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Spring things, pausable things, future things
Springtime is busy time - both out in the nature and inside the development chambers. We're preparing for a new version release still this month. Pausable crafting additions is proceeding strongly. Quite a batch of craftable items will be using the pausable crafting mechanics in the upcoming version. At this point the pausable crafting mechanics will cover all the weapons, lumber items, hafts and item traps such as paw-board fox trap and loop snare - and some more are likely to be added. So, with the upcoming version more than half of the craftable items will become pausable tasks. And in the version after that we'll likely manage to have all the crafts pausable, allowing it also in all the diy_*.txt modding. A new skill, bowyer, will be also added. It's quite self-explanatory that this is the ability and knowledge to make bows and the craftable bows now call for bowyer skills in their crafting. And longbow will be made available as a new craftable bow type for the player character. So, for the next few versions we'll be working mostly on item related additions, and hope to have these released in decent pace. After that, when all the crafting is pausable, we'll move into adding new quests. Some of these will be small and casual, but some will be most exciting for the players who'd enjoy the presence of marriage or permanent companions. Let that be a sneak peek in advance further into this year's plans. April 08, 2024, 08:43:26 PM |
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Version 3.84 released for Windows
Windows version 3.84 has been released on Steam, Itch and for lifetimers. Linux and OS X builds will be released later this week if the workflow goes as expected. This version continues the ongoing transition to make all the crafting tasks pausable, features a good deal of related crafting requirement changes, adds BOWYER skill, introduces springs as a new water source and naturally offers a fistful of bugfixes too. Here's the changelog: Version 3.84 (stable) changelog ** Saved characters from version 3.80-> are compatible with this version. ** - added: BOWYER skill The bowyer skill is the ability and knowledge to make bows. Success in the skill determines the quality of the bows crafted. For migrated characters this skill is created upon the first load in this version. Needless to say, the available craftable bows now call for BOWYER skill in their crafting. - added: craftable Longbow You can craft a longbow from [M]ake menu under "Weapons" category. - added: pausable weapon crafting Crafting of the items in [M]ake -> "Weapons" category are now pausable tasks allowing you to have breaks and continue at will later on. These weapons are stone-axe, stone knife, club, javelin, spruce quick-bow, shortbow, longbow and bowstring. To continue paused weapon crafting use the same crafting option again standing beside the said partially finished item. Like the other partially crafted items these will remain on the ground and can be picked up only after they are finished. They are rendered with a different tint and described as "partially crafted", "half-crafted", "largely crafted" etc. when looking at them. - changed: crafting times and requirements of certain weapons Now that the weapon crafting is pausable the production times of certain weapons have been increased to more reasonable levels. There are also minor changes in some material or tool requirements. The changes are as follows, but bear in mind that these are the average set values and poor tools and/or skills may very well double the actual production times. * Stone-axe Stone-axe gets the greatest time increase in the production time as on average it now takes 50 hours to make one. That's a lot, but it really is a slow process to get the stone blade knapped and grinded out to shape that is efficient for felling trees. Thus, stone-axe now becomes a survival option which you won't take up too lightly, but only in extreme need. Crafting a stone-axe now also needs another stone for final sharpening and polishing. Also, the previous requirement for rope has been replaced with strong cordage requirement. This means you can also use for example spruce withes for securing the head in place in the handle. * Stone knife It now takes 5 hours on average to make and also requires a stone for final sharpening. * Javelin It now takes 2 hour on average to make. * Shortbow It now takes 12 hours on average to make. The time increase is signficant compared to the earlier, and only a skilled bowyer with quality tools may manage to craft a shortbow in one day. With mediocre skills and tools it's a process of several work days. * Longbow It takes 18 hours on average to make. Thus, crafting a longbow is a process of several work days even for a skilled bowyer. * Bowstring It now takes 2 hours on average to make a bowstring from strands of yarn, and 30 minutes on average from a ready-made cord. When using a ready-made cord it often needs to be thinned down to suitable thickness so it's not just tying of the knots. - added: BOWSTRING game encyclopedia (F1) entry - updated: SHORTBOW and LONGBOW game encyclopedia (F1) entries - added: pausable haft crafting Crafting of the