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Summarizing shingles, showcasing tree species based timber
Let's sum up and showcase a few recently mentioned crafting related ambitions with some screenshots. As mentioned earlier we'll be featuring a new light source, shingles. They are thin and flat oblong pieces of pine wood which were burnt to produce light - especially for lighting up houses during the dark time of the year. Shingles are lit by using [a]pply command. Once a shingle is burning you can drop and set it wherever the light is needed, or carry it with you. Traditionally shingles were burnt in a specific stand that kept them in a good angle for proper burning, but in the game the dropped burning shingles are imagined to be inserted between the wall logs or set firmly in place by some other means. One shingle burns for about 30 minutes in the game so for continuous lighting a new one needs to be lit before the previous one fades out. This sort of shingle replacement is done automatically if your character is located beside the burning shingle and there's a stack of new shingles nearby on the ground. You character then automatically replaces and lights a new shingle when necessary, and you don't need to worry about maintaining the lighting even if the task you were doing would take a long time.  Here a cabin is lighted up by two shingles burning in place. There's also a stack of shingles on the ground and if the character remains beside it a new shingle is automatically lit when the previous one fades out. Shingles can be crafted by the player character, and they may be needed in quite amounts during the dark season. An axe and a knife and suitable block of wood are needed for splitting the shingles. The preferred tree species is pine so our shingle splitting requirements will look like this.  A block of pine wood is required for splitting the shingles. Currently the felled trunks in the game are all of the same generic wood type, and tree species don't have much difference in crafting. But now that is going to chance as we'll be adding tree species property for big trunks and assorted timber products. At the first stage this addition only covers big trunks and slender tree trunks will remain generic, but in the future also the slender tree trunks will get the tree species property. So, upon felling big trees the tree species now gets derived into the produced tree trunk. As a result the tree trunks are now called as pine tree trunk, birch tree trunk or spruce tree tunk - depending on what species of tree was felled. There are also different tree trunk tile graphics for pine tree trunk, birch tree trunk and spruce tree trunk. The basic timber products made of big trunks eg. blocks and boards will now start to inherit the tree species resulting in eg. "pine boards" or "block of birch wood". And so the tree type will now start to affect to what type of wood is needed/preferred for crafting this or that. Some tree type preference adjustments based on this addition will be made to craftable items in the next version and it will continue to grow more detailed in the versions to follow.  Here our character has felled big spruce, pine and birch trees and they appear on the ground like this. The coding focus remains in the pausable crafting transition, but it also seems to grow more complex and comprehensive as we advance. These are future adjustments - not yet functional in current version 3.84.2 July 10, 2024, 02:45:23 PM |
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Lagging, delaying, travelling
Hey hey, just a note to let you know that I've fallen behind my development schedules on almost all fronts. The summer was all too busy to maintain a good workflow, and when there was a good workflow many unexpected coding issues kept arising. The features I dreamed of being close to release candidate stage by now are still lagging and delaying. And now a few weeks of travelling takes place so the radio silence is to be expected until september. I'll hope the spirits will make my autumn more coding friendly. Let's catch up then. August 19, 2024, 03:10:32 PM |
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Scattered remarks of pausable items and core functions
Oh yes, there's been decent workflow going on in september. And some rainy days too, which always increase the coding endurance.  Here are some brief remarks and additional details to where we were at with the earlier posts from the late summer. The main work remains the same, transition to pausable item crafting. At this point majority of the Make menu item categories are now pausable. If all goes well, only clothes and transport categories will still persists in to-do non-pausable stage upon release of the next version. The upcoming tree species based timber is now in effect with the applicable craftable items and specific tree species is occasionally preferred, or sometimes even required. This brings in a whole new approach to acquiring timber and item crafting. To give a few examples birch tree is preferred for making wooden shovels, cups and bowls. For wood slats pine is preferred, and shingles need to be made exclusively from blocks of pine. For crafting a paddle spruce is required. And the bows are best made out of pine or birch. The tree species preference is indicated within the material and tool selection dialog the same way as all the other preferences. In the screenshot below you'll see how it goes when longbow crafting is initiated:  In cases where certain tree species is preferred it's still possible to use material of any tree