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| Thread: for all those necro lovers |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 · «PREV |
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Gerdash
Responsible
Famous Hero
from the Animated Peace
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posted July 18, 2003 10:50 PM |
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Quote:
Creatures are given a name depending on what they look like or what they can do, not on what they truely are.
Imagine I want to make a game with a "super zombie", able to suck blood, to regenerate and to turn into a bat-looking creature, what name should I give it ?
i expect i am also free to express my opinion about it (and explain my change of mind in the process):
if you named it a vampire, i can imagine you would get player complaints about your creatures not being the mythological creatures that are known by that name. or if you named it something else, those players could wish for an appropriate mythological creature instead. for some players (like me) this is the main reason they like/don't like the game (there is always the 'as true as possible' thing, of course).
if you don't have a good mythology source to reason your design, you might be in a somewhat uncomfortable situation with those players.
actually there was vampire mythology before bs-s dracula book. so it would be best if you found your mythology source from there. then you could say that your vampire interpretation is the mythological interpretation that outdates the modern commercial one. btw as far as i remember, finding something like that might not be so extremely hopeless, i.e. i vaguely remember someone mentioning something like that.
it was like:
me:
'actually my own reasoning against it is pretty much the same. i fail to see why not.'
emperorsly:
'vampire is got by giving special treatment (i.e. vampire-bite) to a LIVING person'
reminding me that the legend i know is not totally indifferent about the upgrade, they favour the pre-death thing and don't say anything about alternatives, so i don't think i can support the idea of upgrading another undead into vamp anymore because of this. also, doing a serious vamp research is too low priority for me atm.
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Lith-Maethor
Honorable
Legendary Hero
paid in Coin and Cleavage
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posted July 19, 2003 12:03 AM |
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damn...
I knew I had forgotten something... the very thing that would help me back my opinion up... (ofcourse I'm refering to the vamp/zombie thing...)
"true necromancer"? ...if you are refering to the "somebody who predicts the future using corpses" then yes, I remember ...not very hard... it is a greek word after all  ...of course since the dawn of Fantasy, the title is used for dark magic users that raise corpses and/or command the undead, so I guess it is almost as "true" as the RL one...
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You are suffering from delusions of adequacy.
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Wildbear
Hired Hero
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posted July 19, 2003 03:21 AM |
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All right, so, what is an elf ? The old legend of a gnome-like creature, or the elf invented by Tolkien ?
And what is a golem ? It's a man made of earth !
There is only one Minotaur, one Pegasus, one Medusa (other gorgons were looking diffferent), as well as there are only seven Arch-Angel. The Minotaur is supposed to have the feet of a man, does he ? The medusa should turn anyone she look at into stone (and should have a serpent body), does she ?
What is the legend behind the Gargantuan ? Is there any legend about halflings ? Is there any voodoo in the game who raises zombies ? Or any vampire in the army when in H4 the necromancer raises his first vampire ? Do vampires bite their enemies in H4 ? Do they turn into dust when the sun shines, do they fear the cross on the paladin when they see it ? The vampires in H4 may look like vampires, but they already have nothing to do with the vampires you're talking about, and noone here talks about that ? How strange.
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Lith-Maethor
Honorable
Legendary Hero
paid in Coin and Cleavage
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posted July 19, 2003 09:56 AM |
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it all comes down to choices...
it depends on the myth the developers choose to follow... sometimes it is based on popularity (Elves is a fine example) ...other times in functionality (vamps would be an example ...and yes, the vorpal sucking of HoMM4, sucks... pun intended ...IMO, the claw attack of the Vamp in HoMM3 would be far better...) ...I can think of at least 3 different myths were vampires can walk during the day and more than 20 saying that religious artifacts have no effect whatsoever....
as far as the monsters in greek mythology go, yes, most of them were just one creature and not a race ...medusae were 3 sisters, with Gorgo the mortal one... all three looked pretty much the same yet only the mortal one could stone people (all of them but that wouldn't work that well in a game would it?) ...and just for the record, the whole half-serpent look was first shown in a harryhousen (sp?) film... same as the Age of Mythology Cyclops... the HoMM4 medusa is closer to the original... no wings tho...
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You are suffering from delusions of adequacy.
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Gerdash
Responsible
Famous Hero
from the Animated Peace
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posted July 19, 2003 11:56 AM |
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wildbear:
the fact that we do not discuss everything in a post does not necessarily mean that we think there are no problems. imho my posts are rather on the longer side already.
btw some of those topics have been discussed. i guess it was about a year ago. unfortunately, most of the proposed solutions would have made the game very tiresome to play.
the zombie to vamp thing would be an elegant solution, if abundance of unsupporting legends had not made it considerably less elegant. i am sure there are other good solutions possible. excluding the zombie to vampire upgrade (that lets you upgrade an already recruited zombie) would be a minor problem compared to e.g. separating turns into day and night.
some people explain that you could think of it in terms of what price you have to pay to get some gain.
