Why are Arcanum roofs weirdly flat?

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Although the original Faery Tale Adventure (1986) had flat roofs, the sequel Halls of the Dead (1997) managed a semblance of pitched roofs for a substantial portion of buildings:

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

The Origin of Flat Roof Design​

Flat roofs are also known as “low-slope” roofs with a slope of 3-12 degrees or less (against a 90-degree angle from the joists of the roof). In the past, ancient architects found it useful for castles because the design can support ramparts where the defenders of the city can make a stand with long-range weaponry.

Desert-based civilizations found flat roofs practical because it is easy to construct. Given their consistently dry weather, the design of the roof did not need to worry about strong rainstorms.

https://coxroofing.com/why-are-flat-roofs-common-on-commercial-buildings/

Flat roofs

This sounds like modern progressive revisionist codswallop.

In fact, ancient "desert" civilizations did not have flat roofs for anything larger than small huts. If you have a long enough stick then you can place it on top of a wall and form the frame of your roof. For anything larger than the length of a stick it starts to get very complicated to extend the surface.

Ancient Egyptians did not build roofs for several reasons, besides it was just not practical to do so. They would build small extensions on inner walls to provide some shade but large roofs were not feasible to be constructed. Plus large roofs are not friendly to how people used to live, for example at night people would be sleeping on the "roofs" or really top of house walls.

Other larger structures had slanted or dome shaped roofs, as it is actually possible to be constructed by using multiple pieces as the wood. The pieces naturally stack against each other so scale can be achieved.

It was not possible until very recently to build large flat roofs. Slanted and domed roofs have always been superior. Try it.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Another RPG classic ruined irreperably by Codexers and their 'tism.

What can man do against such reckless hate?

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

Because Arcanum is for trans people.

 

[Tihskael]

Although the original Faery Tale Adventure (1986) had flat roofs, the sequel Halls of the Dead (1997) managed a semblance of pitched roofs for a substantial portion of buildings:

Was this game as nice to play as it looks?

 

[Serus]

Looks for me like they stem from the same design concept Fallout roofs stem from.

It looks very silly. Like american trailerparks in the renaissance.

It make sense in Fallout games - in a post apocalyptic world you have very simple, ugly, strictly utilitarian architechture. It doesn't in Tarant - supposedly a rich city with different social classes present where everywhere you have building essentially looking like in Fallout. Troika fu***d this one. Possibly cargo cult coming from Fallout.

 

[Serus]

Although the original Faery Tale Adventure (1986) had flat roofs, the sequel Halls of the Dead (1997) managed a semblance of pitched roofs for a substantial portion of buildings:

Was this game as nice to play as it looks?

Iirc, sadly no. However i played it very little. Again, iirc, so don't take my word for gospel.

 

[Risewild]

Because they are based on the Italianate architectural style, popular during the Victorian period.
The Italianate style can also have slanted roofs, many preferred the flat roofs and like in Arcanum, having a flat roof with slanted edges.

Here's the Wikipedia page about Italianate architecture and it has plenty of pictures of buildings with a flat roof.

Here's one of those pictures:

Spoiler

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

Because they are based on the Italianate architectural style, popular during the Victorian period.
The Italianate style can also have slanted roofs, many preferred the flat roofs and like in Arcanum, having a flat roof with slanted edges.

Here's the Wikipedia page about Italianate architecture and it has plenty of pictures of buildings with a flat roof.

Here's one of those pictures:

Spoiler

Are we actually to believe that slums and jungle shacks were designed to be "Italianate"?

 

[ropetight]

OP after roofs touched him inappropriately:


After he got his revenge:

 

[Lagole Gon]

I'm going to be THAT GUY and give a real answer.
Just in case somebody here is not just pretending to be stupid.
1. It's clear that maps were, for the most part, constructed from premade elements. They are not hand-crafted to the same degree as Infinity Engine games.
2. These flat building are clearly made like this. From ready "blocks".
3. Flat roofs are easy to make. You need a main tile, edges and corners. That's it. You can make a building of any size and shape.
4. Roofs with slopes would make things way more complex. Classic roofs with ridges would require individual hand-crafting, depending of the shape of the building.