species, but if it differs from the preferred types the quality of the produced item will be lower. In that case the generic "...can't make good out of bad." message will be shown upon obtaining the finished craft. .. As we undergo transition to pausable crafting many item recipes go through adjustments and additions. Recently we introduced raw material yield property, which is also available for modding as [yield:num]. This property defines how many crafted items a certain raw material can yield. It's in use for example with making staves, so that you can make three staves out of one slender tree trunk. The yield information is now also indicated upon starting to craft something, and before selecting the desired number of items to craft. This way crafting can be planned sparingly. In the screenshot below you'll see the slender trunk yield indicated when staff crafting is initiated:  It's likely that the crafts that are currently made in batches will be checked for possible use of the yield property to make their crafting more informative and intuitive. The yield property is not practical for all the items, but in cases where you are kind of asked for "how many batches of items that are made eg. 5 items in one go" it can help to simplify things to quite an extent. With all the new properties and tags and preference specifications we've had to touch the very core functions of item crafting that lay deep within the game. It's been quite unnerving to open these functions up for tweaking as if we make mistakes there the whole game will suffer from the consequences. Thus, we've led easy paced and precise coding and testing periods with these. So far, so good. So let's continue. These are future features - not yet functional in current version 3.84. September 13, 2024, 05:29:16 PM |
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Ancient Savo, another Enormous Elk title released on Steam
Some of you are aware of this already, and for the rest it's time for a little cross-promotion... Ancient Savo, another game by Enormous Elk was recently on Steam. Created by Erkka Lehmus (UnReal World co-designer) this open-ended survival and resource management game is focused on raising a family. The game takes place in 1200 CE Eastern Finland, in the pristine woodlands of a region called Savo. If you have played UnReal World you may notice some familiar elements there, drawn from the same pool of inspiration, but Ancient Savo is an independent game its own. Maybe you'd better go see yourself, the introductory sale is on until 30th of September: Ancient Savo on Steam Ancient Savo trailer on YouTube Ancient Savo is being developed independently and aside from the UnReal World, and the route the Enormous Elk's flagship is sailing remains the same - as does the crew. A few screenshots from Ancient Savo:    Cheers! September 27, 2024, 04:48:27 PM |
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Version 3.85 beta released
And now, the time has come and version 3.85 beta is hereby released on Steam, Itch.Io and for lifetimers. It's a beta version, so functionality of all the new features still remains to be confirmed. But in few weeks time, if no serious showstoppers are found, we can expect a stable release. Here's the changelog: Version: 3.85 (beta) ** Saved characters from version 3.80-> are compatible with this version. ** BETA NOTICE: This is a beta release. There are likely bugs, things are still somewhat under construction, and some of the listed improvements will be tweaked and polished further in patches to follow. - added: tree species property for big trunks and some assorted timber products Upon felling big trees the tree species now gets derived into the produced tree trunk. As a result the tree trunks are now called as pine tree trunk, birch tree trunk or spruce tree tunk - depending on what species of a tree was felled. Felling small trees still produces the generic slender tree trunks, but in the future tree species property will be added for slender trunks as well. There are also different tree trunk tile graphics for pine tree trunk, birch tree trunk and spruce tree trunk. These have been added as separate columns within truetile/trunk.png tile graphics file. When making blocks of wood or boards out of the big trunks these products now also inherit the original tree species property. As a result these basic timber products will be now called for example as "block of spruce wood" or "pine board", etc. - added: some crafts now require wood material of specific tree species Some crafts now require specific species of wood as raw material. This is indicated within the material and tool selection dialog the same way as all the other preferences. For example, you may be given a messages such as "You need a board, preferably of pine or birch." or "You need a spruce trunk." In cases where certain tree species is preferred it's still possible to use material of any tree species, but if it differs from the preferred types the produced item will be of lesser quality. In that case the generic "...can't make good out of bad." message will be shown upon obtaining the finished craft. A specific wood species is now preferred when crafting the following items. And this feature will likely get more widely utilized in the future updates. * Longbow, pine or birch is preferred * Shortbow, pine or birch is preferred * Wooden shovel, birch is preferred * Wooden cup and bowl, birch is preferred * Wood slat, pine is preferred * Shingle, pine is required * Paddle, spruce is preferred - modding add: preferred tree species requirement Where