See likes

See likes given/taken


Posts you liked

Pages: 1 ... 19 20 [21]
Post info No. of Likes
Re: What's Going On In Your Unreal World? As a new player, new to urw that is, I made some rookie mistakes. First was not reading anything much before I started.

Just seeing permadeath and wilderness survival was enough to hook me. I started as an Islander as they sounded interesting and fit my mood at the time, and I started in the home culture as that sounds as if it might make life easier to learn. I started with the Unreal World as that sounded most like a tutorial.

I found what looked like a good site to start, on the banks of a lake with lots of conifer trees around and some heathland nearby with other trees. I quickly learnt to collect firewood, built a shelter and learnt to fish. I tried to do anything I could using skills lists, I made a cup and bowl and some planks and as my fishing skill increased I built a cellar for food storage, nothing I made was very good quality as I only had poor tools to use and was getting fed up with eating fish so I spent a few days exploring where I lived, it was moving into summer and ice was melting when I found I had chosen to live on a small island, the lake I had been using as a water source was in fact sea water, the only other fauna on the island was a grouse who could spot me hiding from 20 squares away, even the javelins I had made fell short if I could throw them straight. I did spot a village at the limit of my sight once, on the far side of an ever widening sea, but until I find a way to make ropes I might be stuck here until winter, eating fish and drinking sea water.

April 14, 2019, 10:50:08 AM
1
Wits for wandering NPCs and companions - the future version focus Things have been cooking and development has evolved up to such an extent where a sneak peek of what to expect in the future is in place. We don't have a deadline for the upcoming release, it's a work in progress, but we do know what the core content will be about.

The core content of the next release will focus on NPCs. The most important additions will concern the wandering woodsmen you may meet in the wild and the companions you can hire for yourself. They'll be given a bit more wits, tasks, and meaning for their existence in the game world as follows.

Actively hunting wandering NPCs

NPCs who roam the woods can now actively hunt animals. They seek the game based on their cultural preferences, and within their hunting possibilities. The very act of NPCs hunting, or running after a game, is probably rarely witnessed by the player character but bones and remains found in the woods can now tell a story of another human hunter at the area.
   As we know, the hunts can end in unimaginable ways, so many different scenarios may arise from the NPCs now taking their chances with the wildlife - and occasionally maybe even the very same wildlife that you were after.

Witnessing an NPC hunting scene. Seal-tribe woodsman has been met in the wild, and he's busy trying to shoot down a squirrel.



New companions commands

Companion usefulness gets boosted with some new tasks they will be able to do on demand. Currently it's been added:

* butcher and skin a carcass
* make logs
* make boards

...and the list is likely to grow with a few more crucial tasks. There's a great level of complexity to make companions proceed these tasks with similar detail than the player character so tasks to be added are prioritized with the quality over quantity.

The list of companion commands so far:



As companion skills naturally affect to outcome of the tasks their expertise can be sometimes used to obtain higher quality goods than what the player characters could produce by themselves. We also need to add an chat option to ask NPCs about their general skills and expertise so you know what kind of craftsman you've hired.

The companion was commanded to butcher and skin one of the reindeers we managed to hunt down. We got meat now, and a fine reindeer skin, which is way better hideworking result than what Jurks could have done in his current condition.


Exciting times ahead.
The work continues, more is to follow.

These are future additions - not yet functional in current version 3.52.

April 21, 2019, 01:33:35 PM
1
Re: Wits for wandering NPCs and companions - the future version focus
This looks great, Sami!  I certainly like to see the emphasis on quality over quantity for the new features too.

Has your shoulder healed to the point of using your arm normally now?

See for yourself: :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KBvCCMHO0A

Fortunately it's healed very good. They say it takes a full year to see the final outcome, but I can use it pretty much normally already.
Few restrictions and lack of strength remain, but there's 7 months left to workout until the year of recovery is up.

April 21, 2019, 02:28:34 PM
1
New furniture item: "Chest" for storing things Sometimes the cabin tends to get a bit cluttered, especially in long games.  It's perfectly possible to stash large piles on a single tile, but it looks messy to simply dump everything on the floor.

It would be nice to be able to build a furniture item called "Chest".  I would imagine it would function similar to a cellar, but without the added benefit of keeping food fresh.

It would particularly be nice for clothing items, since those seem to tend to pile up the most.

April 26, 2019, 02:04:14 AM
1
Roast cooking for NPCs, and also as companion command As we continue with focus on NPCs, which becomes the core content of next release, they have now been given wits to actively roast raw meat or fish in their possession.
This feat is mostly witnessed by player character when meeting wandering NPCs who can now actively cook the meat of the animals they've hunted and butchered.
It now becomes an actual game created scene possibility to meet a wandering woodsman sitting by the fire and roasting the meat of hare he just happened to hunt down.

Moreover, roast cooking is also added as a new companion command. Unlike player character, companions don't leave the meat by the fire and pick it up when it's done, but they stay put by the fire while roasting is being done. Companions roast ten pieces of meat at a time, and if not given another order they try to keep on cooking until everything is roasted.

These are future additions - not yet functional in current version 3.52.

May 03, 2019, 12:44:45 PM
1
Re: Roast cooking for NPCs, and also as companion command
Moreover, roast cooking is also added as a new companion command. Unlike player character, companions don't leave the meat by the fire and pick it up when it's done, but they stay put by the fire while roasting is being done. Companions roast ten pieces of meat at a time, and if not given another order they try to keep on cooking until everything is roasted.

These are future additions - not yet functional in current version 3.52.

