Messages

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Modding / Re: Modding in valuable metals (Gold, Silver, Copper) for trade.

« on: February 03, 2019, 08:56:39 PM »

Sorry for disappearing, but I'm dealing with some stuff in real life and I'm barely getting out of bed. I'll try to follow up when I have the energy for it!

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Suggestions / Re: Visual clues

« on: January 28, 2019, 04:45:31 AM »

Where as on the wilderness map I can see much farther

If the terrain allows you to. In the forest you'll only see the adjacent tiles, and hills and mountains block your sight. Daylight or lack thereof also affect this, and I suspect your eyesight does too

This makes sense because what you see on the wilderness map is supposed to be your "long-range" sight, while the zoomed in one is obviously sharper, to the point you can actually see if an animal or person is carrying something, if there's items on the ground, etc.

And you can indeed see animals on the wilderness map... isn't that how you hunt them? Are you expecting to go atop a mountain, look at a tile 5 kilometers to the south and be able to spot a bundle of arrows on the ground?

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Modding / Re: Modding in valuable metals (Gold, Silver, Copper) for trade.

« on: January 27, 2019, 04:38:25 AM »

I think that some tools might have to be made out of iron for a few reasons. One of the "advantages" of iron is that it has a higher melting point, so you can use it for tools that will be handling high temperatures (tongs, perhaps?). That might not be the most relevant point, but iron is also harder, so it might also be better for things like the pliers you mentioned. I'm not sure how much of a difference it would make, though.

Stuff like anvils are almost surely best made out of iron, no? I figure that hammering iron in a copper or bronze anvil might eventually deform it and diminish its quality, but again I'm not really a blacksmith.

Is the iron shape representing the "strip of metal" mentioned in the docs? I was imagining a "shape" as a square, but I guess it could be anything depending on what a recipe needs. It might only be important to determine the weight, either of the shape itself or what the spindle requires.

If we want to have the Pull board degrade, we could make it use up something like #0.01# (or any appropriate amount for the effect we want) per Wire made. This way you would eventually have to make a new one, since repairing is not an option.

As for the naming, I suggest making the ingredient-dependent product's recipes called .Metal X. to standardize it. Stuff made of iron could keep their own recipes if practical and if there's enough space, though that might not be the case, if only to use more fuel.

I think the Pull board is supposed to be made of iron, though. That document mentions "iron plates" a few times, even from the Viking times. I'm, again, not sure if a bronze draw-plate would be capable of making iron wire, but it very well could since it'd still require quite the pull of a wire to crack a copper or bronze plate, no?

Just realized an issue on the first proposed .Pull Board. recipe. To make the auger and drill you need iron. So that .Pull Board. would only be fine for iron wire. If you wanted a bronze-only workshop the pull correction would have to be done differently.

I'm not sure what the Spindle is supposed to represent here, but I figure this could be solved with something like:

.Metal shape.
{* of pure*} [name:Shape of %s]

.Metal spindle.
{Shape of *} [name:Spindle of %s] '+a chunking starter'
{* pliers} '+to twist tighter'
{* hammer}  '+hammer twist'
{charcoal}

.Metal wire.
{Spindle of *} [name:%s wire]
{Pull board} '+smoothing holes'
{Iron pliers} '+for gripping'

And voilá! This will work for any metal, but might not accurately represent iron's need for charcoal or other metal's lack of need for it.

Edit: that last name tag might be [name:Wire of %s] if we want to re-use the wire's material in other recipes' products

I guess there could also be the method of hammering the metals into wire, with a skill penalty making it lower quality, though the longer time and effort to do it should suffice.

4

Suggestions / Re: Snake venom arrows

« on: January 26, 2019, 01:14:20 AM »

Using (or at least trying to use) infection as a fallback when trying to assassinate someone might also be useful, but there aren't too many assassination plots in UrW...

Assassin's Creed: Kallohonka confirmed? Someone has to stop those damned Njerpezit Templars!

I'd totally climb a pine just to dive into a stack of spruce twigs

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Gameplay questions / Re: How exactly to make elk leather

« on: January 25, 2019, 11:13:28 PM »

On the issue of spoiling, I think in winter months you have more time. I'm pretty sure there was a specific winter hare fur that I left for days beside the rapids (I usually just have a Log + Club beside the water and always tan beside that tile) and it was still okay when I noticed I forgot it. Perhaps frozen temperatures keep it fresh, as with meat?

I saw a tutorial for making a leather skin which used only the hide. It was first shaped with clamps and something stuffing it, then stitched and boiled. It was waterproofed with beeswax into its insides and blowing into the skin, so the wax "pours" out of the stitches. It implied that the taste would improve or disappear with each washing or use.