i usually prefer to think of it in a bit different way. as far as creatures are concerned, i like to think of the homm world rules as a not-to-be-changed environment and then try to fit the mythological creatures into it the best i can. who said that the vampire would turn into bat to move on the battlefield? but somehow the vampire is associated with the bat, and it would be nice to reflect it somehow in the creature design.
i am not demanding broad daylight on the battlefield or that the vampire should suck blood with his fingers or whatever, i am just not complaining about it. the moment i start to complain is when i see that a better solution could have been possible. so far i think that the absence of night-time is just caused by the level of abstraction and a different type of bloodsucking might mess up animations.
but what i am really upset with is e.g. the homm4 vampire outfit. nothing would change for worse in the playability if the vampire had a proper outfit. i have got the impression that the designers wanted to add diversity with the futuristic fantasy look of the vampire, and imho their attitude was stupid to the extreme. well, it has been discussed more extensively than needed, i guess it's no use to start it again (i guess i just did it, i hope no one is interested in the fashion topic anymore).
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Wildbear
Hired Hero
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posted July 19, 2003 03:58 PM |
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So now, tell me why people don't want vampires to have a special attack to convert enemies into vampires or the "raise vampires" ability (as a post battle necromancy ability) being available only when there are vampires in the army.
When I read what you write, it sounds like you want the vampire to be exactly like vampires, but you don't even write anything about that ability vampires should have. Those behavior are deeply illogical, aren't they ?
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Gerdash
Responsible
Famous Hero
from the Animated Peace
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posted July 20, 2003 12:04 PM |
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well, imho it would be interesting to discuss the raising vampires thing, especially if you have a good idea how it could be implemented?
i don't like raising them through necromancy, no matter if you have them in your army or not.
the trouble is that the vamps are quite high level and imho there should be some way to limit their numbers (if you remember the problem with homm2 ghosts).
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there's another point that the vamps aren't really armed. i have always been doubtful about their defense or retal ability.
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if someone wants to say that you always need a vampire to make a new vampire, then i ask: how did the first mythological vampire become a vampire?
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Wildbear
Hired Hero
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posted July 20, 2003 06:40 PM |
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Three parts, three answers 
1- I think vampires should have a special attack to turn opponents into vampires and/or a low percentage of raised creatures could be vampires when there is a vampire in the army, for example, this would represent troops that were dying but not dead yet on the battlefield.
The special attack would be less powerful than the real attack and would not restore their health points, and only a percentage of the troops killed with this attack would become vampires. Correctly balanced, there wouldn't be the same problem as what happened with ghosts in H2.
2- Their victims are paralyzed, but I think this should not be automatic. For example, it could affect only living creatures, of the same or lower level from a stack having a lower value in peons. This would explain the fear and why they do not retaliate. Of course it would have to be balanced.
3- Maybe the first vampire was a zombie which transformed into a mutant after some frankenstein-like experiment and thanks to the power of a necro-alchimist, he became a vampire
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CountZero
Adventuring Hero
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posted July 21, 2003 10:02 AM |
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Quote:
this would be interesting. would you tell the source of this info? what did you mean by 'high up out of the way places?' the whole gargoyle topic was quite intriguing already, i.e. using demons to guard e.g. a church.
I cannot find an exact Internet source but here are some interesting urls showing pagan/occult influences in gargoyles:
http://www.sfmoma.org/espace/rsub/project/bluedot/gargs/g2.html
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/6698/DEVIL.HTM
There are plenty of sites showing links between certain gargoyles and pagan deities.
Also there are many many sites that expound a link between stonemasons and satan worship. Usually these sites contain some endtimes fanatic rambling on:
http://www.geocities.com/loinexplicado/ocultism/mason.htm
http://www.endtimeprophecy.net/~tttbbs/EPN-1/Articles/Articles-Romn/gargoy-2.html
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Gerdash
Responsible
Famous Hero
from the Animated Peace
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posted July 23, 2003 01:03 AM |
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countzero:
what's so evil about fertility? ok, there are many more types of pagan symbols than gargoyles to be found in churches. imho the contradiction is probably the gap between reality of human nature and abstract christian philosophy, or whatever, lol.
i feel tempted to say my mouth about religion, but my mouth would get tired before the discussion would end.
interesting that you included the third one among the fanatic rambling.
i still don't think that the gargoyles were meant to welcome any undead.
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actually i would expect the cerberi to have extra damage against undead as they were the guardians of underworld that were supposed to keep the dead from getting out. and even better reasoning would imho be that the dogs like bones.
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lith:
'I knew I had forgotten something... the very thing that would help me back my opinion up... (ofcourse I'm refering to the vamp/zombie thing...)'
and i had also forgotten something. often becoming a zombie must be decided before the death of a person also. i would even say that more often than not. when we draw from the dracula legend for the vampire, why don't we draw from comparable legends for the zombie?
it seems that i am getting more and more interested in the way the zombie and the vampire and the ghoul looked like before the most well known modern fantasy.
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CountZero
Adventuring Hero
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posted July 23, 2003 04:42 AM |
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Quote:
countzero:
i still don't think that the gargoyles were meant to welcome any undead.
