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Codex Interview Expeditions: Conquistador Interview

Burning Bridges

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Actually if you studied history you'd know that the human knee didn't even evolve joints until somewhere just prior to World War 1. Knee joints were specifically evolved to address the threat of machine guns firing across the trenches.

(On a slightly more serious note, European warfare around this time pretty much consisted of rows of people lining up and taking turns to shoot at each other. It wasn't terribly intelligent. If we thought the introduction of stances would be a drastic improvement on our current combat, we'd do it anyway, but none of us really feels that the game is missing that feature :) )

Hm. I am sure if you studied the conquistador period well you will probably know that real Conquistador parties like Balboa, Pizarro etc carried, but didn't use firearms much. Reasons: too humid for gunpowder, too slow rate of fire (hackbut arquebuse), no clear targets. It just didn't work.

In reality, Conquistadors preferred the crossbow, because it could be operated in all conditions, with almost the same effect. The Spanish Rapier was also a favorite, fearsome weapon, because a trained soldier could easily decapacitate / kill half a dozen enemies in a minute. The natives had nothing remotely comparable to these superior steel weapons, and no experience whatsoever with this fighting style.

They wore metal armor, mostly because it was a good protection against arrows (esp. blowgun). It did however cause a lot of problems to them because it was incredibly uncomfortable (heat, dirt, infection etc), when worn all day.

Gunpowder was used mostly for psychological reasons. Same as horses, initially the Indians (Inca) were terribly frightened by them.
 

Misconnected

Savant
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Wouldn't wearing a suit of metal armor make it difficult to crouch and especially go prone?

The armour we're talking about is basically just a cuirass, or breastplate. To give you something to compare it to, a typical cuirass of the period combined with the protective clothing worn underneath it, weighs about the same as a typical modern day motorcycle jacket, and has vastly less impact on your range of motion. Pretty much the only thing a cuirass gets in the way of, is scratching yourself underneath it. I have no idea what kind of protective clothing the Conquistadores used, but given the conditions I kind of doubt it was comfortable. So... I suppose maybe armoured people should have a penalty on scratching themselves?
 

Tolknaz

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Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
I would also expect to see some indian / black faces among the party, but no women.
In reality there were sometimes women among conquistadores though. Sometimes they had a more active role too than simply being captains spouse. Ines de Suarez and Maria Estrada are probably most well known, but there were others.
 

tuluse

Arcane
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Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Wouldn't wearing a suit of metal armor make it difficult to crouch and especially go prone?

The armour we're talking about is basically just a cuirass, or breastplate. To give you something to compare it to, a typical cuirass of the period combined with the protective clothing worn underneath it, weighs about the same as a typical modern day motorcycle jacket, and has vastly less impact on your range of motion. Pretty much the only thing a cuirass gets in the way of, is scratching yourself underneath it. I have no idea what kind of protective clothing the Conquistadores used, but given the conditions I kind of doubt it was comfortable. So... I suppose maybe armoured people should have a penalty on scratching themselves?
Ok, it seemed like something that would be a problem. Thanks for the info.
 

Burning Bridges

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Soreness and heat become major problems if you carry it all day. Nothing that could be simulated in a game I'm afraid.

I would also expect to see some indian / black faces among the party, but no women.

I thought blacks weren't brought over until much later when they had trouble keeping the natives as slaves.

Yes, they only began importing black slaves in numbers when the indians turned out too fragile, and people lilke De Las Casas had protested to the Crown, out of humanity. In many ways it was a logical thing because the Indians really died like flies in the mines, and the Negros mostly survived.

But I think there would have been some black non-slaves. Can't back it up, but I'm pretty sure I remember there was at least 1 in Pizarros part, and the usual anecdote how the indian women tried to wash away the color.
 

Burning Bridges

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I would also expect to see some indian / black faces among the party, but no women.
In reality there were sometimes women among conquistadores though. Sometimes they had a more active role too than simply being captains spouse. Ines de Suarez and Maria Estrada are probably most well known, but there were others.

Never heard of that, outside of towns.

Depends on what you consider Conquistadors I guess. Cortez, Balboa, Pizarro, De Soto how many (white) women did they carry around in total? From what I know, zero.

But there would have been a lot of indian women, though, and possibly children.

P.S. I checked the names you'd given and indeed, there were some white women, at least in Cortez's party. That was really new to me.
 

Running Fox

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Question: You have 2 coders. How in gods name will you manage to scrap together even a remotely functioning AI?
Our AI is already pretty far beyond just functioning. If you care to direct your attention at our Let's Play combat demo videos, you'll see that it behaves pretty intelligently: it prioritises its targets, it uses cover, it uses the combat abilities of its characters, and it's capable of tactics such as flanking and avoiding attacks of opportunity (most of the time, it wouldn't be fun if you never got to make an AoO), etc. It's obviously going to be under continuous improvement, but it's already quite fun and challenging to play against. All of that AI was made by one of our programmers in about a week. It's not even all that technically impressive, it's just a complicated state machine, but it's a very clever state machine.
Running Cocks is a known shitposter, don't bother reasoning with him.

Do me a favor and suck my dick, will ya.


Jonas
Gee, I hope you meant behavior trees when you said state machines...
Cause how many states do you need for handle this situation in context?
5Bf4l.jpg

You will never be able to prioritize the actions before Skynet joins the server...
You'll need to either roleplay the enemy character and run, hide or whatever or game the situation to hurt the player the most, which is not trivial if the player is not a manchild (codex member).

