Messages

151

General Discussion / Re: 5 reasons why Unreal World is one of the most original and rewarding games ever,

« on: August 04, 2020, 03:00:30 PM »

This one, too, was a spam-bot for the post is a copy-paste from a reddit post some years old.

I've seriously tightened the forum anti-spam measures, but still it seems that some bots manage to sneak through. Sigh. Well, I need to think if something more can be done. And in the meantime I'll be manually weeding off the spammer accounts. Fellow forumers, please use the "report to moderator" function when you spot a message which appears to be a copypaste from old forum posts or from reddit or some other urw-related discussion forums.

ps. I'll still leave the copypasted post here, for the content is okay. I just blocked the spam account so that it can't return to edit the post to insert their spam links.

152

Off-topic / Re: How to Sauna in the Finnish way?

« on: August 03, 2020, 08:50:48 AM »

Also I am quite curious about, did the public sauna closed during the time of pandemic?

Well, I live in the countryside and didn't visit any cities while the pandemic situation was acute in Finland. But I'd guess all the public saunas were closed (city dwellers, please correct me if I'm wrong). But that wasn't because of sauna conditions - there is some evidence suggesting that actually the virus gets destroyed in sauna temperatures - but just because of the general social distancing measures.

Wish one day I can visit Finland and try out some of the sauna, preferably the traditional smoke-with-no-chimney one.

Finland offers a plenty of sauna possibilities. One of them is a whole Sauna Village

I wonder if different woods give different aroma in this kind of sauna. 

That I can't really say - but in the old folk culture there have been habits of using different woods for different purposes. Smoke sauna has been a place where people gave birth, and also a place where dead bodies were washed and prepared for burial, and a place for various kinds of folk healing methods. And other kinds of ritualistic use - for example a soon-to-be-married bride had a special sauna before the marriage. And for those different purposes different kinds of wood were used to heat up the sauna, as there were beliefs that burning different kinds of woods has different ritualistic effects of preparing the sauna for specific purpose. Personally I haven't studied those habits in detail, although I do love sauna culture and I'm interested in many of the aspects of the folk culture, but there simply are that much details that I can't adopt it all =)

A technical reason for prohibitions against throwing water on the stones is that there are electric sauna heaters where the heating elements get damaged if you throw water on them repeatedly.

That sounds reasonable. Although I still wonder what is the technical difference compared to electric saunas in Finland. For example swimming halls and other such places have common electric saunas, and in Finland people repeatedly throw water on the stove, all day long, many days a week. I have always thought that it is the sauna stove rocks and stones which take the strain. There needs to be a decent layer of stones on top of the electric heating elements, so that the hot stones vaporize the water thrown on them, and hardly any water reaches the heating elements. The stones then need to be replaced on regular basis, as the constant strain wears them down.

153

Off-topic / Re: How to Sauna in the Finnish way?

« on: July 30, 2020, 09:08:53 PM »

Hehe, I'm under the impression that for Finnish people 60 Celcius is kind of a minimum. 80 Celcius is something like normal. 100 Celcius is hot, but I think some ice-swimming people like it hotter (even up to 120 Celcius). But it must be said that we seldom stay in the sauna for hours in a row - once in a while people go out to cool down and to have fresh air, maybe drink a can of cold beer and then go back to have some more löyly in the sauna.

I think that at some areas in Russia the local culture is to have the sauna heated up to 140 Celcius, but then you can only stay in for a shor period sitting still and then go out to take a dip in the fresh cold water of River Volga. And then repeat. But this is only something I heard from a single person from that area, so I really don't know if this habit is more widespread - I welcome our Russian players to comment on their sauna habits, for it would be interesting to hear what we have in common and what differences there are to our Eastern neighbours.

EDIT: For clarification, I'm clearly writing from a countryside point of view. My own sauna is a separate building, and it is very easy to go outdoors to cool down. But in apartment houses and other urban environments sauna time often gets reduced to some 20 - 30 minutes. Like JP also mentions, longer sauna sessions tend to require access to fresh air and preferably also a lake.

Typically one would say that sauna + private yard is a countryside luxury. But I think that in cities there are also public saunas with outdoor access. At Kallio neigborhood in Helsinki you can spot people wearing a towel around their waist, sitting next to a street in front of a public sauna. They are cooling down for a while, to go back to have another round of löyly in the sauna.

154

Off-topic / Re: How to Sauna in the Finnish way?

« on: July 30, 2020, 04:32:04 PM »

One of my neighbours (or, actually, they are a collective of some 30 adults living together in a big building) have a traditional smoke sauna. They heat it up every day. And in my previous home (that was also a collective, but a smaller one) we heated our smoke sauna twice a week.

The smoke sauna is the basically the same type as we have in the game. Heating up a smoke sauna usually takes 4 - 5 hours or so, you burn continuous fire to make the stove hot, and during that time the sauna is full of smoke. Once the fire is out you open all the doors and ventilation shafts to let the smoke out. So there is no more fire nor smoke when people go into the sauna. A decent smoke sauna might stay relatively warm for 12 hours, so one can have a hot sauna bath at evening, and then a mild mellow sauna bath early in the morning.

