Messages

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Suggestions / Re: Simplifying keystrokes?

« on: February 15, 2021, 06:54:52 AM »

I was in a village right now looking at items they had available for sale, and looking through all items in one area is a process of going to one tile, hitting enter, going to another tile, hitting enter, going to another tile, hitting enter, etc.

That seems like really hard way. I usually just glance at the quick message log. In most cases there's not too many items, so the list does not exeed a dozen of lines and finds room enough in there.

That's what I'm talking about, except you have buildings with maybe five piles of items. So you have the two choices I mentioned, either to walk over every pile you want to inspect, or use the Look command and retarget the cursor on every tile and press enter Every time. And I guess @JP_Finn is right that you can use directional keys also.

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Suggestions / Re: Simplifying keystrokes?

« on: February 14, 2021, 07:40:01 AM »

As for the 1,2,t under ‘look mode’, unless you’re adjacent to the looked tile, only ‘t’ would be viable choice.

Yea, I know. I figured the game could decide what commands are available depending on the tile.

Though, if the devs did implement a tooltip kind of overlay whenever you have a target over a tile, it would also probably make unnecessary the mechanic I was thinking of. Basically, what I was frustrated with is that sometimes you have to look around at a group of animals to see which one is injured, or look around at a group of NPCs to see which one to chat with; and I was thinking it would be easier if somehow the two commands were grouped together. But if you had the tooltip overlay, that also bakes the two things together also.

Although, you'd still have to look around to see which animal to hit with a sword, if they're all surrounding you, I guess, and then there are times, too, where you can't find the animal that was injured on screen before looking around and decide not to attack. I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud about this.

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Suggestions / Re: Simplifying keystrokes?

« on: February 14, 2021, 05:24:25 AM »

By the way, what does everyone here think of this...

I was in a village right now looking at items they had available for sale, and looking through all items in one area is a process of going to one tile, hitting enter, going to another tile, hitting enter, going to another tile, hitting enter, etc.

Because looking doesn't really take any turns of movement, wouldn't it make sense if when you're in Look mode, and you have something under your target, a small overlay box appears somewhere in the corner of the UI, the objects in that tile appear in the overlay and it updates the information when you move the cursor to the next tile?

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Suggestions / Re: Simplifying keystrokes?

« on: February 14, 2021, 02:16:03 AM »

Mate, don't get me wrong, I sure mean no offence (it's just being Russian probably, hehe, we're used to speak out), yet to me suggestions of yours look like you just want UnReal World to change into your own Perfect Game. And that's completely fine, but also it should be always considered that all of us have developed our own playing styles, which differ more or less, and what is perfect to someone, can be unsuitable or simply insignificant to someone else.

Nevertheless, thanks a lot for this particular suggestion! It inspired an idea to make (and share, of course) a set of my own macros for common tasks that require the most fingerwork.

Not really.

As for the suggestion about reducing the number of keystrokes, that would also leave more than one way to accomplish the same thing; it would just create a shortcut.

Customizing my own keys would do well enough for my own purpose, but I think the devs should be thinking about what might work best for new players. @trowft said he would have to lift up his hand to do what would be easy for me, so it suggests he has a different keyboard layout than me. I don't know what type of keyboard layouts are common for players but the idea would be at least a couple of defaults for common keyboards, so new players don't have to set up everything from scratch.

So that's not really my idea here, although I personally don't hold it against anyone to ask for their own Perfect Game, because everyone's idea of a Perfect Game will make the game better, if it expands what the game offers and is also in line with the devs have in mind, too.

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Suggestions / Re: Simplifying keystrokes?

« on: February 14, 2021, 01:24:46 AM »

That would help cover part of my suggestions, but I also like I mentioned, I think there are too many keystrokes for common tasks too.

If Sami and Erkka are able to put in customizable shortcuts, maybe then they could also review what default options are for common keyboard setups, too.

(Note that the Shift key being really easy for me to pivot to is why I suggested in the other thread pressing Shift to skip through animals interrupting your task, too)

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Suggestions / Simplifying keystrokes?

« on: February 13, 2021, 11:53:12 PM »

So, as a longtime player, I'm used to using the keyboard commands, but sometimes they require more fingerwork than feels comfortable when doing things repetitively, and it gets tiring.

One example is the Look command, because the situation in which I commonly use that is when I'm wandering around villages looking for something to buy. Its simpler than it used to be, because now you can select a target and then move the target on to the next item, and the next. But, I'm still moving my right hand up from the arrow keys to the L key; so there's still a tendency of me just wanting to move over the items to see what they are instead of using the Look command, because that would require me to lift my fingers up.