applicable you can specify preferred tree species as a required material within <> tag. For example: {Tree trunk} <Spruce, Birch> [remove] {Block of wood} <Birch> [remove] On the first line a big tree trunk is required, and it should be preferably of either spruce or birch. On the second line block of wood is required, and it should be preferably of birch. In these cases it's still possible to use material of any tree species, but if it differs from the preferred types the quality of the produced item will be lower. If only a certain type of tree species is accepted you should specify it directly by its full item name including the species. For example: {Pine tree trunk} or {Spruce board} - added: shingles - a traditional light source Shingles are thin and flat oblong pieces of pine wood which were burnt to produce light - especially for lighting up houses during the dark time of the year. In addition, shingles are also used as handicraft raw material in the making of shingle baskets - which is a new item featured in this verison. Shingles are timber type items, and they are lit by using [a]pply command. Once a shingle is burning you can drop and set it wherever the light is needed, or carry it with you. Traditionally shingles were burnt in a specific stand that kept them in a good angle for proper burning, but in the game the dropped burning shingles are imagined to be inserted between the wall logs or set firmly in place by some other means. One shingle burns for about 30 minutes in the game so for continuous lighting a new one needs to be lit before the previous one fades out. This sort of shingle replacement is done automatically if your character is located beside the burning shingle and there's a stack of new shingles nearby on the ground. You character then automatically replaces and lights a new shingle when neccary, and you don't need to worry about maintaining the lighting even if the task you were doing would take a long time. Your companions will also automatically set a new shingle burning if they happen to be beside the fainting one. Villagers now also stock shingles and can utilize them to light up their cottage houses. Villagers set shingles burning only when necessary so this kind of lighting in the villages is mostly seen only during the dark autumn and winter periods. - added: SHINGLE game encyclopedia (F1) entry - added: crafting shingles You can find the option for crafting shingles at [M]ake menu under [L]umber category. Shingles are split from a block of pine wood. The process requires an axe, knife and hammering tool such as club. First the block is split into smaller pieces and then the shingles are split and pulled apart one by one by using a knife and hands. One block of wood yields hundreds and hundreds of shingles, but it is time consuming process that can take a full working day. The exact amount of shingles produced from one block of wood is based on the success of your TIMBERCRAFT skill. - added: shingle basket, a new container item Shingle basket is a rather large container made out of shingles. You can craft shingle baskets from [M]ake menu under Utility articles. - changed: Staff item type and role Staves are now classified as timber type items rather than weapons, and considered mostly as raw material for crafting and construction purposes. There are no changes to staff making. They are made from slender tree trunks by delimbing and debarking the trunk and cutting it to suitable lengths. A common staff is thought of being about two meters in length with a diameter that fits nicely in one's hand. MIGRATION NOTICE: Weapon type staves obtained in previous versions do work in crafting the same way as the current version staves. - updated: STAFF game encyclopedia (F1) entry - changed: Flail item type and role Grainflail is now classified as a tool type item, rather than being a weapon. For a long time flails were considered weapons but that approach was foremostly generic medieval weaponry relic from the past and quite inappropriate for the game world. Naturally the FLAIL combat skill no longer exists either. In addition, the small flail item has been removed completely so there's only one flail item in the game world now - the grainflail. MIGRATION NOTICE: FLAIL skill gets removed from the migrated characters upon their first load in this version. The old flails continue to appear as weapon type items, but their usage as weapons is now unpredictable. - updated: GRAINFLAIL game encyclopedia (F1) entry - added: pausable arrowhead making Crafting of the arrowheads are now pausable tasks allowing you to have breaks and continue at will later on. - changed: bone and stone arrowhead crafting batch size increased from 5 to 10 - changed: blunt arrow crafting Blunt arrow crafting batch size is now increased to a dozen (12). As one slender trunk now yields 3 blunt arrows this is more reasonable batch number considering the sparing material usage. An axe or carving knife is now also required in making of blunt arrows - for efficient rough cutting. You can still craft a blunt arrow with any knife alone, but using an axe or sturdy knife makes things easier. - added: pausable fishing equipment Crafting of the items in [M]ake -> "Fishing" category are now pausable tasks allowing you to have breaks and continue at will later on. To continue paused crafting use the same crafting option again standing beside the said partially finished item. There are changes to the crafting recipes as follows; * Wooden fishhook It now takes 30 minutes on average to make. * Lippo It now takes 6 hours on average to make. * Netting