Smoke for Campfires and Forges

[Roland]

I like downsides as well as benefits to advantages in the game. It makes us weigh choices and keeps things interesting and risky. Right now the forges and campfires are a huge advantage with very little downside. Yes, the noise attracts zombies but in reality those zombies were going to find you anyway. Now what if there was smoke? Smoke would introduce several interesting developments in the game: Fuel: There could be fuel that burns more cleanly than others. Coal is great as fuel but would create more smoke. Logs produce less. And the dry deadwood laying around in the desert biome would produce almost no smoke. Now we have choices and reasons to go places.... Strategy: Smoke would be a visible column announcing your location to zombies, bandits, and players. It could be used as a decoy or as a signal for where you are-- making it easier for mates to link up. How far away should you be able to see smoke? That could be sorted out by testing. In any case, knowing that your cooking and forging will make you a lot more visible depending on what fuel you use certainly increases risks. Ventilation: The devs always seem to be looking for ways to change the base building meta and smoke could be a really interesting thing. Chimneys and ventilation would have to be provided or your character would suffer carbon monoxide poisoning debuff. Underground bases would have to have a shaft to the outside for smoke to escape through. I think the introduction of smoke to the campfire and the forge could really create some interesting and new dynamics into the game. Maybe zeds could care less about forge smoke but cooking smoke would carry the smell of food much farther.... Either way on PvP servers it would introduce big risks and more meetups...friendly or otherwise. Just think how cool it would be to come round a mountain side and there in a thick grove of trees you see a column of smoke and realize someone has a campfire going. Time to sneak...

[Tin]

^^^------ This is a Awesome idea.

[Roland]

Need to give credit to Steam user sevndayz2cry for the original idea. I added a bit to it and reposted it here. I also thought it was an awesome idea when I first read it and I hope the devs will think it is worth trying out :)

[Malthis]

The only problem I see with smoke in underground bases is that people would simply put something into their forge, and then just run into another room until the cooking is complete and the smoke vanishes from the room, unless you have some system in place where smoke stays where it's at unless it reaches a certain height and then vanishes. The other thing is you'd have to have it where the smoke continues to grow and spread until it reaches that height and vanishes, otherwise people could easily find workarounds, such as staying in a room next to the room with the forges, and simply having the forges in the other room with a one block hole from the safe room to the other room, with the forges in front of the hole. The smoke would accumulate in the safe room, and then you could simply open the forges through the one block holes in the safe room.

[Roland]

Good points...and yet notice how the introduction of smoke still forces new creativity in base building even when it is thinking up a workaround...lol One solution could be to forget the debuff and just have something like burning coal creates a 15 meter high column, burning wood creates a 10 meter high column, and burning deadwood creates a 5 meter high column of smoke. If the smoke column hits a ceiling then the forge or campfire stops working (not enough oxygen). Thus players simply would need to cut a shaft above their forges and campfires at least 15 blocks up for underground bases and a chimney for overland bases if they want them to work. No need for trying to make a room or cavern fill with smoke or worrying about volumes of chambers. It even would affect the planning stage of building your base because you would want to make sure you accounted for your chimneys. Outdoors you would just need to choose a suitable place and material depending on whether you wanted the smoke to be visible or not.

[Malthis]

[QUOTE=Roland;113131]Good points...and yet notice how the introduction of smoke still forces new creativity in base building even when it is thinking up a workaround...lol One solution could be to forget the debuff and just have something like burning coal creates a 15 meter high column, burning wood creates a 10 meter high column, and burning deadwood creates a 5 meter high column of smoke. If the smoke column hits a ceiling then the forge or campfire stops working (not enough oxygen). Thus players simply would need to cut a shaft above their forges and campfires at least 15 blocks up for underground bases and a chimney for overland bases if they want them to work. No need for trying to make a room or cavern fill with smoke or worrying about volumes of chambers. It even would affect the planning stage of building your base because you would want to make sure you accounted for your chimneys. Outdoors you would just need to choose a suitable place and material depending on whether you wanted the smoke to be visible or not.[/QUOTE] I agree, Cutting off the devices from working for lack of oxygen seems like a much better way of dealing with the smoke issue, but I still feel like there needs to be something that forces them to have to build that smoke shaft to surface to allow the smoke to escape, that way the smoke can still signal players and zombies.

[Tin]

Either way with what you described they would have to augment the designs to compensate, making them plan even further. Burnable blocks will be implemented in the future also. Temperature effect will be implemented sometime - which we can assume campfires/forges will have a heat factor/radius (so no burnables near forges/campfires). Would think smoke would react similar to water (only more rapid) in it expanding the longer things burned (using the drowning effect with water that will be added later - as asphyxiation effect) and revers the properties of water, instead of falling down, rise up. Also increase the fill time so it would fill a place more so then water. So basically flip your room upside down and see if it will act like a bowl for smoke. If it had no way to escape it would continue to fill till you opened a area for it to escape from, and you no longer had something burning.

