Messages

31

General Discussion / Re: Would the devs be open to a GOG release, if GOG unrejected the game?

« on: October 11, 2023, 05:34:47 AM »

Well, I have some more questions;

1. Is there something which would make it better to re-try GOG distribution right now, instead of thinking about it sometime in 2024 or 2025 or so?

2. Last time we asked, their reply was pretty much like "we have reviewed your game and we believe it won't sell enough, so listing it won't be good enough business for us". So, do you have reasons to believe that something has actually changed after that? Either their general policy has changed so that now they consider it fine to list games for smaller audiences - or that 1300+ votes at the wishlist would convince them that listing UrW would be good business for GOG? Or, are you suggesting that because of your personal contacts you could convince them that contrary to their business model it would still be a good decision for them to have UrW on their list?

32

Off-topic / Re: Ancient skis.

« on: October 10, 2023, 11:26:41 AM »

The ski design is optimal for hunting elk and wild forest reindeer. The populations of those animals collapsed near the end of 1800, so hunting them became illegal. Since there was no more that specialized need, people switched to using general-purpose skis.

I browsed through the sources of that research paper; here are some picks;

This is in Finnish as well, but has some pictures when you scroll to the bottom: https://www.kansallismuseo.fi/fi/kuukauden-esineet/2007/lyly-ja-kalhu-tornionjokilaaksosta

I don't know if any of these are accessible on-line, but I'd guess you could consult your local library:

- WEINSTOCK, John 2005; The role of skis and skiing in the settlement of early Scandinavia, The Northern Review, #25/26.

- VILKUNA, Janne 1984; Ancient Skis of Central Finland, Fennoskandia archaeologica 1.

- OVSYANNIKOV, O.V. 1989; On old Russian skis. Fennoskandia archaeologica VI

- NASKALI, Eero 1999; An Ancient Skis. , from "Dig it all, Papers dedicated to Ari Siiriäinen" The Finnish Antiquarian Society the Archaeological Society of Finland, Jyväskylä.

-KANKAANPÄÄ, Jarmo 1997; People in cold environments, from "Early in the North", University of Helsinki Department of Archaeology, No. 10. Helsinki.

- JANIK, Liliana - ROUGHLEY, Corinne - SZEZCNA, Katarzyna, 2007; Skiing on the Rocks: the Experiential Art of Fisher-gather-hunters in Prehistoric Northern Russia, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, Volume 17, Issue 03, October 2007, 297-310.

33

Off-topic / Re: Ancient skis.

« on: October 09, 2023, 02:11:34 PM »

  Is there proof that this is the kind of skis the Sami people used? 

I'm not sure what you count as "a proof", but here is a University research paper : https://www.utupub.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/147759/Korteniemi_Jaakko_opinnayte.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

It lists several pages of references, and if you scroll to the very bottom it also has a handful of related youtube links.

The research paper examines the pair of skis where the other ski is optimizied for gliding and the another for pushing / walking. The historical evidence suggests that this type of skis was invented by Sami people living around the Gulf of Botnia of the Baltic Sea, sometime around 500 BC, and was widely used until 1800 AD. The research paper describes also the experimental part where they crafted these skis to see how they perform in real usage. They found the design to be especially effective for hunting on skis.

34

General Discussion / Re: Would the devs be open to a GOG release, if GOG unrejected the game?

« on: October 02, 2023, 06:17:25 PM »

Hello, and welcome to the forums!

The forum has rather strict anti-spam measures. But if you keep on participating, after a few more posts the forum software will automatically grant you rights to include links in your posts.

And, for the sake of convenience, here is a direct link to the gog wishlist entry for UrW

I think it is Sami who makes this kind of decisions, so let's wait to see what he says.

35

Solved'n'fixed bug reports / Re: steam crashes?

« on: September 12, 2023, 09:33:28 AM »

In this case, and also the case reported by Ares in another thread, I think a relevant question is also if there is anti-virus software active on the computer. (That, in addition to the usual background questions; the operating system, the game version).

36

Bug reports / Re: Weather/Ice anomaly?

« on: August 14, 2023, 09:02:57 PM »

I checked the code, twice, but couldn't find anything which would make the ice weaker while the temperature is below freezing.

But if it is early winter / early spring, then it is possible that the ice is only barely safe, and any marginally small change can make the ice unsafe. Like, daytime temperature being above freezing for a few hours, and there being either full sunlight with no clouds, or heavy rainfall - both of which wear the ice faster than usual.

I'm afraid this is all I can say, reading the weather simulation code. Once Sami has time, he can check your savefile to see if it is more about the actual ice thickness, or more about the safety measures when estimating when the ice is safe to walk on.

And, just for the sake of clarity - did you try to walk on the exact same location / body of water than 3-4 days before? And before it was safe, but now it is no more?

37

General Ancient Savo discussion / Ancient Savo beta 20 : iron works and bugfixes

« on: June 25, 2023, 09:36:10 PM »

Ancient Savo beta version 20 has just been released on itch.io

I hope all the reported bugs are fixed in this version. And as a new feature there is metallurgy, which involves steps like harvesting limonite from lake bottom, using a kiln to produce charcoal, processing the limonite to get iron ingots, and finally forging those ingots to make metal tools like spear heads.

38

General Ancient Savo discussion / Ancient Savo public beta version available

« on: June 06, 2023, 09:04:09 PM »

Ancient Savo public beta version now available!

