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KickStarter Kingdom Come: Deliverance Pre-Release Thread [RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

Ninjerk

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I am far from being expert on art so I don't know. I remember being told there is at least some deterioration of the white color in some medieval illuminations therefore some parts look inappropriately dark and brownish.
However there's similar situation with the medieval castles. As we see them now, many of them in ruins, we picture them as a being rough structures with the bare stones on the walls being exposed to the air and eye while in reality most of the castles, at least in Central Europe, were plastered, therefore white.
IIRC, A lot of medieval art was done with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casein_paint, whereas a pivotal component of Renaissance art was the use of oil paint (which has a lot of useful properties comparatively). Some linseed oils turn yellow or brown over time while I suspect the whites that you're referencing is a result of something to do with the casein paint. All that said, it's very difficult to tell what exact mediums many artists used because (again IIRC) they didn't write their formulas down as other artists could steal them. Lots of money has been spent by companies that create paints and mediums to try to recreate chemical matches to old masters' mediums.
 

Lyric Suite

Converting to Islam
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Regarding colour there is an interesting argument that I haven't had the time to really check the literature on - that much of our ideas about the 'austere' nature of art, architecture and sculpture in Antique and Medieval periods is due to, well, all the bloody colours being washed out (in painting) or, even more starkly, falling off entirely (in sculpture). E.g. Roman statues were polychromatic with amber and other material used for eyes, hair, etc., as were medieval ones; sculpted figures in romanesque architecture too were painted (not sure about Gothic and beyond). The point being, we derive from museums a rather greyscale, solemn atmosphere which in fact is the product of decay over time, and in some cases, Renaissance 'restoration'.

Regardless of whether this argument is true or not, i think it is amusing that not many people seem to notice the fact there's nothing "austere" about European art until the dreary philosopher-artists of the Renaissance showed up. Medieval art had more of a bubbling and lively effect to it. It is as if medieval artists wanted to decorate their civilization the same way a field of flowers decorates a landscape. Even religious art had a brilliant quality to it, almost celestial in fact. The colors in particular were very intense, and it wasn't uncommon that artists would use precious materials to get the effect they desired. I remember reading about the discovery of a medieval manual on how to create the "perfect" colors which required numerous strange or exotic ingredients, so much so that the book was dismissed right away as a mere superstitious curiosity. That is, until somebody actually tried to put those components together and lo, it actually worked.

The biggest misconception of course is the idea medieval art lacked any sense of form and was in that sense "primitive", which misses the fact medieval art was never representational and was for the most part symbolic, and point in fact, there were rules which prohibited the use of perspective in the representation of divine images (you might as well add perspective to the Chinese yin/yang symbol, the medieval icon being its Christian counterpart, precisely), and there were also rules regarding sculpting, which could only take the form of relief. One may argue that those rules stifled creativity, but in truth, the artist had great freedom in his application of a particular form, hence the multitude of ways in which the human figure was represented, almost as if the artist was weary of drawing too "exact" an image for fear of constraining the principle the image was meant to be a representation of, and he also had complete freedom in the use of decorations, decorative art being considered in those days to be like "music" in plastic form (this concept was taken to its extreme in Islamic art).
 
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Tigranes

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That too. But when you aren't very interested in art (I'm not, either, so warning for any basic factual errors coming your way), thinking of 'old art' means Greco-Roman sculpture and figure sculpture in churches, a thousand and one Virgin Marys, etc. until Monet cometh. It doesn't help that most collections in big places like MOMA / Met will focus on everything 1500 onwards. Medieval art when you look at it carefully can be fascinating.

Anyway, I really love the look KC has going - I don't know how precisely accurate it is, but it does evoke a down to earth Eastern European vibe that doesn't get too 'gritty', right down to how wood textures are rendered, etc.
 
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The first inkling I got of medieval times not necessarily being as dreary and "serious" as is sometimes depicted was when I first read Canterbury Tales by Chaucer in high school. That collection had the basest sexual humor in places, which would not be out of place in one of modern frat-type movies. Doesn't mean there wasn't a lot of bad shit going on back then, but people gotta live.
 

Lyric Suite

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The middle ages were a mystical age, full of profound mysteries on one side and crazy superstitions on the other. It was also an age of deep introspection and of course religious fervor, but it wasn't "austere" in that dry, academic sense.
 

WhiteGuts

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But color in medieval age was a sign of wealth, and therefore only the nobles could afford it.
 

Lyric Suite

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You are not going to gain a great understanding of history if you are adamant in interpreting everything through your own modern prejudices.