spear, axe and shovel hafts are now pausable tasks. - added: pausable item trap crafting and loop snare batch production Crafting of the paw-board fox trap and loop snare are now pausable tasks. There are also some changes as follows; * Paw-board Crafting time has been increased to three hours. * Loop snare Loop snares can be made in batches of up to ten at a time, and it takes 20 minutes on average to craft one. - added: pausable lumber items crafting Crafting of the wooden stakes, staves and wood slats are now pausable tasks. There are also some changes as follows; * Wood slat Crafting time for a batch of 20 slats has been increased to 200 minutes. * Wooden stake Wooden stakes are made in sets of 5 pieces from one slender tree trunk. Previously it was 8 pieces from one trunk. * Staff When crafting staves one slender tree trunk can yield 3 proper straight staves. Previously it was one trunk for one staff. - added: pausable utility article crafting for some items in the category Crafting of the wooden shovel, birch-bark box and birch-bark basket are now pausable tasks. There are also some changes as follows; * Wooden shovel It is now made from a board instead of a wooden block. The crafting time has been incresed to 8 hours. - added: springs Springs are water sources bringing groundwater to the surface. They can be found in the terrain on zoomed-in maps at varying environments in size of one to three map tiles. Springs do remain unfrozen even in the winter which makes them very useful water sources. A spring found in the wilderness may provide a great spot for a homestead for those who like to live in the forest further away from the lakes or rivers. From now on the village water supply ponds are also springs. As they don't freeze they are easier to maintain and spot even in the winter. MIGRATION NOTICE: Water supply ponds in the villages you have visited in the previous version will automatically turn into springs in this version. - added: "behind your back" reference to asking for NPC whereabouts When asking the whereabouts of an NPC who is close by but not seen by the player character, the people will now point out that the target NPC is "...over there, just behind your back.". - changed: pushing allowed to locations not visible to the player character You can now [p]ush items around regardless of the location being visible or not. This helps to maintain character's daily life also in the pitch dark low visibility conditions. - fixed: pausable crafts in process occasionally disappearing when finishing crafting something else beside them - fixed: possibility to remove hafts from sickles This was mistakenly allowed. Sickles are a special case and not yet included in the hafting mechanics. - fixed: skin item duplication if tanning got cancelled at the requirements dialog - fixed: villagers occasionally wandering impractically far from the village area - fixed: low quality hafts not degrading the finished hafted weapon quality correctly You pretty much always got fine hafted weapons even with the inferior hafts. - fixed: "Of wolf and woman" quest related NPCs selection mess There was a rare occurrence where the said quest dialogues didn't unfold properly due to the game engine picking the related NPCs incorrectly. - fixed: paused craft remaining time checks There was a rare condition where the remaining time to continue paused crafting was calculated incorrectly resulting in too fast completion of items at the end of the process. - fixed: title song playback interruptions and cracks upon the game starting The issue was with .ogg file loading. The troublesome audio is now loaded before the title song starts, and some .ogg audio has been replaced with .wav files. - fixed: occasional white screen flash when player character goes to sleep - fixed: attempt to haft an invalid target item made the item to disappear - fixed: sickles weighted too much Sickle item weight was mistakenly set to 3 lbs. This is fixed now, and sickles weigh 1 lbs as intended. ----- Cheers! April 30, 2024, 01:26:40 PM |
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Light my shingle
A new light source is coming up as we'll be adding shingles to the game. A shingle, or päre (in finnish), is a thin oblong piece of (pine) wood which were burned to produce light, and to make baskets as well. As a light source you may think them as all wooden candle of a sort. It may feel like a just one small item for an adventurer in the dark cabin, but the required and atmospheric additions will make producing and using shingles a rather significant feature. Traditionally shingles were burnt in a shingle holder which is a stand that keeps the shingle in a good angle for proper lighting and burning. It may be that they were also sometimes just inserted between the logs in the wall - but one had to be understandably cautious without a proper holder. I don't know yet if a shingle holder will be required in the game but the idea is that you could leave a burning shingle in place eg. inside your cabin. And moreover, as the shingles don't burn very long we would want to feature automatic "replace a shingle" mechanism where a new shingle eg. from a pile next the burning one, would be lighted automatically if the character is beside the burning shingle when it fades out. This way you could light a shingle, put a pile of new ones beside it, and not need to worry about replacing the burning shingle in time even if the task you were doing would take a long time. Here's an image of a shingle in a simple single holder. More shingle news will be posted when the things have proceeded further. And in the background the transition to pausable crafting continues. Oddities with the pausable mechanics have been pleasantly scarce in the latest release so we're on good roll with it. These are future features - not yet functional in current version 3.84.2 May 31, 2024, 12:35:32 PM |
