UnReal World News

[h3]The best of 2024 to all of you who roam the unreal world![/h3]

We'll open the new year with a glimpse into what's cooking in the development chambers at the moment. And that is, hafting of the axes and spears is underway.
It's relatively complex and fundamendal addition and I guess we'll be putting out a new release when it's all finished. There's still lots of work to do, but here's a first sneak preview of the upcoming hafting mechanics.

So, in the next release axe and spear items will consist of two parts; heads and hafts.
Haft refers to their wooden handle or shaft, which can break over time or upon damage.
When a haft breaks the separate head remains, and can be hafted again. Hafting is a process of attaching axe or spear head to a new haft, making it a complete working weapon again.

Now let's meet our test character Terhi and let her show how the hafting in UnReal World goes.


One day the haft of her trusty woodsman's axe broke leaving the head lying on the ground.
For all the different axes and spears their heads now also exist as separate items.
Blacksmiths still sell these weapons readily hafted, so the heads aren't commonly found until the axe or spear haft breaks.



Crafting the hafts and the process of hafting can be found from [M]ake menu under a new [H]afting category. The first two options are used to craft a new haft, and the latter for actual hafting to assemble a working weapon with the head and the haft.
Terhi now proceeds to craft a new axe haft.



Both crafting the haft and hafting task itself requires CARPENTRY skills. Terhi has managed to craft a fine axe haft, and then she proceeds to actual hafting.
In this list of hafting requirements there's a new "hammering tool" entry. Axe haft needs to be pounded tightly into the eye of the head, so a hammering tool is required.
The butt of another axe, if available, is the best option but you can do this hammering also with a club, solid firewood or even a stone.



The hafting is done and she managed to assemble a decent woodsman's axe. Let the timberwork continue!


The haft quality and success in hafting has significant impact on the finished axe or spear usability. Poor hafting may result in lowering the weapon quality even below the head quality itself. The finished axe or spear quality thus now refers to overall usability with the used haft, and the success in hafting.
On the other hand, you may also manage to raise the finished weapon quality higher than the head quality itself with a perfect and perfectly fitted haft.

So, this is how 2024 starts feature wise. Stay tuned. ːurw_sageː

These are future features - not yet functional in current version 3.82.

The year is nearing its end - so let us send you our winter season's greetings with this post.

Firstly, we wish you all the best with the festivities and holiday season you might have at hand,
and happy new year!
Then, as a season's speciality let us entertain you with little something recreational from the real world at present-day Savo.

The winter has come, and for devs like us it means the balance between coding and cross-country skiing must carefully maintained. So, a week ago Erkka (co-designer) came over for a visit - and we went exploring the real world on skis.


Sami (UnReal World creator) with the red hat, Erkka (UnReal World co-designer) with the green hat.

Over the years, we've found ourselves doing many kind of media works more or less related to the game world or inspired by the iron-age culture. And now, quite spontaneously, we ended up doing small stop-motion animation - and then thought of publishing it as 2023 season's greetings at Enormous Elk YouTube channel.
There's more, and surely more sophisticated content to explore, if the channel wasn't familiar to you already. We call it Tanssivat tontut in finnish, which would translate as Dancing goblins or Dancing household spirits in english.
https://youtu.be/du2pkQUN9Fg?si=aOPZkYand2qcKmFW

And lastly, for myself the last weeks have been more busy with horseback riding and archery than coding. In early December I did three horseback archery demonstrations at different stables which required quite a bit of both time and energy. But hey, sometimes one has to ride a horse to endure extended still sitting periods in front of the computer. And maybe it's good for one to try out the bow for real if he intends to simulate archery in the game. So, this also falls into category of in the real world at present-day Savo. Let the bow skill speculations start.
https://youtu.be/oPaZKJluLDQ?si=vAzUS2KX986sx7ux

Let's see you in 2024, with all sort of new achievements, features and adventures to follow in the real and unreal world.
Cheers!

Steam Autumn sale has begun and we welcome new adventurers into the far north with a generous discount until 28th of November.

