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1216

Development News / Spirits, spells, short movies, short of time, and the diminishing year

« on: November 20, 2017, 04:15:03 PM »

Today I came to a realization that the absolutely last thing to do for the upcoming version is to finalize the spirit of the forest related quest, and the many spells that were brought into existence because of this very spirit. The reality check came upon me shortly after browsing books for spells to receive bear hunting aids from the spirits when asleep. Shortly after thinking that dreams and premonitions would be now natural to feature with the other upcoming spell improvements. Shortly after noticing myself to follow a pattern where I add a new big to-do right after the existing list of to-dos before release grows down in size to a reasonable length. This has been a familiar and overly ambitious pattern in case of the version in development. Now as the end of the calendar year is drawing nearer and the holiday season approaches, it's better to start wrap things up for test builds and then consider how far a beta release possibility might be.

There's also been this certain short movie occupying our time. A short movie we shot in autumn 2016, and which has been cooking slowly in post-production ever since. But now, ladies and gentlemen, I'm confirmed to say that a brand new Enormous Elk short movie will still be released this very year. Like the upcoming version, this short movie is also the most ambitious of them all. We had a short post about it at the old forums, with a coffee break pic from the filming location. Now let's repost it here.
All in all, despite of breaks, all kinds of stuff is coming up. Peace and patience to all of you.

1217

Development News / Re: "Spirit of the forest, I presume"

« on: November 20, 2017, 12:38:14 PM »

Are these new functions going to take the ritual skill into account? Just want to know for my future characters, cause I always try to get along with the spirits, but at the current time am able to do so without any skill at ritual.

No, they won't. Ritual skill hasn't basically ever been properly functional, and for the next version it is likely to be removed since we can't find a good use for it anyway.
Like currently also in the next version the relationship with the spirits is kept up with character actions.

1218

Development News / "Spirit of the forest, I presume"

« on: November 04, 2017, 05:28:15 PM »

Now that sort of a phrase may actually slip from your lips in the next version of the game as the Spirit of the Forest gets added to our small cast of otherworldly creatures.
Reworked spells and many kind of spirit world additions has a major part in the galore of upcoming features, and manifestation and actual appearance of spirit of the forest is now featured and off my to-do list. Implementing a related quest (or two) is still required, but step by step the planned spirit world additions do gets wrapped up.

As a necessary spin-off feature we also had to expand possible sacrifices to include not only foodstuff, but also valuables. See, offering silver has been traditionally very much linked to pleasing the certain spirits. And as the spells in the game now are actual collected old spells we had to add silver sacrifices if we wanted to add proper spells for "summoning" the spirit of the forest. (You may want to see post about the used "spellbooks" at old forums).

You know, with this version it feels like our to-do things are proceeding really slow compared to the amount of work and energy put in. Seems like we're dealing with complex entities rather than simple isolated features. But there's the spirit of the forest now. He brought in so much more code and features than first assumed, but it all just had to be done.

Let's not spoil too much about what the spirit of the forest can actually do for you, but we know he's an important spirit, watching over the forest and the animals. According to the folklore the spirit of the forest may sometimes tell you where the game is, if he's pleased with you. That, at least, is an actual feature now. And as a tidbit of our desired in-game perfection I gotta mention that these spirits often concentrate on only culturally important animals. Thus, the spirit of the forest can prioritize his observations differently for members of northern tribes than those of the western tribes.
But now look at this fellow of one of the eastern tribes...
He must have something right to hear this from..well...from the spirit of the forest, I presume.

1219

Not bugs / Re: Arrow disappears

« on: November 04, 2017, 04:25:31 PM »

Yep, checked the code paying attention to the latest pondering here and it's indeed simply so that there's no message when an arrow breaks due to impact of the hit. Arrows occasionally breaking upon it is naturally normal (and I actually can't recall if there ever was a message about it?). If we think it closely an arrow breakage inside target's body is harder to notice than seeing them splinter upon hitting a tree or so. Maybe we should add a message, or maybe we should add broken arrows to be carried by the target. On the other hand, I think my logic with broken arrows never being added to target's inventory was to save inventory slots from useless items.
Anyway, the case solved here, now just considering what to do about it. Low priority.

1220

Not bugs / Re: Arrow disappears

« on: October 22, 2017, 08:28:34 PM »

I'm completely sure I've killed e.g. birds with an arrow and collected only the bird from where it fell (straight down), with no arrow (whole or broken) to be found even when searching, so something is bound to be there.
However, I'll keep my eyes open with my next character (who'll be created with the next UrW version). After all, tracking down oddities is a lot easier when they're reproducible, or at least logged.

Okay, good, eyes open, and savegames ahead if the oddity seems to strike.
When time allows I might try some bird shooting myself as well.

1221

Development News / Re: Wounded or starving dogs refusing to attack on command

« on: October 22, 2017, 11:00:14 AM »

@makute :

You've been already asked about this, but can't resist: with the new cubs and baby animals, how far is animal husbandry? And more important, human husbandry

and

@codyo :

From all the times I've asked, "human husbandry" is remaining a very low priority (despite how badly I want it too). So that feature will be a long ways off.

How far it is depends on the level of desired detail. Having domestic animals give birth and their young ones to grow isn't that tricky to do anymore now that we've got it for wild animals. However, with the many player tactics of hoarding dozens of animals huge farms would soon arise. Characters who would live a full year could sit still and be secured with all of their easily "re-generating" animals. I'd like to make having domestic animals far more laborous than it currently is, having to feed them, having them to get sick every now and them - sometimes lethally, not being able to drag a pack of cows with you across the whole map everytime you want, and so on. This sort of improvements feel more important than a sloppy and quick animal husbandry. But it's coming up eventually, we're now more certain of it than ever before

@caius :

Did this comment contribute to this addition?    https://www.unrealworld.fi/forums/index.php?topic=134.0

With all the stuff bubbling around it's hard to say what contributes to which  but making dogs less of a war dogs has been on my mind for a loooong time.