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Summery summary
The summer and nightless nights have made it less attractive to sweat inside the development chambers, so I've been experiencing natural and seasonal downshifting periods with coding. Nevertheless, the new features are being pushed ahead slowly but steadily amid all the other intriguing summertime activities. So, a brief summery summary from the development chambers goes as follows: The work with the shingles is basically all done by now, except that there's one sidetracking idea that may delay wrapping up the shingle code. See, the shingles would actually need to be split from a block of pine wood, and as we know the tree species is not currently derived into lumber products. Well, I'd dearly would like to feature it now together with shingles but as it's somewhat complex addition we don't want to delay the next release too long either. So, this is being considered now, and yes, whenever the tree type will be featured in the lumber products it will naturally start affecting to many other crafts too. The pausable crafting transition naturally continues and it's now considered and prioritized as the main sector of work until all the crafts are prone to pausable mechanics. It won't be yet completed with the next release, but we'll be closer to the goal with every patch. When going through the all item definitions the bigger and lesser chances to some crafting recipes will follow. For example, as we're now getting shingles the concept and crafting of torches is being re-considered. The idea of featuring separate key-command for modded items has been brainstormed and very lightly sketched amid the ongoing conversation and is likely to be first featured as a "beta-feature" which can be used/tested at will alongside the current way of adding modded items. The current system of simple diy_*.txt snippet additions is going to stay as it is, and easy as it is. We're hopeful, but can't quite promise, that the separate modded item key-command will be featured in the release - it depends on the favourableness of the spirits of priorities. There are also several new arrow types being considered, eg. whistling arrow, together with introducing a separate ARROWMAKING skill. We're hopeful that these will be also feature in the next release - if the spirits be on our side. And then, a brief summery summary of the past weeks from outside the development chambers goes as follows:       Cheers! June 30, 2024, 08:30:41 PM |
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Summarizing shingles, showcasing tree species based timber
Let's sum up and showcase a few recently mentioned crafting related ambitions with some screenshots. As mentioned earlier we'll be featuring a new light source, shingles. They are thin and flat oblong pieces of pine wood which were burnt to produce light - especially for lighting up houses during the dark time of the year. Shingles are lit by using [a]pply command. Once a shingle is burning you can drop and set it wherever the light is needed, or carry it with you. Traditionally shingles were burnt in a specific stand that kept them in a good angle for proper burning, but in the game the dropped burning shingles are imagined to be inserted between the wall logs or set firmly in place by some other means. One shingle burns for about 30 minutes in the game so for continuous lighting a new one needs to be lit before the previous one fades out. This sort of shingle replacement is done automatically if your character is located beside the burning shingle and there's a stack of new shingles nearby on the ground. You character then automatically replaces and lights a new shingle when necessary, and you don't need to worry about maintaining the lighting even if the task you were doing would take a long time.  Here a cabin is lighted up by two shingles burning in place. There's also a stack of shingles on the ground and if the character remains beside it a new shingle is automatically lit when the previous one fades out. Shingles can be crafted by the player character, and they may be needed in quite amounts during the dark season. An axe and a knife and suitable block of wood are needed for splitting the shingles. The preferred tree species is pine so our shingle splitting requirements will look like this.  