Vasta (or vihta, as western tribes call it) is like a combination of massage and herbal treatment. When you apply the vasta on your muscles it boosts local blood circulation, helping the muscles to recover after days toil and strain. And I'd guess your skin also absorbs some of the micronutritients and essential oils, which have further cleansing and relaxing effect. (For different purposes one can also make a vasta using juniper, nettles, oak, etc.)

Beer onto the sauna stove rocks - definitely yes =) That gives a nice aroma of freshly baked bread. For similar reasons some people might mix a tiny drop of pine tar into the water thrown to the stones.

To me half an hour of sauna is like a quick washing up. Two hours of sauna bath gives a deeply relaxing effect. (This is my personal preference, I understand that some people do it differently and that is fine.)

JP mentioned lakeside saunas, and I think the combination of a lake and sauna is like a sacred tradition =) Sauna + swimming + sauna + swimming + sauna + swimming just washes any and all stress away, leaving you feeling tranquil and refreshed. In the wintertime some people dip in a hole in the ice, some people roll in the snow.

155

General Discussion / Re: I encountered a merchant entering the village tile today

« on: July 29, 2020, 06:22:04 PM »

The part about "branch" doesn't make any sense to me, so I assume it has been lost in translation.

I'd guess that refers to the quest; Villagers ask for a certain amount of branches - but they never seem to do anything with those branches, after one year the branches are still there unused. So, the simulation is not (yet) that detailed.

But otherwise, as others have mentioned, village inventories are slowly refreshed.

156

General Discussion / Re: Adventurer's Needle quest

« on: July 22, 2020, 05:26:30 PM »

Not sure if this is some new bot/spammer tactic but many of the new topics, started by first time posters are most of the topics from the reddit /r/ thread

So that is the trick? Huh.

I've also been wondering how some posts seem suspicious, yet they aren't (modified) copies of old posts in the forums. But to copy paste relevant material from reddit, that is some advanced spam-bot logic. Personally I'm not following reddit, so I can't recognize copypasted posts by memory.

Oh well. I have to take a second look at available anti-spam features, as it seems we need to add some more muscles to the forum anti-spam procedures.

157

General Discussion / Re: What region does Unreal World take place in?

« on: July 21, 2020, 08:25:27 PM »

The map is fictional, with loose resemblance to some terrain features of real-life Finland.

158

General Discussion / Re: URW Controller

« on: July 17, 2020, 01:11:33 PM »

Hello!

Glad to hear that you found a solution which works for you! It is supposed to work also with PC connected via ethernet. During the pre-launch test phase automatic connection worked fine for all the tested devices. But now it seems that with some configurations the automatic connection fails.

If you are somewhat familiar with the technical side and willing to help with further troubleshooting, please send me a private msg or just reply to this thread.

Like, it would be helpful to know these things:

- on your computer, when connected via ethernet, what is the local ip of the computer ?
- after enabling the controller at UrW main menu, then choose ABOUT, and it should tell the computer ip address - does it report a correct address?
- install any UDP listener app on your android device and ask it to listen to messages at port 8012, then try pressing F10 on UrW - the UDP listener should pick up a "hello I'm here!" type of message sent by UrW. You can try if that message only comes thru when the computer is connected via WiFi. And if the UDP listener recognizes the message when the PC is connected via ethernet, then the bug clearly is in the controller app failing to parse the message.

Ps. lately I've been pretty busy with my main work. But next week there will be a fresh release of the controller app, mirroring the changes in UrW keyboard commands (eg. dropping the character log and introducing a separate button to command dogs and companions)

159

Off-topic / Re: 300 days alone in the real world in 2008 (YouTube video)

« on: June 10, 2020, 09:43:10 PM »

Hopefully a mod can move it...

Done.

160

Not bugs / Re: Forum posting limit

« on: May 20, 2020, 12:11:15 PM »

I browsed the forum settings, and found a 5 second time limit for users staring a new topic. That is supposed to stop spam-bots from flooding a forum.

But I couldn't find anything else related to forum posting limits. I can dig further later on, if needed.

161

Development News / Re: Improvements to fire mechanics, changes to smoking mechanics

« on: May 20, 2020, 11:12:08 AM »

Cold smoking. There are a few requirements, fist the temperature needs to be below about 30 for the whole process, meat should be cured or salted for a couple of days first. Meat is then hung in a cold smokehouse and smoke is fed into it for 8 to 16 hours, the meat is then left for a month to completely dry.

It is a long time since we checked real-life references for the smoking mechanics. But as far as I can remember, it is namely the cold smoking process we are simulating in the game. So, the fire is not needed to generate heat, but mostly to generate smoke - and to keep the air circulating to boost the drying process. I can't remember our sources any more, but I do recall that the smoking process simulation was based on a few articles about primitive cold smoking methods, and Sami adapted a version which was possible to implement with the game mechanics.