needle A wooden stake is now required as a raw material to carve the netting needle from. - added: pausable tying equipment Crafting of the items in [M]ake -> "Tying equipment" category are now pausable tasks allowing you to have breaks and continue at will later on. To continue paused tying equipment crafting use any similar type of crafting again - ie. any cord, rope or withe - standing beside the partially finished item. So, even if you had for example a leather rope in the making, trying to craft birch-bark rope beside it still continues the original paused craft. So with tying equipment we hereby have an exception to pausable crafting continuing rules. If you choose to craft any type of cord, rope or withe the existing paused cord, rope or withe at the location will be finished first. - added: pausable textilecraft Spinning yarn and crafting of the spindle in [M]ake -> "Textilecraft" category are now pausable tasks allowing you to have breaks and continue at will later on. To continue paused crafting use the same crafting option again standing beside the said partially finished item. There are changes to the crafting recipes as follows; * Spindle It now takes 2 hours on average to make. Moreover, in addition using a knife alone, an axe or carving knife is preferred for rough cutting of the initial spindle shape. - added: pausable utility articles Crafting of the items in [M]ake -> "Utility articles" category are now pausable tasks allowing you to have breaks and continue at will later on. To continue paused crafting use the same crafting option again standing beside the said partially finished item. There are changes to the crafting recipes as follows; * Grainflail It's now made of two staves instead of a slender tree trunk. The staves are carved smooth and the impact stave is joined to the handle with a piece of cord. It now takes 3 hours on average to make. * Wooden cup They can be now made in batches of up to 5 at a time, and one block of wood yields five cups. Production time of one cup has been increased to 90 minutes. Previously it was 1 hour. * Wooden bowl They can be now made in batches of up to 4 at a time, and one block of wood yields two bowls. Production time of one bowl has been increased to 3 hours. Previously it was 2 hours. * Torch They can be now made in batches of up to 10 at a time. Some tying equipment is now also required to keep the bundle of branches tight and convenient to handle. The tying equipment can be anything from withes to cords. * Bandage To make one bandage 0.5 lbs of cloth is required, instead of previous 1 lb. - removed: skin (ie. waterskin) item This item was actually a remnant from the very early years of the game where wilderness exploration and abundance of water wasn't so obvious. Moreover, water containers made out of leather are also somewhat anachronistic for the game world. - modding add: [sucmodqty] tag to specificy success modified quantity of obtained items Using [sucmodqty] tag at the item header modifies the number of items to produce, specified as (num), based on how the crafting attempt succeeded. Very succesfull crafting produces close to or exactly the specified number of items, and failures produce that much less. For example, if we had an item header like this: .Club. (10) /5h/ *COMMON* [sucmodqty] This would always produce 10 clubs if there wasn't [sucmodqty] in use. But now as there's [sucmodqty] tag it can produce something like 7-10 clubs based on how the crafting attempt succeeds. - changed: wood slat production amount is now prone to success modified quantity The number of wood slats you get from one board is modified by how the crafting attempt succeeded. - added: yield information of raw materials, where applicable, is now indicated upon starting to craft something For example, when starting to craft staves there will be a message telling that "You can make 3 staves from one slender tree trunk." This way crafting can be planned sparingly in cases where certain raw material yield has been set. - adjusted: availability of small garments such as socks and mittens in the villages has been increased The chances to find small garments such as socks and mittens from the villages has been increased. You still may have to visit several prosperous villages to find a spare pair of precious woollen socks or mittens, but there's noticeable increase to the previous. - added: proper stocking of skis and ski sticks in the villages Skis and ski sticks are now properly stocked in the villages and the equipment quality can vary depending on the culture. Ski equipment restocking, if needed, is based on the village population and season. - fixed: start-up scenarios generated too close to the villages Sometimes a new character's location and start-up scenario were generated too close to the existing villages which caused scenario effects to spread into the villages. This was noticed for example with scenarios like "Unfortunate hunting trip" and "Not all who wander are lost." - fixed: two animals getting caught in the same trap - fixed: holes in the ice refreezing in slightly above zero degrees celsius temperatures - fixed: glitches with using village trade credit for blacksmith orders If you had enough village trade credit to cover the whole blacksmith order, asking the blacksmith's opinion about preferred items to trade only used up your credit but didn't proceed with the order. - fixed: crawling while skiing These two movement modes were erroneously simultaneously allowed. Now the crawling character with skis keeps only crawling, with the crawling speed. - fixed: running while skiing These two movement modes were erroneously simultaneously allowed. Now running is not possible when skiing. - fixed: felled saplings in darkness displayed incorrectly - fixed: rare shovel disappearance potential when digging a pit was paused - fixed: NPCs occasionally setting fires at unsuitable and random locations - fixed: being able to shoot broken arrows with a bow - fixed: shoreline waters at the village area converted into spring water for migrated characters created before the spring addition ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cheers! October 28, 2024, 06:48:55 PM |