Yes, my evidence was pretty lame in the end. I wish I could just find a good authorative source for this topic. It is known that certain gargoyles represent pagan deities and devils and that the church would not approve if it had known. It is also known that there were medieaval stonemasons that were on the dark side, but the whole topic has been hijacked by these fanatics who want to prove that everything is the work of the devil so that they can frighten people into believing that we are living at the end of time.
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Gerdash
Responsible
Famous Hero
from the Animated Peace
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posted July 23, 2003 01:20 PM |
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as far as i understand, the pagans didn't want to attract evil with the gargoyle type of figures. they said 'fertility' and 'scaring away evil spirits.'
and as far as i understand, the mansons weren't concentrating on destruction, but i would rather expect them to have emphasized working devotedly. so i would rather expect them to be somewhat similar to alchemists and the like.
actually, as far as i understand, people usually aren't destructive enough to live up to the reputation of a satanist the way the christians describe it. they may lack self-criticism or whatever, but usually people don't want bad things to happen without getting any benefit.
even if you found some source about some extremists, the mainstream interpretation would still have to prevail imho.
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edit: about the vampire mythology.
reading some mythology and folklore, it looked like vampires and zombies were smoetimes not very clearly distinguished. it looked like any walking dead is already mysterious enough for the medieval people, not like modern people are used to zombies being stupid and mindless in horror movies.
so maybe the upgrade that starts from zombie and ends with vampire wouldn't be that bad. the problem is that the folk stories don't seem to concentrate on a zombie making a career to become a vampire, but why should they?
it was some time ago that i read those texts, but i didn't write about them at once, so quite a bit of time passed and i forgot the locations of the exact quotes. found a bookmark with more or less similar attitude folk tales at
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/folktexts.html
index entry on Vampire and Ghost Stories from Russia
and just something somewhat interesting imho:
http://members.tripod.com/~Kekrops/Mythology_Vampire.html
Quote:
To end the wanderings of the vampire a stake must be driven through its heart with one blow of a mallet; two blows would wake him up. The head is then cut off and placed between the legs. Once the vampire is "killed," the body turns immediately to dust, or to the state of corporeal corruption that would be natural to the time period following the "first death." Often the body is also cremated to make certain of the destruction of the body. According to some tales, care must be taken during the cremation not to allow any of the vermin(snakes & lizards) associated with or contained within the vampire's body to escape destruction; if any do escape, the vampire will grown from these to flourish anew.
Quote:
There are many who become vampires after their death. Their commonest denominator is that there was some irregularity in their burial rites; for this reason their souls are not permitted to rest and they are doomed to walk the earth until their corpse has been properly buried, the original irregularity being corrected. The list of "potential vampires" includes primarily those refused the burial sacraments of the church because they had been excommunicated, or had died unabsolved of their sins in life, had been suicides, or died by drowning. Those who died especially violent deaths were refused proper burial; those killed by lightning are refused burial because their deaths are attributed directly to the wrath of God. Those especially wicked in life are buried in unhallowed ground, as are suspected sorcerers. Those dying while under the curse of a witch, second generation illegitimate children, still-born babies, unbaptized children, the seventh out of seven children born to one family, anyone touched by the blood of the vampire, anyone with a caul(this only in the Slavic nations; in other countries, a baby born with the caul is considered lucky.) the baby of a pregnant woman who doesn't eat salt or who is seen by a vampire, or anyone who is killed by a vampire will become, after his burial, a vampire. Emphasizing the close connection between the vampire and the werewolf, anyone who is a werewolf in life will be a vampire after death; the offspring of the union between a witch and a werewolf is also a vampire. A corpse over which a cat or dog jumps, or upon which the shadow of one of these animals falls will become a vampire. A vampire may also be a soul in revolt against the natural order of the universe, one who doesn't wish to relinquish his material body at death and thus returns to walk the earth. The incidents of vampire attacks increase as does an epidemic since anyone who is killed by one, becomes one.
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A method of destruction used in China was to place red rice, peas and pieces of iron around the grave of a vampire at night, when he returned to his grave before dawn he would not able to pass into the earth, and so would be rendered powerless when the sun rose. Another variation was used in Greece. There, some vampires were transported during the day to an island. The vampire cannot cross water, so there were effectively isolated.
Quote:
The second myth concerns Lilith, the first wife of Adam in the Bible. Lilith was created at the same time as Adam, from the same clay as he was, and therefore his equal in all things. She refused to be subservient to Adam, developed wings, and flew from him. The angels found her hiding place and told her that her punishment for leaving Adam would be that all children born to her would die. Deep in sorrow, she contemplated suicide. The angels took pity on her and gave her full power over all babies born for their first week of life.
Moderator's note:This topic has been closed, as it refers to an older version of the game. To discuss Heroes 3, please go to Library Of Enlightenment, to discuss Heroes 4, please go to War Room Of Axeoth, to discuss Heroes 5, go to Temple Of Ashan.
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