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Romance/Husband/Wife Quest Mod Idea
Hello, Inspired by Privateer's quest idea, I wanted to float the concept of a multi-stage "quest" mod in which you would woo, or otherwise prove yourself worthy of, a wife (or husband; if interest was sufficient there'd be one version for each). The "quest" would essentially be a story told through the F1 key, where each stage of it would be a single menu item, and the entire mod would be contained within one menu. There's be certain things you'd have to accomplish before reaching the next stage, though a lot of that would be left to player enforcement. For example, the start item on the menu would give you a token, which when examined with F1 would describe the woman you were trying to woo, with a picture. Some of her traits. Probably some warrior maiden would be the most apropos? It would then describe the first task needed to win her affections. Such as, "fell a squirrel with thrown rocks near a village". When you accomplished this, you would activate the next menu item, which would give you a new token with a new F1 entry. This one would describe how she witnessed you felling the squirrel, and was impressed by your aim, and how you spoke for a while, etc. The entry could then describe you and her having a throwing competition, which you barely won. The next task might be something like "Come to town wearing a full set of fur clothing, to show that you are self-sufficient." Then you'd trigger the next step in the story/quest, which would describe (via the F1 key) her noticing your styling wardrobe, and further conversation with her, now becoming somewhat flirtatious. It would go on like that. one of the final steps would be to build a house nearby the village for the two of you to live in. The mod could not actually create a new NPC, unfortunately, so this would be the closest it could achieve. The player could, if they wished, imagine one of the "Maiden" NPCs in the village corresponded to the one talked about in the story. So basically I want to start by seeing if there is actual interest in this idea, because it's not something I would create solely for my own use. Thoughts/feedback/ideas are welcome, too. January 13, 2021, 12:23:00 AM |
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Version 3.71 released - a small bugfix patch
A small bugfix patch, version 3.71, has been released to address the following issues: - fixed: some faulty animal snow penalty calculations On few occasions the fatigue rate of animals moving in the deep snow wasn't calculated right. This could result either in animals tiring too easily, or too little. - fixed: distributing offered traded items among foreign traders wasn't always working You might still end up in "can't carry" trade situation, even though the trading party would have capacity to carry the offered goods. Hopefully this is fixed for good now. - fixed: Crash/shutdown related character data loss on Windows systems On Windows system crash or computer power loss might result in character corruption which at its worst erased character data to the extent of making them unrecoverable. This issue has been now addressed with extra safety measures and internal backups which hopefully prevent the worst case data losses for good. Should you experience Windows crash the game now tries to recover character data automatically from internal backup files upon loading the character again. You may still loose some moments or few map loads in the character's life but the game hopefully goes on more reliably. - fixed: UrW mobile controller not working on some systems --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That's all folks. Four fixes in total. You'll find the release on Steam, Itch and also available for Lifetimers. November 17, 2021, 03:16:00 PM |
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Year 2021 now added to development history log
Briefing of the year 2021 is now summarized up at "Development history of UnReal World" section at the homepage. You can take a look at the development history since 1992 page here: https://www.unrealworld.fi/urw_devhist.html January 13, 2022, 02:02:07 PM |
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The 30th jubileum, 47th birthday, and sort of a year off
