Leaderboard

Hey team, I realize it's been quite a while (!) but I wanted to post an update regardless. As was often the sad case with 0 A.D. music, I've got 3 drafts almost ready but I can't seem to find the time to finish them properly! I am currently wrestling with 7 film projects but will raise my head soon, and post some rough mixes of my ideas for the Kushites. Thanks for your patience, Omri

So recently I've been working on implementing PCSS for soft shadow rendering, and I noted some performance issues when it came to trees. Ultimately I ended up disabling soft shadows for transparent models, but it's still apparent that trees present performance issues regardless of whether they receive soft shadows or not. After tinkering around with the drawing process to see if I couldn't fix it, it became clear that the reason was that virtually all of the trees in 0ad use highly translucent leaf planes. What that means in a nutshell is that each tree might generate half a dozen fragments or more per pixel covered by its leaves, each with full lighting calculations applied. If you have more than one tree worth of foliage stacked up then the number of fragments can rapidly become unreasonable. Additionally, terrain drawn under the trees that may be obscured partly or completely also gets drawn with full lighting calculations, which in the case of PCSS are quite expensive. Now ideally trees/foliage would be drawn with a depth-only prepass before terrain in order to early-z reject any terrain fragments or other foliage fragments that would be obscured, and then draw color and alpha blending in a second pass after terrain and water have been rendered. However the current trees don't allow for that because for at least two major reasons: 1. LOD. When using lower mip levels more of the foliage becomes less opaque for trees with dense foliage. Actually these are the easiest to deal with by setting alpha test >= 0.5 and promote to 1.0 alpha, but it makes for a lot of special cases. Palm trees are even worse, since the spikes on their fronds will sparkle horribly from aliasing artifacts if alpha test/alpha promotion is used. 2. Leaf plane visibility. Leaf planes that are nearly perpendicular to the camera (ie edge on rather than face on) become dramatically more obvious when using alpha testing. That could be dealt with by multiplying the alpha value by abs(NdotV) before alpha testing, but again this leads to a lot of special cases since not all trees use randomly angled leaf planes and might look dumb if such a strategy were employed globally. Also the vast majority of the trees look really bad when viewed from any angle besides top down, notably in water reflections. A lot of the trees also looked notably better with alpha test due to shadows being applied more consistently rather than being washed out by the lighting from the terrain behind the leaf planes. So basically, for the sake of better performance and better looking trees I think it'd be worthwhile to look for a solution to these problems. Any ideas?

I still have textures around in my eyecandy mod. FeXoR said he might look into it. Then there is the grass tutorial Alexandermb sent which might help make some too. I guess they can wait.

Hello everyone! I've tried build svn21811 with $make -j5 and the result is: Also building later svn21815 with $make -j3 gave me similar error: [gcc]$ make -j3 ==== Building mocks_real (release) ==== ==== Building network (release) ==== ==== Building tinygettext (release) ==== ==== Building lobby (release) ==== ==== Building glooxwrapper (release) ==== ==== Building simulation2 (release) ==== Simulation2.cpp Linking simulation2 ==== Building scriptinterface (release) ==== ==== Building engine (release) ==== GameSetup.cpp VideoMode.cpp World.cpp JSInterface_Main.cpp Linking engine ==== Building graphics (release) ==== MapGenerator.cpp MapIO.cpp MapReader.cpp MapWriter.cpp Linking graphics ==== Building atlas (release) ==== MapHandlers.cpp Linking atlas ==== Building gui (release) ==== ==== Building lowlevel (release) ==== ==== Building mongoose (release) ==== ==== Building Collada (release) ==== ==== Building pyrogenesis (release) ==== Linking pyrogenesis ==== Building mocks_test (release) ==== ==== Building AtlasObject (release) ==== ==== Building AtlasUI (release) ==== MapDialog.cpp AtlasEventLoop.cpp AtlasWindowCommand.cpp In file included from /usr/include/wx-2.8/wx/version.h:17:0, from /usr/include/wx-2.8/wx/defs.h:134, from /usr/include/wx-2.8/wx/wxprec.h:13, from ../../../source/tools/atlas/AtlasUI/Misc/precompiled.h:48: ../../../source/tools/atlas/AtlasUI/CustomControls/MapDialog/MapDialog.cpp: In constructor ‘MapDialog::MapDialog(wxWindow*, MapDialogType, const wxIcon&)’: ../../../source/tools/atlas/AtlasUI/CustomControls/MapDialog/MapDialog.cpp:113:54: error: ‘Lm_Type’ was not declared in this scope enameSizer->Add(new wxStaticText(this, wxID_ANY, _(m_Type == MAPDIALOG_SAVE ? "Map name: " : "Map path: ")), wxSizerFlags().Align(wxALIGN_CENTER_VERTICAL)); ^ ../../../source/tools/atlas/AtlasUI/CustomControls/MapDialog/MapDialog.cpp:113:54: note: suggested alternative: ‘m_Type’ make[1]: *** [AtlasUI.make:346: obj/AtlasUI_Release/MapDialog.o] Błąd 1 make[1]: *** Oczekiwanie na niezakończone zadania.... make: *** [Makefile:165: AtlasUI] Błąd 2 I'm using Fedora 26 and installed all dependecies. As was mentioned some posts ago I received: [gcc]$ g++ -dumpversion 7 What could cause it? How could I compile code in other way? I really get stuck... P. S. By the way: nice to say you hello once again

