Have you somehow found a way to travel the time ?
I mean, as anyone who actually wield a modern bow, the arrows are still quick enough, I wouldn’t expect much people to deflect that with a sword (at least, not in an historical medieval Europe, not talking witchers there !) but I was not there to see.
More seriously, what are your references ?
I’m always surprised how huge some of the crossbow bolt heads were. I mean take a look at this one below. Probably more for hunting, but wow I wouldn’t want to stand on the receiving side of this.
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Hmm, I’m pretty sure those are from arrows, and not bolts. The heads off of crossbow bolts tend to be smaller.
I can’t provide any direct source, but an archeologist told me that these are thought to be from bolts. I’ve been told that anything that is a lot over 20 grams is from a crossbow. These are much heavier. However it can be wrong obviously. Most common head was of the bodkin type (both for arrows and bolts, I think):
and there is also the rare Y type:
Well I’m definitely not an expert so i’ll take your word for it.
Arrows and bolts designed for hunting will usually have broadheads, heads designed to cut arteries and muscle to cripple or kill the target. Heads used to penetrate chain armor would have bodkin heads, that is a long, almost needle like head to penetrate through links. The last head would resemble chisels in order to defeat armor plates. I have samples of Mongol broadheads and chisel points. The chisel points were gleaned from Hakata Bay, where the Mongols landed and fought Samurai, where chisel points were the best bet in penetrating lamellar armor.
While this has turned into a great internet debate about real life historical crossbows, are crossbows really that difficult to put into the game? I have already seen videos of WH motion capturing reloading a crossbow. Surely crossbows behave the same as testing bows with longer reload times, and no stamina drain/shake, as far as the game is concerned.
It’s not just to “put it in” since you probably have to change a lot of code to make sure it works with everything else.
Programing is like writing a book. If you want to change the lead character of the book when the book is already written you will need to re-write the whole book. Bluntly put.
That is a terrible analogy. Not even close to accurate. Rewrite the entire game? No. The code for missile weapons already exists. A crossbow is a slightly modified version of something that already exists. It would be closer to adding a twin brother to an existing character.
Shoehorning new code into a game is like dropping in a new character that might cause continuity problems, hence beta testing, because you never know how every patch effects the overall program. Sometimes fixing a bug causes other bugs; Been there, done that.
Yes, I’d love to see siege arbalests in the game but I’d rather see the game get off the ground and make the devs rich, so they could add more candy for everyone to enjoy.
I don’t think it’s that hard, but it would take away some resources. They probably want to avoid feature creep… For crossbows you would have to mocap and create new animations, do historical research & provide art, integrate them into the combat and clothing systems, make sure it works with AI and finally rebalance the game’s economy and skill system. It’s a new class of weapon altogether, not just another slightly different sword. And the game has already been delayed a few times…
Keep in mind the arrows and bolts in SCA and other such simulated combats (boffer/LARP, etc) aren’t moving anywhere NEAR the velocities that they would achieve in historical combat, because of the greatly restricted draw length and weights (IE most boffer/LARPS restrict bows to 30lbs at 28" draw) for safety. To say nothing of the safety heads further reducing aerodynamics and increasing drag.
They already have video of them doing exactly that on YouTube. They are reloading the crossbow, bending over with their foot in the stirrup.
It’s a slightly different testing bow.
Sure, it would require some time obviously. I think it would be worth it. That said, this late in development, most likely not. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t be done, and considering the mocap work already done, with minimal effort for what it adds.
As I understand Mocapped animations still need a lot of refinement before they can be included in the game. But don’t get me wrong I’d love to have crossbows in too. However as you say the time of adding whole new features to the game has probably ended already. Also there are no black powder weapons, despite them already being used (not often I think) back then.
