Messages

31

Development News / Re: Summer Sale, Summer opportunities

« on: July 03, 2019, 06:16:36 PM »

Unrelated, but.. how's M&B working for you on Linux? A memory leak plagued me and others for years, and had to start playing it on Windows, sadly.

Haven't noticed any problems so far. The basic M&B runs on Steam Play, which means it's a Windows binary, running on top of Steam's Proton emulation layer (sort of Valve's own WINE fork, I think) - M&B is one of the games it has been tested for, so it was just a matter of clicking Install in Steam to get it working just fine. I haven't installed Warband yet - that's a native SteamOS/Linux port, but I don't really expect much problems there either - it's an older, fairly high-profile game, so I'd expect I'd heard plenty of complaints by now if did't work.

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Development News / Re: Summer Sale, Summer opportunities

« on: June 30, 2019, 09:55:13 AM »

I've played this game for a few months (again after so many years) - I just recently installed Steam on Linux to buy the Mount & Blade bundle, and while I was at it, I bought this game, too. Listening to the newly-released album by Heilung and playing Unreal World just feels... natural.

33

Bug reports / Re: Magic Berrys!

« on: June 21, 2019, 11:55:03 AM »

There really is something weird going on. I went trading in south-eastern Driik in early Seedtime/May (my base is in northwest Driik), and upon entering one village, discovered lots of peas and rye for harvest - I immediately saved the game and made a copy of my character folder, then reloaded the save - and all the harvest was gone! The field is now completely empty of rye and peas - just some dog pipes, milkweed and clayweed here and there (aren't these also out of season?). Seems like the logic is something like this: when you first enter an area where something has new sprouted, the game shows it as fully grown and harvestable - however, if you reload, or move to a new area where similar crops are growing, the game catches up on unseasonal crops and from then on, it shows the correct harvest time. I've attached a screenshot of unseasonal milkweed - these seem to persist even after reload - sadly I didn't think of getting a screenshot of the unseasonal rye harvest...

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Bug reports / Re: Magic Berrys!

« on: June 19, 2019, 05:15:40 PM »

Hmm. I think it's something else. Or at least I can't think of a reason why changing month names would interfere. They are just plain text additions to game messages.

I thought maybe there was some string matching going on that threw things off, but upon further testing, it must be something else - the hemp and broad beans have now vanished, but I still find harvestable black ear mushrooms in late Swidden/April, which shouldn't be possible according to the wiki (if they sprout in Swidden, grow 60 days and are harvestable in Fallow) - in this case, might the wiki be wrong? I also found harvestable crowberries, but they are again back to normal. So, I haven't been able to repeat whatever glitch caused this, but next time I come across it, I'll make a save game right there and then...

35

Development News / Re: Craftable birch-bark items and associated ponderings

« on: June 17, 2019, 08:33:25 PM »

The only downside I can see to have footwear wear out is that it would be rather pointless to put in the effort to try to hunt down Masterworks quality (or even Fine) ones, as they'd wear out and you'd be back to the ones you can craft yourself. It's bad enough when the only "wear" is battle/injury damage...

With leather boots or shoes it shouldn't matter, as they are repairable - there would still be an incentive to track down quality footgear as you can repair them before they get worn out too much. Maybe, if this change is introduced, the ability to repair footwear (and clothes?) could be extended to cover all items, regardless of material? Then the amount of wear wouldn't matter that much - unless there are other factors at play that would throw the game balance out of whack.

36

Bug reports / Re: Magic Berrys!

« on: June 16, 2019, 09:25:41 PM »

I've been playing around with some game files, and one of the changes was changing the month names to modern names in urw_defs.txt, and noticed that I started getting unseasonal harvest - I got broad beans, hemp (in villages) and black ear mushrooms in Swidden/April (I think what I had planted myself in my own field showed the correct time, but I'm not sure about that). Then I changed the month names back to the original, and  now it again displays the correct harvest month. Could this be related?

37

Bug reports / [Graphics] Indoor spaces built on rock don't display the correct graphics

« on: May 12, 2019, 04:22:01 PM »

I built a house on rocky terrain and noticed that the game does not display the correct indoor graphics. Instead, it shows the rocky ground graphic, and if it's been snowing, it shows the snow-covered terrain graphic. There's an entry in the list of known bugs that says "Inside of building don't display correctly on rocky terrain during snowing" - I'm not sure if this is the same thing, since this bug happens whatever it is snowing or not (i.e. the rocky ground graphic always shown). The house was originally built when it was snowing (and the indoors showed the snowy ground graphic even after building the roof/floor, except on those tiles that had some other terrain type), and when the summer came and snow melted, it had the usual rocky ground graphic - and now when the winter is coming and it snows, it again shows the snowy ground graphic indoors. EDIT: during the summer I deconstructed one of the inside tiles and rebuilt it, trying to find out whether this had any effect on the graphics - it still showed the rocky ground graphic, and now the snowy ground, so it seems to be related to rocky ground in general.

38

Suggestions / Re: Couple of suggestions

« on: May 12, 2019, 10:49:23 AM »

It would be nice to see a bit more interactive player icon - if it could also show when the character is naked/wearing lots of clothes/armor etc, I wouldn't go out into a harsh snowstorm wearing only my birthday suit... Also, meeting NPC's that are actively doing something other than just wondering around would be great, and I think this is at least partially in the works - in the dev news, there was something about the possibility of coming across NPC's roasting game, for example.

