Messages

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General Ancient Savo discussion / Ancient Savo 0.9.01 released

« on: September 20, 2024, 12:51:22 PM »

Ancient Savo version 0.9.01 is now available on Steam and at Itch.io

Establish your homestead in pristine woodlands. Farm, forage, fish and hunt for food. Craft tools and items, barter supplies. Get married, raise children. Teach your kids the skills of self-sufficient life - some skills like iron working are so complex that it might take multiple generations of accumulated experience to learn the secrets of the craft. Send you adult offspring to start homestead of your own. Once your family tree has more than one unit, you can freely switch game focus, choosing which family to play as. Or, if your family happens to die, you can continue playing as another family of your clan. There are no combat elements; cold, hunger and accidents are your main enemies.

The game is designed to be moddable by editing XML files. This allows not only adding new items, terrain types and tasks, but also modifying the existing ones to add new attributes to any existing element. A modding tutorial is planned, and will be published once I have time for that.

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Off-topic / Re: Currently in Finland, travelling by gravel roads, asking for advices

« on: September 14, 2024, 11:04:20 AM »

about cities: they add some stress for me when they are big: traffic jam with limited vision angles when I have to find my way in a coutry where rules and signs can be different; it's not easy to park the car which is pretty big. Good point is the behavior of finnish drivers which is so neat compared to the french one.

I totally understand, as I also avoid driving in urban areas; it simply feels too much information too rapidly to process for my brain.

just tell me how and when to reach you the coming days if you are in the mood.

Do you use Discord? That would be the easiest (if you follow the Ancient Savo link in my signature, I think it takes you to a page which has an invitation link to Ancient Savo discord, which is the easiest place to spot my user account there). I'm rather busy with indie coding and working for money, but I'd guess in the coming days I can always arrange at least a short break just to say hello and a small chat or something. Or, we can can meet at the town of Mänttä and I'll help you to find the local Alko =)

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Off-topic / Re: Currently in Finland, travelling by gravel roads, asking for advices

« on: September 13, 2024, 08:11:19 PM »

One example of cloudberry liquor. Alko stuff, not every village has one but I'm sure that with a little bit of searching you can find an Alko which doesn't require too much compromise from your smaller roads adventuring.

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Off-topic / Re: Currently in Finland, travelling by gravel roads, asking for advices

« on: September 13, 2024, 03:52:05 PM »

Other possible food items to look for

SavumuikkuSmoked small fish, canned in vegetable oil

Kalakukko

Sahti but I have no suggestions on where to find it - every time I've had sahti it has been bought directly from the producer, but I don't have the contacts.

Another thing which came to mind is that some bigger gas stations have something like souvenir shops - although it sounds like you generally wish to avoid such places, but with a little bit of planning it might be easier to stay on small roads and stop by some bigger gas station instead of a city (if avoiding cities is one of your preferences?)

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Off-topic / Re: Currently in Finland, travelling by gravel roads, asking for advices

« on: September 13, 2024, 03:40:45 PM »

Salmiakki can be found in pretty much any supermarket or gas station.
For Salmiakki Koskenkorva (or any other beverage with alcohol content over 8%) you need to keep eyes open for Alko, as they are only stores licensed to sell spirits.

Otherwise it is hard to say, as it depends so much on what you wish to see. Also, for culture like visual arts you are mostly off-season; here and there around the countryside we have visual art exhibitions like Purnu art center and Haihatus but I'm afraid they are closed at this time of the year. But one possible route would be via my hoods (if you wish, you can stop by to say hello, unless I'm terribly busy with other schedules), despite being a small countryside town there is Serlachius Museums, with both modern and classical art.

Or, then there are all the natural parks, and smaller sites of interest, like ancient hill forts, or just places with a scenic view - if you are interested in those, ask and I and others can try to post some suggestions.

Among the possibilities are also places like this: Mystical sculpture park in eastern Finland (which seems to be open all the time), or this: Alpo Jaakola Statue park which in September is open only on weekends

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General Ancient Savo discussion / Ancient Savo beta 30 : pottery, children learning skills, and the modding script

« on: August 25, 2024, 10:17:51 PM »

Ancient Savo public beta version 30 is now available at itch.io. And the work continues towards planned September release on Steam

This version adds pottery and related tasks. You can dig soil to get clay, and craft clay items. Construct a pottery kiln to fire clay items to turn them to ceramics.