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Suggestions / Re: No harpoons? Unique ranged hunting weapons in finnish culture?

« on: January 25, 2019, 10:57:31 PM »

But don't fishes already exerrt a lot of pressure on a fishing rod? If a <10 kg fish is hard enough to tame alone, won't a beast 15 times its weight (at least) not make a puny owly go flying through the air? I don't think the fact that it's in water should make any difference

I think I read that there used to be seal hunting on the baltic sea. However, from what I could gather it consiated of finding the seals near the breathing holes or bits of ice and chasing or spearing/clubbing them, usually in the spring.

There seem to be people who seal-hunt in the 21st century without guns or harpoons, making use of that special club-like weapon. They jump around the ice to get to the seals, it seems

Are seals fast in-game when in land?

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Suggestions / Re: Snake venom arrows

« on: January 25, 2019, 08:46:01 PM »

See my edit above! There is only one 19th century source for poisoned arrows from an adder's venom. Unsure of reliability since it's a national epic. The portuguese one can surely not be used to determine much about our ancestors due to being an artistic reimagining including greek and roman mythology into it. So this 19th century epic could br inspired by imported ideas from other cultures.

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Suggestions / Re: Snake venom arrows

« on: January 25, 2019, 08:21:59 PM »

I can see how it would be a sneaky way to clear Njerps villages, by sneaking at night and poisoning them one by one. Other than that and escaping enemies, seems like hitting the arrow is more important than the poison.

Also, would the poison taint the animal's meat?

Edit: in regards to the setting, it's based on late iron age finland. That goes from about 500 BCE to 1300 CE. The population of ancient rome reached over one million. Finnish tribes were about 20,000 in total. This is an important point because it severely limits their ability to absorb technology from far away and even preserve their own knowledge since they apparently had no writing.

The tribes also seem to have been frequently at war with each other and resisting outside influence. This probably made information reach them and to spread more slowly.

Sure, it's a fantasy world about a time and place we don't know that much about. But we also need a limit because it's a low-magic/fantasy setting. So every stretch pulls it further from reality.

That being said, the Kalevala (finnish national epic) does have at least one mention of poisoned arrows, but it's a witch and it was compiled in the 19th century. Not sure it's reliable as a source for their use of the poison: https://finnmyth.wordpress.com/2018/06/23/witchs-arrow/

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Gameplay questions / Re: How exactly to make elk leather

« on: January 25, 2019, 08:18:38 AM »

Are you sure that 0.4 lbs is enough to hold 4 lbs of water? This here is "large" but takes only 1.1 litre, about 2.5 lbs of water: https://www.etsy.com/listing/501655255/large-hand-crafted-authentic-medieval

I made some quick calculations assuming it was cylindrical and got a capacity (or volume) of little over 5 lbs of water, or about 2300 cubic centimetres. No idea why capacity seems so low compared to that.

Anyway, I seriously doubt this would be so light, though I might be wrong. 0.4 lbs is the weight of a hamster or a baseball...

This is a really hard topic to search for. Apparently leather is graded in ounces, based on its thickness per square foot. That's not very useful to understand how much it would weigh.

It seems that a rabbit pelt (with fur) is about those 0.4 lbs or a bit less. Would one rabbit hide be enough for a container like this that takes a bit over 4 lbs of water? Would you need thick leather for it? Won't the pitch or beeswax for waterproofing kind of add to the weight? How much leather would you need to wrap around a 2 litre bottle of soda?

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Gameplay questions / Re: How exactly to make elk leather

« on: January 25, 2019, 02:04:26 AM »

I think the skin's weight and material usage is a compromise. An actual waterskin will require pitch for impermeability and some cord at least. It might also use bone for the nozzle.

While it depends on the waterskin being made, it seems that a good guideline is about 1 lb for the skin and about half a gallon of water capacity, which is an extra 4 lbs. However, I couldn't really find a detailed source for it. It seems that a smaller amount of leather (say, half a pound) can take as low as 0.83 lbs of water.

I guess that a big skin might take 1.5-2 lbs of leather (especially if from multiple small hides) and hold 5 to 6 gallons. More than that might simply not be practical or could damage the waterskin, no? This could also depend on the thickness of the skin. A 6 lbs skin is probably the most useful in order to pour a whole pot into it.

So the leather requirement makes some sense in order to balance it. I sometimes have 2 skins with me, one just for water and another for soup or more water.

All in all, the 0.3 lbs don't seem that farfetched. The water itself is what's going to weigh the most. You can bring the leather requirements down to 0.3, but that's also making it way too trivial IMO.