It would be a lot simpler, say, if I could press something close to the arrow keys, like the Shift key. On my keyboard, Shift is close to both the arrows and the numpad -- so, using either, I could pivot to Shift without much tedious fingerwork. Another possibility is using the Space key, because even though its not next to either the arrows or the numpad, I can at least use it with my left hand, and don't need to move my right hand. My preference for this kind of quick access is the Shift key.

In any case, this would be "Look mode".

Then, from there, it seems to me you can simplify some other common activities. For example, there are common reasons you would want to look at an NPC or animal: to determine who to talk to, or determine who to attack. It would simplify things greatly if once the Info Box came up with the description of the NPC or animal you're looking at, you could press the commands to chat (C) or attack (1 or 2 or T for throw) immediately, without having to retarget the NPC or animal, by pressing Esc, then pressing Esc again, then C or 1 or 2 or T, and then Enter a second time. Or if not at the Info Box, then at the targeting cursor. This would get rid of one or two keystrokes.

You would of course have to determine for directional attacks whether the target is next to the player. If that's done, though, he same mechanics could also apply to things like picking up or moving things, though. So you could go into Look, and if you find the right pile of things, you can then press the , key to pick something up without exiting Look first.

These are just my suggestions, but I think they would reduce hand fatigue.

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Suggestions / Re: Going nuts!

« on: February 13, 2021, 12:52:43 AM »

Seasonal harvesting of trees would open up a lot of other options for the game, because its more complex than the herbs we have in the game right now. Right now, the herbs grow to maturity, they have a single product, and you collect the ripened product.

But for things like fruit trees, berry trees, and nut trees, you have several stages where you can harvest a different product. The tree will first grow flowers, and then the flowers will later develop into the ripened fruit, berry or nut. Often the flowers are just as usable as the ripened product, and can be made into things like teas, syrups, and liquors. Besides which, the flowers would make the game prettier and would be a sign of spring.

A long time ago, when I did the herb tile sprites, one of my main interests was bog-myrtle. Its not a tree but grows as a bush; and that goes through stages of development through the year from flowers, to nuts, to fruit, and all of these are usable. So, ideally, you'd want to be able to harvest the flowers in one season, the nuts in another, and the ripe fruits in another. And then you have something similar with roses, too, where you can harvest the flowers for the rose petals to use those in cooking, or wait until the rosehip matures and use the fruit.

Anyway, something like hazelnut is also appealing, even if it will be a less common tree in the game; because something that makes the game enjoyable over a long term is going on long trips hunting down rarer items, either for your own use as a player or for trade purposes. I could collect a bunch of hazelnuts down south and venture up north to trade with villagers who wouldn't normally have access to them.

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General Discussion / Re: Adding marriage - poll about how you find its priority

« on: February 12, 2021, 11:04:40 PM »

I think there are at least two aspects of this,

1. Having and raising a family
This I think this needs to be in the game at a mechanical level anyway, because we're also talking about things like animal husbandry and wildlife having young. It would also be nice to see this for the NPCs; to see children in villages grow up and for them to bond with other village members and also have babies. So ultimately what we're talking about is implementing some life cycle system to the game, which would also apply to human NPCs, and then would also apply to the player. The player should be able to do it, simply because NPCs should be able to do it.

You would find a mate, divide responsibilities, and then I think like others have said, the only real way to manage the baby is for it to happen all of the sudden because there's no good mechanic for it. Perhaps a chance that the wife gets pregnant if you're sleeping in the same room, with the chances going up the more time you spend together, or depending on some emotional relationship between the two of you that is tracked by the game somehow (such as the game determining if you're angry with each other or in positive relations, though I'm not sure how exactly that would be tracked). Then the pregnancy would come to term and there would be a baby.

2. The ceremony
This would be not just finding a mate to bond with, but having some type of ritual to mark the occasion and seal the bond and officially make you married. Generally speaking, I think it would be nice to see things like village festivals and festivities in the game. I can't speak much to what went on in Iron Age Finland, so I'm just thinking of what might go on in a Medieval village, where you might have some festival decorations like wreaths and garlands, and feasts, and music, and singing and dancing. I've been looking at old shepherd's almanacs, and the winter months after the harvest are set aside as a kind of feasting period. Then by May again, you get allusions to festivals again with May wreaths and so on.

The point being that right now it seems that there's no real social life to villages. Like a lot of things in the game, it feels villages exist to be primarily instrumental to gameplay, which is not the wrong focus for the start. But things can be expanded to make villages feel as if they have a life of their own, and then bringing the same mechanics for NPCs to the player also makes sense here.

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Suggestions / Re: Ambient wildlife

« on: February 12, 2021, 09:48:25 PM »

If I'll ever get tired of a ‘creature spotted’ prompts (which feels to me completely fitting the game's spirit), I'll toggle [TASK_ABORT_ANIMALS:YES] option in urw_ini.txt

By the way on this, it would be nice if the player could just hold down a key, like SHIFT, to avoid the prompts from coming up... so it could be up to your discretion, rather than having to toggle the setting in the init file.