Hi! I know some Egyptian and can type the diacritics (and also the unicode hieroglyphs, although this forum thinks they're emojis and won't let me add them) I've done my best to vocalize them so they're kind of pronounceable (if you're going to record them?) Here they are... I can do more later, if you guys want me to: Structures: Barracks : per-mešʿayu (house of soldiers) Blacksmith : ḥemu ḫʿay-n-ro‘a (weapon smith)　 Civil Centre : Per-nesu (palace, royal residence)　 Corral : Iḥy(stall)　 Defense Tower : Ṯesmet ʿo (great battlement)　 Dock : Meriyet (harbour)　 Farmstead : Šenut (granary)　 Field : Seḫet (field, countryside)　 Fortress : Ḫetem (fortress, stronghold)　 House : Per (house)　 Market : Per-Sebet (house of exchange)　 Outpost : Terter (counterwork)　 Pyramid large : Merwer (great pyramid) Pyramid small : Mer (pyramid)　 Sentry Tower : Ṯesmet (battlement)　 Storehouse : Weḏot (storehouse)　 Temple Amun : Per-‘Amun (house of Amun)　 Temple Apedemak: Per-‘Apedemak (house of Apedemak)　 Wall Gate : Ruwiyet (gate, door)　 Wall : Sebty (wall, fortress, stronghold)　 Wall Tower : Sowut (battlement, wall)　 Wonder : Menu Naḫt (mighty monument)　 Pronunciation Guide š -- English "sh" ḥ -- heavy h, same sound as Arabic: ح; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Voiceless_pharyngeal_fricative.ogg ẖ and ḫ -- kh like the ch in Bach (these were two separate sounds earlier in Egyptian history--later were pronounced the same) ʿ -- pharyngeal sound, Arabic ʿayin, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Voiced_pharyngeal_fricative.ogg -- it's like the heavy h but voiced, if it is too hard to say, it is thought that the sound became a glottal stop, like the sound after uh in uh-oh, after the Egyptian New Kingdom... ' (regular apostrophe) -- glottal stop (before a in 'Amun, also in 'Apedemak) ṯ -- like English ch, also can be written tj ḏ -- like the G in giraffe, can also be written dj EDIT: i've attached the unicode hierolgyphs...it would be really cool to see them implemented in the game (both for the Kushites and the Ptolemies!) kushitebuildings.pdf

Nice! Indeed: I'm cool with the direction you're taking I don't know about the others?

@Sundiata what about this way? symmetrical both sides but only the middle have pillars, this way save's some amount of tris used on each column and add more detail on both sides having windows

It does in mass amount, if a huge amount of grass its going to be added it will need to have some slider or setting controlling the amount of grass i've tested in skyrim Grass Performance mods and the vanilla as well tweaking the grass amount and texture resolutions from 2k to 128 (Its very easy to tweak when it comes to graphical settings) they have quite low plane polys for flowers and basic grass with some 512 or 4k texture resolution, and i imagine this is what any1 wish to achive "Video link" but it drains too much fps when the amount is too much even at low resolutions i hope that will not be the case in 0 AD.

