jtr7 on 11/3/2009 at 07:01
Thanks for adding your thoughts.
Hm. With the precedent set by the Cradle, the Abysmal Gale could now be under a similar kind of haunting, where the ship itself has absorbed too much misery and terror.
Herr_Garrett on 11/3/2009 at 07:01
Quote Posted by jtr7
There's only a portion of the Old Quarter that was walled off. TDP/Gold mentioned it. It's only a section. Unfortunately, TDS only has the Cataclysm Memorial, and nothing else to explain what happened to the walled-off portion, or if it was cleaned up.
Aye, but did you notice that the Cataclysm Memorial is just as shoddy as the Old Quarter was in DP? And why,
why would a memorial erected in the past, say, 40 years have a slot for a Sentient possibly created thousands of years ago?:tsktsk: So many inconsistencies...
Quote:
Originally posted by Bulgarian_TafferAnd don't you find the Clocktower in TDS very weird?
The mechanism of a normal pendulum clock is quite, quite simple. You need a spring or a load, gears and a pendulum. That's all. In contrast, the clock used in TDS is extremely complicated - it's said that the machinery has killed a lot of people.
This is both weird and funny.
Not really, since that assumes that the Clocktower works as our, well, clocktowers work. Notice that the face of the clock doesn't have hands, only a sort of sticking-out thing from the iron stuff that holds the glass face in place, and glyph-like symbols etched into the face. That'd imply that either the iron circle, or the glass face rotates around, and that would require very complicated mechanisms.
Quote:
Originally psted by jtr7I guess it's all they could come up with to make it more plausible for the tower to fall, to have a crank shaft run from he basement to the top of the tower. With boilers in the basement driving the pendulums, suddenly stopping the crank shaft would destroy the boilers, but the boilers didn't seem big enough to blow apart the building's foundation, unless there was an even lower level with boilers, or the foundation was already shamefully shoddy. Maybe a sinkhole formed and the explosion was enough to collapse the foundation into the hollow below. But I'm stretching, though it's not outside what is seen in The City already.
As far as I could work out from the instructions how to stop the Clocktower, you should have waited for a while after you stopped everything, if you didn't want the place coming down. That'd mean they used pressure-condensators and other stuff, and if they had the collectors full, and Garrett let it out all in one go, well...
Or maybe the cogs got stuck and brok off, and if you picture those huge pendulums
crashing down, and then bulleting into the boilers...
What really bothered me in the Clocktower was that it's way too small.
jtr7 on 11/3/2009 at 07:54
Okay, I'm back. My last post was right before I had to take for awhile.
Thanks, Sola', for pointing out that Captain Moira took the Compendium home. I had noticed but didn't look hard at that particular. And thanks for the links to concepts the devs were surely aware of.
All right...the Final Glyph.
From AULalbrechwritings:
"...we labored so long and hard to create the Last of All Glyphs. Yet our best thinkers were not satisfied. What if, for some reason unknown, it came into play too soon? Before these future Keepers had a chance to complete an important task? So we devised the Sentients, each a separate key, each with a will of its own. The Heart, the Crown, the Paw, the Chalice, and the Eye."
OQcataclysmplaq: "The Cataclysm Memorial
In Memory of the Hundreds Lost in that Historic Catastrophe"
Since no date or mention of when the Cataclysm Memorial was erected is given, and the Cataclysm occurred over fifty years prior, and knowing the Keepers could've had the receptacle mounted on anything that may have been at the required latitude/longitude, and nothing says they couldn't maintain the receptacle at that location for as long as they wanted, I don't think it's a too inconsistent. The receptacle could've originally been a dozen meters higher before the Fort Ironwood or the Catacombs were built. I'm sure the Keepers would've had to keep the Final Glyph intact by influencing City planners and the Hammers and such, especially with the rapid and enormous changes made to The City over and over.
Other than that, I quite like the concepts you've presented for the Clock Tower.
As for the Wiki, I still haven't figured out how the articles can be written 'well", since we debate about things so much here.:laff:
Herr_Garrett on 12/3/2009 at 06:49
Quote Posted by jtr7
Since no date or mention of when the Cataclysm Memorial was erected is given, and the Cataclysm occurred over fifty years prior, and knowing the Keepers could've had the receptacle mounted on anything that may have been at the required latitude/longitude, and nothing says they couldn't maintain the receptacle at that location for as long as they wanted, I don't think it's a too inconsistent. The receptacle could've originally been a dozen meters higher before the Fort Ironwood or the Catacombs were built. I'm sure the Keepers would've had to keep the Final Glyph intact by influencing City planners and the Hammers and such, especially with the rapid and enormous changes made to The City over and over.