Another new feature is simulation of characters learning skills when working together with more talented people. So, typically children first helping their parents, then working together with them. Each skill can be defined to have unique learning curve, and skills (very) slowly degrade if not used regularly enough.

There are also some new ailments, and accidents. The likelihood of an accident is mostly determined by the character fatigue, and partially affected by skill level. An accident can simply spawn an ailment, or trigger an interactive text story so that player decisions will affect the outcome.

Like most of the other game elements, ailments, accidents and text stories are defined in XML files making them fully moddable. The modding system was already capable of handling variables and logical conditions. Now there is also a GOTO statement, which can be used to re-direct the script flow.

For more information see the release news on itch.io

---

And, a little bit of background information for those who haven't been following the early stages of the Ancient Savo project; this is an Enormous Elk sideproject, a smaller sister game to UnReal World. From the development point of view this gives me a development sandbox where I can freely test with different algorithms and simulation mechanics without a risk of messing up the vast UnReal World codebase. So, some of the Ancient Savo features might eventually get adapted to UnReal World. But also, as a side project Ancient Savo allows coding adventures of its own. Ancient Savo is built to be moddable from the ground up. At the moment the weather and the map generation are hard-coded. I have some simmering ideas about a possible future sequel, which would be just a set of tools for any modder to create their custom survival scenarios. Ancient Savo already has fully moddable menus and submenus, and the modder can add pretty much anything from terrain types to animals and items and their variables. Well, but future developments depend on the reception and resources - and after so much of coding Ancient Savo my fingers are increasingly itching to write some pieces of UrW code to help Sami with the development.

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Off-topic / Re: Books adjacent to UW

« on: August 12, 2024, 09:20:16 PM »

And, in an attempt to reply; this one is what I found looking for titles in English:

Fibula, Fabula, Fact - The Viking Age in Finland

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Mod Releases / Re: BAC looking for new caretaker

« on: June 14, 2024, 11:21:55 AM »

A customer coming into a store having a staff tell them its a "battle" and how "little" the customer means the staff is an asshole.

I 100% agree with that. But I must admit that I haven't seen that happen in the context of this discussion about "please add a new hotkey for modded crafting recipes". I have seen Brygun making that interpretation, and then sticking with that feeling. Okay, I think that is natural for humans, so not going to continue more on that theme.

So, the way I understand it, this is what we have at the moment:

1. The discussion and considerations about adding a new key for modded crafting recipes is still open, a final decision has not been announced. I haven't seen Sami saying that the suggestion is already rejected, I have seen him saying that before making the decision it is good to think about it from many different perspectives to make a balanced and well-grounded decision.

2. Currently there is no-one actively maintaining the BAC mod. And if anyone / some people want to continue maintaining it, they are free to do so.
(And, both there in the forums and in the community Discord I have seen players mentioning that they'd like to have an updated version of BAC compatible with the latest version of UrW, but maybe those players don't have the modding skills themselves, or then they somehow perceive it as "a ready-made project handed down for us", or, somehow perceiving some distance between them as players and mod creators, while the fact seems to be that mod creators are players, and players can be mod creators, and that the magical "someone" does not exist, but it is always this or that person, you, me, them, everybody.)

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General Discussion / Testing after technical problems

« on: June 06, 2024, 03:38:04 PM »

Hello!

We encountered some technical problems, but everything seems to be back to normal again.

EDIT: Oh, but at first I had trouble posting this message, but I suspect that was because of old cached data lingering around from my previous log-in. So, if you have trouble posting at the forums, try logging out, (force)re-loading the forum main page and logging back in again.

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Suggestions / Re: Make Menu only for Modded items = saving BAC and other large mods

« on: May 12, 2024, 11:08:49 AM »

Also, just to be sure, a few more word of clarification on my side:

I didn't mean to say that adding a new key to bring up modded recipes would not help at all with maintaining and keeping the mods up to date with new version of UrW.

