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[Grimlocke]

I though for quite some time about the weapon naming, even before this mod was started I was allready editing out some overly fantasy-ish weapons (greataxe..) and editing in weapons I felt were missing (polearms!).

As for the reasons I went with the historic naming scheme: They are accurate, established terms for existing and practical weapons, especialy that last part I find rather important. Nothing quite as imersion breaking to me as rediculously impractical weapons and armor, like swords that would weigh more than the person wielding them or those silly giant pauldrons that MMO games cant seem to get tired of. The actual names are mostly there for a lack of ingame description of what weapons and armor look like.
If I call a goblin sword 'clan blade' that tells the player nothing about what it looks like, which means I either have to stick to fantasy clichés (clan broadsword?), rediculous self-describing names (short narrow sword), established terms for a certain shape of sword (arming sword), or write up a whole encyclopedia with descriptions and translations. Since I dislike fantasy clichés and like history, I went with the third approach. Convenientely, right around that time someone started a realism mod compilation.

Now, writing ones own canon is all what fantasy is about in my opinion. Im absolutely terrible at naming things but I welcome anyone who wants to adapt this mod to do so.

I should also mention that AD&D actualy has realy terrible at historic accuracy. Terms like 'longsword' or 'banded mail' are neologisms, terms made up recentely which often dont decribe anything accurate. Longsword for instance came from a german manual discribing various fighting styles with a bastard sword. To hold it with both hands behind the guard was 'langschwert', and to hold it with one hand behind and one in front of the guard was 'kurzschwert'.

[arkhometha]

I should mention that, likewise, I've been watching you guys' work here with interest.  I'll definitely be checking out these weapons when I get around to that end of it.

As for names, I know technical period/culture-specific names like "arming sword" don't really appeal to me.

One naming method that seems to be kind of interesting that I've noticed being used more is simply using dwarven words, but that's really hit-and-miss and probably won't work in an appealing way for weapons/armors.  For example, I thought of a dwarven short sword for restricted-space fighting called a tunnel sword; the dwarven language word for tunnel is ¢d (od), which is...  od sword...  oddastot (tunnelsword)... bleah. Tunnel-soldier sword?  Odezar Sword...  better bit still meh.

On the other hand, my friend and I were trying to come up with a different word for "charcoal iron" (the technically- and historically-correct term). Eventually, I decided on a whim to look up the dwarven word for "charcoal" and came up with "Athser Iron" which is accurate enough not to offend the purist, but alien enough to bring back the magic of the riddle of steel.  And it doesn't sound half bad.

So, depending on the word itself, it can come off well or awfully.  (Of course, I might just be deluded and "athser iron" sounds like ass, but that's another matter. :p)

Otherwise, for more narrowly-themed or period-design-specific weapons, my own thought is to just subtly tie them to a certain culture, rather than having the AD&D list of weird names (guisarme-voulge, Bohemian earspoon, etc.).  My own preferred envisioning places the non-dwarven world more distantly in the past, perhaps even bronze-age, but with chosen anachronisms (dwarven influence we'll say, but nothing even close to the kitchen-sinkiness of genre fantasy) -- so, inspired by King of Dragon Pass, I might have "Orlanthi sword," patterned in the raws on, say, a Viking sword or a spatha or what have you.  A gladius might be retermed Arcoscephalian or Argive short sword.  A certain polearm might be an Elven bladed pike or whatever (Goblinian ear spoon!).  And so on.  (I haven't worked it all out, as that's still at drawing board stage, but just general design ideas.)

Hope that rambling was at least marginally helpful... 



EDIT: ALSO, I was going to post here to say HUGE thanks and props to Arkhometha for that material properties research but didn't want to get necro-slammed.  Now I can.  Awesome work, Arkhometha.  I've done a bit more research of my own, and will make it available (built on top of your work) on the same terms (free use for any purpose without need for permission or credit).

Just contributing to DF while I can't play because I can't wait for the new version. Besides, there's always the off chance Toady like our contribution and bestow us the honor of putting it in DF, and we will even save him some development time. I'm glad my research is useful, but be aware if you work on the heat aspect because the way DF handles heat transfer is not really accurate/realistic so you can get some frustrating results like people taking too long to turn to ash(in game they melt because that's the closest thing we have for being turned to ash/being broke into your basic components and melting in lava) and because the usual data we get is based on fire, not lava. This means that the realistic values are unrealistic in-game. I meant to toy around some more with it and try to adjust some density values for most materials (bone being as dense as wood before I changed it) but I'm too buried in other modding works and university(also, modding takes away my gaming time). Also, there is a free tool somewhere on the wiki that converts ºU to ºC/ºK/ºF, grab it because it's really useful. Well, feel free to use my work as you see fit and good luck on your modding!

And a bit of a off-topic note:
KotDP? I've been meaning to play it for some time now, never got around it.

[Putnam]

I would personally say that heat damage (through HEATDAM_POINT) is good for simulating ash.

[arkhometha]

I would personally say that heat damage (through HEATDAM_POINT) is good for simulating ash.

That depends. On one of my experiments I managed to get a dwarf with a perpetual burning hair. Without a single ash.

EDIT:
The fire died off when the dwarf died. It took quite some time. On that note, I feel like corpses should continue on fire after they die. At least I never saw that happening.

[Putnam]

HEATDAM_POINT has nothing to do with fire.

[arkhometha]

HEATDAM_POINT has nothing to do with fire.

It has to do with the destruction of the material. The temperature at which heat will begin to damage the material. Fire is a source of heat.

[Putnam]

Yeah, but... oh, I see what you mean. I didn't mean literal ashes. I mean just... destruction of the material through heat.

