Messages

61

General Discussion / Recovering from a forum crash

« on: September 08, 2021, 04:04:56 PM »

Hello!

We recently experienced a server-side crash at the forums. To fully recover from the crash I had to manually restore the latest database backup, which was less than 24 hours old. So, any posts made after that backup are probably lost forever, but the vast majority of forum content seems to be back again.

62

Off-topic / A family survival game (in the making)

« on: August 22, 2021, 06:26:48 PM »

As many of you might already know, here at Enormous Elk we have another game project in the making. The game is called Ancient Savo, and it is also keeping your family alive in the 1200CE woodlands of Eastern Finland. The time-scale of the game is so that one turn is 24 hours, and the gameplay is about planning actions. Like "fell down that area of woods", "sow rye", "build a cabin". You don't actually see your family members going around their daily business, so it is more like the old Sim City and such management games, where you hover over the map clicking tiles to plan actions. No fighting; cold, hunger and accidents are your only enemy. And the game is designed to be modding-friendly.

The development has been going on, and at the moment we have most of the basic elements set up. We have 2D and 3D graphics, and you can switch mid-game. You can plan actions and watch your children grow. You can visit a marketplace to barter with NPCs.

In addition to my own coding we already have a few rather awesome contributions by other people - like four original music pieces composed, played, recorded and mastered by Erik Torpström from Rogue Analogue.

Learning to code the 3D graphics took some time, but finally it works good enough. So that for coming weeks and months I'll shift my attention back to the actual game-play, balancing values, adding details etc.

---

EDIT by Erkka at 26th of December 2021 : Removed some outdated information, and here are the fresh additions;

To be honest, I haven't yet gotten to balancing values and adding details. Instead I've been busy with implementing the basics of a modding system, marriage and ability to continue playing as your offspring. All that kind of stuff took more time than I had thought.

Despite lagging a few months behind the intended schedule, the project is still very much alive. A private beta version is available for a restricted audience, and if no fatal bugs are found, there will be public beta sometime towards the end of January, or in February if bughunting eats away time from the actual development.

Apparently the old screenshot got deleted as I updated the project info at Enormous Elk site, so here is a fresh one:

63

Off-topic / Re: Moon and sun in the sky at the same time?

« on: July 17, 2021, 07:55:25 PM »

Yesterday I was driving a car and noticed the moon in the sky, at 4 pm, in full daylight. But I didn't have time to stop to take a picture. Today, back at home, around 4 pm I tried to scan the sky but couldn't spot the moon. Then I went to help some of my neighbours, and took a small forest path to get from one neighbour to another. The path wound up next to a small forest clearing where my horses are having their peaceful eternal rest. I stopped there for a while, with all the good memories of the life with the horses. And then I noticed that above the treetops there is the moon;



Today the sunset will be at 22:45, and this image was taken at 18:35. Thinking of it, I'd guess our long summer days allow more hours to see the sun and the sky together in the sky.

Speaking of UrW, the sun and the moon positions are calculated based on scientific formulas, although we have omitted some minor fine-tuning and corrections, making it so that there might be 1% - 2% inaccuracy. Also, as already mentioned in this thread, it would be more realistic if the moon position wouldn't be drawn on the UrW UI sky box if the moon is too close to the sun. That will probably be adjusted at some point.

With a few lines of more code it would be possible to simulate also the lunar and solar eclipses, but at the moment that is not simulated. Those events would be atmospheric, so it remains to be seen if in some future version we happen to feel like adding eclipses 

64

Solved'n'fixed bug reports / Re: [3.70b3] weather weird (new character, created on 3.70b3)

« on: July 15, 2021, 03:58:52 PM »

In 3.70 beta3 the weather data is not saved in a file named WEATHER.DAT, but now it is in GLOBWEATHER.DAT.

Ukhata, a screenshot would be a helpful, to determine what is "in the middle of summer" in your game. Snow and ice in the early June doesn't sound like a bug to me, just one of those years when summer starts late. But snow and ice in mid-July sounds a lot more like a bug. So, to clarify this, we'd need to know what you mean by "in the middle of summer".

65

General Discussion / Re: Real life names for mushrooms?

« on: July 10, 2021, 06:54:38 PM »

Most of the mushroom are just invented, with no exact counterparts in the real world.

Tellervo's Gift is loosely modelled based on Suppilovahvero.

If the other ones in your list were based on some real references, seems like I have forgotten about them long since. But I have a vague memory that this question has been asked before, so if someone is expert in digging through old posts (probably in the old forums), there might be some forgotten pieces of information hidden there =) But, what I do remember is that most of the

66

Off-topic / Re: How to access (some of) the old invision forum messages

« on: July 06, 2021, 08:48:30 PM »

Thanks, everyone!

The link in the forum news-section is now updated.

67

Solved'n'fixed bug reports / Re: 3.70b migrated character, soil month, temperature too hot

« on: June 29, 2021, 07:55:00 PM »

I suspect this might be a failure in migrating the weather information from the old-version saved game.