Play as a settler family in 1200CE Eastern Finland, in a region called Savo. Build your home in pristine woodlands. Live off the land, raise a family, send your adult offspring to start homesteads of their own.

This is an open-ended resource-management game, with no combat elements. Cold, hunger and accidents are your only enemy. Both 2D and 3D graphics, you can freely switch between them.

Modding based on editing XML files.

see the beta version trailer video

The game is now available at itch.io

Join the Ancient Savo discord : https://discord.gg/6Crvp6F5dj

Currently at beta phase. Fully playable. Some bugs, some content still missing, a lot of polishing and balancing to be done. Final stable version estimated at the end of 2023, on itch.io and Steam (mobile platforms are planned later on)

39

Development News / Re: Blacksmith orders viewed on the map

« on: May 19, 2023, 08:57:51 AM »

I suspect there's some weird truncation going on here

Hehe, personally I see it the other way around - in a pre-modern world they didn't have a clock, not a digital calendar, not this constantly ticking sense of a tight schedule with booked events and deadlines. When I imagine a pre-modern artisan estimating how long it would take to produce an item, they surely won't even bother trying to calculate if it would be exactly 16 or 13 or 18 days , but just round it to "something like two weeks, plus minus a few days" which then just is expressed in the short-hand format of "two weeks", since in such a pre-modern society everyone knows that estimated times are estimated times and anything beyond two or three days can't be measured precisely, so it just normal to idle around for a few days waiting to see if that "two weeks" meant 16 or 18 days.

What is weird is our contemporary willingness to fit ourselves into such rigid timetables, and then feeling uneasy if things don't happen exactly on the minute they were announced to happen.

But, sure, I also think it might be helpful to display some rough estimate of "will be ready after a week or so". Or, just to add "It was said to take two weeks, and the order was placed 8 days ago", leaving some calculation for the player to do. Let's see how Sami decides to code it =)

40

Development News / Re: Sami, Erkka and master Lassi

« on: April 12, 2023, 07:14:08 AM »

Will smithing eventually be implemented as a player skill too?

The official list of development plans is often a good place to seek answers to this kind of questions. For example, regarding that particular question the development list has a sub-section titled "Forging" which has a list item "Introduction of blacksmith skills for the player character". So, the short answer is: yes, eventually.

41

Mod Releases / Re: Jojo's Unreal Portraits

« on: March 31, 2023, 11:55:22 AM »

Dunno why I can't post external links

Welcome to the forums!

There was a time when the forums were plagued by a constant flood of spambots. To stop that we needed to apply strict security measures, including restrictions on posting links for new users. So, just keep on participating in the conversation, and after a few posts you'll automatically get rights to post external links.

42

Not bugs / Re: Too much cold

« on: March 15, 2023, 03:13:14 PM »

I was fighting against the enemies, and I saw: the branch flying in the air, the enemy had shot it with his bow. Possible bug?

This has been reported and should be fixed already, but I'd guess the fix is not yet in the latest version, but will be in the next release.

43

Suggestions / Re: Remove some armor and weapons.

« on: March 10, 2023, 01:31:16 PM »

  I'm a little more hesitant about shin-cops, the very first ones I've seen I found them on Byzantine finds, around the year 1000.

The game is based on roughly 800 - 1200, and the Viking trade routes down the Russian rivers took all the way down to Byzantine, so I'd guess it is withing the frame of possibility that some instances of 1000 AD Byzantine items reached the shores of Finland before 1200 ended 

44

Off-topic / Re: 'Asentokuusi' - simple shelter under a leaning spruce tree

« on: February 17, 2023, 01:38:37 PM »

Yes, I think I agree. My comment on me not realizing "asentokuusi" could appear as a skill instead of being self-evident was not meant to underrate anyone who is not familiar with the concept. It was meant more as me recognizing my own ignorance, how easy it is to take things self-evident when they are not.

So, yeah - I hope to post some real-life material later on this year. I just need to think a bit how to best do it without needing to fell trees on land I don't own.

45

Off-topic / Re: 'Asentokuusi' - simple shelter under a leaning spruce tree

« on: February 17, 2023, 10:35:33 AM »

The question was posted as a comment to old development news. We encourage everyone to reserve dev.news for Sami to post announcements and news about the game development, for there are other forum sections for other discussions. So I moved this to off-topic.

And then  the actual reply; I did a quick search in YouTube but couldn't find an exact match. Maybe I could try to make one myself once the snow is gone.

I'm not sure if it will work so well with a pine trees, if you need it to protect from rain. A spruce / fir tree thick with branches would do.

EDIT:

Here is an article in Finnish, with some pictures. Using the ancient concept with modern equipment.

And a winter version video.

Neither of those demonstrate a protection from rain, yet the idea is the same. And both of the links show the most simple way of doing it: just finding a spruce tree with low-reaching branches, so that you can shelter under them. As a person who grew up in the Finnish countryside all of this appears so commonplace and self-evident for me that I didn't even realize this could be seen as "a skill", hehe. Well, but the improved version of asentokuusi is just to fell another spruce tree so that is doesn't collapse to the ground but leans to another tree. For a countryside kid this feels about as intuitive as sheltering for rain in a random doorway probably is for contemporary urban people. Anyway, I try to remember this, so that I can test and try to shoot a video once we have summer conditions.