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Guys, in the next release you must clearly explain the change from alpha system to release system. Even though it might seem cosmetic, it sends the message that the project has reached a very high level of maturity. People take changes like that very seriously.

devlog #1 devlog #2

Hey everyone, For the past month, I've been working on a project: a narrative campaign for 0 A.D., focused on Viriathus and the Lusitanian resistance against Rome. In-depth research, focusing primarily on Appian's *The Spanish Wars* Why : Because 0 A.D. clearly lacks a narrative campaign, and because the development faces significant technical and resource-related challenges. If this work can help the community, that in itself is a success for me. My goal : My goal is to create a story people will play, while discovering 0 A.D. But also to help the developers with my experience, through reports, and above all to create a reference for future scenario creation. For the past month, we've been working on the scenario. I already have 8 contributors on the project. Huge thanks to them. Release : The goal is to release Scenario 1. No official date yet, but I'll post an update every two weeks here, and also on Reddit. Also : This project isn't to release it as quickly as possible, but rather to ensure quality and also learn things like programming, digital painting,music, and collaboration. Thanks !

You should have arbitrary effects as a chaotic and random effect. When a price control effect occurs arbitrarily. This makes the market not an organic entity, but a regulated one. Someone or several people decide to take action to control prices. Especially the so-called trade war. In 301 AD, Diocletian promulgated the Edictum de pretiis rerum venalium, known as the Edict on Maximum Prices. The state set limits on a huge amount of goods and services, in response to inflation and prices that the government considered excessive. The preamble itself accuses merchants of raising prices even when there was plenty.

A quick preview of retail sales and statistics VM_Preview1.mp4

Quite interesting, some things are similar to my upcoming Market suggestion, for example: -Selling resources at retail (slow, but more profitable than direct barter): I thought of local trade (retail) represented by a trickle, while global trade as it is now, but more profitable, while removing instantaneous barter and integrate it on the mentioned ideas (I think it's a silly system copied from AoE that many other games don't have). -Once units appear on the map, they consume coins and food: I like the upkeep idea, but it's more radical, for now. -If a player's balance of these resources becomes negative, unit recruitment and construction are locked: I think it's not enough punishment, makes sense for a certain time, but after that, units disbanding and mercenaries rebelling by going to Gaia would be interesting. -Interest on deposits: nice idea, since "there is evidence for the existence of private banks in Greek antiquity since the end of the 5th century BC. They functioned as offices for changing money or keeping coins and valuables. In addition, they operated as pawnshops", from the Museum of the Bank of Greece. -Traders. The main role is to influence prices during barter transactions. The option to generate resources by moving between markets has been disabled: that's where I'll propose things in the exact opposite way (Traders travelling and doing the bartering trades continuously).

yes, but this is already the case with elephants. IMO the target should be to keep their maneuverability through buildings and other immovable obstacles as close to current as possible.

UPDATE: Version 0.12.1 Added Wiki button Each game will start in a random month

Yes, I agree they should be very clumsy, as ships, nothing wrong about that. But what I find might be solvable is their uncooperativeness , by putting in place the measures needed for them to rotate in certain situations.

Yes, I agree with you. Although I’m not sure elephants necessarily need to be able to move smoothly through the narrowest possible passages. There has to be a point where the elephant’s size actually matters mechanically, and in those situations, the most logical choice seems to be to destroy the house rather than try to squeeze through it. But I think trying elliptical hitboxes is reasonable. I got the impression that implementing them would be quite complicated, but if there’s any possibility of doing it, I’d definitely give it a try.

I was thinking of a somewhat realistic silver coin (perhaps similar to Ptolemaic emblem, but silver instead of gold).

I think the difference would be the direction that the unit is pushed to: With the current pushing, it would move the same direction as the pusher, which means they will probably collide again. With the "clearing the path" mechanism, the second unit would make two steps into the direction it faces/ or into a direction with free space/ or a certain angle of the pushers movement direction, so hopefully avoiding another collision. I'm especially thinking of the elephant sliding another elephant scenario from the videos above. I don't know if this makes sense or if it's too costly but maybe one active instead of passive move could help solving the bottlenecks somehow Yeah, I'm a big fan

As long as you give proper credits to Wildfire Games and respect CC BY SA 3.0 you're in the clear

Reducing hitboxes might solve the issue with the wider path from your first video, but the narrow one would remain. It's like chasing the issue. I think hitbox shape might be more determinant: in tight spaces, vertices complicate rotating and straight sides give too much front for static equilibrium. Maybe elliptical shapes with increased on-center repulsion range to avoid compact tiling might be worth a try (since that seems to be the only problem about them, for now).

What color do you imagine it to be? I can imagine the Celtic's color, I don't know why, apart from the obvious. The Greek letter in one color(yellow or Orange) and the rest in other colors including green.

right click on no formation to make it the default bro

OK, thanks I'll send him an email. Who should I ask about using assets from 0AD Cheers, Boston

Reconstructed Gallo-Roman boat from Toulon, with some reconstructed wooden barrels.

I was think it could be the reverse of the coin (i like the combinaition of a celtic shield with greek writing)

What style will you use? Coin/relief style emblem. Shield style emblem ( like painted shield) In both cases, at least the shape of the head must be drawn.