So, to narrow it down it would be helpful to get confirmation if this only happens when first loading a character created in older version, or if it indeed is possible that an old character starts OK, and temperature then goes silly after a few in-game days.

68

Solved'n'fixed bug reports / Re: [3.70b] character movement slow while zoomed in when snow crust

« on: June 29, 2021, 05:14:12 PM »

Also, just to confirm: is the character alone in the zoomed-in map, or are there a number of other creatures also moving around?

69

Development News / Re: Sneak preview of textilecraft system with screenshots and additional insight

« on: May 12, 2021, 07:13:54 AM »

Nice to see the metric units have been added.
Will it be a config?

yes it will

70

General Discussion / Re: Active or High quality Unreal world youtubers

« on: May 11, 2021, 09:28:10 PM »

Tried to post the link but it says I'm not allowed to post external links.

We apologize for the inconvenience!

To reduce the spambot activity we've been gradually building up layers of automated anti-spam measures. One layer is that users with less than four posts can't have external links in their posts. But now when the spam-bot activity has been relatively silent, (thanks to the new and better mixture of invisible defences which filter out spam-bots when they try to create an account) I lowered the threshold to two posts. So derek should now be able to post external links. But all the new users still need to post at least two coherent on-topic posts before they can embed links in their posts.

71

Development News / Re: Fibre processing continues with retting and some spin-off features

« on: May 10, 2021, 06:23:36 PM »

This is a topic I've seen mentioned in the forums a few times before, and decided not to comment (for I've thought that this will be discussed again, once the need to feed livestock gets implemented in the game). So, not going to go into details of this discussion now, when plans for "the need to feed livestock" are just that - plans, and not yet in the works. Just a short mention, one point:

As a person living in the countryside, with decades of first-hand experience in feeding domestic animals like horses, cows and sheep, and as a person who has read something about the history of animal-rearing in Finland, and also has first-hand experience about the old traditional breeds like the Finnhorse and Finncattle, I'd like to make a point: "hay for food, straw for bedding" is a relatively modern invention. 1000 years ago it was more like "feed your animals with what ever you managed to gather in the summer", which meant things like dried bunches of broadleaved saplings, moss, straw, and yes - wild hay. (For bedding it was most likely peat and moss).

I've seen my own Finnhorses deliberately choosing to eat straw when hay is also available. Those old breeds have digestion all geared towards survival, they like to chew tree bark etc. Finncattle digestion is more like a reindeer, than a modern cow bred for maximum milk production.

Oh well. And in case someone disagrees and feels a need to continue this discussion, please do so in "general" or "off-topic" sections instead of dev.news which is for announcing features Sami is working on, not about going into details discussing future plans.

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Development News / Re: Fibre processing continues with retting and some spin-off features

« on: May 07, 2021, 07:29:07 PM »

is there a plan that eventually animals such as cows and sheep will need to eat during winter,

The official development list, in section "Livestock and domestic animals" mentions:
"*Ability (and need) to feed animals, including grazing".

I'd guess this indicates that there is such a plan.

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Gameplay questions / Re: 1 arrow = 15 feet cord

« on: April 22, 2021, 11:11:20 AM »

Is there a mod that changes that, making it consistent with the rest of the game, by any chance?

I think the next version release will change that.

74

Development News / Re: The Moon and The Crust

« on: April 08, 2021, 02:08:56 PM »

In UrW simulation there are two factors to the visibility:

1) how far you can see
2) how bright / dim is the area you see

(there, naturally, is a defined relationship between these two. But, speaking of the simulation, they are different variables)

If we use these variables to make sense of the real world phenomena, I think moonlight having snow on the ground doesn't affect variable 1. But it might slightly change variable 2. The main effect of having snow on the ground is that it creates a different kind of contrast. Let's imagine it this way:

there is no snow on the ground, you are standing on a middle of a field, looking at the edge of the forest. Next to the forest there is someone, maybe a person, maybe an animal. But the forest behind that creature is dark in color, and so is the creature. So you have very little of visual cue to distinguish the dark shape of the creature against the dark background.

Now, imagine the same scene with snow on the ground, and also a layer of snow on tree branches. Suddenly the background appears not dark, but more like dimly glowing blueish-white. But there is not snow on the creature, the creature is dark. In these conditions it is a lot easier to spot "aha, there is something there, near the edge of the forest!"

And I think something like this happens in UrW simulation, too.

75

Gameplay questions / Re: How do I ski

« on: April 07, 2021, 05:20:38 PM »

in real life wood sliding on icy snow would wear down from friction. 

based on real life experience I'd say that a wooden ski gliding on icy snow has a rather minimal friction, so I'd expect it won't wear down the ski.

What wears down wooden skis is when there isn't quite enough snow, and you suddenly hit sand, gravel, stones, rocks or asphalt (if crossing a modern road with skis on)