Jump to content

Smithing/metallurgy; shields; campfires


Zabuzaxsta

Recommended Posts

I see swords more as hand made improvised weapons, not forged and smithed. For example, you could get a rod from a welded construction just simply applying enough force at welded point. If in the game a hand drill would be implemented, player could make some alterations to the sword and with rasp or file implemented, the rod could be made  sharp. Same with axes, pikes, yet nothing complicated and really durable. Personally, I don't see how forging from ore could be done in zombie apocolipse.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

in reference to the question about logging companies, there are in fact 3 logging companies in or near Muldraugh alone http://www.yellowpages.com/muldraugh-ky/logging-companies

 

and Manta.com has 313 logging companies in the state of Kentucky http://www.manta.com/mb_44_E019B_18/logging/kentucky

 

the devs are using the actual town's as the model for the map. helps to remember that

 

as for blacksmiths in or near Muldraugh, 2 results. 1 in Louisville, 1 in Radcliff

http://yellowpages.aol.com/blacksmiths/ky/muldraugh/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yep, logging  company in a small town  (or being main reason a town is formed)is . . . well.

A staple of the Canadian lumber trade?
 

 

 

Simple metal crafting would be better all around to implement than actual forging. Take the aforementioned rod. Sharpen it to a point, tie it to a sturdy stick using some hand made rope and you got yourself a nice spear.

Yep, or creating an edge on a flat piece of metal.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I do know several, actually, and the 3,000 number is actually off (it's closer to 4,000), and is only the number of people officially enrolled in the artist's-blacksmiths association of north america.  None of them are enrolled in the association; I think it's a safe bet that there are far more than 4000 blacksmiths in the country right now.  I think it's interesting you would assert I know none when I actually do.  Furthermore, you completely ignored my point about the logging company.  The chances of there being a major logging company in a tiny little town in Kentucky are similarly slim (with regards to the blacksmith possibility).

 

Interesting that you only mention it now after a coupla pages of discussion- my apologies for making that assumption, but I figured that if you did know some that would be very relevant to bring up much before this. I hope you can understand my confusion that you only told us you know some after I said you didn't. Curious coincidences aside, as has been said there are logging companies in Muldraugh as it's based off of the real Muldraugh. And as has been said, there are no blacksmiths. So.

 

Also, your quoted 4000 (which I'm assuming is sourced from the article you linked below) includes both hobbyists and professionals- we already know there are no professionals (which probably makes up the majority of them) in Muldraugh, so that would leave only hobbyists anyways, meaning the number is likely much smaller. And for small craft skills like that, many people tend to stay connected in communities like that, so it's a reasonable assumption that a high proportion are indeed registered. When hobbyists go to learn stuff like that, the association is usually there to help learn, provide materials, and recommend providers for equipment.

 

 

I have checked my facts.  The sort of open fires necessary for a forge are illegal within city limits.  I get what you're saying, that people would obviously move just beyond the city limits to do their stuff, but this really isn't an economically feasible business model.  You'd be far from your customer base.  The people that do this are probably the ones smithing for art and whatnot, and your assertion that this represents all of the smithers in existence needs to be backed up.  You need correct zoning or permits to do so in large cities, and if you're saying people do it outside of the city limits you've just proven my point - that people don't do this in big cities.  There are absolutely laws against having this in your garage, as it could easily cause a fire in such an unventilated area and burn down half of your neighborhood.  I've had the police called on me for making charcoal once, and they politely requested that I stop doing it or they'd arrest me next time.  Here's a reference to some people griping about it within the city limits: http://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/1253-neighborhood-blacksmithing/

 

You appear to be misunderstanding the difference between large open fires and enclosed fires within proper facilities. They aren't the same. The only limitations are for industrial sized units or open, outdoor fires in general. And, interestingly, also misunderstanding how most forges work for people who do forging seriously, which is curious since you know so many blacksmiths and have indeed done it yourself. A forge with proper ventilation and enclosed isn't agains the law (and in fact cannot be against the law, because people use both wood burning stoves and wood pellet stoves in houses and garages constantly).

 

 

 Being able to run 5-6 miles is something that the average American can't even hope to do.  I live in a dense, urban walking area and going 1-2 miles in the heat or cold can make you pretty damn tired (and I'm in decent shape).  Most people aren't in shape like that, and couldn't get in shape like that within a few weeks.  Additionally, you never addressed my point that lots of people lack the coordination to run.  I've been to run clubs numerous times in my life and trust me, there are PLENTY of people who just lack the basic coordination to do anything more than a fast jog (and these people are in shape).  But fine, we'll assume the character is fit enough (against all statistical evidence about people in the US) and has the type of body (coordination, posture, running form)  to make sustained sprinting while carrying tons of crap feasible due to your "it's the way the game is designed to be played and the way it's meant to be balanced" argument.