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Suggestions / Re: No harpoons? Unique ranged hunting weapons in finnish culture?

« on: January 24, 2019, 10:34:35 PM »

If you define the harpoon as something which is attached to the boat, then they didn't use this kind of contraption. But I use the definition that harpoon is the the spear with a strong line attached. And they used it - they attached it to a bladder or bag or some other float, to both impede movement of the animal, and to retrieve it easier from the water later.

Do you have any source for the bag thing? Because I searched and could find no mention of a bag nor a rope: http://northernwildernesskills.blogspot.com/2018/01/sjalen-seal-hunting-in-northern-baltic.html

Actually I use "harpoon" for fish spears in general, because many archaeologists use this word in this meaning.

But in that case we're talking exactly about the ango:



Source: http://thethegns.blogspot.com/2011/11/angon-english-heavy-javelin.html

It does seem that the Wiki has a picture of an ango including a rope, though, but I found absolutely no mention of ropes used in seal hunting or along with spears, while references to the "typical Finnish angon" or "Finnish angon javelin" are easy to find, and is clearly mentioned as there being a local version used in the Late Iron age.

Also only one group of Sami regularly pursues whales (Sjo Sami, a.k.a Sea Lapps), others do it only when the whales are in the shallow coastal waters. But all groups living near seal hunt seals.

Not disputing that, I'm just questioning the usefulness of a rope attached to the ango when you're hunting a 300 kg creature across the ice. Alone. You're not going to dive into the breathing hole and chase it, right?

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Suggestions / Re: No harpoons? Unique ranged hunting weapons in finnish culture?

« on: January 24, 2019, 08:40:33 PM »

They might not have harpoons, but they do have the Sámi knife (lapinleuku), which I assume to be the Northern knife in-game, and the guksi, which is essentially a carved birch drinking cup, specifically from birch burls. Video for anyone interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwvhGwsE3hs

We could either start calling them Saami, or perhaps we should rename Sami himself to "Santa's little programming monkey" or just "The Dev" 

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Modding / Re: Modding in valuable metals (Gold, Silver, Copper) for trade.

« on: January 24, 2019, 07:57:35 PM »

It's probably impossible to hammer iron into a small ring, lol

Wire making is done by drawing. This meaning to pull the metal through a hole. Then pull through a smaller hole. Repeat until you get the size of wire desired. To do this you would the board with holes and pliers.

BAC has lead in for doing this but I didn't put iron wire in (yet) as the only current use is chainmail. I would need to consume one of the two free menus for chainmail recipes and I want those available for custom modding.

While that's a really good idea, I researched a bit and it seems that we only have a definite timeline for wire-drawing iron after the 12th century: http://www.forth-armoury.com/research/wire/authentic_wire.htm

The following article seems to go further into this, showing that we have no proof that even the greeks and romans drew wire with plates, rather than hammering them: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2FBF03215438.pdf

It also includes some pictures at the end of how gold wires look with some different techniques, and describes about 4 of them. The more malleable metals would be easier to use with some of the techniques than iron, though. Regardless of the material, this doesn't look or sound like an easy endeavour

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Suggestions / Re: How come I can burn down forests while it's raining?

« on: January 24, 2019, 07:07:17 PM »

Considering that right now the only thing causing a tile to change is deforestation, maybe only make that check whenever a tree is felled. If a certain percentage of agricultural field is present, and below a different one for the trees, it could turn to a Field.

This could make a difference when population and tribes interact more with the world. If they rotate the crop fields every few years or if they actually go out and fell trees, etc. Other than that, there isn't much use.

Edit: this might be problematic if map maintenance resets the tile and it generates stuff that wasn't there originally at all...

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Modding / Re: Modding in valuable metals (Gold, Silver, Copper) for trade.

« on: January 24, 2019, 06:58:09 PM »

That's a good point indeed. However, finer crafting would probably still need some pouring. As you mentioned, creating a thin line and then bending it like a torc. You won't need a ring's hardness in combat, so it's not an issue. It's probably impossible to hammer iron into a small ring, lol

Here's some iron age jewelry for ideas:













https://blog.britishmuseum.org/how-do-you-put-on-a-torc/

Some of these exceptional torcs were made by twisting wires of metal. However, the curator mention that by hand it wouldn't be a one person task. Making wires by hammering is fucking hard...

So stuff like those torcs or bracelets would be easier if you could mould a thin wire. The pendants are really easy to make, though, and would not require that.

Twisting the metal seems to be a common motif at that time. I'm still baffled by the precision and craftsmanship on some of these items...