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Re: Who let the dogs into the wild...
Nice. What happens when you hire those characters? Do you get the dog's abilities as a bonus, and, if so, to what extent (ordering it around, getting it to carry items, etc.)?

It would be a shame if dog ownership prevented characters from being hired.

In my tests none of the dog owners met in the wild agreed to be hired. This could be because they don't want get into trouble with their precious pets, or because they don't want to lend their pets to anybody to any extent, or because it's prevented due to resulting spin-off features being far too costly to implement in the midst of other priorities.  ::)

March 31, 2019, 02:44:55 PM
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Re: The Snakes of Winter! This legacy issue with snakes has been fixed now, with some additional love for snakes which I'll post at dev.news in a few minutes.

(And at the same time, bears have been given proper hibernation as well.)

Fixed - persists in 3.52

April 13, 2019, 08:15:51 PM
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Legacy snakes issues fixed, some new snake love added For quite a long time there's been a gutsy fistful of legacy issues related to snakes which are now fixed and balanced as follows:

- snakes now cause point type wounds. (Currently they cause tear wounds, which isn't quite right.)
 
- snakes now hibernate during the winter as they should. (Currently they are active all year around, which isn't quite right.)

- snakes are now slightly more common than previously

- snakes are now venomous, as they should be

 The snakes in the game are vipers. They are venomous species but the bites are usually not highly dangerous.
 If the venom is discharged upon a bite it will take several days for the snake to refill its venom glands.
 However, the snakes can naturally bite without venom too.

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

April 13, 2019, 08:21:31 PM
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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
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Re: Roast cooking for NPCs, and also as companion command
Nice! Does the "active" cooking means they won't process skins of killed animals, or will they do what I do, i.e. first process the skin and then cook (in my case it's typically dry/smoke, but roasting is plenty good enough for the time being) until the skin is ready for the next step? It's a natural extension of the system (as well as something that would be useful to order companions to do), but might be a bit of a scope bloat currently.

Active skin processing ability for NPC is pending to be added, it's not yet there.
Companions naturally do thing in the order you command them, but eventually - when there are more and more tasks - it naturally would be good to have them working self-imposed.

May 03, 2019, 05:35:57 PM
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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
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Re: Rules of engagement for adventurers in the wild All this assumes that most of the time human <> human encounters in the wild are hostile. They are not, in our opinion, and in (our) NPCs opinion too - though it seems to be many play the game differently. So, to me, this is a wrong point of view to start with.

Back in the day, as people still want to play the game the hostile way, we had a system where villagers would react to player characters entering the villages with wielded weapons. Coming too close, the villagers would attack. Nobody really wants this system, and we removed it too, as it's so burdensome to constantly answer to NPCs if you are friend or a foe.
And you make mistakes too, and get attacked even though you would want to play really peacefully.


May 08, 2019, 11:40:12 AM
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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
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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
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Re: Craftable birch-bark items and associated ponderings Good points here and there, and we try keep things covered.
See...
as we can see with combat related wearing out it's so that clothes and armour do not come down in their quality upon wear. 
So masterwork boots will appear as masterwork boots, even if they are seriously worn out masterwork boots. The same principle applies to footwear wearing out in use.
With weapons and tools it's already so that higher quality items are more durable. Now quality based durability will be extended to cover armours and clothes as well.
As a result your fine boots will last longer than the rough ones. 
And while I'm at it, the quality of armours and clothes will be extended to cover their protective values as well. Finer furs are warmer furs, and so on.

When it comes to repairing clothes, it really should be made so that you shouldn't be able to repair things infinitely.
This could be easily achieved by lowering the quality on each repair, finally forbidding rough clothing to be repaired at all.
Just pondering for now, though, as there are these other things in line first.

June 19, 2019, 12:17:16 PM
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