Cycle!

A Bicycle would be of little use to a heavily laden party of adventurers, but I'm surprised that the technologists of Arcanum haven't come up with these things yet!
I suppose that's a symptom of the, erm, suspicious circumstances surrounding the rise of technology.

It'd be cool, there'd be special little bikes for Gnomes, who of course would have to make xtra large bikes for their half-ogre guards. And the half-ogres wouldn't quite be bright enough to ride them, and always get into prangs, and crawl out of the wreckage and apologise with dopey ogre speak.

You could cause mischief by pointing a highly magickal artefact at the road, and it upsets the gears in the bikes that go past.
There's, like, a couple of Tarantian kids sitting by the side of Kensington Broadway, pointing a magical sword at the road, and all the bicycles that go past go haywire. First guy's cycle breaks in half and he has to unicycle along, the second one goes crashing into the river...

 

Put it this way: Arcanum is set in a world which hasn't quite gone on to the advanced technologies such as bicycles yet

Actually the designer's note has mentioned how graphically intense the game is and already excused themselves from things such as the female versions of half the races. Thus bicycles are no way near getting on the list.

 

However it would sure be nice to see people on those huge&small bicycles riding through a city. Just like it would be to have mountable horses.

 

Technologists really should have been given a method of transportation comparable to Teleport. I think a plane would have been a great idea. Once you got to Caladon, you could pay Maxim 50k gold to build you one. It wouldn't be too hard to incorporate; you'd just have a clickable plane object that would take you to the world map like Teleport does.

BTW, anyone notice that Hieronymous Maxim is a pun off the name Hiram Maxim (the inventor of the machine gun)?

-Poiuyt Man

 

No? Is that so? You don't say!

Next you'll be telling us that "Gilbert Bates" is a pun off "Bill Gates"!

(sorry, couldn't resist)

 

And why are there no Bates Steamers on the streets?

 

And do you know about Appleby?

As for Maxim however I didn't know inventor's name so I guess now I'm smarter.

 

Spoliy...


Aaah, but what about in the picture of 'Arronax returns to Vendigroth'
They seem to have some sort of Automobiles.

I assume that once a city becomes as technological as that, It's basically immune to all magick.
And the same would go the other way around
No need to outlaw the use of magick or technology, because one your city is completley obsessed with one, the other can't go near it.
The Vendigroth in the finishing picture: I'd wager that as soon as a mage goes near it, he loses all of his magick powers.
This will probably happen with Tarant before too long, as well.

 

True but Arronax destroyed the whole region of Vendigroth so he didn't even have to go near the city iself to do that. And no matter how much technology is around when magick power is successfully unleashed it damages everything - be it tech or magick.

 

Also true.

Perhaps that's why the cars look so dopey. They're round balls so that if magick makes them crash, they just bounce around, and you can get out and push them back on the road and continue driving.

Arcanum will never be able to develop the internet, though.

 

That is such a lie. In Bates journal he mentions a network of steam pipes running throughout Arcanum. In his opinion there is a way for steam to carry information. It would be of course tough like hell to get what you want from all that steam. And there would be frequent failures... that's internet enough for me.

 

And when a mage walks past your house, your games start lagging.

And when you lose packets, you can hear them hissing out from the phoneline.

 

:rofl:

And they hire people who have no knowledge about technology other than ask you to list what equipment EXACTLY you have just to tell you there is no solution in their "support services". They laugh their asses of every single time someone asks for help. Such are the mages from Sierranus mountains.

 

Professor Hunley that made the submersible (newspapers in Vendigroth) has the same name with the inventor of the first submersible during the American Civil War.

 

It's simply astonishing how much knowledgeable people can notice in Arcanum. I didn't know the submarine inventor either. But then what the hell do I know after all? I know that I'll pay closer attention to names when I play Arcanum again - and check them in encyclopedia every now and then.

 

Edward Teach

Edward Teach (in Arcanum, the ship captain in Ashbury and later blackroot) was the real name of Blackbeard the Pirate.

 

I though that Mr. Gatling invented the machine gun.

Also shouldn't the subway blow up whenever a mage walks over it?

 

It should be the other way around.

--techie

 

Hunley was the name of the submersible, was it also the name of the inventor? BTW, she has recently been raised & is in the process of restoration.

The Gatling Gun is not a machine gun in the strictist sense. It is a group of semi auto guns that must be powered by outside energy. A machine gun, such as the Maxim Gun, is fully automatic & powered by the energy of its own firing.

