The Kalevala Day and 10,000 days of digital Finnish culture in UnReal World

[Sami]

Today, February 28th, Finland celebrates Kalevala Day and the Day of Finnish Culture in honor of The Kalevala - a 19th century work of epic poetry regarded as our national epic. That's something to celebrate, but we've got some more for you on this special day...

In early 2020 we received an interesting e-mail from a player (Cheers, Travis!) sending congratulations on a milestone: UnReal World had lasted 10,000 days in the real world.
This was calculated from the date stamp in executable file of version 1.00b distribution archive. We don't even remember the exact release date, but it was summer of 1992. So the continuing lifespan of the game is at least 10,000 days - and well, it's quite something.

Needless to say, The Kalevala and UnReal World go well together. It is not so much about direct influence as a book, but the game draws inspiration from the same pool of oral tradition, folklore and mythology of our ancestors. Of this content some is rooted in ancient unrecorded history dating back thousands of years, and some is closer to Iron Age - where the game takes place. So let this day be a celebration of The Kalevala, but also 10,000 days of digital Finnish Culture in the form of UnReal World.

10,000 days...

10,000 days is a long time. Lines of source code in the game now sports somewhere around 140,000.
On average that makes:
14 lines of code per day
for 10,000 days.

Changelogs for version releases contain around 15000 lines of text, so that makes:
1,5 lines of changelog entries per day
for these 10,000 days.


...and continuing

That's just some numbers to give an idea of the long history, which is continuing as we speak. It seems to be 9 days since the last dev.post here at the forums.
So on average there should be around 126 new lines of code and 13,5 lines of changelog entries written.
We haven't checked but we are continuing.

Would you buy an old but continuously developed fenno-ugric roguelike from these guys?

From the left: Sami (creator) and Erkka (co-designer) of UnReal World

We wish you happy Kalevala Day and the Day of (digital) Finnish Culture.
Let's continue.

[koteko]

What an amazing project. When I'm old and retired, I'm sure I'll still lurk the forums, excited by the next update. You guys rock!

[JEB Davis]

What an amazing project. When I'm old and retired, I'm sure I'll still lurk the forums, excited by the next update. You guys rock!

My sentiments exactly!

Few people in this world are able to take a dream like yours and create a great work, big or small.
Sami and Erkka, I consider you to be fortunate men, although I'm sure it has not been an easy road to follow.

[Dark Art]

You know.. I keep hearing about The Kalevala and from what I hear its quite something. Do you know if there is a translation, or maybe even an audio version of it? I think it would very interesting to have a read or even better listen to it professionally narrated.

[Erkka]

You know.. I keep hearing about The Kalevala and from what I hear its quite something. Do you know if there is a translation, or maybe even an audio version of it?

I think Kalevala is translated to English, to French, to Russian, and to many other languages. Sadly, I'm not aware if there are any audio versions available, but maybe someone else knows, if we have here users who are more active in browsing audio book services?

But I happen to know one video adaptation  of one of the opening poems of Kalevala.

 (Naturally, Kalevala starts with the myths about how the world got created. And then it goes on to introduce the main characters - that video is an adaptation of the poem introducing Väinämöinen and Joukahainen - the old sage and the young wanna-be-sage who dares to challenge the old master.)

[Dark Art]

I'd imagine its freakishly difficult to properly translate things like these. It took me quite a while to find a good translation of Greek mythology and I am still trying to locate Scandinavian and Icelandic heroic sagas. I doubt anyone who is not native in the language and very familiar with the text could do even a half decent job. Is there a version that you would recommend?