To begin with, there was no "art for art's sake" in the middle ages, and in fact, there was no real conception of art as it is understood today:

http://www.studiesincomparativereli...ibit_Works_of_Art-by_Ananda_Coomaraswamy.aspx

Therefore, artists never created their work just for the sake of their own self gratification (which didn't prevent them from using art for their own spiritual development, of course, since they created the methods and the technique used), and they generally worked by commission. But that goes without saying, for how does an artist sustain himself, if not by the exercise of his craft? And i don't see how things have changed really, for whom you do suppose supported artists like Picasso? If the argument is that artists had no individual freedom, i'd say modern art is sort of an example of what happens when artists are given too much freedom. Besides, "self-expression" can occur even within the constrains of a particular form, as i said (Islamic art is a supreme example of this). Medieval artists did not have to brake every rule just to be creative and "original". Indeed, their conception of originality was different too. For them, to be "original" meant to return to the "origin" (Platonic thought was all pervasive in the middle ages), which in art means the essence of a particular image. They didn't need to paint Christ in a different way, their object was to paint Christ in the best possible way according to the rules of their art, and "mastery" in this respect was something that could only be gained after the artist had gained a sufficient understanding of the most profound aspects of this art. Where Renaissance artists sought virtuosity, and genius was almost an exception to the rule, medieval artists sought genius first and were not particularly concerned with virtuosity. That is why their art is so intensely spiritual, where as the works of the artists of the Renaissance is merely human, the occasional genius notwithstanding.

Of course, sometimes you did get individual artists who broke every possible rule, like the composers from the so called "Ars Subtilior" school, but this "freedom" had a different purpose too. For those artists, to brake a rule was a mean to "free" the soul from the limits of the finite ego, and this art was something of an "avant-gard" but with a spiritual rather then purely destructive aim. No work is more indicative of this than Solage's famous Fumeux Fume:



And it is extremely characteristic of the modern mentality that people interpret this song to be about "smoking" (there was no such thing as tobacco in medieval times), or was some kind of humorous ditty about "grumpiness", as seen in the ludicrous translation found in wikipedia. The "smoke" referred to the song concerned the spirit exclusively. The music "broke" the limitations of the ego and freed the spirit from the constraints of relative existence, essentially turning the "poison" generated by this destruction into medicine (where as modern avant-gard is mostly just poison). And there are techniques used in this song that didn't appear in western art until the 20th century. So much for those "primitive" medieval artists, hey?
 
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Lyric Suite

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And then course, there was also popular music in those days:





A bit unfair to use a genius like Machaut as an example since he was a wee bit better than his contemporaries, but nothing shows the true essence of an art than using one of its most outstanding examples, right?
 
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Lyric Suite

Converting to Islam
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Even Gregorian Chant sounds a bit different when sung using the techniques and intonations common in those days:



How can you NOT feel like picking up a sword and squash the heretics after listening to this?
 
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Zed

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Codex USB, 2014
https://twitter.com/DanielVavra/status/508736499043430400
Bw9lJhEIMAAOSTj.jpg

Hello, I am indie dev! I just won awesome notcorrupted award! Please send me your moneyz you misogynistic gamer scum!
:lol:
 

NotAGolfer

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Divinity: Original Sin 2
This is just an elaborate strategy to attract attention from the LGBT Bioware dreck. They will be outraged, they will send death threats to Daniel...and then they'll buy his game.


:excellent:
I don't think so. He should have stayed out of this whole mess like every one of the professional non-indie developers (they did, right?). Lay low and let them cats scratch out each other's eyes.
Politics is for people with too much time on their hands, WHO ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR PAYING THE SALARIES OF A WHOLE GAME STUDIO.
Hope this doesn't blow back in his face.
At least he got Adam Baldwin on board. As much of a Tea Party loon he might be, he's still a bro and a funny guy.
 
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Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
:salute: :salute: :salute: http://techraptor.net/2014/09/12/interview-daniel-vavra/

An interview with Daniel Vavra: GamerGate and the gaming industry

I’d first like to personally thank Daniel Vavra for allowing TechRaptor this interview. For those of you that do not know, Daniel Vavra is a game designer and writer that has been in the industry for about fifteen years. Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven was the first big project he led back in 2002, where he was both director and writer. He returned to help with the writing on the sequel as well, Mafia II.

Most probably know him now for the successful Kickstarter campaign attached to his newest project, Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Kingdom Come: Deliverance has since gained a lot of attention, with many people following the development vlogs quite closely. It is the first game for Warhorse Studios, a development company based in the Czech Republic that Vavra helped found.

