Tomorrow it will be Ancient Savo launch at Steam. My own schedules are so that after hitting the publish button I need to leave for work, and then come back five or six hours later to see if there is any feedback. As I sit down to write this, I remember the atmosphere before some earlier project releases - that sparkling anticipation and curiosity to see if something big, medium or small is about to happen; that joy of reaching a major milestone. Today I recognize all of those elements being there, but in a lot more calm and tranquil manner. Most of all, I feel peaceful, as is the Steam release was just another day of work in the long continuum of years of development. I like that feeling, somehow I feel grounded and balanced instead of floating in the air because of bubbling excitement.

Also, I think I need to correct myself. I don't remember exactly when and where, but I probably have been writing about the sense of "gambling with my life", and there not being plan B in case Ancient Savo will not generate any meaningful amount of sales. Yes, I do remember feeling those feeling and thinking those thoughts. But something has changed, without me putting conscious effort in it. There is no more a sense of "a gamble"; for if Ancient Savo will sell only dozens of copies, nothing dramatically bad is going to happen. I won't lose a gamble. It would just mean that I need to re-arrange some of my routines for the next months, to take measures to balance my personal economy - yes, to revert to the plan B which has emerged. Just like in covid times, I'd guess I could just pick a period of work in simple basic forestry, work long days of blue collar work for a month or two just allowing by brain to rest, and to earn a little extra money.

Sure, after years of development the Steam release is a big step forward. But certainly it doesn't mean anything being completed, nor coming to an end. For me it feels more like another new chapter in the bigger story; taking the journey to a new area, getting to travel new paths. I remember that at the time when I chose to fully focus on Ancient Savo development, it felt like my personal attempt to switch to being a full-time indie game developer. And then, running on extremely low budget, being supported by friends and by the people over the internet - it feels like internally I have already gone through that transition. It is hard to describe, as the whole economic aspect of it is still unknown at the time of writing this. But somehow, in my mind, I feel like an indie coder. In addition to pieces of code to contribute for the UnReal World project, I also feel that a few sequel ideas have solidified in my mind - and that those ideas and plans about them feel somehow "real", not just "vague plans". Or, that working with Ancient Savo has opened some gates in my mind, and behind those gates there are new energies waiting for their time to flow into existence. Exactly how that is going to happen (read: how to fund the development) remains to be seen, but living in uncertainty and resting in not knowing feels increasingly natural and comforting for me.

---

Some time ago on UnReal World forums someone was asking for suggestions while roadtripping in Finland as a foreigner. From forum posts the discussion went to direct messages, and he asked me if I know a camping area in or near the village I live. Yes, there is one by the river near the village center - I checked their web page and it said that they had just closed for the winter. So I suggested that he could just park his car on my yard and camp for a night. He agreed. And so one night I sat by a camp fire on my yard, together with a foreign visitor, having an unhurried peaceful chat, sipping little of liquor. The following morning he suggested to give some feedback on his impression on Ancient Savo - it was like a surprise gift for me! I'm so familiar with all the aspects of the game that for me it isn't always easy to understand how the game would appear to someone still just learning it. So I watched him run through the tutorial, listening to his suggestions, writing notes. Very valuable information for me!

But that happened just a few days before the Steam release, so I simply don't have enough time to implement all of the suggestions. Again I realize how much my own mind focuses on the inner logic of the game; I've spent several long days coding the AI to run other family units, although that is something which won't affect the early game play but becomes crucial only later on in the game. I felt that I want to get the basics of AI implemented before the Steam release - as sometimes it so happens that implementing a new major feature requires re-structuring some of the core data structures, and that is not easy to do if the game is already released. So, before the release I wanted to make the data structures solid and robust enough to handle all the planned features. Hehe, and then it again dawned on me how it would be good to spend a few weeks simply polishing those aspects which first meet the eye of a new player.

Well, in a way I hope that Ancient Savo wont' gain major attention in the very first weekend, so that the coming week I could have time to continue polishing and making the game easier to approach for a newcomer.

And, in so many ways it has felt really good to stick to the planned release date, instead of just always having to postpone the planned release. But today there was also a brief moment when I felt really unsure about it. As, I hoped to get everything ready earlier in the week, so that there would be a few days just to test, and possibly to fix things - this, regarding the Steam internals, as for me there is a still a lot to learn about the way Steam handles uploads, upgrades, and how things need to be configured so that Steam can install and launch the game. I'm just a coder, not that much gamer, I don't even use Steam myself so I'm not familiar with the system. Then, as often happens, things took longer - tasks like packaging the development version to a distribution version; I already had a routine for that, but now it somehow didn't work, and troubleshooting took half a day. Well, but finally I had the latest version packaged ready for distribution and sent it to itch.io and Steam. I installed Steam on my development machine, and it managed to download Ancient Savo. When I tried to launch the game, it started and then just closed with no error message. Not good! I hopped over to terminal, located the directory where Steam installed the game, and started Ancient Savo from command line; it started just fine. So, apparently something is bit wrong with my Steam client. Maybe it is a linux thing? I have only one Windows machine, and oldish laptop which is increasingly showing signs of wear; sometimes half of the screen gets the pixels all messed up, sometimes it just powers off. I installed Steam on the windows laptop, downloaded Ancient Savo, and it launched just fine! What a relief. A bit after that I got a bunch of beta tester keys from Steam, which allow downloading the game before the official release. I sent three keys to three different Windows users, and they all confirmed that they could install and launch the game. So, I hope that on the technical side everything is ready for the release tomorrow!