But, of course, for the sake of realism it would be perfection have different kinds of smoking processes available. Just like we could use different kind of buildings, like something in between a shelter and a log cabin. I mean, I remember that historically for cold smoking people have used constructions with a fire box dug into soil, some 15 meters of underground flue to cool down the smoke, and then a small wooden smoking box at the top end of the flue. Additions, additions, there would be that many additions to buildings, cooking processes and all. And now we have some fire handling improvements, good! More improvement in the future, I'd guess 

162

Suggestions / Re: Roads and creeks, brooks. Springs!

« on: May 07, 2020, 10:33:06 AM »

As much as I'd love to have this kind of additions, there are user interface related questions which are more or less unclear for me.

Let's imagine we would have brooks some 1 - 12 meter wide, criss-crossing the terrain. And you're travelling on the overland map. Would you like to get notified every time you automatically cross a brook? Or get zoomed-in every time? Or just simulate on a higher level, assuming that your character figures a way to cross the brook without asking player decisions? Or allow the player some setting or configuration to be switched based on need? For example, if you are thirsty, you'd probably like to be notified whenever your character spots a small brook?

Or, you are just covering a longer distance, travelling on the overland map, using the high-level simulation of automatically crossing brooks without interrupting your gameplay with constant notifications like "you cross the 23rd brook of the day, again". But then, that one time the simulation, RNG and skill checks would determine that when auto-crossing a brook you slip and fall. Now what? You then get zoomed-in into the situation?

(also, I have to say that adding small paths and brooks would require a lot of additional data to the world-map, to keep track on how these smaller-than-a-world-map-tile features go, something like "this tile is mainly forest of type X, but there is a brook running from north to south, and then there is also a east-west path", and should the data structure allow only one brook and one path per world map tile, or are the occasions we would need two creeks near each other? It would be an interesting coding task to inflate this data so that when you travel in the zoomed-in map these creeks and paths would run uninterrupted but with natural curves.)

I'm not saying these are reasons we won't implement these features. It is just to affirm that, like JP_Finn says, this would be a sizable change, requiring a lot of re-coding the map routines and re-structuring the entire map data structure.

163

Not bugs / Re: Bug or insane lynx and lazy dog?

« on: April 20, 2020, 11:26:34 AM »

Almost slightly off-topic, but I'll comment with a real life story which took place near my home couple of months ago;

It was dark night, and one of my neighbours was driving home, about 80km/h speed on a quiet countryside road. Then, before he could react he saw sudden movement and the car went *THUMP* - being one of the local hunters with a lot of experience in identifying wildlife the driver could tell that it was a lynx crossing the road, got hit by the car. The driver thought it must have been an instant kill, or then the lynx was left suffering in the ditch next to the road. So he went to investigate. At that point I happened to pass by, stopped to see what is going on, and joined the search. We could not find a single hint of the lynx - surprisingly enough, it seemed that it didn't get injured that bad, and was able to retreat into the dark woods. So the neighbour alarmed the local hunting group.

After an hour the hunters had spread around, combing the forest looking for tracks. Also, a skilled dog was sent to track the lynx. After a while the hunters heard the alarm bark of the dog - and the sound was moving, so apparently the lynx was on the move and the dog was chasing it. Before the hunters could reach the location of the sounds they noticed that the sounds weren't moving. So maybe the lynx had collapsed because of injuries? The dog kept on barking, the hunters kept on approaching, and then suddenly they met the dog, who was fleeing in panic. The hunters followed the tracks for a while and found a place where the paw prints on the snow told a clear story; the lynx had been fighting with the dog, and the dog chose to flee - which seems like the most reasonable decision; the dog only has teeth, but the sharp claws of the fierce feline certainly are something to be afraid of.

The morale of the story; lynx are not to be messed with. It is realistic to assume that if a dog goes 1:1 fight with a lynx, the likely outcome is the dog either fleeing or getting seriously injured.

(I think the contemporary hunting dogs are trained to chase a lynx, hoping the lynx climbs a tree and stays there, so that the dog can keep it on hold and bark until the human companions arrive to relieve the situation.)

164

Development News / Re: UnReal World Mobile Controller app for Android Devices

« on: March 24, 2020, 07:54:26 AM »

Is this a controller for my PC UrW or is this a mobile phone version of UrW

this is not a mobile phone version of the game itself. To use this app it is necessary to have the game running on your computer.

Consider this app as an alternative to the physical keyboard. You press keyboard buttons to control the game, but the game itself runs on your computer.

165

Development News / Re: UnReal World Mobile Controller app for Android Devices

« on: March 23, 2020, 08:52:36 PM »

Very cool! Any chance to see it ported to PC?

At the moment it is too early to discuss possible ports to other devices. Let's first see how it goes with the fresh Android version. Future plans will be crafted later on, based on user feedback. (Your feedback included, naturally  I write down that a PC version has been suggested).

And maybe mod the size of the buttons too?

That is already doable with the full version of the app. In the standard layouts buttons are divided on two tabs. All the buttons can be defined in a xml-file, and the modding system is rather flexible. For example, one could spread the buttons to four tabs. That way there would be less buttons on each tab, and they would have more space to appear bigger. Actually, something like that was suggested already in the beta-test phase, but unfortunately I haven't yet had time to create such a custom layout myself. So I encourage anyone interested in the modding possibilities to give it a try. You can customize button captions and commands, colors, background images and so on.