Messages

151

Off-topic / Re: Who were "Njerpez" ?

« on: August 24, 2020, 01:01:27 PM »

If the game change log said: "Based on historical references it has now been verified that The Novgrod Russians never did thing X, and therefore in this game release The Njerpez also don't do thing X" then all the questions and arguments by user1805 would be highly on-point.

But, at the moment to me it seems that user1805 just slightly misinterpreted what Sami meant to say in the game change log. I believe Sami meant only to say that "It is intended that Njerpez behave in a way X, and it has now been verified that they really do X in the game."

Then, of course we can have another discussion about if Njerpez should behave this or that way based on fully accurate historical facts about Novgorod Russians. But, to me that seems to miss the point. The game doesn't claim to be 100% historically accurate. Many things are simulated based on historical facts, but not all the things need to be so. Especially the tribes, they contain a lot of artistic freedom. Therefore the game creator can say that "in the fantasy world I created the element X behaves in a way Y because I wanted it that way", and I find it hard for anyone else to counter that. Like, can anyone say that "I don't believe you imagined it that way, you need to imagine it some other way!". I always thought that the very essence of imagination is that anyone can imagine the way they do.

152

Off-topic / Re: Who were "Njerpez" ?

« on: August 24, 2020, 12:37:57 PM »

Let me come back to this: "Now it's been also verified that Njerpez raiders don't ever try to reach regions of western and northern cultures"

Verfied would mean proven. And as the discussion (not only in this thread) refers to history as a main base of the game, to me it looked like someone found a historical proof. From here I thought 'What a hoax, who proofed that?'.

Great, thank you for the clarification!

It is my understanding that in the game release notes "Now it's been also verified that Njerpez raiders ..." means that it has been verified that the game mechanics is functioning the way it is supposed to do. To put in other words; it has been verified that an old bug is now fixed in the game. It is not meant to be a reference to the real history outside the game. I really didn't understand that you took it as such, and I'd guess this has been a source of a lot of confusion in this thread.

I mean; in the real history Novgorod Russian do what they do. In the game world we have artistic freedom to decide what we want The Njerpez tribe to do, and for that the creators' decision is enough. So we have decided that we want them to be wandering mainly and mostly around the Eastern cultures of The UnReal World.

153

Off-topic / Re: Who were "Njerpez" ?

« on: August 24, 2020, 07:20:51 AM »

But what was the real name of the tribe that come in focus and around what year was it?

I'm sorry if my previous reply was too unclear. Here comes a clarified reply:

Q: What was the real name of the tribe?
A: Novgorod Russians

Q: Around what year was it?
A: 1000 AD - 1200 AD

It is true that I'm not a Historian M.A. But I did study some folkloristics at the University. Naturally, that doesn't mean that I would be an unquestioned source of the ultimate truth. As always in science, we need further references, and we need to back our claims by evidence and we need to question the evidence, and we need to provide our sources etc etc. Honouring those principles I gave a few links in my previous reply. Especially this wikipedia article. Sure, again we can say that wikipedia is not a fully reliable source. But that article has further references, so if you are interested you can dig further and read books, or the original sources like Novgorod First Chronicle.

Naturally, all of this can be questioned, as counterarguments are a crucial part of scientific thinking. One counterargument provided in an earlier comment was:

5. They could not have been russians because on the one hand side there also must have been swedes, which are not been found and on the other hand side the etymological reference does not fit, because the referring tribe is on the wrong side of the map.

It is very likely that I fail to understand the argument correctly. From my point of view the premises of that argument are somewhat vague. I'll provide a more detailed examination:

- the game takes place in a fantasy world which is inspired by real history. I fail to understand the argument that "if there are russians there also mut have been swedes". The only way I can understand this argument would lead to including the whole world in UnReal World, like "if you include tribe X, you must also include the other tribes which had interaction with X, and after that you also need to include further tribes which had interaction with them, and their neighbours also and then the tribes living near them and so and so on". But the answer is that no, we don't need to. In a fantasy game world we can choose what to include, where to focus and what to leave outside the game world.

- Also, I'm not so sure about the "swedes have not been found in UnReal World" part. The swedes are included in Foreign Traders.