 

 You have to chose athletic in the character options to even stand a chance of running a fraction of the distance to Muldraugh. You have played this game, right? You're going to be exhausted and chugging along, constantly fighting being winded the entire way if you run it. Further, 5.8 miles is not that far at all. Any person who can walk can walk that in an hour or two. Average walking speed for a human is 3.1 miles per hour. So we'll say two hours. You play as an average person in PZ. If you take Overweight, it takes way longer in-game time. But I think all of this is just bluster to hide your hilarious original assertion that it should take days to walk 6 miles.

 

 

 

Additionally, you never addressed my point that lots of people lack the coordination to run.

 

I specifically did address this point. I'm doing my best to be nice here, but if you think that "lots of people" lack the coordination to move faster than a walk... I don't know what to tell you. If you're referring to obese people, that's covered by the game's trait systems anyways. You are not playing as an obese person. You are not playing as a cripple. You are playing as an average person. It's taken me a good 10 minutes to pose a nice-ish reply to this assertion, it's just... I don't have the words. I'm sorry if this came off rude.

 

 

Most varieties of vegetables and whatnot are seedlees, or contain inert seeds (this is to encourage you to come back to the store and buy more).  Learning how to harvest and dry seeds is extremely plant-specific and something that is completely outside of the skillset of most people.  It's something, in fact, most people couldn't figure out without training (to one of your own arguments) - they get moldy, aren't harvested at the right time, etc.  I've tried growing numerous things in numerous places (such as tomatoes, citrus, eggplant, squash, etc.) and without fertilizer or top quality soil it was HARD.  Maybe you're just projecting your skill onto other people when you assert all it takes is putting some water on them.  My tomatoes have had early blight, late blight, septoria, aphids, and so forth and without fertilizer would rarely produce and when they did the yields were super small.  It also doesn't take 5 days to grow cabbage.  Now the developers have incorporated some of this (such as the diseases), but they've streamlined and easy-fied it for fun.  Yet another of my arguments that can go under your "spirit of the game" argument.

 

The place I work sells seeds. Seedless varieties are actually fairly uncommon- much more common are those with inert seeds, as you say. But there's still a full set of seeds that do pollinate and reproduce- easily half of our stock. Again, misinformation adds little to a logical debate. And as you've said- sickness is already in the game, as is fertilizer. So. It's really some very basic simplifications for an already tenable idea- will get back to this later.

 

 

I think you are radically underestimating the trial and error process.  Try different things, see if they work/improve your result, then remember said things. Also, you didn't respond to my point about how "the technical knowledge behind smithing was learned over millennia and is not something you can magically intuit" is not a good argument.  The same can be said of carpentry, which is definitely in the game.

 

You're making sweeping generalizations. Carpentry is something that you can look at, puzzle out, and learn. I've built a cabin from scratch. Carpentry is a logic puzzle- you can feel it, you can see it, and it's just a matter of solving problems. And carpentry has been done since the dawn of time, far, far before forging was ever a thing. I think sometimes that you're intentionally being obtuse- a simple look at history proves you in arguably incorrect here- do you even believe the assertions you're making?

 

 Forging is not this way. I don't know how to make you understand any more clearly- with no way to identify metals and alloys you have no way to know what you're smelting, and different metals have to be treated differently. There's not an endless supply of exactly identical scrap metal sitting around for you to try on, and if it's a different composition it could be entirely different to work with even if mainly the same thing. Even different steel alloys are massively different to work with. But more than that, this isn't a logic puzzle. It's stuff that was found out over generations, or things that were found in a laboratory by industrial company's chemists. There's a reason mankind didn't forge metals for thousands of years, and it's not because of the lack of charcoal. If you really think that's it, then I have once again ran out of polite words for you.

 

About the article you've linked- I've read it before. If you'd used the search function before posting this thread, you probably could have even found my response to it. But it comes down to foreknowledge, which you're conveniently ignoring once again. The average person doesn't understand the heats necessary to forge metal, nor would they ever think to try most of this. And claiming you can do stuff like this with garage variety tools is a huge oversimplification- there's a reason people have arc welders, and it's not because they have money to waste. It's because they need them to do the things they do. Obviously a soldering iron isn't going to cut it, and nothing else is going to withstand the heat of the forge.

 

 

 

nothing about quenching techniques and the tips for techniques for shaping metal are things that are easily intuitable

 

This in particular makes me see red a little. If you're not quenching right you will ruin what you're trying to make. I just... are you just making things up?

