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0 A.D. Development Report: September 2019 – May 2020 Wildfire Games, the international group of volunteers developing 0 A.D. : Empires Ascendant, is happy to present its latest development report. If you want to find out more about the development of this open-source, cross-platform real-time strategy game or if you are interested in game development in general, it might provide an interesting read. If you want to be part of this project, feel free to visit our forums and join our active community, or just grab a task from our list of open tickets and get right to it. We are currently looking for Programmers, Translators, Historians, MapMakers, Animators and Artistsa. *names written in bold black are Wildfire Games staff and names written in bold grey are community members Summary Programming We have been working on improvements on performance, both graphical and non-graphical, to make the next Alpha run more smoothly. The map editor will no longer be laggy (creation should not be hindered!) when changing the height. You can also now search the entities in a non-strict manner, e.g. “units ptol hlr” would show “units/ptol_support_healer_a” in the list. Art Greeks, Iberians, Celts, Romans, and Carthaginians have received visual updates, with better helmets, shields, and props. Flora has also been improved with better trees, and more variety in plants and props that can be placed over the maps in the scenario editor. The bear and the baby elephants now have animations, and hippopotamuses can now be placed using the scenario editor. Special artillery towers have been added to the game, as well as a new Gaul wonder and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. New sounds for weapons and for some animals have been committed. Balancing Work has been done towards improving gameplay to fix the current balancing issues with the help of some of the best ranked lobby players and some modders. Internationalization 17 languages have reached more than 90% of translation. Programming The whole team would like to welcome Angen as a new member. Angen has been an external contributor since the beginning of 2018 and has done a lot of work towards unit behaviour improvements. He is currently working on improvements on the formation system along with general unit behavior improvements. Angen added the ability to allow cancelling trade routes. He committed some fixes for formations. He implemented the ability to display tools instead of weapons when units are approaching resources. He made the trade gain by garrisoned entities configurable which will allow for a finer balancing a75397425a3774fd.mp4 bb has also been working on various smaller code fixes with the goal to improve consistency and to make unit templates cleaner and he fixed the lag that appears on windows when shift is pressed. elexis committed a patch allowing for map specific placement in the GUI game setup page, continued working on the GUI rewrite and fixed some bugs. He implemented game-setup options for landscape and daytime and added morepreviously uncredited people to the credits. FeXoR and nani have been working on the procedural generation of maps, to allow for more realistic maps. Freagarach made it possible for the same entity in multiple control groups (ctrl + number hotkeys). He allowed for status effects to affect unit speed (e.g. slowing down a unit when hit) this will be particularly useful for mods with magic. He also added a progress bar to show the upgrade status. Mods can now make projectiles deal friendly fire. This is currently unused in the game. He also allowed for some resources to not be barterable in the market, this will also be used in mods such as 0abc (link) and Delenda Est (link) upgrade-animations-and-progress-bar.mp4 Imarok fixed an error warning with AMD CPUs, fixed the display of actions cursors over the minimap and the usage of the patrol action, and did some cleanup in the minimap code. Itms worked on some improvements to the continuous integration system. He also did some library updates for NVTT (NVIDIA Texture Tools), the library we use for our textures, with the help of adrian and s0600204 on a library called FMT (This library is used to print warnings and errors). He also worked on build fixes for Mac OS. Krinkle worked on fixing JavaScript warnings, and submitted a few fixes for MacOS support, as well as some to improve the game’s CI. linkmauve did some cleanup of the rendering engine, by removing old platform specific code which was either deprecated or superseded by SDL2, and worked towards improving multithreaded debugging. Nescio has done a lot toward improving consistency in our files, renaming them to match the same conventions, and making them easier to deal with by simplifying some of them. For example all our map files had inconsistent naming conventions, and the presence of whitespaces in their name caused issues. Stan has created a feature for mods to allow buildings to construct themselves without the need of units. He made some optimizations to the engine, and did some cleaning up of the code. He also improved the scripts that help artists check for mistakes, and made a Blender importer for game objects, reducing the amount of work it requires. He also added the ability to play visual animations when a building is upgrading, and when a tech is being researched. He is currently working with the help of OptimusShepard to fix an issue with recent AMD CPUs. If you have Zen 2 CPU and want to help please head to this forum thread and tell us. Autobuildable video (3D Printing house) Researching animations user1 and Dunedan are working on upgrading the lobby backend to be able to provide new features for the next Alphas. vladislavbelov continued working on the rendering engine to bring improved performance and visuals. The next alpha will feature a FXAA filter, allowing models to look less jagged. He also worked on better tools to