As of now, Vavra seems to play the role of the voice for Warhorse Studios, as he is featured in most of the videos attached to Kingdom Come: Deliverance. He continues to plug away on the game as they hope for a Q4 2015 release date.

For those hoping this would be about Kingdom Come: Deliverance, I am sorry to disappoint. Recently, Daniel has been vocal about GamerGate and the attached issues on Twitter, and we here at TechRaptor were looking to see what his views were in a more in-depth manner.

Some small edits were made for clarity at Vavra’s request.

One final thing: the ideas expressed here are not necessarily shared by myself or TechRaptor but are the interviewee’s own.

What is the biggest difference in the gaming industry when comparing now to when you worked on Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven (2002)? Better or worse?

The industry is much better now. We can be independent. We can self-publish our games, even on consoles. We can speak directly to our fans through social networks. There are new ways to fund development. All that is awesome and ideal for growth of the scene and more original games. There are also many more communication channels – social media, Youtubers, bloggers. Back in the day, the Internet was very small, paper mags held all the power, and the journalists asked boring questions like “how many weapons/cars/levels are you going to have?” I was trying to write a sophisticated mature story, and most of them wanted to know if it’s going to be possible to drive over people. Now, when I am trying to make mature realistic historic game, some people ask why we don’t have female knights.

You’ve worked both as part of a larger company, 2K Games, and now independently at Warhorse Studios. Do you see a difference in the way the gaming industry treats independent developers and those working for larger studios?

When you work for a big Publisher you do what you are told. There is very little chance that you will ever be able to work on your own stuff. And it’s perfectly OK. You are getting money in exchange for your loyalty and nobody is holding you there. You can leave if you don’t like it. I did it, took a lot of risks and hoped that finally I would be able to do what I always wanted. But suddenly a lot of people who think they know what’s good for me and the world started to tell me and many other developers what we should do, only that they don’t give anything in exchange.

I grew up during communism, when comics books were prohibited as capitalist decadent propaganda, western movies were censored, any book that could be in conflict with socialist ideology was prohibited and you went to jail for saying what you think. So I am allergic to any kind of censorship in the name of any ideology. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I would like to give all the ideologues a piece of advice – If you want something to be made, do it yourself. Everyone will be happy.

Are women well represented in the gaming industry? Not as characters in a game, but as developers, designers, etc.

I worked with many women in the past. Two were my bosses. We have several women in our team as well and I hope that they are happy and treated like anyone else. We have a very flat structure, so anyone can ask me or Martin in case they have any problems. We even have two married couples working at Warhorse, and in the past I saw several other marriages of co-workers at other companies. The only thing that I’m interested in when we hire someone is their talent. Nothing else. I can’t speak for other companies, but I really doubt that it’s different in the US or anywhere else.

The funny thing is, that when you ask actual female developers like Amy Hennig (of Uncharted fame), they will tell you they never had any problems. But the people who are constantly talking about this issue are journalists and bloggers who have never actually even worked at a gaming company.

And the funniest thing is, that when you look at how many women are actually working at those magazines criticizing gaming industry for sexism, you will realize that it’s the same as in gaming companies, 10-20% at most. Polygon has 21 editors and only 5 of them are women. And when you look at their audience it’s 80% men. What a sexist magazine!

Is misogyny a problem in the gaming industry?

Define industry. There are hundreds of million people playing games, so it’s very likely, that some of them are going to be stupid assholes. But saying that the industry is misogynist, because some idiot wrote something on Twitter is absurd, and I strongly believe that it’s used as a distraction so they don’t have to talk about the real problem here. When you are accused of something, accuse your opponent of something much worse. When somebody writes hysterical, aggressive, manipulative articles calling people ‘basement neckbeard troll scum’, he should know what’s gonna come.

I was attacked on the Internet many, many times, because I often tend to say stuff people don’t like, but I never ever had a need to whine about it in a magazine and play a victim. When stuff gets serious and somebody really is doing some ugly shit, the best thing you can do is call the police and not tweet about it.

And there is also another very important thing. A large sum of gamers are teenage boys, who kinda naturally tend to do stupid things and are often quick on conclusions and insults. So no, the industry is not misogynist. Stupid people are misogynist.

We know that GamerGate came out of the idea that “gamers are dead.” Obviously, it has gone beyond that now. What do you think the end goal of the GamerGate movement is and do you agree with them?

I don’t think that there is one goal. It’s just a lot of people which are not happy with the state of gaming journalism. So I am going to talk about my personal motives. It took me two years to start a company. We almost went bankrupt several times. I think that what we are doing is really something no one has done before, and we are really trying to do it as well as we can – a realistic, historically accurate depiction of medieval Europe with a mature story.