I don't "use" all the creatures either, but you know as a player that they're there because they're useful; my suggestion was just that not everything in the game world has to be useful, it can be there for flavor, too.

Sami, I can't speak on the effect of the strain on the game running, so I'll have to take your word for that. I agree that most of the time you're not going to see them, especially in the woods, but I do see them a lot in real life. Relatedly, what do you think about the idea of being able to flush some creatures out of different types of vegetation? So I imagine a lot of the smaller creatures, including birds, could be found in places like bushes, reeds, and so on.

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Suggestions / Ambient wildlife

« on: February 12, 2021, 09:32:48 AM »

All of the birds in the game right now are birds that are good for hunting or foraging. That makes sense, since a good part of the game centers around doing those activities.

However, something I enjoy in UrW is just the feeling of wandering in the wilderness, so I think I'd also enjoy seeing birds that aren't what you'd call "useful" to me as a player, but would add to the ambience of the game, such as songbirds. So lets say I wake up at my cabin for a day of fishing, and there's a warbler on my fence singing. Or its just finished raining, and because the ground is muddy, there are birds out looking for worms. And because different birds have different distributions in Finland, I'm guessing that you'd be able to tell what region you were in just by what birds were around and what songs they were singing.

While all of this is probably something that could be done with ambient sounds, too, I think it would add to the game to be able to see them. Besides just the enjoyment of the visual aspect of seeing the songbirds, it would also make it seem less like everything that's in the game is just there as a matter of instrumentalism, as a means to an end, so you could feel like you were in a living breathing world. They would naturally also be more common than game birds, and more commonly keep that sense of a living world in your game experience.

Of course, I wouldn't necessarily expect a small songbird passing by to pause tasks the way the game normally does when animals come into your view. Since they'd be there more for the ambience, the game could assume you'd ignore them.

They would also be prey I assume for predatory birds like owls and goshawks, and you could see them being caught.

I assume there would also be a lot of other small animals, like snakes and toads and field mice and so on, that would be between tall grass or lake reeds or sedge, and would have the same purpose. (And of course these have had a role in magic lore, so they might have that added use).

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Off-topic / Swedish archaeologists uncover remains of 8,400-year-old dog

« on: September 24, 2020, 03:37:23 AM »

"The remains of a dog dating back several millennia have been uncovered at a pre-Viking era burial site in Sweden, making it the oldest such find in the country.

The dog was discovered at an Iron Age burial site in Blekinge, southern Sweden, along with what archaeologists believe are grave goods – valuable or sentimental possessions buried with the dead.

"This is the oldest burial find of a dog in the country. The dog is well-preserved, and the fact that it lies buried in the middle of a stone age building is unique," said osteologist Ola Magnell."
https://www.thelocal.se/20200923/remains-of-8400-year-old-dog-uncovered-in-sweden

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Suggestions / Leucism, etc.

« on: November 14, 2017, 10:22:05 PM »

There was a post on this on the old forums, about occasionally finding animals with some sort of pigmentation disorder like leucism, melanism. You would then be able to obtain a fur from them that would be very valuable.

Thought I'd bring it up again after seeing a story about a white elk making news in Sweden

https://www.thelocal.se/20171114/swedes-rally-to-save-famous-white-elk-from-being-shot

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Suggestions / Re: Corpses

« on: November 09, 2017, 02:21:47 AM »

I was just thinking, it might make sense for rotting corpses to also carry diseases and have worms or maggots.

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Suggestions / Corpses

« on: November 06, 2017, 09:20:22 PM »

I know that corpses will attract scavengers, but wouldn't they also be effective in warding off certain types of animals who see it as evidence that there's a threat in the area ?

Just the same, I was thinking about what the effects of leaving Njerpez corpses outside the perimeter of your home would be? Would they scare off Njerpez, and ward them away? Or would they come and investigate? What of the same with foreign traders, adventurers, huntsmen, and other types of NPCs?

It might be worthwhile just to put in a little game logic around how animals and NPCs react to the presence of corpses, jut to make things more interesting and create more depth and emergent behavior.

It would also be interesting to be able to get animal skulls and the like, and skulls from Njperpez you killed for the same purpose (see the thread on the old forum with sprite graphics for skulls, bones, organs, meats). Even putting severed heads on pikes, which is a bit outside of the "normal" gameplay of UrW, and which I wouldn't do myself, but in my view anything that adds to realistic player options in the game's world makes it feel more immersive.

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Suggestions / Re: More kinds of structures

« on: October 14, 2017, 06:22:40 AM »

I was thinking that another extension of developing a system for "interior spaces" that would be used for inside buildings and in caverns would be letting players dive into water, where the inside of the water would be treated as an "interior space."

So, imagine diving into a pond,