[Zucchini]

Just contributing to DF while I can't play because I can't wait for the new version. Besides, there's always the off chance Toady like our contribution and bestow us the honor of putting it in DF, and we will even save him some development time.

Yes, same hope here.

I'm glad my research is useful, but be aware if you work on the heat aspect because the way DF handles heat transfer is not really accurate/realistic so you can get some frustrating results [ . . . ].  This means that the realistic values are unrealistic in-game.

I saw your notes on that.  I may end up adopting the same approach -- one file with proper values, another with values adjusted for the game's quirks in its current form.

I meant to toy around some more with it and try to adjust some density values for most materials (bone being as dense as wood before I changed it) but I'm too buried in other modding works and university(also, modding takes away my gaming time).

I've picked up where you left off.    For a lot of materials, anyway.  That stuff was hugely helpful.

Also, there is a free tool somewhere on the wiki that converts ºU to ºC/ºK/ºF, grab it because it's really useful. Well, feel free to use my work as you see fit and good luck on your modding!

Will do -- thanks!


And on the same note, if you guys find it useful and want to include any or all of the stuff I'm doing in the Grim Grimoire, please feel free.  I'm being pretty anal careful about being sure to provide stupidly obsessive proper sourcing and documentation of my changes, so hopefully it should provide enough info for you to decide whether you like a certain change or would prefer a different value for this or that.


Off-topic about King of Dragon Pass

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And a bit of a off-topic note:
KotDP? I've been meaning to play it for some time now, never got around it.

Absolutely awesome. I held off for a long while, imagining it to be pretty shallow (and because Runequest/Glorantha always didn't look that interesting to me, though I never checked it out past flipping a few pages), but it's really deep, immersive and one of the most well-written games I've ever seen (comparable textually to the best of the IF games, while still having a hell of a lot of beautiful art).  Kinda tricky to get to run on Win7 64, but I figured out how to do it -- I can share the tricky tricks if you need.

[arkhometha]

Well, no need to, I have it running on Windows 7 x64, I just don't have time to play it. Thanks for the offer!

[dennislp3]

+1 to KotDP btw...totally awesome as shit...needs a more modern remake or something.

[rex mortis]

Do you plant to make the caverns, and underground in general, less hospitable? Perhaps by removing seeds from underground plants so they can only be gathered, but not farmed? Furthermore, the ones that can be used for food could have very low values compared to aboveground plants to make it more difficult to manage happiness without outside access.

Aboveground plants could be adjusted too, perhaps to make them less [EDIBLE_RAW] and require milling or other processing to use.

Finally, maybe make all animals that do not have to eat not exist (like pigs) or not be edible (like dogs). Then, if you want a meat industry, you will need pasture areas.

Because making food a real challenge is realistic. I am sure somebody will still manage to make a completely sealed, viable fortress. But then it would be more of an accomplishment than a cheap exploit.

[dennislp3]

Do you plant to make the caverns, and underground in general, less hospitable? Perhaps by removing seeds from underground plants so they can only be gathered, but not farmed? Furthermore, the ones that can be used for food could have very low values compared to aboveground plants to make it more difficult to manage happiness without outside access.

Aboveground plants could be adjusted too, perhaps to make them less [EDIBLE_RAW] and require milling or other processing to use.

Finally, maybe make all animals that do not have to eat not exist (like pigs) or not be edible (like dogs). Then, if you want a meat industry, you will need pasture areas.

Because making food a real challenge is realistic. I am sure somebody will still manage to make a completely sealed, viable fortress. But then it would be more of an accomplishment than a cheap exploit.

Underground plants can just be made to take longer (all plants need much longer and more realistic growth cycles)
Animals that dont graze can be modified to graze with 1 or 2 lines of code in their files...much more reasonable than deleting them.

I personally wish the food system was deeper and included nutrition (even if only a simple model) so one food cant feed everyone forever...Though they do seem to have calories...cause dwarves get fat.

[arkhometha]

"Franchet has also studied the action of fire on bones, which is of interest when the remains of cremation are to be studied. He distinguishes eleven phases. In the first phase the bone takes on a yellow color, in the second phase, a light brown one, and in the third phase, dark brown. In the fourth phase, the bone is completely burnt and so is black, turning to indigo-blue in the fifth. In the sixth, is the blue-grey. In the seventh phase, at 600°C, the bone turns white. In the eight phase, it contracts and becomes deformed. In the ninth, splits appear together with torsion of the bone tissue and in the tenth, vitrification begins, which gives the bone an appearance of porcelain. Int he eleventh, with the temperature at 1200°C the bone melts."

Paul A. Janssens - Paleopathology - Diseases and injuries of prehistoric man. 1970, First Edition, Royal Opera Arcade. SBN 212998447
pp. 20, chapter 7 - Skeletal remains

So the melting point is 1200ºC for bones. Probably a bit lower for magma, but it should take some time for a bone with this melting point to melt in DF since it doesn't handle temperature transfer in a realistic way. Also, this does raise another question: at what point should a undead stop moving?  In the ninth phase it starts to crumble and in the tenth it starts vitrification, and I bet if something hit it it should break like glass and stop moving. Unfortunately, DF doesn't support you making undead/bone glass so maybe we should only use melting. The bone should start taking HEATDAM at the eight/ninth phase though, probably around 800ºC or 700ºC. So there we have, reliable data on human bone melting. I will take a look at some medicine books to try and get some more reliable data on tissue and fat melting points and properties, although I got some fairly good data before. The main problem seems to be the way DF handles heat transfer, that makes body parts behave unrealistic on extreme heat.