What I was thinking was a scenario like this:

1. Sami adds the new hotkey
2. But somehow it happens that no-one from the modding community updates BAC recipes

Then, the way I see it, the underlying root problem would remain unsolved - the extra hotkey probably would make it easier to access all the recipes in the mod, but the confusion with vanilla items and modded items, and vanilla recipes and modded recipes would still continue to exists.

But, I do see the point represented by PALU and others; having that extra hotkey would help in the transition phase, when a new UrW version introduces new mechanics, and the mod needs some time to adapt, and a clean way to access "compatibility recipes" to transform old modded items to corresponding new vanilla items. And that is something I fully support, and to me this sounds like a good argument.

---

Also, personally I like the modding approach. And in my opinion Sami has been maintaining a fine balance between "an artistic indie coder following his inner vision" and "listening to the player suggestions and wishes" - not locking up in the ivory tower, nor getting lost in the endless swamp of "design by committee". I see my role as helping Sami to develop the game which fulfills his inner vision.

And, at the same time I see that some players wish for a fully moddable game, which would have the modding in-built into the core structures of the game engine. I find that an interesting idea, but I do understand that it would be an another game, not UrW but something different. Now, as some of you might already guess - I suggest that those interested in exploring the possibility of a fully moddable survival game could take a look at the Ancient Savo project and its modding system. (not wanting to hijack this thread, just my contribution to the theme of "yes, Enormous Elk does care about modders, modding matters")

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Suggestions / Re: Make Menu only for Modded items = saving BAC and other large mods

« on: May 11, 2024, 09:06:38 AM »

So we don't matter to you?

Just a "small bunch".

Huh? Honestly, I can't quite see where this comes from. So let's take an another look at what has been said and what has not been said:

In any case, separate menu seems to get support from this small bunch of thread participants.

To me this does not sound derogatory, not at all. When Sami says "this small bunch of thread participants" I read it as saying:

OK, earlier there was a mention that there have been 524 downloads for the mod, so let's assume that as a guideline to estimate the number of users. And then we have 6 members of the modding community participating in this thread. That means we have heard the opinion of 1.2% of the modding community.
[EDIT: while I was writing this we got the 7th voice, PALUs opinion]

Is 1.2% a small bunch? Is six persons a small bunch? Or should that somehow be felt as an insult, a way of saying "your opinion does not matter?" Honestly, sounds a bit off to me. And, the "ouch you hurt my feelings!" is always a tricky path to walk along - if one chooses to do it, then it probably would also be beneficial to start with spelling correctly the name of lead developer. It is only four letters, so shouldn't be that hard to spell, so if one constantly writes it in a wrong way, should that be taken as a sign of ignorance, derogatory gesture of non-mattering? Does not sound very constructive to me, better just focus on the actual facts that have been said, and work on the subject matter itself.

So, what we have then, at the moment:

- a suggestion to add a separate hotkey to bring up only the modded crafting recipes
- roughly 5 members saying that they support the idea
- one member saying that it would not be so very important for them, as they prefer to just update the mod code themselves to adapt to the new versions of UrW
- Sami signaling that he is still open to consider the idea, just saying that to implement it would take some extra work on his part - and that the amount of that extra work is probably a bit more than just a few lines of code.

What we do NOT know:

1. of the 518 mod users who have not commented in this thread, how many of them see that an extra hotkey would solve their problems
2. and how many of them see that the top priority should be just to have the mod actively maintained, so that it would stay compatible with the new versions of UrW

And the way I understand it, Sami mentioning about "small bunch" is a reference to the situation 1. - scientifically speaking, critically thinking, we have no way of knowing if our gallup of 6 people out of 524 gives an accurate representation of the general public mood or not. Not saying that the voice of 6 people does not matter, not insisting that it is not aligned with the majority. Just reminding that given the current evidence we can make an educated guess, not knowing for certain. And there is nothing wrong with it - in any case life is mostly about making decisions based on uncertain evidence.

Lastly, to me it still looks like that even in the case Sami added that extra hotkey to the vanilla game, it would not do very much to solve the situation 2, which probably needs to be addressed separately - at least if in the modding community there are people who care enough about large mods like BAC to maintain the mods. But if it so happens that there is no active modder to maintain a mod, then that just is the way things are at the moment? But, personally I see that mods matter, and modders matter, and modders matter to other modders, so it would seem rather natural that this leads to mods being maintained and updated to stay aligned with the new versions of the game.

