In the midst of summer schedule challenges we're hereby releasing version 3.81 first for Windows  and follow with Linux and OS X builds in early august.

This version is mostly about craftable and repairable fishing nets, preliminary introduction of pausable crafting and some bugfixes. Find full changelog at the end of this post, and now let's highlight the most exciting addition...

Craftable and repairable fishing nets

Now it's possible to both craft a net from the scratch, and to repair worn-out nets. These are both pausable tasks allowing you to finish them in parts as you please. This will be the start of featuring a possibility to have breaks in long crafting tasks and continue at will later on. After the mechanics have been developed further this will be expanded to cover wider range of crafting.

        Weaving a net is laborious task and the mere amount of yarn alone may be demanding to obtain. The other material requirements include thicker cordage for the supporting lines, rocks for weights and birch or pine bark for floats. Traditionally the rock weights were sometimes wrapped inside birch-bark pockets for more durable attachment. This is optionally doable in the game as well.

         Making a net is process of several days, and that is why nets were usually woven indoors during the wintertime. For the history and realism sake a good use of written sources along with actually interviewing old net makers were carried out to come up with the many values and mechanics. And still there's a room to add some advanced fishing net care and maintenance features in the future.  It might be interesting for some if we opened up our research and field studies later on, but here's just one curiosity:

There's a tool called netting needle which has been essential in netmaking. It's a tool the player characters can craft in the game as well. In our interviews with a certain old net maker one question was: "We're the nets ever made by hand alone, without a netting needle, and is it even viable?"

   Ville, a real person in real world - an old fisherman - just kept staring for a really, really long time and said ]"Everyone had their own netting needle." Other interviewees also confirmed that netting needles were always needed, even when repairing the nets, and during the fishing season people would carry them around just in case. Well, the game mechanics allow netmaking without a netting needle too, but you will only find it impractically slow.

Version 3.81 changelog

*** Saved characters from version 3.70-> are compatible with this version. **

 - added: craftable fishing net

         It is now possible to make a fishing net by the player character. The option can be found at "Fishing" category in the [M]ake menu.

         Weaving a net is laborious task and the mere amount of yarn alone may be demanding to obtain. The other material requirements include thicker cordage for the supporting lines, rocks for weights and birch or pine bark for floats. Traditionally the rock weights were sometimes wrapped inside birch-bark pockets for more durable attachment. This is optionally doable in the game as well.

         Making a net is process of several days, and that is why nets were usually woven indoors during the wintertime. In the game making a net is newly featured pausable task allowing you to finish it in parts as you please.

 - added: NETMAKING skill

         Netmaking is a skill for weaving and constructing fishing nets. Success in netmaking determines the quality of the nets crafted. For migrated characters this skill is created upon the first load in this version.

 - added: pausable crafting

         In this version we are introducing pausable crafting for a few selected items. This will be the start of featuring a possibility to have breaks in long crafting tasks and continue at will later on. After the mechanics have been developed further this will be expanded to cover wider range of crafting.       

         Crafts that can be currently paused are:

         * Net

         * Chop felled tree into blocks

         * Split firewood from a block

         * Split a trunk into boards    

           With the pausable timbercraft options you can now also use unhandy and inferior tools eg. stone-axe in board making as there's no upper limit of how much time can be used to get the work done.

         Pausable crafting works similarly to pausable building. You can cancel the process at will, and then continue at will. The crafting will be continued when you try to make the said item again standing beside the partially finished item. For example, if you try to [M]ake a fishing net beside a partially crafted net the crafting continues.
         Partially crafted items 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.

 - added: different tile graphics for a set net

         Tile graphics for a set fishing net is now different resembling its float line on top of the water.

 - updated: "Net" game encylopedia (F1) entry

 - changed: the weight and price of the net item

         Both have been increased. The weight because of the rock weights taken into account, and the price because of the true workload.

 - added: netting needle, a new item

         Netting needle is a wooden tool used to weave fishing nets. It can be crafted by the player character from [M]ake menu "Fishing" category. Netting needle allows weaving the net conveniently with proper knots and tight mesh of uniform size.

 - added: repair worn-out nets

          The option to "Repair worn-out net" can be found at "Fishing" category in the [M]ake menu. Repairing a net is also pausable task and can be cancelled and continued at will. To continue paused net repair works the same as continuing paused net crafting; if you use the repair option again beside the partially repaired net the crafting will continue.

 - added: harvesting pine bark

         Pine bark can be harvested from big pine trees all-year round. Pine bark chunks are used used in making of net floats.

 - added: "Bark" game encylopedia (F1) entry

 - added: ball of birch-bark strip as village resource

         Villagers now gather and stock balls of birch-bark strip. These can be then traded for by the player characters if need be. Birch-bark availability in villages is based on the culture, and it naturally gets restocked only when the birch-bark harvesting season is on.

 - updated: "Birch-bark" game encylopedia (F1) entry

 - added: timbercraft product quantities affected by the used tool, ie. an axe

         When making boards, blocks of wood or firewood you'll get fewer products when using an unhandy axe for the said tasks. The effect is most notable when the axe is far from preferred one, eg. making boards with a stone-axe.

 - adjusted: blacksmiths titled as masters always produce masterwork goods

         There was a small skill range where blacksmiths titled as masters produced fine, but not masterwork goods. This has been adjusted so that now masters always produce masterwork goods.

 - fixed: using STEALTH from skills menu prompted nothing

         Now it says the skill is automatically used when necessary. That is, when your character gets [h]iding.

 - fixed: firemaking failing at fertilized locations

         Fire data couldn't be properly set to locations with fertilization data.

 - fixed: some diy/biy descriptions corrupting the material requirement text output

         Adding descriptive texts eg. '+(needed for this and that)' to some diy/biy entries caused text output corruption in the displayed list of required materials. This was noticed with some cordage at least.

 - fixed: math failures when using withes (on the ground) in constructions

         There was a rare occasion where using withes on the ground might cause math failures to the number of materials used or required. This was noticed with building a fence gate, but might have occurred elsewhere too.

 - fixed: animals leaving droppings far too often after 255 game days

         Yep, it was char<>int kind of mistake in the dropping interval calculations.

 - fixed: some encumbrance penalty calculations

         Excess penalty didn't always capped at 100%, and the weight of worn clothes you could carry without penalty wasn't always calculated correctly.

 - fixed: making stone arrowheads not allowing using stones on the ground for grinding

 - fixed: wading mode text alignment not centered

 - fixed: repeat the last action display for arrow and bowstring was blank