Just started today to make the main structure, tell me if its going okay or if i must start another building, btw i don't know if i should make the 2nd floor like the picture because its already big, or if i should reduce the columns (wich is the biggest from the 2 i've made as prop actor) Width is 2 and 1/2 Size of a house, Height is like 15% more.

I take that back, with the ridiculous amount of grass I spammed it does in fact lag fairly significantly, although it's still less than the lag caused by the palm tree spam on gold oasis or siwa oasis. I'm glad you brought up grass though. Not only is it freaking gorgeous but it also highlights some interesting lighting concerns that have convinced me of the need for custom shaders for different kinds of transparent models. In particular the dark lines you see on grass when looking straight down at it are caused by using NdotL lighting on grass, which is dumb given how translucent real grass is and bad because all it does is highlight the grass model's true shape, which is undesirable. The same thing but with the sun directly overhead: As for increasing grass usage, now I'm seriously thinking about implementing a grass map feature so that you can paint and unpaint grass/flowers/etc as easily as you can do with terrain texture. Having nicer grass models/textures would also be nice. A lot of the current textures use fake lighting where the grass is darker towards the bottom, which also creates ugly grey lines. A fancy profiler wasn't necessary. If I enabled soft shadows for transparent objects I literally got zero fps when panning over the trees in the center of gold oasis, and when I disabled soft shadows for transparent objects it became playable again. They work fine for terrain and solid models.

I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. I literally painted greek acropolis into a giant field of grass and could not produce any lag. :| I think grass might actually count as a solid model but I'm not really sure. To be fair I was honestly surprised that it didn't lag hardly at all even after painting that much grass. It even receives shadows!

Only problem I see is making textures seamless I believe Lion posted a tutorial on how to make seamless textures. I cannot prioritize terrain textures at the moment.

There is no such thing as brush texture so I guess he mean terrain textures.

Off topic: I won't point any finger to someone (@wackyserious) neither i'm gonna say names (@wackyserious) but have you thought on remaking the atlas paint textures?

team A : dizaka(gauls), bbgotbanned(Britons), palailogos(Ptolomy), darkodin(Romans) team B: Prodim(Romans), Fleur(Britons), Servo(Iberia), Breakfast_burrito(Seleucid) bbgotbanned team is a bit OP when it comes to strong players having Dizaka and Palailogos with him. Their 4th player is a bit new but can build armies and just maybe a bit lesser than Breakfast_burrito. My side with Prodim our strongest player is facing bbgotbanned on the front in the north and they kept BS with each other. Me and Fleur were pockets and breakfast burrito is facing a stronger Palailogos. Dizaka as pocket was leading everyone and built a CC near Prodims base. Me as Iberian tried to control the lake and kept raiding the beacheads but got behind in econ so I decided to P3 with lesser pop. The funny thing is Prodim and Fleur cant hold their front but we are also rolling on our front. commands.txt metadata.json

You can download svn (developer version) or for these days candidate to release.

i will make it anyways if doesn't fit timeframe i'll try with another, in any case the more buildings we have of constantinople the more historical accurate @Skhorn could remake his constantinople map for a later campaing map. Btw the constantinople walls were 2 sets of walls it may be good to allow the civ build the lower wall cheap and weak in 1st phase and later build (Not upgrade) the inner wall.

Actually, this building could make a convincing marketplace ...with a fountain

@Alexandermb I think the main issue with your byzantine CC is that it's only a very small part of that particular palace and seems to be some kind of forum, public meeting place, but doesn't have the feel of an administrative/government centre. It think with some polishing it would be great as a special building though. Byzantine Forum with some economy techs or something... Here are some more appropriate palatial structures from Constantinople as inspiration. These have a much more awe-inspiring feel, that the Byzantine CC should really have (also from the right time period): Some other stuff:

Potential props