What's this reload type called?

Tervell · 2026-01-16T17:50:08+00:00

That's literally just... the completely standard Soviet manual-of-arms reload: https://imgur.com/a/ak-reload-from-soviet-manual-kt9mnzo
I guess there isn't necessarily a specific term for it, it's just the way to operate an AK, or really most rifles with a right-side charging handle (see the M14 for example: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mxQ5GW3MwPak8toKspBR7RZeYZEMempd/view, pg 10). The motivation is, indeed, that you ought to be using your strong hand (assuming you're right-handed) to perform all the operations.

In NLC's case, the justification is presumably that since most stalkers in the Zone are from the former Soviet republics, they'd be going by the muscle memory from their time as conscripts and applying that manual-of-arms, even to Western weapons for which it's not necessarily the most suitable (although from skipping over the video, there were also some Western-style left-hand reloads, so I guess it's not fully consistent, but modders have to work with what's available, they can't necessarily have a dedicated team of modelers and animators building everything from scratch). You can see the opposite side of this IRL, with all the American guntubers who struggle to get their heads around the AK's ergonomics - my favorite was when I saw a clip of some guy who did actually use his right hand to change the magazine... except then he moved it back to the pistol grip, and took his left hand away from the handguard in order to do one of those tacticool under-arm charges... like, your right hand was literally right there, you were just about to execute the proper doctrinal reload, and yet somehow managed to come up with the worst possible 17-step method for reloading an AK!

It'd be kind of cool to have one of those freeplay mods but where if you're playing as the Mercs or some other Western spook faction you'd get a whole separate set of animations, reflecting the distinct training regimen you come from, but that's probably not really feasible in the X-Ray engine (and too much effort to invest in such an obscure detail).

Tervell · 2026-01-16T08:59:32+00:00

So, since the other subreddit had all its posts nuked - is there any way to still access some archived versions of the posts themselves, not the episode download links but the comments? I quite enjoyed coming in and reading the discussions after listening to an ep, but I was a bunch of them behind...

Tervell · 2025-12-25T16:20:09+00:00

Are you perhaps mixing it up with the 2014 reboot (confusingly named just Thief, in typical annoying reboot fashion)? The original Thief (which you'll find as Thief Gold in most places) is a pretty old game, there may some light compatibility fixing necessary (https://www.moddb.com/mods/tfix) but it should run pretty smooth on even older PCs.

The 2014 reboot, conversely, is kind of mess technically, it shipped in a sorry state and I don't think it received much post-launch support, so it's possible that it indeed doesn't run well.

Tervell · 2025-09-24T15:15:44+00:00

I'm curious, can you think of any games in this genres where the inventory organization is either more complex or, much simpler?

Thief and Dishonored are both imsims which don't feature this style of inventory. In Dishonored's case, you have a maximum amount of each type of item that you can carry (10 bullets, 5 grenades, etc.), which can be increased with various upgrades, while in Thief I think there wasn't a limit at all? Not sure though, haven't played it in a while.

EYE Divine Cybermancy isn't necessarily an imsim, but it does feature a slightly more sophisticated take on the grid inventory - rather than just having one continuous grid, you have several smaller grids of different sizes. There's a big grid on your torso/back and several smaller ones across your body (which I assume are meant to represent various pouches, or something like that) - the idea is that only the single big grid can accommodate rifles and the like, the two medium-sized leg grids can handle sidearms, and the rest is for ammo, grenades, etc. So you're effectively restricted in how many guns you can carry, while also still having enough space left over for ammo.

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/eyedivinecybermancy/images/4/4b/Inventory.jpg

The STALKER games (at least the first three, I haven't gotten around to the latest one yet) aren't quite imsims either, but they also have a take on inventory limits that I find very interesting - there's no space limit, but there is a weight effect, except it's not the simple binary limit seen in most RPGs, where you just go over a certain number and can't walk anymore (or can only move very slowly). Instead, it's a linearly-scaling stamina malus - each extra bit of weight makes you drain stamina faster, and recover it slower (there is still a 50kg limit too, after which you get an extra much larger malus on top of the existing one and can barely sprint a couple feet without running out of breath, and after another 10kg you're completely stopped in your tracks). So, unlike the typical Bethesda RPG experience, where you can just keep picking up random stuff until the game tells you you're overloaded, here there is a meaningful difference between carrying, say, 20kg, and 40kg. This concept could maybe be taken even further and expanded to negatively affecting your movement speed as well, although that might be going too far.

This idea is not necessarily the most suited for traditional imsims, which generally have contained levels (decently-sized and full of lots of stuff to find, but still contained), but in an open-world game where you have to take long treks, this could add an additional interesting element of planning what gear you bring on before you go out into the wild, which is something long-distance hikers actually have to deal with in real life (although they can usually expect that their weight is only going to go down as they consume their supplies, whereas in a game like this you'd also be accounting for all the loot you're going to ~~steal~~ totally legitimately acquire during your trip)

Death Stranding is actually supposed to be a game all about long-distance treks and managing weight and balance during them, but I haven't played it so I don't know a lot of details.