debug the renderer and easier access to those through the game. He added an option to use low quality shadows on more modest machines. He also worked on the map editor, allowing it to save the panel size between each session so one does not have to resize them every time, and a non-strict search to the Atlas entity list. He is currently working with Stan to add an option to resize the map with a specific offset. Snapping (1).mp4 Snapping to buildings (video) Screenshots with/without FXAA wraitii has worked on improving the engine, cleaning the code to make it easier to extend and to optimize. He has also been reviewing patches from Freagarach with aim to add gameplay features, such as status effects. Status effects will allow units to deal more realistic damage to others. For instance, it will allow flaming arrows to keep dealing burning damage after a unit has been hit. status-effect-test2.mp4 Art Alexandermb added a Transversal Crested gallic centurion helmet, sheaths, new idle relax animations for the hoplite, and scutum shields. He also made some citizen animations for the slave and siege engine operators. Likewise, there are some new Gaul idles for swordsman and new pikeman attacking animations, new Roman republican and imperial shields, gladiator helmets, Celtic Carnyx, while he finished the bear animations, hippopotamus animations, worked on improving camel animations and gave more options to modders, new animations for siege engines and improved existing ones. He worked on improving the shield textures, allowed elephant turrets to attack by giving them an attack animation, and animated the baby elephant. 5253d395bfdc8c4e.mp4 Bigtiger has worked on some gorgeous new elm trees, new poplar trees and improved the flora LordGood added new Ptolemaic houses, committed Enrique's pines, artillery towers, new unit sounds, Hungarian oaks, bolt tower and amphitheater, updated Ptolemaic sentry tower and added a new obelisk. He has worked on a few beautiful maps and provided screenshots for advertising on social media. Artillery Towers Hungarian oaks Pompeii amphitheatre for Romans in scenario editor New Ptolemaic houses Sahyadri Buttes, a new 5 player Skirmish map Atlas Valleys is a large 8 player skirmish map Samulis created new cattle sounds. Stan added an orange firefly particle and committed new improved berry bushes by BigTiger. He updated outdated icons and cavalry icons to use the new horse assets. There are now new lavender, new bluefin tuna textures and animations. Lately he has developed new icons for the unit actions and for status effects. He created three textures and icons for bears (polar, black, brown), made two hippopotamuses textures and created a model for the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. He also replaced the current Gaul wonder by a more historically accurate one: the sanctuary of Corent. Sanctuary of Corent Fireflies raw2.mp4 bear Mausoleum at Halicarnassus Hippopotamus wackyserious improved textures for Greeks, Iberians, Romans, and Carthaginians. Judean slinger Iberian Spearmen Roman Advanced Cavalry Cretan Archer Iphicrates Roman TRIARII wowgetoffyourcellphone made some Corinthian helmet portraits, worked on some animals portraits and has given feedback on gameplay and icons and has made some of the screenshots in this development report. Miscellaneous Balancing Nescio worked with Stockfish, Badosu, ValirAnt, FeldFeld, and borg- to get some gameplay balancing patches, which were committed by other members. Documentation Beau fixed some mistakes in the documentation.² Beise is currently translating the wiki from English to German. Nescio has also been updating the English style guide, corrected many templates for consistency, and standardized hero aura descriptions and generalised tooltips. Finances Jeru made a new financial report and submitted a development report to SPI our financial sponsor. Thank everyone for all the donations. You can see more information about supporting us financially here: https://play0ad.com/community/donate/. Lobby user1 and elexis continue their work moderating in the multiplayer lobby. user1 created a a special thread on the forums to report all issues regarding the lobby. Interviews Freagarach gave a presentation at Sogyo Stan gave an interview for the Waffling Taylors podcast (https://wafflingtaylors.rocks/). The podcast should be available in June. He gave an interview with Picasoft (in French - you can find an English transcript here). Picasoft is an association at the UTC (a French school) you can read more about it here. He also gave a presentation at Avanade He also held a stand at the Capitole Du Libre in November 2019. You can find a summary here vladislavbelov did a presentation in FOSDEM 2020 about graphics pipelines in 0AD. See this thread for more information. Translations 16 languages have reached more than 90% of translation. If you want to help with your native language head over to Transifex. Gallaecio has been improving and correcting the English descriptions in-game with the help of Nescio Tournaments There has been quite a lot of activity on the competitive side! Most of the replays are available on the forums, so you can see some of the best players in action. derekO organized “double elimination” a tournament fpre organized a “survival” tournament HMS-Surprise organized the Sunday pro games tournament 1v1 commentated between 17/01/2019 and 24/11/2019. This was a competitive community event with very nice graphic designs! marcusAureliu#s organized a tournament rain_ironwolf organized a Hyrule Conquest tournament Stockfish also organized a multiplayer 0 A.D. tournament called the Primus Pilus tournament from 30/03/2020 to 29/04/2020. HMS-Surprise eventually took over to finish it. This report was written by asterix with the help of Thorfinn the Shallow Minded, Stan and Sundiata. For more details, please check wiki:Alpha24 and the roadmap. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT.