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Suggestions / Re: Make Menu only for Modded items = saving BAC and other large mods

« on: May 06, 2024, 10:30:34 AM »

I think this is a good discussion, and I'm glad that the discussion is happening.

Also, just to make it clear; I don't see any offense intended, nor do I intend to do so myself by this comment. Just trying to ponder on a bit more abstract level;

OK, so the underlying problem is that there is a good large mod a lot of player like and use the mod - and then any new update to the vanilla game introduces something which is not compatible with the mod.

What needs to be done to fix that? I see two main alternatives;

1. The mod is updated to make it compatible with the latest version of the game
2. The vanilla game is modified to keep the new version of the game compatible with an old version of a mod

Or, the same worded bit differently;

Oh noes! A mod is not compatible with the latest version of the game! Somebody do something to solve this! Who you are going to call? Ghostbusters? No? Then who can do a bit of extra work to solve the issue?

1. The modding community to the rescue! Mods are by the players, for the players, so both making and updating the mods is something the players can contribute
2. The lead developer Sami! In addition to making all the updated to the vanilla version why doesn't the guy just do some more extra work to keep the game compatible with the mod !?!!

---

Now, this maybe does not come as a surprise to anyone, but in both descriptions the option 1. seems more natural and fitting to me.

And then, in the case of BAC, if the underlying problem is that at the moment Brygun wants to focus on other things and is not actively maintaining the mod - then who should step in to fill the gap? Sami the lead developer? Or someone else from the modding community?

I'd say "the modding community" - like a clear message on the modding forums telling that at the moment the B of BAC does not have time to actively update the mod, so looking for new people to contribute, keeping this beloved large community mod alive and compatible with the new versions of the vanilla game.

---

Again, I'm not claiming that this is the truth to this question. I'm just trying to clarify the way I see the situation, and I have a feeling that Sami's opinion is not so much different. But if you, the players and the modding community, see things differently or wish to point out something obvious I'm missing in my reasoning, I'm happy to hear your voice.

If I understand correctly the points already mentioned, the suggestion has been that a little bit of 2. is wished for, as seen from the player perspective Sami adding just one extra hotkey to the vanilla game should not be very much of extra work, but that little bit by Sami would offer an enormous relief for the modding community, bearing fruit for years to come. And then the reply to that involves the usual "woah, not to fast - let's first consider this carefully to see if adding that one extra hotkey is going to bring about new problems, or if it is going to require so much additional coding by Sami that it waters down the entire argument of "little extra work to reap enormous gains" instead of "the modding community doing the modding"

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General Ancient Savo discussion / Coming soon at Steam

« on: April 26, 2024, 09:50:57 AM »

Ancient Savo now has a public "coming soon" profile at Steam

Or, to be more specific, "soon" means "September 2024", but if you so wish you can wishlist the game, and share the link if you happen to know anyone who might be interested in a resource management survival simulation focused on raising a family.

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Gameplay questions / Re: Cursed Wolf Quest

« on: March 22, 2024, 08:15:41 AM »

PS if anyone knows how I can post 'external links',

The method to enable posting external links is to make a few more posts, so that the forum software considers your account a legitimate user instead of a possible spam-bot. As we have suffered from swarms of bot accounts posting irrelevant links, we needed to make the security settings tighter. So every user account starts with external links disabled, and if their account does not get blocked / banned / deleted after making a few posts, then posting links will get automatically enabled.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

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Bug reports / Re: [3.83] Runaway Slave Start - Njerpez Infighting

« on: March 09, 2024, 10:19:21 PM »

There are two factors here;

1. friendly fire immediately leading to fierce infighting : yes, I agree with that, in some future version the logic could be improved somehow. Maybe the easiest would be that the first friendly hit is forgiven, but if it starts to accumulate the others would feel that this is not a chain of accidents but intentional behavior which needs to be punished.

2. should friendly fire happen in the first place : I think yes. But how often, that is a good question without absolute answer. So, when you say " it regularly seems to happen to some degree" I'd like to hear a bit more about that. What is "regularly to some degree", like out of 10 starts 2 of them lead to infighting? Or out of 20 starts one turns to infighting?