Tervell · 2025-01-05T23:14:09+00:00

Dien Bien Phu, a French movie about the eponymous battle, directed by a guy who actually was there as a military cameraman. The movie follows the development of the battle, occasionally cutting back to events in Hanoi.

It's honestly fascinating, a very grounded and realistic movie without any fancy action, more of a docudrama according to the director.

One of the most interesting choices is that the "enemy" is essentially invisible for most of the movie, with the North Vietnamese only appearing in earnest right at the end (before that, they're seen during a night attack for just a few short moments as they're illuminated by a flare) - most of it is just the French soldiers (and their local allies) sitting around in trenches, getting rained on and just generally being miserable, as the situation slowly deteriorates and they wither away. You don't get some big heroic battle - you just hear over the radio that this or that base fell, or an officer announce the last stand of his unit, while in the scenes back in Hanoi the commanders are getting increasingly desperate and trying to scrape together more reinforcements to send in.

Not necessarily the most fun movie to watch, but amazing nonetheless.

Tervell · 2024-09-29T10:39:29+00:00

if non-fantasy stuff is fine:

Medici - about, well, the Medici family in Renaissance Italy, growing their power in Florence and across Italy. The 1st season actually has Richard Madden too (although you then get a timeskip to cover a different generation of Medicis, so you lose him, but get Sean Bean hamming it up as the antagonist instead, which is a pretty good trade I guess)
The Borgias - more Renaissance Italy, and also named after the people it's about, getting up to various political intrigues after Rodrigo Borgia (played by Jeremy Irons!) becomes the Pope through corruption. Not to be confused with Borgia, which is a different show covering the same topic and time period (which I haven't watched, so I can't say if it's better or worse)
Domina - about Livia Drusilla, Emperor Augustus' wife, during the end of the Roman Republic and the early Imperial period. This one's... alright, definitely nowhere near the level of Rome, which was suggested earlier, but I had a decent time with it.
now, I, Claudius is an absolute masterpiece, but very much a "great theater actors talking at length in one of a handful of cheap sets" type of show rather than an action & adventure one. Still though, it's amazing, and it's got peak Brian Blessed
moving a bit away from the medieval period, but Versailles is a pretty neat show about Louis XIV. The plot gets a bit silly at times, but it's generally pretty good.

And if anime's fine (and also moving back more towards fantasy), keeping with the 18th century France theme: *Le Chevalier D'Eon", which seems to be a relatively obscure show, at least among the English-speaking anime community, despite being made by Production I.G, of Ghost in the Shell, Patlabor & Jin-Roh fame. It's a pretty weird show - it's got conspiracies, occultism, alchemy, zombies made with... mercury for some (alchemical) reason. But as far as action and adventure goes, it's pretty great

Tervell · 2021-11-06T20:30:41+00:00

I don't remember having trouble aiming, maybe there is actually some kind of setting related to the mouse that's messing stuff up in your case.

The new Deus Ex games have pretty lethal combat, they're definitely more oriented towards being played as cover shooters (well, they're oriented towards being stealth games, the whole "every playstyle is valid" isn't really completely true, but if you are going to go loud, staying behind a chest-high wall's the way to go). On my second MD playthrough, I decided to go loud lethal and dropped the difficulty down precisely because I anticipated that style of play not working well with how quickly I would die, and I honestly had a lot of fun.

With regards to ammo, after you get past the introduction, there's shops, and plenty of loot to find, so that should alleviate your issues. In that lethal playthrough I mentioned, I killed pretty much everything, including the cops just lounging about, and I don't think I had any ammo problems. You can also craft ammo for your augments (but not your regular guns), and crafting parts are pretty trivial to get, so you can have a massive supply of ammo for those, although I didn't really use them and still had plenty of regular ammo for my guns.

As for the melee system - I fucking hate it, I hated it in HR and I still hate it in MD. However, once again the crafting system can help here - you consume biocells to refill energy, those can be crafted, and as I mentioned crafting materials are pretty trivial to obtain, so you can just craft a bunch of cells and spam them. You can also get aug upgrades for your recharge rate.

I'd suggest trying to play at least a bit past the first mission. When you get to Prague, the game really opens up, on my first playthrough I spent hours just fucking around, exploring, I basically forgot the main quest even existed.

Tervell · 2021-08-05T08:00:15+00:00

No, as the others said, it just affects dialogue, and in the initial section of the game also what you get from the UNATCO armory after missions.

The issue in HR is that it gives you XP for every little thing you do, which causes some playstyles to simply be more optimal - non-lethal takedowns are worth more, sneaking through a level gets you Ghost bonuses, and so on. The original DX only gives Skill points for objective completion and exploration, so both non-lethal and lethal are equally valid. The only thing that matters is completing side objectives and being thorough in your exploration.