This year, in 2022, we are celebrating the 30th Jubileum of UnReal World. The game was first released in the summer of 1992, so the 30-year milestone will be reached this summer. Now what will this special year of celebration bring upon us, and the game? When it comes to coding and development, I will be taking it real easy. It is likely that we'll see some updates to the game, but mostly I'll be devoting my time for variety of other things. So I'll kind of celebrate the 30 years of development by taking a year off from the usual coding flurry. This also allows me to better contemplate on the future of the game as there some challenging overhauls in our sight. One is moving to higher resolution and modern aspect ratio. The year is early, and these thoughts are scattered, so more news on this front will follow later on. But yes, it is truly so that I will take a year off from the usual, practical, hands-on development. Planning, brainstorming and a little something easy paced remains, though. Nevertheless, during this year of celebration we will be bringing you some recreational content from the North, out and away from the development chambers. What it will be exactly remains to be seen, but I'm sure this year off will bring along many occasions, incidents, experiments or artistic projects to share or publish. There are some ideas bubbling under already. On this thursday, 27th of January, it will be my 47th birthday. I started working on UnReal World at the age of 15 and two years later, at the age of 17, the first version was released to the public. Now the 30th Jubileum, or 47th birthday, may feel like an occasion to offer me a drink or something, and for that purpose I quickly created "buy me a coffee" page. https://www.buymeacoffee.com/SamiMaaranen It's a simple support channel I've been asked to allow even earlier. Now it's up and will remain so at least for this year. I'll reserve the right to decide the drink to buy with your support  , but big cheers anyway! (And surely the regular donations page also works for gifting some squirrel hides.) So these are the news to start this year with. Feel free to comment or ask if something comes to your mind. Yours, Sami (UnReal World creator)  The developer is currently out the office ...  He's skiing in the woods following two elks...  He will be back occasionally and eventually. January 24, 2022, 03:01:22 PM |
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The real world paddling adventures
You see a canoe here. The paddle wielded as a primary weapon. You push the canoe into water and jump aboard. And there, in the real world, 120 kilometer long Kokemäenjoki ("Kokemäki River") awaits...  So, as mentioned in the previous post I went for a lengthy river canoeing trip with a friend, and here comes a little photo greetings from that magical journey. We travelled with an indian canoe through the whole Kokemäki River in southwestern Finland, all the way to the Gulf of Bothnia, and on top of that some 10 kilometers out to the Reposaari island at Bothnian Sea. The whole journey was about 130 kilometers long.                    It took six amazing days of adventuring, and there are a lot more sceneries to show and stories to tell. For those who are keen to see more I will go through the whole journey day-by-day in series of posts at my BuyMeACoffee page, with some video footage as well. Take a peek, all the content there is available for everyone: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/SamiMaaranen/posts But should you then feel like buying a coffee for a weary paddler one of the upsides is that every supporters gets e-mail notifications when future posts are up. Let's keep adventuring. August 23, 2022, 12:15:41 PM |
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NPC archery AI tuning
As you may know, NPC archers in the game have been quite careless about accidentally shooting to their own party members. This has been especially problematic, sometimes even frightening, when having eager archers as companions. Now NPC archery checks to avoid hitting unintended friendly targets has been adjusted as follows. Before shooting an arrow NPCs can now consider the risk and possibilities of hitting an unintended friendly target, ie. members of their own party. Depending on their risk assesment the shooting NPCs may then choose to take or not to take a shot. The higher the risk, the less often you'll see the NPCs using their bows. These improvements will change NPCs archery behaviour to quite an extent, especially if there are several NPCs being engaged in a fight or hunt, and moving within the risky zone. In general you will see NPCs being more careful with archery than before. Now you can also feel more relieved about your own archer companion's behaviour. They won't be taking seriously foolhardy shots which might put you, your dogs or anyone else in your party at risk of being wounded by an unintended arrow hit. This will also sometimes make hunting with companions to proceed differently than before. See, if there's is a pack of dogs, or melee armed companions, running in front of capable archers it might be that they have difficulties to find a spot to make a safe shots to the target. Many new scenarios may arise, and occasionally you may need to build new tactics based on the new NPC behaviour. Lastly, in the heat of the archery combat accidents can still happen. That possibility hasn't been excluded, but now these things should happen way, way more rarely than before. These are future features - not yet functional yet in the current stable 3.71 or beta 3.72 November 20, 2022, 07:14:33 PM |
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Re: NPC archery AI tuning
Awesome! Guess that combined arms war parties will be viable soon.
