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Merlkir

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Everything posted by Merlkir

  1. Merlkir
    Hah, I just had a good morning laugh. :D "Ondra" is a fairly common male name in the Czech Republic, so I had to send a link to the map to one of my best friends, who's also named Ondra. Funny that his boot is a bay in the northern parts of the world. Ah well. I wonder about the "etymology" of that name in Eternity. Could it be a thunder god like Indra?
  2. Merlkir
    Nope, not lamellar. a) it's shown with a vaguely norman-looking helmet (with a late bascinet type nose guard, confusingly), but it's not a historical design, most definitely not something a norman knight would wear. b) the lamels in a lamellar suit overlap as well You see this type of "armour" in movies quite often, because it's easier and cheaper to manufacture without having to figure out real historical designs. You just cut out bits of metal, drill holes and tie them together. One of the core principles of scale/lamellar is the overlap of pieces, you have none of that with a design like that. While we're at it, a brigandine has some overlap as well and the pieces are riveted to the inside of a leather jacket, not chain-linked to each other.
  3. Merlkir
    It's called "not very well designed fantasy thing", not a brigandine. ;P
  4. Merlkir
    There was the Aumaua wizard. (I can't link to the image I found for some reason. Just google "aumaua".)
  5. Merlkir
    Oh yes. The hilarity of German-Slavic homophones. German for "road turn" is "whore" in Czech, Polish and probably other Slavic languages. Polish word for "to look for" is a popular Czech variation of "to copulate".
  6. Merlkir
    If you look at bedouin clothing, the amount of cloth used is ridiculously high. They often wear things over their clothes which could easily double for what we'd call a cloak. As LC said, cloaks are terribly practical, especially if you're travelling.
  7. Merlkir
    Cloaks are suitable for all kinds of climate, they used to be a common piece of clothing among most classes in various shapes and forms.
  8. Merlkir
    :D very ot, but thanks! Yes, it's true. Lots of cloaks and richly embroidered robes in both projects!
  9. Merlkir
    If you wanted a disadvantage to cloaks with magic bonuses, just give them some kind of a movement penalty. Fighting in a cloak is not easy.
  10. Merlkir
    When that music hit in the demo, dang, right in the soul. Any Soule fans who know which track it was off the top of their head? Pity the demo didn't do actual gameplay, hopefully we'll get that soon when the vertical slice is done.
  11. Merlkir
    Actually, that makes a lot of sense - Paladins should be barking orders (at least text) and not radiate silent, yet colourful auras (at least for the motivation abilities). Order sound effects similar to the casting mumbles in BG/IWD would be cool too.
  12. Merlkir
    It sounds more like a talk about the business of things rather than showing gameplay of the vertical slice. (which would be awesome though)
  13. Merlkir
    So, animancers? Are they "soul scientists"? Like from "animus" = soul?
  14. Merlkir
    :D We do need a temple of cave prostitutes in PE now. Yes.
  15. Merlkir
    All this makes me very happy. - About pronunciation being un/intuitive - I think it could be a cool way to distinguish some of the more alien cultures - maybe the human languages are more or less intuitive, but suddenly! the player hears an elven name pronounced and it's quite unintuitive. Oh, that's right, they're quite different to humans! - About the fact we're reading it transcribed in latin script anyway - it's the old Tolkien "old timey translator" trick - we're simply being fed an approximate translation of all the languages. The differences we see now are perhaps not at all what the actual languages sound like, it's the translator giving it his best effort to make their respective relationships obvious by relating them to languages we know. Names in language X are pronounced differently than we (mostly English speakers) would assume from the transcription? Well, in the analogue of language X, names are also pronounced differently to the way they're written down in the common tongue Y (whatever that is). And that difference of language X pronunciation to the Y transcription is kind of similar to the way Irish names are pronounced compared to being written down in the latin alphabet.
  16. Merlkir
    Neither of them are good, the last one is the least bad. Spikes, man, spikes and exposed skin everywhere.
  17. Merlkir
    PE still has barbarians running about in fur undies, I think this level of anachronism is perfectly fine. :D
  18. Merlkir
    Lamellar is pretty effective actually, if made properly. The suit the lady's wearing seems a bit loose and the lamels are quite big. The cataphract guy (rider) wears a much better reproduction. (I've seen a few lamellar cuirasses being used in reenactment and they didn't seem to catch blows)
  19. Merlkir
    That ULFBERHT documentary I can sort of recommend. Sort of. The smithing is legit, that guy btw is also quite experienced with wootz/bulat/damascene steel. However! The rest of the documentary is very very specifically a single guy's view on the issue of the ULFBERHT swords, many sword experts expressed their polite disagreement with a lot of what's been said. For absolutely gorgeous pattern welded swords (very very good quality replicas of original pieces), one has to look no further than Patrick Bárta and his TEMPL workshop: http://www.templ.net/english/weapons-antiquity_and_early_middle_age.php Huuuuge pictures of insanely beautiful swords like this one:
  20. Merlkir
    That's a curious image to illustrate your post, you can't see the blade. :D The hilt itself is not pattern welded, that's all (silver I'd guess) inlay.
  21. Merlkir
    It might be worth giving a go for a mockup, it shouldn't take long to quickly put together form photo textures. The contrast depends a lot on the artist, obsidian comes in a variety of colours, not all of them super shiny and bone could be old yellowy bones with cracks, carvings and dirt setting in the crevices, not as contrasty as it might sound on paper. (I can imagine it being not much different to the classic parchment/wood/stone style.) Anyway, I really didn't expect the screens with black and white drawings and multiple choice options, almost like gamebooks, but now I'm definitely looking forward to that feature.
  22. Merlkir
    A few days ago I had an interesting conversation with a friend who writes cyberpunk novels. He was wondering when we're finally going to come up with superior swords made of titanium, carbon fiber or another futuristic material. My reaction ended up a bit disappointing, but it doesn't seem like there's any need for that. Steel has pretty much an ideal combination of weight, hardness, flexibility and the ability to hold an edge. There's not much point in making swords lighter, or more bendy and harder materials are usually also more brittle. Possibly some kind of composite could be overall better, but I'm not sure how far that kind of technology is, especially considering we don't need swords very often. (except for soldiers wearing "tactical" swords to combat in Afghanistan, which is apparently a thing. I was surprised to hear that.) Maybe when we finally build an army of cyborgs, massive (yet light) swords for cutting up enemy cyborgs might become handy. Until then, steel is indeed real. edit: I don't envy anyone who has to come up with fictional metals. :D "Well, it's just...better than steel in all aspects, you know? Magic!"
  23. Merlkir
  24. Merlkir
    Lock nao pls?
  25. Merlkir
    Yes, this. Damascus steel has been a legend in its time, but the magical tales spun even today about its qualities are ridiculous. PJ explained what Damascus most likely was very well. Pattern welded steel on the other hand is what the guy made in the video - you take bars of different properties and weld them together in a forge, twisting and layering them to make a pattern. It used to be believed that this created a sandwich of layers with different properties, a composite material. In reality, the metal becomes more or less homogenous in features other than appearance. It used to be top technology from about 400 BCE (in Europe) to 900-ish CE. It was replaced by other techniques, because it's quite a complex and difficult process and it makes swords very expensive. Smiths learnt how to make swords cheaper and just as good from homogenous steel, later even better than that. Getting back to real Damascus - here's an excellent video series by a smith attempting to make wootz (and you can see it's not so easy to get it the first time. Wootz is in its properties closer to cast iron, it's difficult to hammer without breaking at first right after blooming.)
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