LISTEN LISTEN LISTEN LISTEENNNNN!! ... ahem. Far Cry Primal pre-order.

Father Ted · December 07, 2015, 04:08:02 PM

Quote from: Philippe on November 03, 2015, 12:49:33 PM
Can you hunt herds of caribou and use an atlatl ?

I've heard of an axolotl, but not an atlatl. Some kind of ancient Inuit weapon?

JasonPratt · December 07, 2015, 05:09:23 PM

Atlatls were a simple lever device for throwing spears farther / stronger than unaided by hand (a little like the devices for throwing a ball in jai alai).

Eventually superseded by bows and arrows, but their flexible darts were precursors to arrows.

JasonPratt · December 07, 2015, 05:11:04 PM

BEHOLD THE FIRST HUMAN WEAPON DELIVERY SYSTEM!

http://www.atlatl.com/about-atlatl.php

Father Ted · December 08, 2015, 05:00:54 PM

Why thank you Jason - I never knew of such a thing. I should have known from the spelling that the name was South American, but Philippe threw me with the caribou reference. I've seen spear-chuckers, which have a similar idea, though lacking, I'm guessing, the flexible projectile.

I'm wondering though if this predates the sling as a weapon delivery system...

JasonPratt · December 08, 2015, 09:55:30 PM

I'm guessing not, but the distinction would be that the darts are inherently weapons while rocks aren't necessarily (although of course weaponized 'bullets' were eventually made for slings.)

JasonPratt · December 08, 2015, 09:59:41 PM

Quote from: Father Ted on December 08, 2015, 05:00:54 PM
Why thank you Jason - I never knew of such a thing. I should have known from the spelling that the name was South American, but Philippe threw me with the caribou reference. I've seen spear-chuckers, which have a similar idea, though lacking, I'm guessing, the flexible projectile.

The system was invented independently (and/or spread for such a long time that it reached) all over the world.

I'm planning for variations (flexible darts to sturdier spear chuckers) to be a key weapon for some of the demi-men tribes in my fantasy series, once I get back up in their area of the world. Retroactively they're in the battle taking up the last quarter of Book 1, but I didn't know about the weapons at that time so didn't include them. ;) (I was busy doing other tactics and strategies anyway.

)

Philippe · December 09, 2015, 03:50:44 AM

Quote from: Father Ted on December 08, 2015, 05:00:54 PM
Why thank you Jason - I never knew of such a thing. I should have known from the spelling that the name was South American, but Philippe threw me with the caribou reference. I've seen spear-chuckers, which have a similar idea, though lacking, I'm guessing, the flexible projectile.

I'm wondering though if this predates the sling as a weapon delivery system...

The atlatl is a seriously old system and I'm sure it predates the sling.

I'm sufficiently long in the tooth not to trust my memory on this kind of thing. I remember studying the French ones in school, but didn't remember that they went as far back as the middle Palaeolithic ( i.e. before the Ice Age).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower

Why archeologists give things the names they do could be the subject of a Ph.D thesis in psychology. My guess is that the first person who figured out what that oddly-shaped stick really was had had some exposure to hunting in the Americas. If he'd spent time in Oz he would have given them an aboriginal name. For better or for worse, atlatl is now enshrined in the literature.

The 'civilization' of the Late Stone Age that gave rise to things like the Lascaux cave paintings was built on large food surpluses that came from the (probably organized) hunting of herds of caribou and reindeer. The herds lived in an ecological niche just beyond the edge of the glaciers, and when the ice retreated north, the reindeer followed and Paleolithic civilization more or less collapsed. It took a couple thousand more years of post Ice Age living before anyone found an ecological niche that would generate a similar food surplus, but along the way managed to discover agriculture and how to grow their own.

We don't know much about people back then, but we do know what they ate because people tended to live on their trash heaps.

JasonPratt · December 09, 2015, 05:47:14 PM

To be honest, some of these new things are repurposed old things. (FC2 had a lot of flammability. To the point where the devs like to joke about the time they test-started a fire and realized they needed to tamp down on some settings when they burned literally the whole gamemap.)

Father Ted · December 09, 2015, 05:53:59 PM

Stop getting this back on topic - moar archaeology!

JasonPratt · December 09, 2015, 05:59:28 PM

Dropping bees on your opponents with attack owls == not currently supported by archaeology.

glen55 · February 29, 2016, 11:43:36 PM

The setting has me jonesing hard. I rarely buy on release day any more, but . . . it's almost through downloading now and scheduled to unlock in 17 minutes.

JudgeDredd · March 01, 2016, 02:09:01 AM

Definitely not a pick up from me. You can take that to the bank. >:D

Yskonyn · March 01, 2016, 02:40:03 AM

You'll cave once we keep telling you that the beastmaster elements and the hunting (or being hunted) rocks your world and is not to be missed.

JudgeDredd · March 01, 2016, 03:24:30 AM

In the famous words of Ashford and Simpson

Solid.....solid as a Jock

JasonPratt · March 01, 2016, 11:26:29 AM

Quote from: Yskonyn on March 01, 2016, 02:40:03 AM
You'll cave once we keep telling you that the beastmaster elements and the hunting (or being hunted) rocks your world and is not to be missed.

What you did there. I saw it.

... wait, did I preorder this? I mean, I'm the one who started the thread, I pre-ordered it, right? But I don't think it was preloading so...

{checking}

CRAP I DIDN'T PRE-ORDER IT!

{checking reviews}

THANK GOD I DIDN'T PRE-ORDER IT! ::) :P

Apparently a lot of people are having problem with UbiDRM, water is wet, sky is blue. I haven't had a problem with that yet in regard to several other Ubi PC games, but I have other things to be playing so I'm not in a huge rush to beta test their DRM system.