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Bioluminescent mushrooms and wood
Hey! I want to suggest content expansion in a form of bioluminescent fungi. This video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0em0Czk0eQo recently caught my eye and while video itself is in Polish language, at 17:25 there is a fragment with prolonged exposure of how it looks. What I’m talking about is Armillaria mellea or possibly in a case of the north Armillaria borealis. In video it is said that mycelium of those species can span area as big as 37 hectares in Europe and almost 1000 in America. Assuming 1000 hectares, given its growth rate, it would be as old as 10 000 years. I think it’s safe to say that such species were present 1000 years ago. On top of that, there were legends of glowing trees and mushrooms until in XVIII century it was proven that timber supporting mine shafts indeed can glow in the dark. So what I suggest is: - Areas infected with Armillaria, where glowing wood could be found. Finding such area may not be so obvious considering bark need to be removed first and not all trees are infected. Possibly it could be harvested and reused by players to create some form of lantern posts. I assume it won’t glow very bright, but probably enough to create orientation spots? - Maybe some quest involving finding such area? I think there are very clever ideas that could take place here, but I don't want to spoil the fun. I think it would be a perfect fit for a game’s theme, where almost magical phenomena from legends comes true. Most of the information contained in this post is based on the video (again sorry for language restriction), though I’ve been doing some research to check if this information is correct. If idea catches I can help find specific references on this topic. I understand that such expansion may not sound as most pressing. I believe though that it's better to have more ideas/options than less. November 27, 2024, 07:32:20 PM |
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Reducing amount of blunt hits enough to kill prey
Hi everyone, I started using blunt hits to preserve quality of hides and noticed it taking somewhat many blows to kill. An elk I've just hunted down had survived sixteen hits to the head with a woodsman's axe (which weighs six lbs) before died. I don't have an experience of killing someone this way (as well as any other), yet seems a bit unrealistic to me. Spoiler: show December 01, 2024, 11:09:25 PM |
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Re: Bioluminescent mushrooms and wood
This is a neat idea. I did some cursory "research" on this and found that in Finnish folklore the phenomenon is called "peikonkulta" lit. "troll's gold". In Finnish nature the mushroom you mentioned (Armillaria borealis) indeed causes this, but also a bioluminescent species of moss (Schistostega pennata) grows in Finland. According to 16th century Swedish historian/cartographer Olaus Magnus, northern people marked their paths in night time forests with these plants, and sages/shamans used these for special effects. Bioluminescent plankton is also found in northern sea waters, especially in White Sea, and Sami have known the phenomenon as "gallagas" or "gallagas-dolla". In Baltic shores glowing waters are much rarer, but in Finnish folklore it's known as: "merituli" which is apparently a direct translation from old Norse "morueldr" (both mean sea-fire); "noidantuli" (witche's fire) from a folk belief that glowing waters were a result of witchcraft. December 15, 2024, 01:12:01 PM |
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Hired help when wounded.
Simple suggestion: When injured, and task requires a wounded appendage, allow the task to go on if there's a hired hand/helper/companion available. e.g. my character got his hand injured fighting a bear, my companion is an old man Ahvo, who's a master hideworker. But the bear skin is going to rot as we can't do the task at all. December 20, 2024, 12:05:13 AM |
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Season's Greetings with electric elks and northern fire works!
Once again the year is nearing its end and with these season's greetings we wish you all the best with the festivities and holiday season you might have at hand, and happy new year! As this years speciality I shall a share a fresh episode from my traditional archery YouTube channel which offers a different view to devs life in and outside the development chambers. Now we've just recently passed the winter solstice in the Northern hemisphere and the days are slowly but steadily getting longer and longer. So why don't we celebrate it with this sort of a northern fire works - the birch-bark fire arrows! https://youtu.be/JdsLobHDp1Y?si=UPqTs2MklfUlYp4q And let's not forget the picture greetings, this time with Enormous Electric Elk!  Take care, all the best, see you in 2025! December 24, 2024, 12:18:31 PM |
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