 

I've seen the little trash can forges before- you realize they're usually lined in extremely specialized masonry foam and the like? Again, already responded to this last time it was brought up and I actually went to the trouble of calling around trying to find the materials. I live in a town roughly 3x the size of Muldraugh and no one in town, even with all of the places I tried combined, and the neighboring towns, could provide the materials it would take to make this happen. Also, the little weber grill models and trash can models can't forge strong metals like iron and steel- most can barely melt tin cans, and the melting point for tin is still much below what it takes to make iron maleable.

 

 

And here is why I kept granting all of your simplifications - when you look at them in their totality, every sort of simplification required to get smithing in the game is already something the devs have done with another skill in some way.

 

Frankly. No. That's not true at all. The devs simplify realistic things that every average human being in the world can either do or figure out in an afternoon. The assertion that this is somehow equivalent to an advanced technical skill that is either past down through years of apprenticeship or technical degrees is laudable for it's brashness but has no basis in reality.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just to put this cooking (etc) = blacksmithing thing to rest one and for all, let me try to clarify the difference for everyone in very small, easy to understand terms:

 

Cooking:

 

Easy to do

No prior knowledge necessary for basics

Has many easy steps that anyone could follow that would be very time consuming to add to the game

 

Cooking is simplified because no one wants to spend 45 minutes in real life slicing each carrot in a game- we all know that a human being is capable of slicing a carrot. There is no specialized skill involved. This is why it's not required in the game, not because slicing carrots is so fucking hard that we need to step outside of realism to make it fit in the game.

 

Blacksmithing:

 

Not easy to do

Requires foreknowledge of procedures, set-up, and technical skills

Has many complicated steps that would be very time consuming to add to the game

 

Blacksmithing, if it were a viable, realistic choice, would be simplified to add into the game, too. Probably wouldn't require every little bit of duct work for the forge, and probably wouldn't require every single tool a blacksmith uses. But it's not a viable, realistic choice.

 

Simplifying something anyone can do for gameplay reasons ≠ Simplifying something that very few people are capable of

 

I hope this illustrates the non sequitur of this argument in a simple to digest way.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

So I'll address these one by one.  425/60 = (approximately) 15%.

Not sure why he brought up that number

Because I'm A GENIUS!!! I wish I was anyways...

I enjoy observing people with excessive vocabularies argue, partaking in this is essentially the best way I expand my language skills.  However, I have come to notice that neither of you have made an impression on the other, and I feel like those in support of blacksmithing are blatantly ignoring the supportive facts on how unlikely these things are.  Forgive my exaggerations, but after reading the article multiple times, this is how I perceive your responses.

"Well, you can make soup, SO YOU'RE A MASTER CHEF OMG.  So that obviously translates to being able to melt down metal and make weapons.  I don't know where we got the casts from, or the heat, or the sturdy base, or the tools, nor will we ever bother to explain that past "rarely in random houses", but if you ignore all those things suddenly smithing seems plausible!  So it is realistic!"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nota Bene what he's actually suggesting is forging rather than casting. Forging only requires metals to be heated to just under their liquid point, where casting actually involves making a mold and pouring heated liquid metal into it. As far as how plausible they both are, it's a moot difference, but it should be noted anyways.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cooking is completely unrealistic, and I'm not quite sure how you can possibly argue otherwise.  Yes, some nice cooked vegetables would be good in the apocalypse, but vegetables boiled in water would not.  They'd be god awful, and the water would taste unbelievably bad.  You need stock (which is itself a whole 'nother process) and some salt to make it at least halfway decent.  Finally, you don't make soup by boiling vegetables.  You cook the vegetables in some way, then add them to the pot of stock and salt to make soup.  Again, boiled vegetables in water would taste terrible, no matter what your situation was, and it wouldn't make the vegetables somehow magically "better" as it does in the game.  Fresh tomatoes would taste waaay better than if you put those tomatoes into a pot and boiled them for an hour.  Also, pretty much all vegetables need to dressed in some way before being put in the pot, another thing which is left out.  But again, let's go ahead and let all of this slide according to your "it's the way the game is designed to be played and the way it's meant to be balanced" argument.

 

Making soup from scratch is not hard.  I've done it myself.

Yes, good soup requires stock or broth.  The cool thing is that broth is super easy to make.  You boil stuff in water to make broth.  Boil meat, like chicken or beef, and it pulls all the oils and fats from the meat and makes broth.  Boil vegetables, and it pulls all the oils and juices out of the vegetables and makes broth.  Add some simple spices like salt or garlic or basil and you've got some tasty broth, vegetable or meat.

To illustrate how simple making broth is, please consult these recipes:

 

Allrecipes.com vegetable broth

 

Allrecipes.com chicken broth

 

To make these two things into soup, add vegetables and/or meat.  Being that you already used those things to make the broth by boiling them in water, you really do just boil vegetables and/or meat in water and add spices to make soup.