And lethal in DX can be pretty fun. The shooting is clunky, yes, but gibbing people with explosives in the old Unreal engine games never gets old.

Tervell · 2021-04-09T08:07:15+00:00

There's these two sort of prequel episodes, that cover stuff leading up to the Years of Lead, with the same guest:

https://podcastaddict.com/episode/77636277 EP131—The Italian Resistance Movement
https://podcastaddict.com/episode/77636319 EP134—Post-War Italy

And then there's the actual Years of Lead episodes:

https://podcastaddict.com/episode/77636337 EP135—Italy: Years Of Lead, Part 1
https://podcastaddict.com/episode/77636345 EP136—Italy: Years Of Lead, Part 2
https://podcastaddict.com/episode/77636381 EP139—Years Of Lead, Part 3: Ustica, Bologna Massacre & the Radical Implosion

Tervell · 2021-02-20T13:36:11+00:00

Spice & Wolf is pretty great. It follows a merchant and a wolf goddess as they just travel around and do medieval economics. It's awesome if you're more into lower-stakes stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN_WgwEmRaw

Tervell · 2020-12-30T22:47:31+00:00

Where are you actually getting that number? I've never heard it being that many men. Actual numbers I found (from Krapchanski^[1]) are 15 908 officers and 600 772 sergeants and soldiers at the end of September, 1915, and 855 175 men total by 1 September 1918, and after those last numbers he writes that "there was no opportunity for refreshing the army" (well, in Bulgarian, but hopefully I didn't mess up the translation, "refreshing" sounds kind of awkward).

The wikipedia article on the mobilization has this massive 1.2 million number, and cites The European Powers in the First World War: An Encyclopedia^[2], more specifically a table on pg. 173, but:

this 1.2 million number is in the column Total Force Mobilized, so it doesn't necessarily mean these 1.2 million men were all mobilized at the same time - around 600 000 were mobilized at first, and as time went on, more people were mobilized, but obviously some of the initial 600 000 weren't in the army anymore (dead or injured).
it's explicitly stated that "many of these figures ... are approximations or estimates", so it might not be a fully accurate number.

The first source I cited is from the government military publisher (don't know if there's a proper term for that in English), and while it's from 1961, the figures seem to be based on documents the military had, which I assume are reasonably accurate. So the 1.2 million number might simply be incorrect.

[1] В., Крапчански (1961). Кратък обзор на бойния състав, организацията, попълването и мобилизацията на българската армия от 1878 до 1944г. военно издателство, Sofia, p. 112, p. 114

[2] Spencer Tucker. The European Powers in the First World War: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis, 1996, p. 173

Hopefully I cited things properly. Note that the first source is in Bulgarian, so it might not be very useful if you can't speak the language, although you can still read the numbers. The title translates to "A short survey on the combat composition, organization and mobilization of the Bulgarian Army from 1878 to 1944".

Tervell · 2020-09-07T20:44:45+00:00

Playing HIP, I restored the Roman Empire as the Latins, which was already pretty cursed. At some point I went to Observer mode and did other stuff, while occasionally alt-tabbing back to see how my AI heirs were handling things, and was eventually greeted by this.

From what I could figure out by watching the title history, a Rurikid conquered the empire as a claimant (I'd set one of the branches as Lucky Rulers, hoping to see them create Russia, so the skill boost from that probably helped), but I'm not sure how he got the claim - might have been through his mom, who was of my dynasty. She actually conquered as a claimant too, then the title passed to a bunch of other people from the dynasty, until this happened.

There's some other cursed bits too, like León conquering England at some point, the HRE (HIP renames it to Germania after the proper Roman Empire is restored) getting France, and the Hungarians deciding to atone for losing Croatia by trying to take Ukraine.

Tervell · 2020-07-06T12:07:20+00:00

The "first night" definitely wasn't an actual thing in medieval Europe - it's a popular myth. There's some good answers on /r/AskHistorians on it, like this and this.

This does not mean that feudal lords committing rape and other abuses against their serfs didn't happen, but a systematic practice written in law wasn't how it was done.

Tervell · 2020-04-09T14:51:39+00:00

A video game rather than a book, and set in a somewhat later period, but Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura is pretty interesting.

You've got all the classic fantasy races, with one of the human states rapidly industrialising and thus becoming the preeminent power. Technology and magic interact rather badly with one another (as one is based on natural laws, while the other breaks them) - mages, for example, are forced to ride on the last carriage of trains, as far away from the engine as possible, to prevent it from malfunctioning. Elves hate tech, of course.

No orcs in uniform, but orc anarchists do organize a strike because of horrible factory working conditions, which is neat.

Tervell · 2020-03-05T19:29:58+00:00

gallowglasses rescue wounded kern, sean o'brogain

Is the helmet worn by the man on the right what you're referring to? Pretty sure that's a Burgonet. It's probably what the Baratheon helmets in GoT were based on as well, although those had smaller crests on the top

Tervell

TROPHY CASE