And then we are called racist because there are no people of color in our medieval Bohemia world, because there are biblical illuminations in our country with Queen of Sheba (who happened to live in Africa 2000 years before our game). And on top of that we were called sexist, because we had a stretch goal to add playable female character into our game. As if it was costless to write and implement a whole new questline into the game. All this when the game is in an early stage of development, and they don’t have a clue about the actual story. Do you think that anyone would want to be involved in such absurd discussions during a campaign on which his existence as a studio depends?

This happened to many developers. Assassin’s Creed had 5 different articles about its lack of a female character on the front page of an industry website in one day. Five! Next to each other. And we can continue: the Far Cry 4 cover “scandal,” Stanley Parabble was accused of racism, Wildstar was accused of sexism, God of War, Hotline Miami, Bioshock, Divinity Original Sin, Witcher… Nobody ever dares to argue or protect his art, because it would mean instant accusation of misogyny/racism/homophobia/sexism… And then you realize that the people who are accusing others everyday have terrible conflicts of interests and very weird ethics. The pot calling the kettle black.

Do you think that the accusations of corruption are as deep as many would have us believe?

I don’t know and I don’t care. The biggest problem we have is, that there is a group of people that think they know what’s right and what’s wrong and that they have a mission to make the world a better place and protect the oppressed by any means. They don’t even care what the “oppressed” people think. They censor any feedback they don’t like. They try to censor Twitter. They think that they are better than the rest. It’s funny that they are absolutely unable to have any discussion or provide solid arguments. Have you ever seen any of them in direct confrontation with their opponents? I guess you didn’t, because they only know how to bark at others from behind the fence and then how to play victims when somebody barks back.

And they will never be happy. If you don’t have a gay character in your game, you are homophobic, if you do have gay character in your game, you are homophobic, because they don’t like the character. If women in your game look good, you are sexist, if they look bad, you are sexist, if you can fight with them, you are misogynistic, if you can’t fight with them, you are using them as objects, if you don’t have any women, because there is no correct way how to have them, you are misogynistic.

It’s a witch hunt and it’s affecting my artistic freedom.

You have been very vocal on Twitter the past week about GamerGate and in one tweet you mentioned the fear many developers have of being blacklisted. You also mentioned you put your reputation on the line by speaking out. Do you think that fear of blacklisting is justified?

When you look at the moral standards of some of those people. When you see them calling respected people with different opinions “Faded crackheads, shitlords and misogynistic basement neckbeards”. When you see that one of the biggest gaming sites (Polygon) has a blacklist of people they don’t like to hear from, what would you expect? Many people also don’t go deep into the issue and they make an opinion just based on the hysteric reaction to anonymous threats, while the whole thing is about something absolutely different.

Yes I do think that some of the journalist will not like me and our game. I believe that some people may start thinking that I support people who hate women even though I absolutely do not. I may lose some friends. But I think that fighting for freedom of speech and artistic freedom is very important. And I think that some of journalists just crossed the line and somebody should say that.

Leigh Alexander, who writes for several mainstream magazines, has a PR agency at the same time while she is an editor at Gamasutra and threatens people that “She is a megaphone that could destroy them” and says that Adam Baldwin is a “washed up crackhead”. WTF is that? How could she still have a job? And that same person is teaching us about ethics and writing articles about childish misogynistic basement trolls? Give me a break!

Will the GamerGate issue have any real effect on your approach to your upcoming game, Kingdom Come: Deliverance? That could be changing a character, a story, or part of the world.

No. We had a strong playable female character before all this started. We have gay characters in the game, and we have different minorities in the game, because all I want is to have a mature, strong story. A story that I wanted to tell for years, and I am not going to change it because of outside pressure.


Again, I want to thank Daniel Vavra for this wonderful interview and wish him the best as he works on his newest game.
 

Ninjerk

Arcane
Joined
Jul 10, 2013
Messages
14,323
Didn't know anything about his project before this. I'm going to have to seriously consider buying it now, not only because I like his position but also because it's about time we got another historic RPG.
 

Paul_cz

Arcane
Joined
Jan 26, 2014
Messages
1,996
Why can't I fucking brofist that interview post.

It's your punishment for calling basement - sklep. And generally having a ridiculous language.

Sklep is a store you silly Czech.

Hey, I didn't invent the fucking language. I agree that CZ is god damn ridiculous. Which other language has sentences like Strč prst skrz krk ?
 

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