 

The secret to being a good cook (not a chef, a cook) is starting from a good recipe.  I guess it's a good thing Project Zomboid has cook books.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think you are radically underestimating the trial and error process.  Try different things, see if they work/improve your result, then remember said things.  Also, you didn't respond to my point about how "the technical knowledge behind smithing was learned over millennia and is not something you can magically intuit" is not a good argument.  The same can be said of carpentry, which is definitely in the game.  Additionally, learning how to build multiple-story structures and how to support those structures adequately is something that typically takes an engineering degree, and along the lines of your argument should therefore be unlearnable in the game.  If you gave someone with no carpentry experience a log and a saw and said "cut a board" I really doubt they'd be able to do it until after months of practice, but your character starts off being able to do this.

 

I am a skilled woodworker and I can comfortably say that carpentry in Project Zomboid is quite realistic.

 

Building multiple story structures, admittedly, is quite difficult and probably should have stricter limits, but it isn't too far a stretch past everything else that can be done in an already implemented and believable game system.

 

Building a simple staircase, storage crate, fence, door, or table is not difficult.  Being that, without adding points into the carpentry skill, these items all look terrible when you first build them in Project Zomboid makes the system completely believable.  The only thing I might recommend is that carpentry require hammer, nails, AND a saw be in the player's primary inventory for all recipes but I'm not too bothered if it isn't.

 

It would not take months of practice to be able to saw a usuable board from a log.  It would take maybe an hour of practice.  We're talking a usuable board that you can use to make a door (big, flat rectangle) or a storage crate (several small, flat rectangles attached together).  You're not sawing a board that you can make into a baroque chest of drawers.

 

A good example of how practical and realistic the carpenty skill and recipes of Project Zomboid are is the rain collectors.  Making a crate or barrel water-tight would involve coopering which is a highly specialized, specific carpentry skill you could NOT learn without an apprenticeship.  That PZ requires an already water-tight trashbag in the recipe shows that a lot of thought went into making that recipe and the carpentry skill as a whole quite believable.

Edited by Art Falmingaid
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Interesting that you only mention it now after a coupla pages of discussion- my apologies for making that assumption, but I figured that if you did know some that would be very relevant to bring up much before this. I hope you can understand my confusion that you only told us you know some after I said you didn't. Curious coincidences aside, as has been said there are logging companies in Muldraugh as it's based off of the real Muldraugh. And as has been said, there are no blacksmiths. So.

 

Also, your quoted 4000 (which I'm assuming is sourced from the article you linked below) includes both hobbyists and professionals- we already know there are no professionals (which probably makes up the majority of them) in Muldraugh, so that would leave only hobbyists anyways, meaning the number is likely much smaller. And for small craft skills like that, many people tend to stay connected in communities like that, so it's a reasonable assumption that a high proportion are indeed registered. When hobbyists go to learn stuff like that, the association is usually there to help learn, provide materials, and recommend providers for equipment.

 

My original post was about incorporating something into the game, you said the idea was ridiculous, we talked about probability distributions for a while, then I responded to your lengthy critique (in which you asserted I must not know anything about this) by saying actually it's I've done some stuff like this with friends before.  That doesn't seem odd at all.  You're right, it has been a couple of pages, but as someone else pointed out we're being verbose.

 

Also, there does seem to be some room for "artistic license."  Maybe you disagree, and think the only things that should be included in the maps are things that are actually present in the locations they model.  That's certainly a viable opinion, and one that is obviously striving for exact realism.  The thing then would be to drive to Muldraugh and check each person's residence and farm and see if there's anyone who practices smithing.  I think this is a little extreme, and my position is more that "Eh, there's a not-too-ridiculous chance that someone who knows how to smith and has some basic tools lives in small-town Kentucky", but you obviously disagree.  My point with the logging company is that there are rare things in small towns sometimes, that's all.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on how many smiths are registered.  I just don't think that there's a high rate of that amongst people doing it for basic, utilitarian metal shaping in their rural community.  I'm a homebrewer, and I've turned several friends on to it, and none of them joined any organization.  I understand that's not perfectly analogous to smithing; I'm just trying to say that enrollment in clubs/associations is always going to be a part (large or small) of the total amount of practitioners.

 

 

 

You appear to be misunderstanding the difference between large open fires and enclosed fires within proper facilities. They aren't the same. The only limitations are for industrial sized units or open, outdoor fires in general. And, interestingly, also misunderstanding how most forges work for people who do forging seriously, which is curious since you know so many blacksmiths and have indeed done it yourself. A forge with proper ventilation and enclosed isn't agains the law (and in fact cannot be against the law, because people use both wood burning stoves and wood pellet stoves in houses and garages constantly).