@Mati256 :

but now a way to treat wounded dogs feels more important than ever... and if you can heal dogs, why not companions too?

Mmm..that is a long awaited functionality but like said many times before it's made so that dogs (and all the pets) usually heal faster on their own than what would happen if low or mediocre physician skills were applied. So these pet healing thingies currently play for character's advantage in a sense.

1222

Bug reports / Re: [grain] type plant always produce the same weight of grains

« on: October 22, 2017, 10:40:59 AM »

True indeed. Checked out the code and grain type plant's fistful size is hardcoded for some reason.
I can't remember why that sort of decision has been made, especially as flora files have seed_size defined for grains...although it's defined as Small, which is a bit off for the grains in the game. Gotta reason my reasoning regarding this at some point.

1223

Solved'n'fixed bug reports / Re: woodsman's axe disappears

« on: October 22, 2017, 10:32:18 AM »

Message log is incomplete. It seems to start from the point where the woodsman's axe isn't anymore to be found in your inventory (but handaxe is used instead.)
To figure things out I would need to scan the complete original message log for woodsman's axe occurences.

1224

Not bugs / Re: Returning already eaten food

« on: October 22, 2017, 10:25:30 AM »

Not a bug. Like noted, if you can't return what you're expected to pay the relationship with the village decreases.
There could be NPC chat message regarding the fact that item wasn't able to be returned, but serious me-eat-no-pay characters will discover how it goes anyway.

Dogiuks, fiddling with containers like that is bound the mess things up. Containers are intented to be bought in the condition and with the contents available, no pouring or making your own ratios of the product allowed in the UnReal World.

1225

Not bugs / Re: Arrow disappears

« on: October 22, 2017, 10:19:22 AM »

Very hard to tell, if there's a bug or something quite normal in question.
To find out, we have to narrow this down to what was originally reported "when I hit arrow to the animals the arrows disappears" - and exclude the missed arrows which indeed can be difficult to find from the distance.

wanderer (and others), I would need to investigate a savegame right after you think you some of the hit arrows had disappeared. I think that might come in your way usually after the animal has brought down and arrows are to be collected. Feel free to send one.

One thing which can cause this sort of confusion though, is that arrows that break are left on the ground at the hit location. In the heat of the hunt you may misplace message information regarding arrow breakage. And if you, for example, notice making 5 hits to the target, but don't notice a message about one arrow breaking, then it may surprise to collect only 4 arrows from the kill.

Also, in the earlier versions broken arrows simply vanished. It was even more easy to get confused if message log wasn't read carefully throughout the hunt.

1226

Stories / Re: Poems of the Fallen

« on: October 22, 2017, 09:58:18 AM »

Just a quick note which hopefully doesn't get things sidetracked;
I absolutely love this thread.  It's so great this was started, and that people joined in.

Oh I would love to have some of these verses to be composed into proper songs. Any composers/musicians/singers around who'd need a new project...

1227

Development News / Wounded or starving dogs refusing to attack on command

« on: October 04, 2017, 02:21:40 PM »

Let's announce just one small but significant upcoming addition....

 - added: wounded or starving dogs may refuse to attack on command

        If your dog is seriously wounded or starving it may refuse to attack on command. Even the suffering dogs still defend
        their masters and themselves from charging predators and enemies, but are just reluctant to act as war dogs who always
        run after a given target completely despite of their own condition. This addition may encourage you to keep your dogs
        more safe and better fed from now on.


This is an upcoming feature, not functional in the current version 3.40.

1228

Development News / Time flies, the autumn comes

« on: September 30, 2017, 12:15:25 PM »

Oh my, it's the last of september already, and there's been no news since entering the summer vacation. Let's fix that quickly now.
So, for those who only read news I should announce that I did survive the summer -- and as a more concrete evident frequent forum browsers have spotted few replies and
here and there. Mostly concerning a few squashed or mysterious bugs.

At the moment, regarding the game, I seem to be very short of time for anything else than continuing the development from where it was paused before the summer vacation. And occasionally squashing the most relevant bugs with the left hand when possible. Once we get a fistful of more to-do's featued a roadmap towards the next version becomes more to clear announce verbally for you, good people. The last few weeks it's been mostly all about continuing to add a new spells and finalizing ritual system renewal. It's one of the big next version additions, and was vaguely briefed in this old forums thread.

With the shortage of more words and news to give you let's just say that the autumn is coming, but so are the future features of UnReal World.
Let there be code, and let there be swans.


September 2017, outside the development chambers.

1229

Solved'n'fixed bug reports / Re: [Fixed - persists in 3.40] Pig in forest cover quest

« on: September 27, 2017, 10:55:19 AM »

This has been taken care of now.
We'll make it so that losing a lost animal trail under (lots of) new tracks means losing the trail for good, so the tracks that are said to belong to animal you're after are the ones that matter. It's also adjusted so that the small animal tracks don't that easily mess up the bigger tracks even if the smaller ones were numerous.

Fixed - Persists in 3.40

1230

Solved'n'fixed bug reports / Re: Trapped small animal opens door on adjacent tile

« on: September 26, 2017, 03:55:16 PM »

Fixed. Persists in 3.40.
This bug might apply to other animals besides squirrels as well.