November 20, 2022, 09:25:01 PM |
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Academic interest towards UnReal World - in Finnish and in French
Every now and then the many unique elements of UnReal World do arise academic interest. Folklore, mythology, historical ambition, recreation of traditions, long history or the mere depth of it all. Now we're highlighting a fresh book in Finnish and shortly upcoming conference in Paris for you to have a closer look at will. Both can be witnessed also online. The Finnish connection ... Back in 2019 mr. Kyyrö, PhD from University of Turku School of History, Culture and Arts Studies first interviewed me, and then Erkka separately, for his studies and projects regarding computer games and religion. There's a forum post (with a picture) about it here. Now mr. Kyyrö has written a chapter about UnReal World and its approach and relation to the field of new spiritualities in recently published compilation work titled "Uushenkisyys" (in Finnish). The title of the book translates as "New spiritualities" in english, and quoting the english abstract: "The book shows the multiple ways in which new spiritualities intertwine with different sectors of the society and blur spirituality’s boundary with religion, health care, art, and popular culture, for example. The book is the first book-length presentation in Finnish of the field of new spiritualities."  In his research mr. Kyyrö analyzes both the game and the interviews of me and Erkka. The chapter is titled "Dare to hear your voice, dare to follow your spirit" - which is a line you may have spotted from the game end screen. For me, quoting this very line means a lot. I don't exactly remember if it appeared into the game 20, or even 25 years ago - but it's been there for a long time and the underlying attitude behind it still stands strong even though it was first made up by a far less experienced coder and a human being. The book is freely available online, in finnish. So take a look, you finnish speaking players. https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/93482  The French connection... Earlier this month I had a pleasure of receiving contact and talking online with monsieur Efrati, a doctorate student at EHESS (School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) in France, where he works on the representations of Prehistory in video games. We had a great and interesting talks which may lead into further research or co-operation, but he already gathered some UnReal Worldish background material to be utilized at the following event. Tomorrow, 28th of november, he's organizing a conference at the French national library dedicated to a 1986 survival/proto-open-world game called Sapiens. The subject may be interesting to many of you on its own, but now also the UnReal World is going to be mentioned in the context as well. To what extent, I don't really know, so you have to witness it by yourself. Luckily the conference can be watched online too: Monday, 28th of nov., 18:00 - 20:00. Unfortunately, it will be in French only but our french speaking player base is not a small at all - so go check it out. Here's the conference web page, and at the bottom you'll find a link to watch it live (and afterwards) on YouTube.  Screenshot from Sapiens game November 27, 2022, 01:50:16 PM |
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Version 3.72 stable released and available on Steam, Itch and for Lifetimers
Version 3.72 has been released and is now live and available on Steam, Itch.Io and for Lifetimers at the designated forum section. Here's the changelog. --------------------------- Version: 3.72 (stable) ** Saved characters from version 3.60-> are compatible with this version. ** - improved: NPC archery checks to avoid hitting unintended friendly targets Before shooting an arrow NPCs can now consider the risk and possibilities of hitting an unintended friendly target, ie. members of their own party. Depending on their risk assesment the shooting NPCs may then choose to take or not to take a shot. The higher the risk, the less often you'll see the NPCs using their bows. These improvements will change NPCs archery behaviour to quite an extent, especially if there are several NPCs being engaged in a fight or hunt, and moving within the risky zone. In general you will see NPCs being more careful with archery than before. Now you can also feel more relieved about your own archer companion's behaviour. They won't be taking seriously foolhardy shots which might put you, your dogs or anyone else in your party at risk of being wounded by an unintended arrow hit. This will also sometimes make hunting with companions to proceed differently than before. See, if there's is a pack of dogs, or melee armed companions, running in front of capable archers it might be that they have difficulties to find a spot to make a safe shots to the target. Many new scenarios may arise, and occasionally you may need to build new tactics based on the new NPC behaviour. Lastly, in the heat of the archery combat accidents can still happen. That possibility hasn't been excluded, but now these things should happen way, way more rarely than before. - improved: aggressive NPCs waypointing to their enemy Agressive NPCs may now choose to use slightly winding routes to their enemy, instead going for the shorthest and straightest route. These new tactics aim to give NPC archers some free space for shooting, and to increase chances for group of NPCs to nicely encircle their enemy. - added: vastas can be found in village saunas during the appropriate season Villager made vastas will now appear in the village saunas during the season when it is possible to make them. This is mostly an atmospheric addition, but also works as an indication for the player character that the birch trees are now in good leaf for making a vasta. - added: random character name option Upon creating characters and choosing their name you can now randomize a culturally relevant names for them. Pressing tab or asterisk (*) will bring up random names which you can then confirm with enter, or modify at will. - added: water temperature affecting to spoilage rate of the fish caught in nets The colder the water the longer the fish will