 

I've bolded these parts because you're definitely right about them, and so few people observe them.  I linked to at least one discussion where several people admitted to having a forge that wasn't strictly speaking legal.  You're right, you can do this sort of stuff in the city limits if you get it up to code, but most people don't want to waste money on it and give up on the idea or move to somewhere more conducive (i.e. more rural, less nosiness).  I suppose we should both look up statistics on the distribution of smiths across rural and urban areas.

 

 

 

 You have to chose athletic in the character options to even stand a chance of running a fraction of the distance to Muldraugh. You have played this game, right? You're going to be exhausted and chugging along, constantly fighting being winded the entire way if you run it. Further, 5.8 miles is not that far at all. Any person who can walk can walk that in an hour or two. Average walking speed for a human is 3.1 miles per hour. So we'll say two hours. You play as an average person in PZ. If you take Overweight, it takes way longer in-game time. But I think all of this is just bluster to hide your hilarious original assertion that it should take days to walk 6 miles.

 

Ok, so I'll try to make this point more clear, as I (admittedly) don't think I did a good job the first time.  If I said days, I was in error.  I also was not aware that the distance was that short IRL.  However, I still think it is unrealistic.  I don't have such a character, but I've seen YouTube videos (unfortunately, I do not know if they were "hacked" or not) of someone running to West Point with level 5 sprinting and whatever perk it is that lets you run longer.  They had to stop around 7-8 times, I believe, and perhaps less.  Given that the distance is 6 miles, this means that character was sprinting a little less than a mile at a time, which is unrealistic.  Olympic athletes cannot sprint that long; I believe 400 meters is usually taken to be the longest sprint in such events.  Also, one's character can do the sprint to West Point and still stay awake for 12 hours or more that day.  This is also extremely unrealistic.  I'm not complaining, just trying to point out fudges like these make the game more fun, and that it's not perfectly realistic (which is your main argument for why forging should not be included - it's excessively unrealistic).

 

 

 

I specifically did address this point. I'm doing my best to be nice here, but if you think that "lots of people" lack the coordination to move faster than a walk... I don't know what to tell you. If you're referring to obese people, that's covered by the game's trait systems anyways. You are not playing as an obese person. You are not playing as a cripple. You are playing as an average person. It's taken me a good 10 minutes to pose a nice-ish reply to this assertion, it's just... I don't have the words. I'm sorry if this came off rude.

 

When I said run, I meant sprint.  And yes, lots of people are incapable of doing anything more than a jog.  If we're talking about the average American person, it's not at all unrealistic to assert that this is exceedingly difficult for most people.  And no, one does not start off the game with it being exceedingly difficult to sprint.  There are lots of studies out there about how high in fat our diet is, and how increasingly sedentary American society is.  Your assertion that the "average person" can sprint for a couple blocks (at first, later in the game close to a mile as I noted above) is simply false.

 

 

 

You're making sweeping generalizations. Carpentry is something that you can look at, puzzle out, and learn. I've built a cabin from scratch. Carpentry is a logic puzzle- you can feel it, you can see it, and it's just a matter of solving problems. And carpentry has been done since the dawn of time, far, far before forging was ever a thing. I think sometimes that you're intentionally being obtuse- a simple look at history proves you in arguably incorrect here- do you even believe the assertions you're making?

 

As for the first few sentences, I'm saying the same can be done with basic smithing.  My reference point was the popular mechanics article where the guy with no prior experience or knowledge of techniques was able to do some really basic stuff.  I'll have to go look up your response to the article, as I'd like to see how you debunked the proof of concept it provided.  And yeah, sure, there would need to be some simplifications of the process to implement in game and you couldn't quite do as much as in real life but my whole point with sprinting/farming/carpentry was not to say they are similarly difficult but that there are similar simplifications.  Again, not saying it can be simplified to a comparable skill-level-process, just that those other things involve simplifications in game that one could apply to some of your objections about smithing.

 

So the whole "dawn of time thing"...I'm not over-simplifying, you are.  My whole point is that you can't deduce that something is impossible for a modern person to do simply from the fact that it took humanity millions of years to figure out.  These numbers are probably horribly inaccurate, but I'm just going to throw them out there to paint the picture: it took us 2 million years to figure out how to farm, 2.1 million years to figure out how to do carpentry, 2.2 million years to figure out written language, and 2.3 million years to figure out how to shape metal.  What I'm trying to point out is that "it took humanity a long time to figure it out" is not a good argument, as it took us a long time to figure out pretty much everything that can be done with ease today.  If this sort of argument DID establish the truth of what you are trying to claim, it's a good argument for why (for example) a modern person shouldn't be able to figure out written language, which is clearly false.  Learning a language also requires millions of years of tradition and depends heavily upon your ancestors.  I think you'd be better served just sticking to the inherent complexity of the process argument, as smithing admittedly ain't simple.