That is awesome!  Can a similar dynamic be added to NPC commands for smoking, drying, or salting meat?  If they have in their possession cords, a knife, and/or salt, can that be added to their repertoire of commands?

Those are more complex cookery deeds, and not coming this time. Basically everything can be done, but unfortunately the time is limited and masses of other features are shouting and waving "please add me, please add me." ;)

May 07, 2019, 10:39:52 AM
1
Re: Fix Robbers This will be taken care of in the next release.

The fights which deal with special consequences for the player character's party upon defeat will continue on their own until the true result is resolved for all the participants.
This includes both fighting the robbers, as well as some village fights where villagers choose to deal with the nuisances with non-fatal manners.



May 08, 2019, 11:26:07 AM
1
Re: Rules of engagement for adventurers in the wild
Hi Sami, nice to hear from you!

The rules of engagement I am proposing are limited to one-on-one encounters in the wild, not to villages, where they would indeed be quite tedious.

The rules I'm proposing don't assume hostility or peacefulness. That's the whole point. They assume that you don't know what are the intentions of the other guy, because this is the first time you see him. And besides, you are in the wilderness, meeting someone completely unknown, miles and miles from help if something goes wrong. It is natural to be careful (more so in tribal times!). And that's the idea: to be careful, and have some interaction to determine intention. And also, to give a fighting chance to the NPC, if it is the PC  the one not that peaceful, otherwise it is open to an obvious exploit.

Yes, I understand you talked about wild encounters, but we like to think that when two woodsmen meet in the wild they are by default more friendly than suspicious.
This is the cultural basis we are building on. (Things would be naturally different if there were known hostilities like tribal wars etc.)
The problem also is that if the same woodsmen keeps circling at your area you would basically have to define your good intention every time you meet him.
Or, if you would have to say it only once, and then could later approach the same NPC with wielded sword or readied bow the exploit would be right back.
Believe me, people would get bored to constant "friend or foe?" questions and they would sometimes forget to unwield their weapons, and unexpected mistakenly initiated troubles would arise.

There will be people to exploit, the innocents to attack, for those who are into it and as it's not (hopefully) the leading playstyle it's not even all that worthwhile to start cutting it down with laborous mechanics. As we've noticed of this thread already that exploit-proof intention declaration towards NPCs is hardly going to be exploit-proof at all.

If the exploit itself really is the problem then kind of "negative karma" is the best way to fight it. There are several folklore based means that include for example the restless dead souls haunting their murderers, but it could be also made so that one day, when murderous player character happened to turn their back at random seemingly peaceful woodman they got attacked instead. Now that would be karma. And probably also encourage to be polite towards fellow woodsmen. 

May 08, 2019, 09:16:23 PM
1
NPC hunters gone wild I've had amusing and laborous times with testing and tweaking how NPCs now behave in the wild with their newly added wits for example to actively hunt and process the downed animals. New blocks of AI always make things a bit crazy at first as unimaginable and unpredictable conditions harness the power of new algorithms.

I've witnessed NPC hunter running after a squirrel swinging a sword, and exhausting himself by circling around the tree with no better understanding of the target being out of his reach. After awhile my character decided to help the guy out and shot the squirrel down for him, after which he correctly proceeded to butcher and skin the carcass. Without manners of saying a proper thanks, though.

Another NPC came (or was actually forced to by the means of black debug magic) hunting at the site where I had just lost one of my party members. After he had succesfully shot the hare he was after he proceeded to approach the corpse of my passed companion. My character and his dog watched in confusion this guy just stand on the corpse with no intention to move anywhere. Later on I found out that the crazy NPC hunter had an unbearable craving to skin and cut the corpse of my dead companion, but the moral restrictions came in between and he ended up in endless "Should I? No, you must not." limbo.

On a brighter side of incidents I traded a loop snare from a wandering woodsman for a fresh salmon. Soon after, the woodsman decided to light a fire and roast the salmon. A simple little thing but it made a nice difference.

All in all, NPCs in the wild seem a bit more intelligent, but also bit more crazy at the moment. Craziness is surely refreshing, but tweaking and testing still need to be continued.

May 22, 2019, 05:11:50 PM
1
Bark stuff, birch-bark stuff Many updates to peeling bark from trees, and utilizing birch-bark as well, are on their way.
Most fundamental addition of all the bark related stuff is to allow harvesting birch-bark and feature it as raw material which can be used in many different crafts.
Takes a while before we get into adding crafts, but bark harvesting changes and additions have been made already, and they can be summarized roughly as follows:

Birch-bark is peeled in long strips, which are wound to a ball for storage. (These kind of balls of birch-bark are called Sommelo  in finnish.)
Harvesting birch-bark in strips is slower compared to (already existing) ways of removing bark in sheets, but as a strip it's ready for weaving.
Moreover, time of the year now matters in harvesting any bark. It's best to be done in early summer, and gets more difficult (and eventually impossible) out of the proper period.
The bark yield (from a single tree) is also not constant but depends on the season and character's timbercraft skill.
And the biggest catch of this all that with adding birch-bark strips we'll be also adding unit of lenght to appropriate game items - that will eventually cover all the cords and ropes as well. So the requirements for birch-bark crafts are going to be eg. "16 feet of birch-bark strip" rather than some weight measure of bark. Many new possibilities open. But it's a hassle at first now to make conversions and routines understand the lenght. But that's my hassle, you just stay tuned...

These are future additions, not yet functional in current version 3.52.

May 29, 2019, 12:21:31 PM
1