And with the Autumn Sale also the Steam Awards 2023 nominations have started.
In case of UnReal World, we really can't help but to pick "Labor of Love" as our nomination category.

Outside the development chambers it's hardly autumn anymore.
The days grow shorter and shorter, and soon after the noon you can already start to prepare for the dusk.
It's 31 years of UnReal World development behind - and still no end in sight.
It's some four more months of snow and freezing temperatures ahead - and it's all good.

That's all folks. You are welcomed to enter and invited to nominate.
:urw_sage: :urw_fire: :urw_elk:

Greetings to those who roam, or are about to roam the unreal world!

We're happy to announce a new version release:
Version 3.82 is now live and released for Windows, Linux and OS X.

This version brings you a whole new fishing method, bunch of fish life improvements and a basket of crucial bugfixes. Find the changelog below.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]

Version 3.82 changelog

Version: 3.82

** Saved characters from version 3.80-> are compatible with this version. **

- added: retrievable broken off arrowheads

Occasionally arrows do break upon hitting a target, and now the arrowheads can be also occasionally, but not always, retrieved and re-used. Only the arrows of decent or higher quality will loose the arrowheads in retrievable condition and the arrowhead itself almost always suffers from the quality degrade.
If the arrow breaks from hitting a non-living target you will find the arrowhead on the ground together with the broken arrow item. If the arrow breaks upon hitting a living target the broken arrow part will drop on the ground and the arrowhead gets stuck into target's body. These stuck arrowheads are not visible to the player character when looking at NPCs/creatures, but can be found and retrieved only from the target's dead carcass.

- added: lippo fishing, a new fishing method

Lippo is a kind of a dip net with a long pole used for catching fish from rivers and shallow waters. Lippo fishing is foremostly practised only at certain times of the year; when the fish to be caught are migrating upstream to their spawning locations, and during the active spawning period.
Fishing with a lippo in the rivers and rapids is done by standing on rocks in the river. The location is often suitable when there are several rocks around as these are the usual places where both resting and spawning river fish are around and can be caught. Additionally, a lippo can also be used from the shore if the spawning fish are noticed by the shoreline. The lippo is lowered into the water, down to the bottom, and carefully dragged around in order to catch resting or spawning fish into its hoop.
Start using your lippo either by [a]pplying the lippo from the inventory or using the FISHING skill.

- added: LIPPO encyclopedia (F1) entry

- added: craftable lippo

You can craft a lippo from [M]ake menu under [F]ishing category. A lippo is constructed in such a way that it has a wooden hoop into which multiple small birch saplings are tied to. These saplings are tied together at their open ends, so that they form a net like construction around the hoop. The hoop with this net is then fixed to a long wooden pole.
The applicable character skill for crafting a lippo is NETMAKING.

- added: spawning periods for the relevant fish species

The following fish now have their unique spawning periods; pike, bream, salmon and lavaret. During the spawning period the fish gather up at their species specific spawning locations. This can be then taken advantage of by spearfishing or using newly featured lippo fishing.

- added: splashing and water ripples from the fish activity

As the fish spawn in shallow waters they do splash in noticeable way, and there are now splashing sounds to be heard and round water ripples to be seen indicating the fish activity. These are essential cues in order to find the actual fish spawning locations.
There's splashing audio to be heard but you are also notified with a game message. For example "You hear a splash from the east." or "You notice a lavaret splashing in the water." And then there are modestly animated water ripples, a new visual effect that can be noticed in the water where the fish activity has taken place.

- added: encyclopedia (F1) entries for PIKE, BREAM, SALMON and LAVARET

You'll find information for example about their spawning periods and habitats, and the related fishing means.

- improved: spearfishing

It still remains possible to catch lone roaming fish with luck and patience, but now the spearfishing can be considered most effective for catching the spawning fish.
Upon spearfishing you will be now notified about the ongoing fish spawning periods. The messages will tell if the chosen location might be good considering the spawning fish, or if the spawning might be going on elsewhere. These are hints to consider in order to find a good spot, but you are naturally free to try out your spearfishing luck also regardless of the spawning periods and locations.
There are also some changes in the spearfishing messages thorough the process.