 

My point with the charcoal is that it is readily available now and it wasn't back in the day, which makes it easier to make a fire of appropriate hotness nowadays than back in the day.  I never said people couldn't do it back in the day.  As for the part about quenching, read the article - the guy has no idea what he is doing and manages to shape some metal.  Again, I'm not arguing for being able to forge an engine block, just something like pull an iron bar out of a fence and pound it flat or turn it into nails.  Hell, iron is malleable enough you could probably do it without/with minimal heat (though I have to admit it's just a guess), as XxZeraphinexX noted above.

 

The last thing I should point out is that I'm not trying to argue smithing is easy, or that these other things are just as difficult to figure out, or anything like that.  I'm trying to establish that there is a range of difficulty in skills in Project Z, and that people are WAY oversimplifying them.  I'm not saying they're not doable for the average person, though to be honest I think most of you are rather capable individuals and are overestimating the average person (when I grew some tomatoes a couple years ago, the most common response was "OMG!  How did you do that!?  I could never do that).  What I'm trying to say is something like this - sprinting is unrealistic, cooking more complicated than it is in-game, farming significantly more complicated than in-game, carpentry (especially for multi-story buildings) extremely more complicated than in-game, so maybe basic smithing isn't that much of a stretch.

 

Warned you to drop this, it's detracting from the conversation

 

 

 

I think sometimes that you're intentionally being obtuse- a simple look at history proves you in arguably incorrect here- do you even believe the assertions you're making?
If you really think that's it, then I have once again ran out of polite words for you.
I just... are you just making things up?

 

This kinda crap pisses me off.  In one of your other posts, you said I was misusing "ad hominem."  There's no other way to describe comments like these.  Insinuating I am stupid is ad hominem.  You can't just hide behind the fact that you never said anything directly in earlier posts (these are pretty blatant).  Since the beginning of this discussion you have been demeaning, insulting, and degrading. You trying to say this is not ad hominem and that I shouldn't be allowed to use the phrase (I mean, do you even hear yourself?  I haven't even said anything rude to you) is yet another ad hominem.  I have not ONCE done this towards you in our discussion, and I simply do not understand your need to do this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I see swords more as hand made improvised weapons, not forged and smithed. For example, you could get a rod from a welded construction just simply applying enough force at welded point. If in the game a hand drill would be implemented, player could make some alterations to the sword and with rasp or file implemented, the rod could be made  sharp. Same with axes, pikes, yet nothing complicated and really durable. Personally, I don't see how forging from ore could be done in zombie apocolipse.

 

This is also something I thought would be cool.  Someone in another thread posed the idea of using lawnmower blades in a recipe for an improvised sword.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The thing then would be to drive to Muldraugh and check each person's residence and farm and see if there's anyone who practices smithing.  I think this is a little extreme, and my position is more that "Eh, there's a not-too-ridiculous chance that someone who knows how to smith and has some basic tools lives in small-town Kentucky", but you obviously disagree.  My point with the logging company is that there are rare things in small towns sometimes, that's all.

 

A quick Google tells me there are at least 15,000 logging companies with online service listings in the U.S.- and that's only counting the ones with online service listings that have been compiled onto a website called "Mantra," meaning the actual number is much, much higher. Further, logging companies are actually (in this case factually, not just by unfounded assumptions) focused on rural areas and even more specifically, are only extant in heavily forested areas, which cuts out huge swaths of the country. And the fact of the matter is, many of the small little towns in the US were founded around logging companies. It's not a stretch of the imagination at all to think that Muldraugh would have one (regardless of the fact that it actually does in real life). It would be a stretch to think that there's a blacksmith. You're using nonequivalent comparisons- I don't know how else to respond. You're misrepresenting reality.

 

 

I've bolded these parts because you're definitely right about them, and so few people observe them.  I linked to at least one discussion where several people admitted to having a forge that wasn't strictly speaking legal.  You're right, you can do this sort of stuff in the city limits if you get it up to code, but most people don't want to waste money on it and give up on the idea or move to somewhere more conducive (i.e. more rural, less nosiness).  I suppose we should both look up statistics on the distribution of smiths across rural and urban areas.

 

I think it's a pretty sweeping generalization to assume that "most people" who are hobby blacksmiths don't want to "waste" money on it and would rather not waste money by leaving their jobs, families, and loved ones so that they could buy a new house and find a new job in the country somewhere. Yup.