There you go.

This is how I would do it. Several tiles for each roof.

Now you need indvidual elements for every possible building size and shape.
Making 45 degrees everywhere would make things easier, but it looks rather silly.
Or go with 22,5 degrees, but now you have to pay attention to the size of the building.
Or... just go with flat and don't worry about anything.

 

[pOcHa]

Boy oh boy, let's tune in for the fallout cult for their cope why the areas in the game look absolutely dogshit.

By the way, these two games were released just a few years apart:

Fallout is supposedly good at choices and consequences, but does anyone know why did they choose to make the game so ugly and unrealistic?

no snow, nigger

light snowfall, almost just morning frost, so still no structural integrity to worry about, nigger

 

[Risewild]

Are we actually to believe that slums and jungle shacks were designed to be "Italianate"?

Yes.

 

[Serus]

Because they are based on the Italianate architectural style, popular during the Victorian period.
The Italianate style can also have slanted roofs, many preferred the flat roofs and like in Arcanum, having a flat roof with slanted edges.

Here's the Wikipedia page about Italianate architecture and it has plenty of pictures of buildings with a flat roof.

Here's one of those pictures:

Spoiler

Are we actually to believe that slums and jungle shacks were designed to be "Italianate"?

You know Italians, they can't do anyhing right expect pizza and pasta.

 

[roguefrog]

So ethier Roofist against flat roofs or the lack of Roof diversity...

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Although the original Faery Tale Adventure (1986) had flat roofs, the sequel Halls of the Dead (1997) managed a semblance of pitched roofs for a substantial portion of buildings:

Was this game as nice to play as it looks?

The developer went bankrupt while Halls of the Dead: Faery Tale Adventure II was still in development. Although the team worked for free in order to complete and release the game (which flopped commercially, having no advertising/marketing budget), this necessitated cutting some content that would otherwise have appeared (such as a large island somewhere), but it is playable and completeable without any noticeable bugs. As things are, there are three issues that hinder the game:

• Rather than allow the player to control movement directly, the game requires the player to click on the desired destination, following which all three brothers will proceed according to party order. However, the pathfinding isn't the best, so it's all too common for one or both of the trailing brothers to get stuck on something, requiring player intervention. This could have been largely avoided by either allowing direct movement or having better pathfinding (preferably both).
• Combat is designed so that the player controls only one brother per round, with the others attacking automatically. Would have been much better if combat switched to being completely turn-based with the player having manual control over all three brothers (to compensate for the lengthier combat, the number of combat encounters should have been reduced, with the XP and treasure gained per encounter increased proportionally).
• Aside from the main quest, the game barely has any kind of direction in terms of side quests; would have been better to point the player to locations, with some objective involved, but this is probably related to the rushed development post-bankruptcy.

Still a fun game, regardless, and it looks gorgeous.

 

[ShiningSoldier]

Although the original Faery Tale Adventure (1986) had flat roofs, the sequel Halls of the Dead (1997) managed a semblance of pitched roofs for a substantial portion of buildings:

Was this game as nice to play as it looks?

I didn't play the second game, but the first one was awful. They tried to create a huge open world, and they succeeded - I mean, the world is definitely huge and you can walk in any direction. The problem is, it's absolutely empty. For example, you can spend 30 minutes of real time walking west and find absolutely nothing. No magic. Combat is just "click one button", no skills, and after some time your character becomes overpowered, so the combat becomes even more boring. And of course no quests except for the main quest.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I didn't play the second game, but the first one was awful. They tried to create a huge open world, and they succeeded - I mean, the world is definitely huge and you can walk in any direction. The problem is, it's absolutely empty. For example, you can spend 30 minutes of real time walking west and find absolutely nothing. No magic. Combat is just "click one button", no skills, and after some time your character becomes overpowered, so the combat becomes even more boring. And of course no quests except for the main quest.

There is no "they" in regard to the original Faery Tale Adventure: it was created by one person - design, programming, graphics, sound, and even music - in seven months in 1986, on a new type of computer that arrived in stores September 1985.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Now I'm wondering if there are mod toolsets for the Faerie Tale games. Gah!