- changed: rain visual effect slightly softened with randomized alpha blending

- added: ROUNDSHIELD encyclopedia (F1) entry

- updated: FISHING ROD encyclopedia (F1) entry with a bit of baiting information

- fixed: not being able to use withes as tying equipment when crafting skis

- fixed: encyclopedia tooltips in the inventory not displayed for items with additional item part descriptions

Tooltips were missing for items such as "Hunting bow with no string" or "Fishing rod with iron hook". Now the base items (ie. "Hunting bow" and "Fishing rod") are properly parsed in these cases too and the tooltips displayed accordingly.

- fixed: Old Man's Punt quest dialogue confusions

The quest progression dialogue had gotten tangled with blacksmith related dialogue.

- fixed: NPC archers could shoot arrows from beyond player character's visible range

- fixed: NPC archers could use and shoot back the arrows that had originally hit them

- fixed: blacksmith product price estimation oddities

Quest rewards were discounted from the final blacksmith product prices, but the blacksmiths didn't bring this up in their dialogue which caused confusion and wrong estimations. This was most notable when quest reward would compensate for the whole price and resulted in blacksmith trade preference being blanked (ie. "..give me your .")
Now blacksmiths will speak about how much the possible reward compensates, and give items truly for free with applicable rewards.
Blacksmiths might also have given wrong price estimation for batch of product because of not calculating the number of finished items properly.

- fixed: blacksmiths failing to produce ordered items

Blacksmiths often failed to produce ordered items because of carrying too much load. This prevented the ordered items to be added in their inventory. Blacksmiths kept building up the excess load because the items they got as a payment weren't never removed and restocked from their inventory. Now blacksmiths will restock their inventory before attempting to carry the finished ordered item.

- fixed: usage of TEXTILECRAFT from the skills window or via hotkey not working for migrated characters

- fixed: TEXTILECRAFT skill not improving for migrated characters

- fixed: Chat command causing fade to black after being forcefully woken up by an NPC



Cheers! ːurw_sageː

Here we go with a brief development news about what's bubbling under at the moment.
Well, a good bunch fishing related additions, we can tell you.

There will be improvements to some old fishing methods and a completely new form of fishing to be featured. And to have it all done with our desired ambition we'll also feature spawning periods and habitats for the different species of fish. And these can be then taken advantage of with the old and new fishing forms.

It's quite a sidetracking, snowballing bunch of additions, but slowly coming together so nicely that we can briefly highlight it already.


Now pikes, breams, salmons, trouts and lavarets (at least) will be given their spawning periods and habitats. Gathering of the spawning fish can be then taken advantage of with suitable fishing means.
For example pikes will come to spawn in early spring at shallow shoreline waters with rich vegetation.
During that time the spearfishing from the shore can be quite succesful.
As we know, spearfishing is already an existing fishing method in the game, but now it will become a bit more detailed for example with information given related to ongoing spawning periods and the chosen location.

Ingir proceeds with spearfishing and the game notifies about the chosen location being good considering the ongoing pike spawning period.


Lippo is a certain kind of dip net with a very long handle, and it was used in special kind of fishing at rivers and rapids. It is a new fishing tool in the game that
can be crafted by the player character, and it will be used in this newly featured form of fishing.

Ingir has arrived at the rapids with an intention to craft herself a lippo.


Lippo fishing was practised especially when the certain fish, salmons or lavarets for example, gathered at the rivers to spawn. But lippo can be also used to catch roaming river fish outside their spawning period too. In this fishing method the lippo is casted into the water, down at the bottom of the river, and then moved carefully in order to scoop the fish into its net. The roaming fish in the rivers and rapids will occasionally rest beside the rocks and skerries and these are the locations where lippo needs to be used.

Ingir needed to row with a punt to reach a skerry in the rapids. Maybe there are fish resting behind the neighbouring rocks, she thinks and reaches out to pick up the lippo.

Just a quick briefing.
There more to this.
Stay tuned.