Middle-Earth: Lord of the Mods (Private Beta I)
- Thread starter PCHighway
- Start date
aaglo
Furioso!
Excuse me, but what the frikking hell are you talking about 
tjedge1
Writer of writerly things
Gandalf and Saruman's missing mage brothers in the Lord of the Rings right? That's who I think they're talking about. The 2 that went east and was never heard form again.
Yep, there were originally five Istari; Gandalf, Saruman (who went evil), Pallando and Alatar (who went east) and Radagast (who went hippie, and started talking to birds 
).
We have to talk about something while PCH does all the work.
). We have to talk about something while PCH does all the work.
AlcTrv
Only goes to one thread.
mrtn said:and Radagast (who went hippie, and started talking to birds
*imagines Radagast, covered only by his beard, talking intimately to a rock*
Duddddde! I know! Seeeeeriously, that pebble is so out of this WORLD!
WildWeazel
Going Dutch
mrtn said:
I assume you mean the singular form of the Sindarin words Ithryn Luin? Luin may be Lui, but I'm not sure.
The Last Conformist
Irresistibly Attractive
The singular ought be Ithron Luin. Not actually attested.mrtn said:
The Last Conformist
Irresistibly Attractive
Looks too much like a fortress, too little like a city for my tastes, I'm afraid.mrtn said:OK boys, this is something I just made. I think it fits perfectly as a walled city for the high peoples (including Radagast, of course).
WildWeazel
Going Dutch
Maybe I should have looked up the meaning before I offered an answer.The Last Conformist said:
@mrtn: "just made"? looks a lot like a certain AoK building to me...
It looks a little too "High Middle Ages" for M-e, but it might work as a building icon for Gondor.Well, my view of ME cities largely is that they are fortresses, or fortresslike. You never read about the teeming casbah of Minas Tirith, but you read about the mighty walls.The Last Conformist said:
Yes, just made, as I "make" all my stuff. I never create stuff from scratch, I always steal and tweak.Weasel OP said:@mrtn: "just made"? looks a lot like a certain AoK building to me...
This has been resized, shadows and background has been fixed and the colours have been changed.
Greenlocke
Northern Hermit
mrtn said:OK boys, this is something I just made. I think it fits perfectly as a walled city for the high peoples (including Radagast, of course
Stolen from AOEII?
edit: whoops. weasol op beat me to it. It might look good in-game though. Tend to make the cities 'pop out' a bit more.
The Last Conformist
Irresistibly Attractive
Actually, one of the things that fail to thrill me about M-e is the almost total invisibility of the daily life of common people; once outside the Shire, you never hear of any farmers, and precious little of city-folk.mrtn said:Well, my view of ME cities largely is that they are fortresses, or fortresslike. You never read about the teeming casbah of Minas Tirith, but you read about the mighty walls.
(Incidentally, it may not be coincidental that the same "empty" world is found in Beowulf, and to some extent in the Icelandic sagas.)
Anyway, places like Minas Tirith may have been citadel cities, but they were still cities. Your piccie doesn't look like its got any civilian houses at all.
To be fair, Beowulf is about an incredibly hard bloke killing things, and all the scenes consist of (a) him killing something or (b) everyone talking about it afterwards. So it's not really surprising that you never meet any peasants. I agree that it's more of a gap in Tolkien, though - it might have been interesting if, say, the Rohirrim had passed through any villages on their way to Helm's Deep, or Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas had stayed at a town in Gondor after emerging from the Paths of the Dead. Although come to think of it, perhaps "interesting" is the wrong word.
WildWeazel
Going Dutch
It wouldn't be too hard to build a small city in AoK with a castle, a few houses, and some walls, and use a screenie to make city graphics.
I gave him the graphics yesterday. It looks like he has edited the width, the windows and maybe the roof, and certainly the color scheme.Weasel Op
@mrtn: "just made"? looks a lot like a certain AoK building to me...
Mithadan
I like that fortress, although the fear that it might be too high-middle ages might have merit. Hmmm. Ach, I'd rather have mrtn's fortresses than units with plate armour!
Besides that fact, we will be forced to use images like the one Mrtn posted for civilopedia icons. There is already a shortage of building icons that are suitable for use. I suspect many of the ones we can use will come from AoK.
I don't think it looks "High Middle Ages," however. Compare it to the description of Orthanc, Gondoloin, and Armenelos the Golden. In the company of those names it doesn't look too advanced at all.
AoK buildings don't blend well with Civ3 ones. I've created some medieval age city graphics for MEM and a personal MOD I once had. It took a lot of blending and blurring to even get 3 AoK buildings and statues to look decent in a city. AoK has a more "cartoonish" feel to its graphics than Civ3. AoK uses brighter colors, because much of it was hand-drawn. You however, were able to make the colors very Civ3 here. This building definitely could fit _in_ a city, just not as a stand alone city.
On the top of the agenda is Evil city graphic. We don't need "high" cities, I know you don't like SM's cities very much, but they fit best for now (see screen below). The evil culture group is lacking cities. If we are going to focus on city graphics, let's focus on that.
The problem I have with the city is its singular building. Castles aren't cities. The fort is a part of the city, not the city itself. Even Helm's Deep consisted of numerous walls, cave dwellings, and towers.
In a historical context, (real history, not fantasy) Roman forts spawned cities in England and other parts of Europe. People built up around the fort because it was safer with Roman troops there. To be honest, I don't know what came first, the forts or the towns, but I'm betting that a fort would certainly encourage population growth of an urban area. This is a real fort, from the Iron Age, I believe the site said it was Jewish:
This is the only ancient aerial photo of a fort I could find on the web. But you can see the complexities of it from this vantage point. It wasn't just a big building made of stone, with some arrow slits. It was a fort; numerous buildings that could store troops, horses, food stores, weapons & armor, and civilians. All surrounded by walls thick enough that they could be stood upon and defended.
While I appreciate the effort very much, I don't think it will float as a city. Civ3 and ME don't mix very well, and certain things have to be surrendered to Civ3's design. Yeah, many cities in ME were forts, but fort doesn't exist without a wall. In civ3, walls are separate constructs. Some things between the two simply can't blend. For these reasons, I don't think we should make city graphics look like forts, I think we should make them look like regular civ3 styled cities.
The Last Conformist
Irresistibly Attractive
No, it's the right word.Plotinus said:
I'm probably in the minority in being a Fantasy reader that tends to worry about the socioeconomic basis of it all, but, then, I've never thought authors should cater to popular tastes over mine.
Pratchett, incidentally, has some things to say about the importance of such things in faciliating the suspension of disbelief. IIRC he discusses it in the foreword to the Discworld Companion.
Edit: SM's gfx aren't as pretty as mrtn's fortress, but actually look like a city. So I prefer them.
Read Steven Brust. This is one of the reasons I think he's better than JRRT.I'm probably in the minority in being a Fantasy reader that tends to worry about the socioeconomic basis of it all, but, then, I've never thought authors should cater to popular tastes over mine.
I want to make new gfx as I don't think SM's city look like a city. PCH is fixing some houses for me. I've not given up.
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