If you don't mind, I'll hijack this post with a couple of suggestions of my own (maybe there could be a sticky post for making small random suggestions?).

• Make consuming Noadi's mushrooms to give some sort of information on your standing with the spirits (maybe trigger one of those messages "The forest seems hostile" etc. - if they actually have anything to do with it; the only thing I've noticed so far is that if the forest is hostile, I have trouble getting anything but harsh skins).
• Allow trading off a beast of burden's inventory (this I think has been suggested earlier). This would reduce the tedious pack/unpack cycle, and would also remove the annoying way the game handles things if you happen to accidentally try to leave the village area without paying - if the trade dialog is triggered by a villager, you cannot step out of the dialog to unpack things from you beast of burden, but have to trade with what is in already in your inventory or give the stuff back

39

Suggestions / Re: Musical Instruments

« on: April 05, 2019, 08:21:28 PM »

Maybe you could do things like construct an instrument and play it to make spirits appear, for example? Using drums and dancing to enter altered states in order to converse with the spirits is pretty common theme in most primitive cultures, and the noitarumpu is central to shamanistic cultures of the northern regions; the challenge is to figure out an in-game effect that would enhance the game in some meaningful way, instead of being just a nice gimmick.

40

Suggestions / Re: Bait not req for fishing? Really?

« on: February 17, 2019, 04:07:00 PM »

I've thought of the fishing process to include not just waiting for the catch, but also finding bait, etc. that's just been abstracted into a single skill roll - after all, the process takes a couple of hours and you can catch several fish with a single try, so there's obvisouly a great deal of abstraction going on. I fish myself quite a bit, both with artifical lures using a spinner reel and by angling, and on the few times when I've either forgotten to take the bait along or have run out, I've used whatever bugs I've found around the place, or used parts of a fish I've already caught (fish eyes used to be a popular choice during the ice fishing season) - and on some occasions, just used some colorful string I've had in my pocket.

Rods themselves may or may not be accurate, as there are no surviving examples that I'm aware of (being wood, they decompose easily and even when found, may not be that much different from any other random piece of wood). However, we do know that iron age people did fish using bone or wooden hooks and some type of string, and so it's highly likely that they would've used some type of rod to improve their reach - our ancestors weren't stupid, after all, and attaching the string on the end of of long wooden stick is a very obvious way to improve your chances of reaching suitable fishing spots.

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Suggestions / Re: Allow dogs to fetch prey floating on water

« on: December 31, 2018, 04:38:05 PM »

Wouldn't the dog freeze as well in finnish waters? It's not like their fur is water- or cold-proof

Depends on the breed - some breeds have a thick and oily underfur, which gives them protection against cold water, and most northern breeds are quite cold-resistant. Though if this idea were coded in, maybe there should be a limit on how cold the waters can be - many dogs can take colder waters than most people, but even they'd refuse to go into waters that are near freezing point.

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Suggestions / Re: Allow dogs to fetch prey floating on water

« on: December 31, 2018, 11:44:06 AM »

Don't know how historical it is, but it's a great idea. Maybe you could buy trained and untrained dogs for this. And trained dogs would be more expensive. Maybe add a training system for the players in the future and when the option to sell animals becomes available, you have another way to earn a living.

I would think the idea would have occured to our ancestors around the point they were freezing their bollocks off wading in themselves.... the dog in the game is no particular breed, but more like a generic mongrel - but any dog that can be trained to hunt can be trained to retrieve. My family used to have a succession of hunting dogs of random pedigrees, and while training some took more effort than others, they were all used to retrieve mallards with (some) success - one of them you couldn't let out of sight or it ate the bird - hungry or not - but as long as you kept it in sight, it too brought the bird back...

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Suggestions / Allow dogs to fetch prey floating on water

« on: December 29, 2018, 11:54:40 AM »

I was gathering herbs and hunting on a remote lake, shot down a few birds over water, and as I waded in to pick them up and eventually started getting cold, I started thinking it would be useful to have a command for dogs to fetch prey floating on water. The dog would pick up the bird, come back and then drop it near the owner. Of course, if the dog was hungry, it would eat the bird instead. That might be expandable to other small prey as well - for example, you set your dogs on a hare, they hunt it down, kill it and then bring the carcass to you. The latter would be a bonus, but the former would be really useful especially in early spring/late autumn, when the waters are too cold to wade in yourself just to fetch a bird for a couple of cuts of meat, and you don't have a boat or raft handy.

44

General Discussion / Re: Base for Rules System

« on: December 29, 2018, 10:30:22 AM »

URW is based on Harnmaster? That's cool - we tried that system back in the 90s, but it never really got off the ground, as we found the system to get in the way of roleplaying (same thing happened with Rolemaster as well - too many tables to roll on). So we ended up using the RuneQuest system with the Hârn sourcebooks, and that worked a treat. Now that I think of it, the Hârn vibe is obvious - that system had the greatest sourcebooks, and IIRC, Orbaal felt a lot like URW...

45

Gameplay questions / Re: What affects watercraft speed?

« on: December 27, 2018, 04:42:56 PM »

As you work on your mod Brygun, I personally would like to see fine vrs rough punt effect speed and endurance cost. [cut]

I think those kinds of things cannot be modified by user mods - speed, endurance, etc. are hardcoded. From what I've read about the developing process, modding has been a bit of an afterthought, so it's not very flexible.