 

If you'd been here before the sector31 meltdown, you would have noticed a post made by me entitled 'A Little Bit of History'. Maxim wasn't just the inventor of the machine gun, but was infact the inventor of the first ever plane.

Here is most of the post, that I managed to recover.

OK. This is an article from the magazine 'Flyer' May 2002 edition.

It's a TRUE article about something that might seem remarkable similar to those who have done the repair master quest. It can't be a coincidence!
-------------------------------------

MAXIM's AERIAL DREADNOUGHT

What weighed 7800lbs, had twin engines, 4000sq ft of wing area, developed 2000lb of thrust, and burned jet A1? None other than Queen Victoria's secret weapon!

In 1916, at the height of WW1 and the last year of his life, Sir Hiram Maxim, recollecting in old age about one of the most amazing but least known and almost forgotten events in aviation history, said: "At the present moment, it is very easy to see that I overdid it at Baldwyn's Park."

1916 saw aviation emerge as a major military force. Yet the entire war might have run out very differently had Maxim's plans of more than 20 years earlier succeeded. Today it sounds like pure science fiction; but it was all true. Only an accident prevented history taking an altogether different course.

It all began in 1890 with a chance remark from one of the directors of the Maxim Machine Gun Company, which had made multi-millionaires of Maxim and his financial backers, as manufacturer of the only really effective and efficient automatic weapon available at that time. Maxim was posed the question; could a viable heavier-than-air aircraft be developed, big enough to loft the devastating Maxim firepower high above any battlefield? His consideration was brief. It would take five years, and did the board of directors have £50,000 to invest in the project? Much discussion ensued, and it was another two years before Maxim was able to turn his undoubted engineering talents to this new and fascinating project.

When he did, the budget had shrunk to £20,000 but his imagination had grown. To carry a worthwhile warload would require not just the world's first successful heavier than air machine, but a truly gigantic aircraft, the 'Maxim Giant'.

And giant it was. During the winter of 1892 Maxim spent long nights hunched over his drafting table, sketching an aircraft so huge it was not surpassed for almost a quarter of a century. With a wingspan of 105ft and weighing more than 7000lbs, it's easy to understand why Hiram felt "Perhaps I overdid it". For the design that emerged at his research station at Baldwyn's Park, near Sydenham, London, also broke aviation records in almost every other way. It was not just a biplane, built from high tensile steel tubing braced with steel cables, but had more than 4000sq ft of wing area, and was powered by twin engines, each chain driving two vast 18ft propellers (one of which is kept today at the science museum in Wroughton, Wiltshire).

These engines were the crux of the machine. Maxim had wanted to use powerful examples of the newly invented Otto cycle engines, but failed to find anyone who would even risk an attempt at building the powerful, but lightweight diesels required.

In the end, Maxim had to design and construct them himself, and here the entire project became almost Gothic; like all good Victorian engineers he had decided that they were not to be diesels - but steam engines! Maxim was an acknowledged expert on steam technology and he produced, from scratch, a technical masterpiece.

Feulled by Naptha (kerosene, or jet A1) they were marvels of compactness and lightness. Built of thin steel and alloy, they developed 185hp each, from a compound non-condensing design, and were estimated to prodice, via the chain drives, a staggering 2000lb of static thrust at the propellers. Maxim, an imposing six-footer, was able to pick up an engine with both hands, they were so light.

All this had not been achieved without the staggering amounts of work. A small, but enthusiastic team toiled away on the design. Under the direction of a young physicist called Phillips, a complete aeronautical laboratory was built at Baldwyn's park. A 36ft wind tunnel was even constructed, and a systematic research program undertaken on almost everything from aerofoil sections to powered flying controls.

Once again, Maxim allowed his enthusiasm for all things steam powered to get the better of him. To ensure stability he invented the world's first single-axis autopilot. It was a small scientific masterpeice using a complex arrangement of gyroscopes (steam powered, of course!) to run servo-controls to the elevators. Roll stability was ensured by giving the wings very large dihedral and the directional control achieved through differential throttling of the engines. The pilot was able to 'fly-by-steam' with just a small joystick linked to the powered flying controls.

*here I'll skip the rest because it's mainly about the test flights and people who went up in it - although it only reached 2 foot in height because it was tethered and the wheels built into a rail system because it was too powerful and kept trying to fly off without provocation!*

Anyway, on July 31, 1894, it actually broke through the restraining system in a gust of wind and flew out of control and crashed. They have photos of it flying (somewhere!) but it was written off and he thus lost funding because it cost too must to repair.

You could read the full article if you want the rest of the story.