Development > Development News

"Spirit of the forest, I presume"

(1/2) > >>

Sami:
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.

codyo:
I wanna fight him.
It's my forest now.

nekot:
Great news!
I cannot wait to meet him!

PoisonPen:
I'd really like to be able to turn supernatural elements on and off in the options.  As much as encountering pirus, paasselkas, leshyies, rusalkas, polevois, and the rest would be fun, I'd like to be able to have a more grounded, historical experience too.  If I'm shooting lightning bolts at a level-25 domovoi, I might as well be playing ADOM.

Erkka:

--- Quote ---  I'd like to be able to have a more grounded, historical experience too.  If I'm shooting lightning bolts at a level-25 domovoi, I might as well be playing ADOM. 
--- End quote ---

Well, at the very moment there (again) is an another thread where a player is actively trying to encounter a being which is supposed to be more or less 'supernatural' - and has difficulties doing so, for it isn't easy to find the right conditions to encounter such a being.

I think that speaks of Sami's design philosophy - personally I wouldn't worry about the game turning into 'thow lignting bolts at magical creatures'-kind of high-fantasy. The 'supernatural' elements of UnReal World are, and will remain, elusive and hard to catch, and after all, we can't be exactly sure if they are mere hallucinations, a series of random luck, or possibly a prankster hermit playing tricks on the player character.

Also, the way I see it, this actually is the historical experience. The pagan folks believed in these rituals having an effect, and they believed those supernatural entities to exists, and there were reports of people occasionally spotting those creatures. So we don't simulate the 1000AD world the way 2000AD scientist believe it to be, but we simulate the 1000AD world the way 1000AD folks probably themselves experienced it to be. No lightning bolts, though, they aren't a part of Finnish folklore =)

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page