They didn't really know what the Final Glyph was, that is what bothers me. Or if they did, it was not in their interest (until the very last minute, with Gamall), to maintain the slots. And anyway, "the lack of planning evidences itself in the closeness of the structures. The strange twist of a street..." makes it plain that they didn't know it would be the
street themselves that would draw out the Final Glyph.
jtr7 on 12/3/2009 at 10:03
Gamall, alive for centuries, had been hiding writings for some time, long enough for them to be forgotten, or for the details the elders knew were important to be lost. The Keepers knew about the Final Glyph, only the applicable details were "missing." Other details were likely intentionally left out, so only a few would know what it was. Makes sense to protect the greater interest, since the failsafe would be against corrupt Keepers who needed to come to an end. The writings regarding the Final Glyph were not as important as when the signs of the times and the glyph prophecies called attention to them. The order had grown complacent, too, unbalanced, corrupt...lazy about certain matters, inflexible in others. Those who would've been in charge of maintaining the Final Glyph may not have known what they were charged with, only ensuring a stretch of road was not redeveloped and the street altered, or not to let a receptacle get moved, because it's important for some unknown reason they are not allowed to question, but it's for the balance of the Order.
Petike the Taffer on 12/3/2009 at 11:51
Quote Posted by Herr_Garrett
Aye, but did you notice that the Cataclysm Memorial is just as shoddy as the Old Quarter was in DP? And why,
why would a memorial erected in the past, say, 40 years have a slot for a Sentient possibly created thousands of years ago?:tsktsk: So many inconsistencies...
Explanation : The Keepers made it ! ;) :cheeky: Hey, maybe they thought it would be a good idea to prepare everything for the failsafe Final Glyph, if something would go awry in the iminent future. The prophecies about the coming of the Three Dark Ages follow each other very succesively and in a very short time period (not more than 5-7 years). Who wouldn't get worried ?
jtr7 on 12/3/2009 at 12:04
Along the lines of what I said, except they made the failsafe generations ago, centuries ago, and every receptacle is mounted to an almost typical landmark. Surely the Keepers would've influenced the location of the landmarks, if not the nature of the landmarks themselves, though I don't think they necessarily would've made them.:)
Quote Posted by Herr_Garrett
And anyway, "the lack of planning evidences itself in the closeness of the structures. The strange twist of a street..." makes it plain that they didn't know it would be the
street themselves that would draw out the Final Glyph.
Interesting take on that, I see what you mean. Opinion: I always took it as a nice
Thief world explanation for some of the crazy streets in the OMs, the wild variation of design from one map to the next, the radical changes between one game and the next--the devs' way of building some lore around the tangible signs of some haphazard design choices, and working within well-known engine and memory limitations that prevent long lines of site, as well. Closeness of structures and twisting paths are recommended mission-building techniques to keep polygon counts and scene complexity down. The lack of planning (not in real life, but as an in-game explanation): For TDP, the devs didn't know which kinds of missions would be the most positively received, and so they gave us a bunch of different kinds, so there would be something for almost everybody. In TMA, the general mission types and layouts were planned before the story was figured out, then they rearranged some missions and changed areas to match the story, forcing missions to match, and having to ship before they were done. TDS, one unexpected limitation after another forced redesigning the missions to work within those limitations, time was wasted reworking maps. Such is the life of a developer. The same goes for the line: "Nobody knows the whole city, how old it is, how many times it's been built over. Not the Hammerites, nobody." :cheeky:
Meisterdieb on 13/3/2009 at 20:40
Do we know that the landmarks themselves are important for the Final Glyph?
As I see it, only the location matters for the glyph to work.
Similar to how the Keepers didn't care what type of street it was or what kind of buildings line it, just as long as it runs a certain way as defined by them.
jtr7 on 13/3/2009 at 22:01
I'm looking into that, but whatever I find will be made-up guesswork conjectural stuff. I think only the devs could really say, but the one thing that stands out is that most of the landmarks represent The City's beginnings. Who knows how long the Keepers have been a part of The City?