[Roland]

Requiring underground bases to have a vent to the surface might be a bit too punishing. I like the idea of thinking of the room as an upside down bowl and smoke as inverted water blocks. But it still would be subject to Malthis' workaround. Just close off the room while cooking or forging and you would totally avoid any ill effects. Making the smoke cut off the device from working stops that and the only real question is where is the balance for keeping the game fun for those who like to build deep bases. Mining 15 block shafts up from their forges wouldn't be too tedious and people could even get creative with brick blocks and such. Being forced to mine 40 blocks straight up to the surface might be beyond the pale...lol As for how the smoke would look I would imagine it would act like water blocks except that it would flow straight up to the height limit. I know that if I built a chimney for my device, lit it, and then walked outside and saw smoke coming out of the top of the chimney it would give me a very satisfied feeling :)

[meatsuit]

Maybe while we're at it we can dump our venison in a smoky room and make jerky. Nomnomnom. It could be one method of food preservation if spoilage were ever implemented.

[EnableScope]

The smoke should blacken your ceiling and the walls touching it. Also it should light the block on fire if there is a block 1 or 2 above or next to made of flammable material.

[Tin]

[QUOTE=Roland;113245]Requiring underground bases to have a vent to the surface might be a bit too punishing. I like the idea of thinking of the room as an upside down bowl and smoke as inverted water blocks. But it still would be subject to Malthis' workaround. Just close off the room while cooking or forging and you would totally avoid any ill effects. Making the smoke cut off the device from working stops that and the only real question is where is the balance for keeping the game fun for those who like to build deep bases. Mining 15 block shafts up from their forges wouldn't be too tedious and people could even get creative with brick blocks and such. Being forced to mine 40 blocks straight up to the surface might be beyond the pale...lol As for how the smoke would look I would imagine it would act like water blocks except that it would flow straight up to the height limit. I know that if I built a chimney for my device, lit it, and then walked outside and saw smoke coming out of the top of the chimney it would give me a very satisfied feeling :)[/QUOTE] Gotta agree on the shutdown effect.

[Ladarian]

Good ideas :) Part of me is fearing us someday having the ability to set things in the world on fire though!

[Roland]

I like their idea of having limited blocks being flammable but I am against being able to set forest fires and burn down wooden structures. For most of us it would be fun once or twice in a SP game to build something big and then burn it down or set the forest on fire or watch Diersville burn. But after trying it once we would be done with it. But there would be enough people who would just add fire to their griefing bag of tricks to make the ability unrealistic for MP. Those people don't need any more tools. Plus we would have to endure all the twleve-year olds screaming "it's not griefing if it's part of the game!"

[EnableScope]

[QUOTE=Roland;113717]I like their idea of having limited blocks being flammable but I am against being able to set forest fires and burn down wooden structures. For most of us it would be fun once or twice in a SP game to build something big and then burn it down or set the forest on fire or watch Diersville burn. But after trying it once we would be done with it. But there would be enough people who would just add fire to their griefing bag of tricks to make the ability unrealistic for MP. Those people don't need any more tools. Plus we would have to endure all the twleve-year olds screaming "it's not griefing if it's part of the game!"[/QUOTE] Maybe burning doesn't have to completely destroy the structure. Maybe it has a random chance of destroying the block but also creating a charred half destroyed version of the block so when your house burns down it looks like a really nice burnt house. Also you would build your house of other materials such as stone to prevent it from being burnt down. In real life fire departments are working 24/7 so it would make sense that ultimately most of the wooden structures will burn to the ground if not protected with fire extinguishers and sprinkler systems.

[Roland]

it is not just my base I am concerned with. Bases are easy to manage. They can do what they did with TNT and just make it so that fire won't burn keystone protected blocks. The main problem is punks going around and burning POI's and forests. A server can get wrecked pretty quickly. I don't go on looting runs to Diersville all the time but I also would not like it if it was an ash heap... People were complaining about joining servers on day 100 before they added regenerating loot containers because they were too hard to get started in. With fire able to burn down POI's and along with them the loot containers we are back to barren wasteland servers. Now that sounds badass and hardcore even to me as I typed it but in reality not having Diersville is not as much fun as having it. But...Of course it would be fun to test out and see. Maybe the griefing would be no worse than at present.

[Tin]

Maybe the burnable blocks could take a long time to ignite/real fast burn feature. ex: open flame needs to be exposed to a burnable block for 30sec but the block itself can only burn for 10secs (oh and id have torches not able to burn blocks, just NPC's/Zombies n such). That way when a block burns it can't jump to another block. So lets say a Forge has a burn area 2 blocks top 1 block all around it could never burn down the whole building. If they made a flame thrower in the game they would also have to limit the trigger time - Lets say 10 secs per trigger duration. it would never totally burn the block out it would take 3 bursts to destroy/ignite it (also make burned damaged blocks repairable). *times are just examples only.

[Roland]

Someone else in another thread talked about signal fires of different colors. As an additional entry into the chemistry category there could be some compound that could be crafted that when put in the fuel slot of the campfire it would cause smoke of different colors. This could be a way to signal supply planes or just as a way to signal friendlies out in the wilderness.

