Mod: Warhammer Nation: Lizardmen - v0.75 minor update

[HoneyBadger]

Thought I'd chime in here: The very best stone weapons of Neolithic actual reality, earth, right now, as in: down the street some guy with a degree dug it up and carbon tested it to be over 10,000 years old, are pretty amazing.

For one thing, they're as much as 5 TIMES as sharp as the average modern scalpel. Obsidian can be manufactured, right now, today, this very minute, in the real world, sharp enough that it's used instead of metal for eye surgery.

As for bronze...well, let's step back a minute from bronze and consider copper. Copper's a pretty amazing metal. For one thing, the ancient Egyptians-6000 something years ago, at the time of the Great Pyramid, old dynasty, could manufacture copper chisels that were every bit as hard as steel. They did that by compressing the copper, under extreme pressure, using wood that they soaked in water. The copper atoms compacted, creating a highly tensile surface suitable for carving even the most royal of cartouches.

Bronze, itself, is not a bad metal at all. It's a lot better than poor quality iron, and it's way better than even good iron for the purpose of making armour. With the added bonus that it doesn't rust. The problem with bronze is that tin is expensive and relatively rare. We don't even use tin cans anymore because aluminum is so plentiful.

Another problem with bronze is that it's harder to make large blades out of it than it is to make them from decent quality steel, and so an additional pressure to use iron occurred, since the Romans, when they went all Byzantine, were feeling a little insecure after losing the western Empire, and getting into phallus symbols in a AHEM *big way*, they shifted their armies to larger and larger weapons.

Actually, that's not entirely true. It'd be kindof funny (atleast to me) if it was the whole answer, but bronze was pretty much on the way out when the Hittites showed up, having invented iron, and really stuck it to the old bronze-using empires. Iron was a fad. Iron was popular, iron was successful, and iron was cheap. With the added bonus that iron, ultimately, was the better invention, because it could be refined into steel, in all it's myriad excellent forms.

We still use bronze today, though. It's tough, it's-especially in the case of beryllium bronze-extremely corrosion resistant, even to salt water, it's easy to work with and melt down, and it's a good looking metal.

I've seen some outstanding modern bronze knives manufactured using freezing processes, special mouldings, and magnetic fields. If we can do all that today, surely we can imagine magic also enhancing bronze.

And consider that in Dominions, magic has the tendancy to become less and less powerful, over time. Entropy definitely exists. So, old bronze, stone, wood, bone weapons might very well be several degrees more magically powerful, and common, than iron weapons, even if you don't factor in the common belief that iron was anti-magic.

[Zentar]

Sombre always does great work, unfortunately he also eats, sleeps and does other things. I enjoy his mods, NI map mods, and general wisdom / insights. This looks like another winner and I cann't wait till it is completed!

[Sombre]

I've been really busy recently and I've had to scale back my mod plans. I will continue working on lizardmen and get a beta ready, but I'm dropping a bunch of other ideas I had simply due to lack of time.

I am still truckin' though ;]

The new patch is awesome.

[Shovah32]

Come on Sombre, back to work! *cracks whip*

Now, I shall vanish into the mists once again..

[Sombre]

Here's the old graphics I had ready. As per llama's sage counsel, I shall be working primarily on the lizardmen until I've made some real progress on them. I tidied up a couple of these graphics, but my real upcoming work will be doing more attack sprites and sorting out some of the lesser commanders like Skink shamans etc

I am leaving the Slaan for a while because like I said, I had done a lot of work on one and lost it all. That's a real demotivator believe me.

[rdonj]

Yes, more excellent warhammer races appear on the horizon!

[llamabeast]

These really are very, very nice.

Also I agree with my past (but forgetful) self that the salamander is an awesome sprite.

Losing the Slann must have been infuriating. I _hate_ it when that kind of thing happens.

[HoneyBadger]

I had exactly the same thing happen to me. Really nice graphics set, maybe 18 units with attack sprites, that went bye bye along with my laptop. Immensely frustrating. That's why now, if I do a single graphic, I post it to the board that night.

And I know how hard it is to get back up on your horse and ride, but if it's any consolation, Sombre, I've had similar things happen before, and mostly the second time comes out a little better than the first set did.

Anyway, I'm still very excited about the lizardmen, Sombre. You do beautiful, creative work, very consistently, and these are certainly no exception.

[Kristoffer O]

> I am leaving the Slaan for a while because like I said, I had done a lot of work on one and lost it all. That's a real demotivator believe me.

Yep! At times I've lost a number of sprites due to save format of the .trs file. A long number of sprites are stored in the same file. If I accidentally save over army12.trs with a new file I lose all sprites since last backup. Quite annoying. It happened in CoE andÂ*I've been quite careful ever since. Still, I have lost a couple of sprites at times.

[Sombre]

Arf. I have done a little work on attack sprites today. The real progress will come on the weekend when I have more free time. I'm really happy with the way the skinks have turned out.