 

 

 

 

 

 You have to chose athletic in the character options to even stand a chance of running a fraction of the distance to Muldraugh. You have played this game, right? You're going to be exhausted and chugging along, constantly fighting being winded the entire way if you run it. Further, 5.8 miles is not that far at all. Any person who can walk can walk that in an hour or two. Average walking speed for a human is 3.1 miles per hour. So we'll say two hours. You play as an average person in PZ. If you take Overweight, it takes way longer in-game time. But I think all of this is just bluster to hide your hilarious original assertion that it should take days to walk 6 miles.

 

Ok, so I'll try to make this point more clear, as I (admittedly) don't think I did a good job the first time.  If I said days, I was in error.  I also was not aware that the distance was that short IRL.  However, I still think it is unrealistic.  I don't have such a character, but I've seen YouTube videos (unfortunately, I do not know if they were "hacked" or not) of someone running to West Point with level 5 sprinting and whatever perk it is that lets you run longer.  They had to stop around 7-8 times, I believe, and perhaps less.  Given that the distance is 6 miles, this means that character was sprinting a little less than a mile at a time, which is unrealistic.  Olympic athletes cannot sprint that long; I believe 400 meters is usually taken to be the longest sprint in such events.  Also, one's character can do the sprint to West Point and still stay awake for 12 hours or more that day.  This is also extremely unrealistic.  I'm not complaining, just trying to point out fudges like these make the game more fun, and that it's not perfectly realistic (which is your main argument for why forging should not be included - it's excessively unrealistic).

 

Let me clarify a bit. Sprinting in game isn't sprinting. It's just running. It's a bad choice of works on the skill tree. Judging by everything about it- movement speed, my conversations with the developers, the rate of exhaustion. It's running, not sprinting. And if you chose obese in the traits it's barely even jogging- it's slow as hell. But you're still just blissfully ignoring the fact that PZ assumes your character is somewhat fit unless you chose obese as a trait- that's the entire reason it's there. No matter how much you banter about how fit the average citizen is. By the way, you're using the word 'average' wrong. What you should be using is mode because that's what you're referring to.

 

 

When I said run, I meant sprint.  And yes, lots of people are incapable of doing anything more than a jog.  If we're talking about the average American person, it's not at all unrealistic to assert that this is exceedingly difficult for most people.  And no, one does not start off the game with it being exceedingly difficult to sprint.  There are lots of studies out there about how high in fat our diet is, and how increasingly sedentary American society is.  Your assertion that the "average person" can sprint for a couple blocks (at first, later in the game close to a mile as I noted above) is simply false.

 

Again, you're confusing average with mode. And I just double checked with one of the lead developers (Chris Simpson aka Lemmy101) on Skype and he said it is in fact running not sprinting. Maybe it's not worded the best, but there it is. Semantics debate ended.

 

 

And yeah, sure, there would need to be some simplifications of the process to implement in game and you couldn't quite do as much as in real life but my whole point with sprinting/farming/carpentry was not to say they are similarly difficult but that there are similar simplifications.  Again, not saying it can be simplified to a comparable skill-level-process, just that those other things involve simplifications in game that one could apply to some of your objections about smithing.

 

Still happily ignoring my very clear posts about the inequality of the simplifications. Even made a cliff's notes version in hopes that you would acknowledge the point.

 

 

 

 

Hell, iron is malleable enough you could probably do it without/with minimal heat (though I have to admit it's just a guess), as XxZeraphinexX noted above.

 

This is the crux of it, though (and yet another facet of my argument this entire time that you haven't responded to). There's no need for this in the game. Basic iron shaping can be done with many other tools without heat. Scrap metal can be worked with a file, a grinder, or a hammer. This is the biggest failing of the blacksmithing idea- why add something unrealistic when it could be handled in game to give the exact same perks, with less programming, less sprinting, less complicated systems, and nearly identical end results? The only possible argument is that you're simply enamored with the idea of blacksmithing and you hope others will be, too- and that's a viable argument, in a way. After all, I think 'scrap metal working' in Minecraft might not have gone over quite as well as smelting and smithing did. But for a game like PZ, if you have two paths in front of you- one is realistic and accomplishes something, and one is unrealistic and accomplishes the same thing- the first path is always the one to take.

 

 

 

These numbers are probably horribly inaccurate, but I'm just going to throw them out there to paint the picture: it took us 2 million years to figure out how to farm, 2.1 million years to figure out how to do carpentry, 2.2 million years to figure out written language, and 2.3 million years to figure out how to shape metal.  What I'm trying to point out is that "it took humanity a long time to figure it out" is not a good argument, as it took us a long time to figure out pretty much everything that can be done with ease today.  If this sort of argument DID establish the truth of what you are trying to claim, it's a good argument for why (for example) a modern person shouldn't be able to figure out written language, which is clearly false.  Learning a language also requires millions of years of tradition and depends heavily upon your ancestors.  I think you'd be better served just sticking to the inherent complexity of the process argument, as smithing admittedly ain't simple.