now keep good in the nets. The effect isn't all too drastic, but still functional. In the coldest waters during the wintertime you can expect a few days longer preservation times compared to the average. - changed: name/sex/culture character creation selections order -> culture/sex/name As the random character name option needs to know the culture and sex to pick up a relevant names these selections now come before choosing the name. - changed: "quick and easy" character creation mode now randomly chooses also the culture and sex Previously there was no randomization in that regard, but Kaumolais male was always chosen. Otherwise this character creation mode mode remains the same assigning rest of the options automatically and starting nearby a village. - added: "Harvest and pick" agriculture option The good old harvest option only cut down the crops, but this newly added option also automatically picks up the harvested plants to character's inventory. For clarification the existing "Harvest" option is now renamed as "Harvest down" in the Agriculture menu. - added: domestic animals in the villages will withdraw from player character's way Moving towards a domestic animal will now make it to withdraw from your way. This is to prevent the character from getting jammed eg. in small buildings with village dogs. - modding: increased maximum number of character portraits in each category up to 250. - added: watercraft marker icons on zoomed-out wilderness map When leaving punt or raft on the zoomed-in map the corresponding marker icon is now shown on the zoomed-out wilderness map. - enhanced: message about the markers at wilderness location Instead of given information about each marker with their own message now a summary of all the markers is given in one sentence. For example: "There is a shelter, set traps and a punt at this location." - added: confirmation to start a fire on some occasions You will be asked a confirmation to start a fire in the following conditions: 1. There are valuable items to be burned down where you are about to build a fire. 2. You are building a fire indoors at other than fireplace location. These confirmations will prevent the unfornate cases of accidentally setting your house or valuable belongings on fire. - adjusted: party members fire making safety checks From now on your companions won't ever start a fire at a location with items on the ground. Previously they might accidentally set a pile of items on fire. - enhanced: rendering of the portraits Character portraits are now rendered directly to the screen using the available resolution. This makes the portraits appear more crisp and clear. This enhancement affects to various game screen where portraits are being used; quest info display, list of ancestors, character profile, chat screen, etc. - added: two new character portraits, one western and one sage - SDL update: updated to newest SDL 2.24.0 Updated SDL release includes a good deal of bugfixes which may have hampered some systems. - reworded: "The sauna" game course task description The task description of taking a sauna bath was outdated. Now it's reworded to feature the current mechanics. - fixed: minimum number of fibre plants required to extract one bundle of fibre Previously 15 plants were always required, which was a result of failing math. Now the amount depends on the plant and its' fibre yield, and the minimums are 5 flaxes, 8 hemps or 15 nettles. - fixed: flowering plants providing also seeds when treshed The seed production code apparently has gotten broken somewhere in the earlier versions, and you got them upon treshing even if the plant was still flowering. Now it's fixed back as it was and you get seeds only after the flowering period. - fixed: sacrificing food in a container mistakenly removed the container too - fixed: auto-cut yarn weights calculated wrong This bug manifested itself eg. in smoking and drying cookery recipes. After retrieving the auto-cut yarn you found it heavier than expected. - fixed: extracting fibre from retted but not dried nettles was possible - fixed: extracting fibre from bundles of nettle fibre was possible - fixed: carried weight statistics not updating immediately after cancelled crafting - fixed: character's height in metric units displayed wrong This was a conversion issue within character profile screen. - fixed/adjusted: squirrels won't climb to safety in saplings Previously they were mistakenly considered being high up in a tree even if it was a mere sapling. - fixed: heavy missile weapons getting stuck to small animals This is a legacy issue which is hopefully fixed for good now. The bug manifested itself eg. in a situation where you threw a javelin at a bird, the weapon got stuck and the bird flies away carrying it. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cheers! Enjoy the release. December 19, 2022, 08:24:22 PM |
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Version 3.80 (beta) released
We're happy and excited to announce a beta release of UnReal World version 3.80. Being a beta release some of the new features are still slightly under construction and there might be higher bug potential, but the essential new additions are completely playable and we haven't ran into stability issues either. Version 3.80 (beta) is available at Steam, Itch.Io and for lifetimers. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version 3.80 (beta) changelog ** Saved characters from version 3.70-> 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: blacksmith NPCs and ordering metalworks from them Blacksmith is a new NPC type who you can meet in the villages. Blacksmiths can produce different kind of metalworks on demand. This is a fundamental addition which will make a big difference to obtaining iron tools and weapons. Blacksmith products are culturally dependent and can range from fishhooks to swords. There's also variety among the levels of blacksmith expertise. All the blacksmiths can produce the basic tools needed for the every day life of their local culture, but only the few talented ones can forge more demanding items, like a sword. * All the cultures do have blacksmiths, but their areal availability varies. Not every village has a blacksmith, but in general there are several within each cultural area. * You can ask villagers if there's a blacksmith around. The option for this is found from "Ask for help/company" chat mode. If their blacksmith is a highly skilled one villagers are proud to let you know that right away. * Ordering something from a blacksmith is initiated by talking to them. Ordering options become available upon greeting a blacksmith, or can be found from "Ask for help/company" chat mode. * Blacksmiths vary in their expertise, but all of them can produce at least decent quality items. The more talented blacksmiths can produce fine or even masterwork items. They will let you know the level of their expertise and outcome of their goods loud and clear. * Not all the blacksmiths will produce the same items, and the cultural variety makes the most difference there. Also, only the few most talented blacksmiths will be able to forge the most demanding items, such as swords, helmets or specialized knives such as Kaumolais knife or Skramasaksi. * It should be clear already that metal armours are not really known or used by the local cultures, so blacksmiths do not produce those - except for helmets. So the availability of NPC blacksmiths doesn't change the fact that metal armours do remain as rare imported goods, as they should be. * Of the swords, a few talented blacksmiths may produce broadswords and shortswords but the other types of swords found in the game are of foreign origin and remain to be rarely found as imported goods. The northern peoples aren't familiar with swords at all, so to find a sword forging blacksmith one has to seek among the wealthy western cultures, or at Kaumo and Reemi. * You can order one item at a time, which will be payed for after it's ready. Upon confirming your order you can ask what the blacksmith would like as a payment from your current inventory, but you don't have to have enough goods for the payment yet upon placing an order. When the order is then being bartered for, even if you wouldn't have enough goods at first you can cancel the trade and come back to try again with more wealth. * Meanwhile your order is being made you can ask the blacksmith how is it coming along. They will give you an estimation about the remaining production time. Depending on the item the production times vary from few days to a month. * If you don't come claim your order within half a year it will be given away. This may naturally lower your reputation among the blacksmith, and the village. - added: BLACKSMITH game encyclopedia (F1) entry Village blacksmiths and ordering their goods described in short. - updated: culture and weapon related game encyclopedia (F1) entries All the culture descriptions have been updated with relevant blacksmithing information and assorted corrections. Certain sword and axe descriptions have been updated to emphasize that those are foreign weapons not known by the local cultures. - added: villagers can tell about sages and blacksmiths in the neighbouring villages Upon asking villagers if there's a sage or blacksmith around, and if there is not, they will now let you if there's one in the vicinity or neighbouring villages. You will then be given directions how to reach the village in question. - added: animal droppings Certain animals now leave visible droppings, i.e. feces, that can be found in the terrain on zoomed-in map level. The droppings aren't featured for all the animals, but for those whose droppings are commonly noticeable and relevant. For example the following wild animals can leave droppings: hare, fox, badger, lynx, wolf, reindeer, elk and bear. The domestic animals such as sheep, cows and pigs also leave droppings. The droppings of different species look a bit different, and upon looking at the droppings with game commands you will be told which animal's droppings it is. For example: "You see here an elk droppings." If the droppings are somewhat recent, less than a day old or so, you will be also be told that it's fresh droppings in question. Even if you wouldn't be able to specify their age the droppings work as an indicator of the animal presence at the area. The droppings may remain visible for weeks, but will eventually disappear. - added: using animal droppings as fertilizer Using animal droppings as fertilizer isn't necessary, but it's possible - if you feel like it. You can either spread droppings on the ground before preparing the soil and planting your crops, or spread them around after the planting. In the former method the droppings are then mixed in the soil upon preparing it, which is better. The fertilizing effect is simplified and any amount of droppings will help a little. You don't have to fertilize every tile of the field, but just quite casually spread the droppings here and there. This extra fertilizing helps plants to sprout and grow more succesfully, so somewhat higher yields can be expected from the fields fertilized with droppings. The effect isn't too dramatic though, since the slash-and-burn agriculture in use already includes fertilization with the ash from the burned woods. When collecting droppings they appear under a new "Miscellanous" item category in character's inventory. - added: SMOKING and FIREPLACE game encyclopedia (F1) entries These will explain the smoking and fireplace heating up processes. In the cookery menu SMOKING encyclopedia entry dialog is shown at Smoking option. - fixed: getting "carry too much" pick up restriction even if the character's inventory wasn't really full - fixed: possibility of de-hairing bird skins, or already de-haired skins It was redundant, and confusing. Now the game notifies you about this being needless. - fixed: animals and NPCs drowning in shallow waters or small puddles The issue made NPCs occasionally drown in village wells or puddles, or the animals drown in shallow shoreline waters if they were moving about there a lot eg. when tied in place. - fixed: quest journal sometimes showing excess NPC portraits on the latter pages - fixed: meadsweet flowers tile missing - text corrections: a good bunch typos and grammar corrected, some messages rephrased. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Cheers! April 24, 2023, 02:16:38 PM |
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