A block of pine wood is required for splitting the shingles. Currently the felled trunks in the game are all of the same generic wood type, and tree species don't have much difference in crafting. But now that is going to chance as we'll be adding tree species property for big trunks and assorted timber products. At the first stage this addition only covers big trunks and slender tree trunks will remain generic, but in the future also the slender tree trunks will get the tree species property. So, upon felling big trees the tree species now gets derived into the produced tree trunk. As a result the tree trunks are now called as pine tree trunk, birch tree trunk or spruce tree tunk - depending on what species of tree was felled. There are also different tree trunk tile graphics for pine tree trunk, birch tree trunk and spruce tree trunk. The basic timber products made of big trunks eg. blocks and boards will now start to inherit the tree species resulting in eg. "pine boards" or "block of birch wood". And so the tree type will now start to affect to what type of wood is needed/preferred for crafting this or that. Some tree type preference adjustments based on this addition will be made to craftable items in the next version and it will continue to grow more detailed in the versions to follow.  Here our character has felled big spruce, pine and birch trees and they appear on the ground like this. The coding focus remains in the pausable crafting transition, but it also seems to grow more complex and comprehensive as we advance. These are future adjustments - not yet functional in current version 3.84.2 July 10, 2024, 02:45:23 PM |
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Lagging, delaying, travelling
Hey hey, just a note to let you know that I've fallen behind my development schedules on almost all fronts. The summer was all too busy to maintain a good workflow, and when there was a good workflow many unexpected coding issues kept arising. The features I dreamed of being close to release candidate stage by now are still lagging and delaying. And now a few weeks of travelling takes place so the radio silence is to be expected until september. I'll hope the spirits will make my autumn more coding friendly. Let's catch up then. August 19, 2024, 03:10:32 PM |
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Scattered remarks of pausable items and core functions
Oh yes, there's been decent workflow going on in september. And some rainy days too, which always increase the coding endurance.  Here are some brief remarks and additional details to where we were at with the earlier posts from the late summer. The main work remains the same, transition to pausable item crafting. At this point majority of the Make menu item categories are now pausable. If all goes well, only clothes and transport categories will still persists in to-do non-pausable stage upon release of the next version. The upcoming tree species based timber is now in effect with the applicable craftable items and specific tree species is occasionally preferred, or sometimes even required. This brings in a whole new approach to acquiring timber and item crafting. To give a few examples birch tree is preferred for making wooden shovels, cups and bowls. For wood slats pine is preferred, and shingles need to be made exclusively from blocks of pine. For crafting a paddle spruce is required. And the bows are best made out of pine or birch. The tree species preference is indicated within the material and tool selection dialog the same way as all the other preferences. In the screenshot below you'll see how it goes when longbow crafting is initiated:  In cases where certain tree species is preferred it's still possible to use material of any tree species, but if it differs from the preferred types the quality of the produced item will be lower. In that case the generic "...can't make good out of bad." message will be shown upon obtaining the finished craft. .. As we undergo transition to pausable crafting many item recipes go through adjustments and additions. Recently we introduced raw material yield property, which is also available for modding as [yield:num]. This property defines how many crafted items a certain raw material can yield. It's in use for example with making staves, so that you can make three staves out of one slender tree trunk. The yield information is now also indicated upon starting to craft something, and before selecting the desired number of items to craft. This way crafting can be planned sparingly. In the screenshot below you'll see the slender trunk yield indicated when staff crafting is initiated:  It's likely that the crafts that are currently made in batches will be checked for possible use of the yield property to make their crafting more informative and intuitive. The yield property is not practical for all the items, but in cases where you are kind of asked for "how many batches of items that are made eg. 5 items in one go" it can help to simplify things to quite an extent. With all the new properties and tags and preference specifications we've had to touch the very core functions of item crafting that lay deep within the game. It's been quite unnerving to open these functions up for tweaking as if we make mistakes there the whole game will suffer from the consequences. Thus, we've led easy paced and precise coding and testing periods with these. So far, so good. So let's continue. These are future features - not yet functional in current version 3.84. September 13, 2024, 05:29:16 PM |
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