And if you use behavior trees, I'd like a glimpse of the actual graph, I am sure, your awesome coders have it lying around, I wanna see ya prioritize the same problem... r00fles

Oh, and dont use JA2 as reference. Use chess. If your AI cant cope with a feature, dont implement it.
JA2 was absolute garbage at release (1.13 is still a larp simulator, mind ya). The enemy agents couldnt even climb roofs for Gods sake...
You could wipe out the AI in a half sleeping, drugged up state (me when posting on the dex).
- simply outrange by means of guns
- ourange by means of night vision
- grenades
- roofs
- camping on corners
- cross fire camping

Its not a game, its a retarded toy for children 5 to 10.
Fuck, the Tower of Hanoi is a harder analytical puzzle than most "games" that come out today.
And the Codex loves this garbage and calls people with a functioning brain "shitposters".
Along with the wide population of retarded fleshbags that cover this planet.
Thats why Oblivion along with Alpha Protocol and Fallout 3 New Vegas are such hits.
This larp simulator shit started infesting even strategy games, look at Paradox for examples... BLURGHGHGH

Wanna advice on how to make your banal toy into a decent puzzle?
(Let me evangelize proper thinking here a bit, definition as by Chris Crawford:
Computer game designer Chris Crawford attempted to define the term game[6] using a series of dichotomies:
- Creative expression is art if made for its own beauty, and entertainment if made for money.
- A piece of entertainment is a plaything if it is interactive. Movies and books are cited as examples of non-interactive entertainment.
- If no goals are associated with a plaything, it is a toy. (Crawford notes that by his definition, (a) a toy can become a game element if the player makes up rules, and (b) The Sims and SimCity are toys, not games.) If it has goals, a plaything is a challenge.
- If a challenge has no "active agent against whom you compete," it is a puzzle; if there is one, it is a conflict. (Crawford admits that this is a subjective test. Video games with noticeably algorithmic artificial intelligence can be played as puzzles; these include the patterns used to evade ghosts in Pac-Man.)
- Finally, if the player can only outperform the opponent, but not attack them to interfere with their performance, the conflict is a competition. (Competitions include racing and figure skating.) However, if attacks are allowed, then the conflict qualifies as a game.)
)

Add a time limit. Time limits force the player to get creative and turn a banal shit boring exercise in patience into something worthwhile.

Wanna a recent example?
Unity of Command.

Brilliant victory require you to take Kerch (nice, place, i lived there for a year) on the 2nd! fucking turn.
Me, as a veteran armchair fieldmarshal with more than 15 years of hardcore warfare behind my back, was thinking the following: no way...

1st attempt:

Well, tanks have the classic Panzer General (earlier examples pls) overrun ability, so I weaken the first 2 in the row and overrun both, and maybe I could hurt the third with some infantry.
But fuck me, how am I supposed to kill 3 more units in a corridor in one fucking single turn?

2 attempt, (i am lying, more like the tenth and days later =P )

Now, in UoC zones of control steal your movement points like in PG but you can effectively move through your own divisions and force virtual bridgeheads! Also, weak units lose their zoc kinda like in PG.

I have 4 air attacks and I essentially weaken the first 2 ivans with my landsers and fall back, do some air damage and overrun (gotta get a bit lucky with 90% chance of overrun) with the panzer.

552ZK.jpg


Now the situation looks like this with 2 zones of control that would stop my tank dead in its tracks.
Cant have that.

06GPm.jpg





Anyways, it doesnt look like your wonderful game is gonna be funded anyway, a shame, really, hexes, tb, not bad art, a setting I cant remember seeing...
Its already miles above the usual crap.
 

tuluse

Arcane
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Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong
They're up to 41k today, which is like 20k in the last 8 days or so. I give them a good shot at getting funded especially since most projects get a big boost right at the end.

Also, Alpha Protocol was no where near a hit.
 

Running Fox

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I just read that they released a smaller version of the game on the Windows Phone. :lol:
I hope it was a gamble right at the start when the OS went to market... or some kind of a contract.
Why develop for WinPhone when there is iPhone?
 

kaizoku

Arcane
Joined
Feb 18, 2006
Messages
4,129
The armour we're talking about is basically just a cuirass, or breastplate. To give you something to compare it to, a typical cuirass of the period combined with the protective clothing worn underneath it, weighs about the same as a typical modern day motorcycle jacket, and has vastly less impact on your range of motion. Pretty much the only thing a cuirass gets in the way of, is scratching yourself underneath it. I have no idea what kind of protective clothing the Conquistadores used, but given the conditions I kind of doubt it was comfortable. So... I suppose maybe armoured people should have a penalty on scratching themselves?

One thing is certain, the natives move faster on the jungle than any spaniard (armored or non-armored) could.

Is this factored in?

It would be a good trade off. Protection vs. Agility.
 

kaizoku

Arcane
Joined
Feb 18, 2006
Messages
4,129
I just read that they released a smaller version of the game on the Windows Phone. :lol:
I hope it was a gamble right at the start when the OS went to market... or some kind of a contract.
Why develop for WinPhone when there is iPhone?
check their blog
IIRC it was a stepping stone onto moving to the PC (IIRC they use the same framework? xna? not sure)
 

EG

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But how do we prove the natives are faster? There's none left. :(
 

MicoSelva

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Codex 2012 Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Divinity: Original Sin 2 Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
Just wanted to cast oa voute of appreciation for The Codex staff for conducting and publishing the interview. :salute:

As for the game, it looks pretty interesting. I will check it out after it is released, if I have time.
 

commie

The Last Marxist
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Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Divinity: Original Sin 2
Beautiful stuff, another project where I put my my money where my mouth was and did my bit. I feel like a Renaissance patron of the arts in an Italian city state or something. :smug:

Says a lot that I've spent more on kickstarters since W2 than on buying retail games over the last 6 years.
 

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