I managed to block my 24 elephants again. The gaps they tried to pass through are quite small. I’ll clarify again here that I’m deliberately trying to push things a bit. In particular, I’d like you to look at what happens with the group at the bottom, which has a visibly wider path than the group at the top. The first elephant goes straight through, but the second one, which is coming slightly from the side, collides with the house and turns to its left to try to go around the house. However, there is no longer enough space for it to make the 90-degree turn, so it gets stuck at the corner of the structure's hitbox + some eles probably pushing it too, and ends up blocking all the eles. I replicated this with only a few elephants, and something similar happened. It seems that elephants need to make a 90-degree turn to go around a building, avoiding any contact between their hitbox and the corners of the structure. This can be seen in the following videos. There is clearly enough space for the elephant to pass through if it moved diagonally: The obvious conclusion is that the hitboxes are too large, both unit and building (I'm asuming hitbox are the green ones). They extend well beyond the 3D model that the user sees and create these visual inconsistencies: the elephant cannot pass through a gap that appears wide enough. Having the structure's hitbox larger than the model may be desirable to prevent units from clipping through it and perhaps also help with visual clarity. But for organic bodies, maybe we can cheat a little with this. And I think this is also why I mentioned several times trying to "give them more overlap". But perhaps that wasn’t the right term. Maybe it’s not a matter of giving them more overlap, but rather making their hitboxes smaller. This could help elephants move through gaps that appear wide enough to the user, and it would also prevent them from pushing each other without actually touching, as can also be seen in this same video (00:10). In this last example, we can see an elephant walking around the barracks while keeping an exaggerated distance from the structure's visible boundaries: One final clarification: It’s obvious that destroying the houses is the quickest way forward, and there’s no reason to expect the elephants to organize themselves perfectly and head straight for the fortress. After all, the purpose of this feature is to add more realism and make a huge creature like an elephant somewhat clumsy. However, I think there is still room to improve the visual inconsistencies I’ve shown, where there appears to be enough space for an elephant to pass through, but it nevertheless gets blocked. I think most users will consider these visual inconsistencies a bug, and they can make the experience somewhat frustrating. That’s why I keep pointing them out as something that I think needs to be addressed.

They are seen interacting with the moon god in some reliefs. With the jars I try to imitate colors and artistic style. I really like this one. What colors did they paint with? There wasn't a way to make many colors back then. Egyptian blue, for example, I understand was lost, I don't know how many centuries ago. https://historia.nationalgeographic.com.es/antiguo-egipto/cientificos-recrean-pigmento-azul-egipcio-hace-5000-anos_23801

He's really clueless, it happens a lot with veterans in RTS games who are newbies in 0 AD. Many things in 0AD are not intuitive. And they are very inconsistent.

[h1]Hybrid Total War + Rise and Fall Combat System[/h1] I have been thinking about a possible hybrid system combining some of the large-scale control of Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War with the individual soldier behavior seen in Total War. The main idea would be to separate strategic control, formation control, and individual combat. [h2]1. Hierarchy[/h2] A possible hierarchy could be: ARMY | +-- BATTALION | | | +-- UNIT | | | +-- SOLDIERS | +-- BATTALION | +-- UNITS The player would primarily control battalions or units, while the individual soldiers would remain autonomous enough to handle local movement and combat. [h2]2. Movement and Pathfinding[/h2] Instead of every soldier independently calculating a complete path, the formation could have a main path and each soldier would try to maintain a relative position inside the formation. For example: Formation path: A ---- B ---- C ---- D | +-- individual soldiers maintain formation positions This could potentially reduce the amount of expensive pathfinding required when moving large armies. [h2]3. Combat[/h2] When two formations engage, the game could first determine the front/contact area between them. For example: ROMANS ████████████ ████████████ ████████████ ⚔ ████████████ ████████████ ████████████ ENEMY The unit would have a general combat target, while soldiers in the contact area would look for appropriate nearby enemies. This would allow the battle to look like individual soldiers fighting individually without requiring every soldier to make high-level strategic decisions. [h2]4. Individual Combat[/h2] Each soldier could still have: []Individual position []Health []Target []Attack behavior []Animation []Local movement Collision avoidance However, the UnitAI would remain responsible for the higher-level behavior: []Attack []Advance []Hold position []Retreat []Pursue []Change target Change formation The soldiers would execute those orders locally. [h2]5. Casualties and Formation Deformation[/h2] When soldiers die, the formation should not instantly rebuild itself into a perfect rectangle. Instead, gaps could appear naturally: ████████████ ████X███████ ████████████ Nearby soldiers could gradually adjust their positions, while rear ranks could move forward when space becomes available. This would preserve the visual feeling of a large group of individual soldiers while keeping the formation as the main organizational structure. [h2]6. Possible 0 A.D. Architecture[/h2] Conceptually, this could fit into a hierarchy such as: Army / Battalion | v FormationController | v UnitAI | v Individual soldier behavior | v Pathfinding / local movement The important point would be to avoid making every soldier behave like a completely independent strategic agent. Instead: Army/Battalion: high-level orders Formation: positioning and collective movement UnitAI: unit-level behavior and combat state Soldier: local movement and individual combat [h2]7. Why this could be interesting[/h2] This could potentially provide the visual and tactical feeling of Total War while retaining the faster group-level control of Rise and Fall. It could also be interesting from a performance perspective. Instead of: 1000 soldiers x 1000 independent high-level decisions x 1000 independent pathfinding operations the system could operate more like: 1 army order | 10 formations | 100 unit-level decisions | 1000 individual combat/movement behaviors The individual soldiers would still be visible and fight individually, but the expensive high-level decisions would be concentrated at the formation and unit levels. I think the interesting question for 0 A.D. is not necessarily how to create a completely new "battalion entity", but whether the existing FormationController, UnitAI and pathfinding systems could eventually support this kind of hierarchical control. This could give large armies a much stronger sense of organization without removing individual soldiers from the battlefield. ##### This is an alternative idea. I have other ideas for the organization; this would only work in battle formation. ####