[Roland]

The smoke flares in 9.1 have made me think about this idea again! Black smoke billowing up from campfires and forges would be amazing and making us create vents or chimneys for our bases would really add to base design. I hope that the devs will notice this idea and consider it.

[Zvex]

Actually coal sould make the least smoke. At least in real life it generates almost no smoke (I often take with me coal from shop to get better heat when making a firecamp in the nature). And in terms of getting it - it is obviously harder to get at the start of a game, than simple trees. So coal should be the most valuable and clean fuel.

[alexthemantid]

[QUOTE=Roland;113092] Maybe zeds could care less about forge smoke but cooking smoke would carry the smell of food much farther.... Either way on PvP servers it would introduce big risks and more meetups...friendly or otherwise. [/QUOTE] Good idea, but zombies `could care less`? That means that they care enough to be able to care less. :/ That would mean that they would care about it.

[Peter34]

[QUOTE=Zvex;125877]Actually coal sould make the least smoke. At least in real life it generates almost no smoke (I often take with me coal from shop to get better heat when making a firecamp in the nature). And in terms of getting it - it is obviously harder to get at the start of a game, than simple trees. So coal should be the most valuable and clean fuel.[/QUOTE] I was going to write that too. Wood contains all sorts of thing that makes highly visible smoke, probably (I'm fairly sure, but not 100%) moist wood as opposed to dried wood, whereas coal is almost pure carbon which forms nothing but carbondioxide. If some if you think "coal makes a lot of smoke", it's probably because you've seen coal-fired factories or power plants, with your own eyes or in pictures, with chimneys that let out a huge amount of smoke, but you need to realize that such places burn [I]absurdly large[/I] amounts of coal, and that if they had burned the same amount of fuel-energy as dry wood instead of as coal, there's have been [I]lots[/I] more smoke. More generally, a Camp Fire should produce less smoke than a Forge. A narrower column, and not rising so high into the air before it disperses, and thus not visible from as great a distance as a Forge. Or better yet, all the local smoke should be added together. Each Camp Fire gives from 1 to 3 points depending on how clean the fuel is, and each Forge gives from 5 to 15 points. That way, 4 running Camp Fires and 4 Forges would give a minimum of 19 points of smoke and a maximum of 72 points. And the more points there are, the denser, wider and higher-rising the smoke column would be. That way, it's more advantegeous to run your cooking or industry all the time, but only a few units running at the same time, than to do the kind of massive-scale "parallel processing" that I'm inclined to, where I might have 4 Forges simultaneously processing I-Bars into Iron Ingots, or 2 Camp Fires processing Murky Water into Bottled and 2 more processing Botlted into Tea, or even fun all 8 at once. As for getting rid of the smoke, though, I think I'd just install a couple of bar-holes in my ceiling, above the Forges, and maybe one above the Cooking area.

[DarkDragoon]

Personally I love the idea of campfires and forges creating smoke, and I'm hoping they add air polution and oxygen levels, since they already have a gas mask it seems like they've thought about it and are possibly working on it or planning to work on it, it makes sense that if you mine a cave out the further in you get the lower the oxygen levels get to the point where you'll need an oxygen tank hooked to your gas mask and if you start burning stuff in a campfire or furnace underground the smoke will start polluting the air to the point where again you'll need an oxygen tank hooked to your gas mask, this would require you to make proper ventilation like chimneys and put your camp fires and forges under them so the smoke goes up and you don't die of poisoning, this would also let them add a new item "activated charcoal" which could be used to help heal you after you suffer poisoning from smoke inhalation since it absorbs toxins

[Shiek4d5]

Good God man, they removed the smoke because it was popping up in the cooking menu. I am sure they will put it back in, this thread is pointless.

[Gertle]

Looking around in the pimp dreams section, I'm used to seeing things like "ADD A SUPER MISSLE LAUNCHER AND TANKS WITH LAZER CANNONZ AND ZOMBIES THAT THROW OTHER ZOMBIES AND FIGHTER JETS WITH MISSLES THAT LOCK ONTO ZOMBIES!!!!" But this is actually an incredible idea, it would completely blow underground base's cover and require above ground bases to have open windows or a chimney. Might be kinda hard to implement though.

[Shiek4d5]

[QUOTE=Gertle;127410]Looking around in the pimp dreams section, I'm used to seeing things like "ADD A SUPER MISSLE LAUNCHER AND TANKS WITH LAZER CANNONZ AND ZOMBIES THAT THROW OTHER ZOMBIES AND FIGHTER JETS WITH MISSLES THAT LOCK ONTO ZOMBIES!!!!" But this is actually an incredible idea, it would completely blow underground base's cover and require above ground bases to have open windows or a chimney. Might be kinda hard to implement though.[/QUOTE] Oh, you guys mean to add it as an entity in the game? I thought it was for visual effect. In that case I am on-board with it. TFP did mention a while back that they will add a feature that will keep players from staying underground too long, the air supply will deplete or something. I think it is in the works along with their Atmosphere feature. I amend my previous post.