 

Wow, this one's a zinger. And wrong. As I said before, a simple look at paleontology shows that humanity has been using wood and crafting it into houses (in wooded areas, of course) since the dawn of time. This is not true of metalworking and was obviously not done until much later. Signs of farming, again, have been found in the fertile crescent- what some people think may be the first civilization of mankind. 

 

Quote from Wikipedia about The Fertile Crescent:

The region is often called the cradle of civilization; it saw the development of many of the earliest human civilizations. Some of its technological inventions (but not necessarily first nor uniquely) are writingglass, the wheel and the use of irrigation. The earliest known western civilizations manifestly arose and flourished using the water supplies and agricultural resources available in the Fertile Crescent.

 

The Fertile Crescent's evidences of farming go back to about 9,000 BC. Conversely, bronze didn't start to be used until about 3,000 BC. So basically all it took for farming was for a stationary community to form- as soon as that happened, farming started- and pretty much started on day one with very little prior experience. Six thousand years of civilization later metalworking starts.

 

 

 

The last thing I should point out is that I'm not trying to argue smithing is easy, or that these other things are just as difficult to figure out, or anything like that.  I'm trying to establish that there is a range of difficulty in skills in Project Z, and that people are WAY oversimplifying them.  I'm not saying they're not doable for the average person, though to be honest I think most of you are rather capable individuals and are overestimating the average person (when I grew some tomatoes a couple years ago, the most common response was "OMG!  How did you do that!?  I could never do that).  What I'm trying to say is something like this - sprinting is unrealistic, cooking more complicated than it is in-game, farming significantly more complicated than in-game, carpentry (especially for multi-story buildings) extremely more complicated than in-game, so maybe basic smithing isn't that much of a stretch.

 

Again, very clearly ignoring my clearly spelt out point on how different these simplifications are from your own. Can only assume you're not responding to it because you can't. And again, you're confusing mode with average. From a gallup poll, the average american is slightly overweight. Not obese- and even if you took the mode, after further research, it still wouldn't fall into the obese field. So I guess you're just wrong.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just find a buckler or a small shield that's made of metal and has enough grips, handles, and straps on it. And use it to shield bash zombie faces.

 

The strength of the bash is dependant on your arm strength though and it's not meant for crowd control, but as a additional means of melee against zombies or possibly bandits.

 

Plus whacking zombies with a small rounded metal shield is more effective than punching one in the face, as there's a piece of metal between their jaws and your arm.

 

The current game mechanics uses a single 'attack' variation, meaning ctrl click or right mouse button and left clicking.

 

Meaning unlike skyrim, you have no actual means to 'alt fire' ingame to use the other item without 'switching' items.

 

Unless they bind in a 'melee' key to use alongside the 'primary fire' function...

 

Like how F key in fps can be flashlight or 'kicking' and shooting is left mouse button.

 

Maybe you can use a 'shove' or melee function and bind it to X or C or something, so that when a 'shield' is equipped on the offhand you can bash with it as a mean to shove while doing damage (to the skull).

 

Though shield bashing is exhausting for a good reason.

 

Regarding refining and smelting. The thing about metals from the earth and in real life, is that they aren't exactly a chunk of metal. Ores are actually a collection of minerals or metals that has to be filtered out and all, hence the process of refining.

 

So the best thing one could do is light a furnace or a chimney fire, or even a stove and attempt to melt or bend metals in existing metal wares, in order to reshape them into a weapon.

 

A frying pan for instance... Cast Iron Pots and pans are impossible to bend and are super hot due to the heat required to bend them, but they are heavy and durable.

 

But the stainless steel metals like forks and knives bend and melts easier under modest heat, meaning you can easily reshape them using some smart crafting techniques (rubberbands or duct tape + 4 forks = bundle of forks which is layed one by one, making them extremely unlikely to bend when stabbing)...

 

Or you can warm up the forks and straighten them out, and then make spike traps with them (you will need a ton of forks and knives and such).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Realmkeeper I love ya, but that's not really relevant to the thread either- the warning was only about throwing around off topic stuff (like this) so again, to everyone, please keep it on topic. Will be handing out further warning points for continued posts that don't directly relate to the subject matter. Cheers, Rathlord

 

All I'm seeing in this thread now (It's essentially derailed, or at least approaching the bend too fast) is some chap who won't relent his stubborn position regardless of how wrong or misguided he may be, and a moderator desperately trying to slow the train before the corner, and keep the thread on track.
 
I get that some people are passionate about a topic or idea, but when, even after a moderator's warning, they continue to blindly present almost-relevant walls of text to the people that have a genuine interest in seeing where the thread may go, it detracts from the thread as a whole.
 
Trying to be lovely here, but can we stop flogging the dead horse?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...