- "the etymological reference does not fit, because the referring tribe is on the wrong side of the map" leaves me rather puzzled. As stated earlier, the word "Njerpez" is my own invention, a pseudo word. So there isn't that much of etymology to the word. It is just onomatopoeia in action. Also, the UnReal World map is not an accurate copy of real world map, so directions and dimensions could well be altered because of fantasy. But, funnily enough, in the case of Njerpez the geographical reference is accurate. Just like in the real history, seen from the viewpoint of Finnic tribes the Njerpez / The Novgorod Russians come from South-East. But, the thing is, that as a person who drafted this fantasy world, and the locations of the tribes, my brain is probably too stuck with the way I see it, so I'm having hard time wrapping my mind around some alternative way of seeing how "this or that tribe is on the wrong side of the map". I'll be happy to broaden my perspectives if provided a clear explanation which a half-educated mountain man like me can understand.

154

Off-topic / Re: Who were "Njerpez" ?

« on: August 09, 2020, 08:56:29 AM »

This might be a bit of a disappointment, but here are a few words from the very person who crafted the word "Njerpez" and drafted their place and role in the UnReal World;

1. As far as I know, the name is just a pseudo-word, chosen for the way it sounds to a Finnish-speaking person. (Of course there probably always are sub-conscious influences I'm not aware of myself.) Without meaning anything specific it just sounds "foreign". It should be noted that the same principle applies to all the other cultural names in UnReal World - most of them are pseudo words chosen to sound like a words which could've existed in ancient Finnish language.

2. Although UnReal World is based on Iron Age Finland (roughly 800 AD - 1200 AD), we deliberately chose to make a phantasy world resembling historical Finland. That way we have some artistic freedom, and not all the details need to be 100% accurate. Just like the world map is not real Finland, so the tribes and cultures are loose adaptations. Especially the Njerpez. They are somewhat based on Russian cultures.

Historically speaking, there is the 1323 AD treaty defining a border between Swedish Kingdom and Novgorod Republic. That border runs through the area which was home to Finnic tribes. So, a lot simplified, around the turn of 1200 - 1300 AD the land mass now known as Finland saw the Swedish Kingdom expanding from the West, and Novgorod expanding from the South-East.

One fictional inspiration for the world of UnReal World has been an alternative history; how would late 1200 AD Finland have looked like, if the Swedish invasion didn't take place? In that case, probably, there still would've been some sort of Novgorod expansion. And not just Novgorod expansion, but probably also Finnic tribes launching (counter)raids into Novgorod territory. Or, actually this Finnic - Novgorod warfare probably is also historically accurate, but only fragmentary documents remain.

EDIT:

The Njerps are, after all, crazed nutjobs, rather than a normal culture.

I must say that personally I'm a little bit sad about that. I mean, I feel that it would be great if we had all the cultures of UnReal World more detailed and behaving in more realistic and complex way, with multiple layers in their behavioural patterns and repertoire. But that is a huge task which would require a lot of AI programming, and the main focus has been developing the simulation of nature and animals.

155

Suggestions / Re: A "get lost!" button?

« on: August 08, 2020, 02:36:46 PM »

Well, I'm part of the development team, and personally I feel that something like "threaten" would be both interesting and useful future addition at some point.

Basically, instead of a full-out fight a character could choose to act in a threatening way. Then the AI should evaluate if the threatened being would choose to flee or to counter-threaten, or to attack.

I could imagine this working both for animals and humans. And what little I have seen animal behaviour, seems like a natural way for many of them - first trying to negotiate the situation with different displays of threatening moves, and if they don't work only then a full fight ensues.

How do you think you can claim the wilderness where is no mans land as your territory?

I might be a simple person, as I'm not aware of any other means that the exact thing Skyleaf mentions. You tell others that you consider this or that plot of land as your territory, and ask them to leave if you feel so. If the others refuse to respect your statements, then it ultimately boils down to this or that form of violence to sort out who can stay and who needs to leave. In the modern society fist fights and lethal combats are (most of the time, in most of the countries) replaced by stuff like police, courts, legal punishments, jails etc. But the underlying basic mechanism is the same; the one who can backs ones claims with more firepower is the one who controls this or that piece of land. (From the philosophical point of view; I'm not here to say if I like things being this way, or if this is the most preferable way to handle land ownership. I'm merely just describing the way things seem to be in most of the human societies.)

156

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.

157

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.

158

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.

159

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.

160

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.

161

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.

162

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.

163

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)

164

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.

165

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.