid until the thaw, right? I suppose from a gameplay perspective they should stay active (perhaps the otherworldly slime that animates them generates enough heat to keep them from turning into corpseicles) though perhaps with a speed penalty (and possible damage resistance) due to being partially frozen. I find the idea of zombies that are hidden in snowbanks bursting out to grab your character as you explore the frozen wastes to be particularly compelling.

[DWC]

[quote=“Rivet, post:4, topic:1765”]I’ve never been there, but from what I hear New England winters are positively brutal. Special equipment to navigate the cold months of winter would be an excellent addition to the game. Crafting snowshoes/skis/tire chains to make travel easier would be a wonderful bit of detail that I’d love to see included.

The Unreal World is a roguelike that does an exceptional job of simulating harsh winter; it’s a real test of your preparedness to survive it, and a smart player spends the warm months planning for the cold ones. The foolish players end up being poked with sticks by Njerpez children when the snowbank their frozen corpse ended up in thaws out.

I do have to question whether zombies would be active in freezing temperatures, though. If they’re dead they should freeze solid until the thaw, right? I suppose from a gameplay perspective they should stay active (perhaps the otherworldly slime that animates them generates enough heat to keep them from turning into corpseicles) though perhaps with a speed penalty (and possible damage resistance) due to being partially frozen. I find the idea of zombies that are hidden in snowbanks bursting out to grab your character as you explore the frozen wastes to be particularly compelling.[/quote]

Yeah I kinda had The Unreal World in mind too. There the game sorta turns into you sitting in a shack for what seems like forever hoping you’ve got enough food in your cellar to see the end of it. I don’t think it gets as cold in New England as it does in Finland though, so you’d presumably have a bit more freedom to go out and do things without worrying if your toes will survive the 5 minutes walk into town.

I dunno about the zombies. They should be active, but maybe just a bit slower, to keep parity with any movement effects your survivor would have. Maybe they are cold-blooded and the tissue is pretty stiff but the goo doesn’t care. If they just got frozen to the pavement the whole winter, it would be a pretty lame apocalypse.

Plus, the winter might give you a good reason to use the underground, sewers and subways to get from place to place.

[KA101]

Re cold affecting critters: One thing I’d like to implement would be a simple flag-check. If critters aren’t WARM, they either don’t appear topside at all* during Winter, or take a (not so) hefty speed penalty. A quick check indicates that Cold-Blooded characters would only lose 17.5% of their speed at 30F.

(Or, I could have my math wrong.)

*Cool Critters with underground places to go, such as giant ants, would probably be far more common in their lairs. Bears & hibernating would also be an issue…not sure if it’d be worth coding a mutation to let Beastly players hibernate too.

In slush or ice, I’d imagine a STUMBLES critter might have a pretty good chance of slipping. Winter Boots ought to keep the player out of trouble…fae forfend that someone be caught with Heels on ice, though.

Re snow-based craftables: Same idea re snowballs, not sure if the snow fort would be useful but I haven’t built one in over a decade (so what do I know?) and integrating snow into food might be a problem re non-Clean water. Snowman ought to confer a morale bonus; top hats & scarves exist in-game so one could do a fairly good Frosty. Thinking snow-based shelters ought to be a viable alternative to Tents, etc–got directions & a diagram or two in that “How to Stay Alive in the Woods” book.

[DWC]

Makes me wonder how acid snow would work though… It’d obviously pile up and linger like any other kind of snow, right? It’d need to be a different color, green everywhere would look like grass or vomit or something and sorta kill the visuals of a hostile snowy winter. I can’t think of any acidic chemical in existence that’s green anyways.

I think some other player wanted a ‘Metro 2098’ mod or whatever that game is with the theme being underground with topside being an inhospital wasteland. Acid snow and all the other dangers would be an easy way to mainline that sort of gameplay.

[system]

Acid snow?

My friend, the freezing point of acid is well below that of what is possible by nature. So yes, it would still acid rain, just not as much but in a more concentrated form.

(I would like to say about -127.28F if it is sulfuric acid)

[DWC]

Duh, yeah I guess snow made of acid and acid ice isn’t actually a thing that could exist. I suppose acid rain/ acid snow would be solid particulate matter of the acidic chemical wrapped up or mixed into the regular water rain. Like when volcanic ash gets mixed with regular rain water. So acid precipitation is still mostly water, it just has acidic compounds in along with it.

Then again I suppose the acid being there would change the precipitation freezing point or something, hmm…

[vultures]

So, if a very large ammount of acid vapors were to condensate above a dreamy, snow-drawn scenery, what would happen? I know what sulphur is, but this sh*t ate my utilities whilst whacking a spitter Z. That’s some weird doing… like on that Canadian flag - what’s the big leaf for, what’s it hiding? It’s all a mystery, I tell ya.

[pikdome]

I’d like to think that zombies would be temperature dependent.
As temperatures drop, it starts getting harder to survive in other ways, so why not have new opportunities arise based on season?

So, summers the season of plenty, the wilderness has got all kinds of food in it, special warm season creatures like the giant mosquitos and frogs flourish, active zombies wandering the cities, giant bees gathering honey, etc.

The numerical thermometer on the hud should be removed, and instead various in character ways of determining the temperature, like thermometers or tuning a radio into the NOAA automated weather forecast service.

On that note maybe a new domestic bionic that connects to an automated weather satellite can give you current readings for your area, as well as the weather forecast. It could be pretty handy.

Winter could be a boon, if you are prepared.
Zombies get sluggish from the cold, and even freeze stiff when the thermometer drops below zero. Now, it’d also be hard for you to be out trekking in the freezing temperatures, but it’d mean that you could loot cities with some relative safety, as long as you don’t freeze to death, or the temperature doesn’t rise above freezing, thawing the zombies…

Also, I’d wanna see some abominable snowmen and yetis out lurking the woods, maybe new enemies made entirely of ice, giving new incentives for using flame based weaponry.

Just my two cents.

[youtoo]

I never survived until winter. However, maybe we can get some ideas about winter from the roguelike ‘unreal world’ (google it if you dont know about it. I dont have the link).