I will take advantage of this video to make the fortress of the Suebians. Thanks @Genava55

Ok so: borg - ok any day after 10 pm utc, except wed legendz - ok any day after 9 pm utc badosu - ok any day after 9pm utc stockie - ok any day after 8 pm utc, before 12 am utc vicentesk - ok any day after 8 pm utc

Hello! Here are my contribution. Just jpeg on this post to show what i drawn. CC are welcome ^^. I forgot: https://we.tl/t-E5dirNJUrR source files Iphicrate Pericles Themistocles Xenophon

Documentary mostly giving evidences from the Alemanni Small documentary about the Frankish warrior during the 5th century AD: Some footage from the place:

Today i've activated "delenda-est" by deactivating all other mods to help you a little bit find out errors: Map: Acqutitania (2), two players (Han Chinese, Epirotes) ERROR: Could not load animation 'art/animation/biped/new/promotion.dae' ERROR: CSkeletonAnimManager::GetAnimation(art/animation/biped/new/promotion.dae): Failed loading, marked file as bad ERROR: CCacheLoader failed to find archived or source file for: "art/textures/selection/star/256x256.png" ERROR: CCacheLoader failed to find archived or source file for: "art/textures/selection/star/256x256_mask.png" the errors belong to: and

han_champion_chariot throws error: caused by: "attack_b.dae" and "sword_shield_attack_b.dae" no longer exists since "23107"

First of all, I would like to congratulate all the team behind this project. This is the best RTS I've ever played, because it combines almost everything: art, realism, strategy, originality, etc. I've played a lot of RTS like WC and SC, (they have great technical gameplay). So I'd like to give you some recommendations to improve the game because there are things that can be better without much effort. I hope the developers can read this. And again, this is a great game! First, the selection of specific units and targets is sometimes very tedious. The main inconvenience of this type happens on naval maps, when we construct the buildings more together, they cover the units and it is difficult to select them when they are behind a building or put a meeting point near your buildings. Another example when you finish mastering an enemy tower and want to select it to self-destruct, it is often difficult to click it because the units around it cover it, sometimes also the trees cover it. I know this is fixed many times by moving the camera, but that's not practical. Something similar happens sometimes when you decide to attack an enemy unit that is between trees with infantry and often you will take out wood and not chase it (of course if you adjust your camera this can help, but as I said before it is not practical). SOLUTION: I -- as a novice player I am -- I think that happens because the unit selection is made around the unit, but I think it would be improved if the selection of the units would be made around their circle of selection that they have in the field. Second. Obligatory garrison of towers (and siege towers) and ships to have a decent attack. This slows down the strategic gameplay because you have to add soldiers at all times to these types of units. It also takes away realism (although it seems otherwise) as all soldiers give the same damage regardless of whether or not they have more damage due to rank or a damage update. This could be explained if the soldier finds other weapons in those structures and replaced their weapons, but usually that didn't happen. POSSIBLE SOLUTION: I think this problem is the solution to another problem where you sought to balance the towers and boats so that they are not op. Perhaps one of the options they ruled out was to make the construction of towers occupy population, but the solution can be a combination of both factors . It would more or less look like this: Advanced tower (wooden): occupies 1-0 population, gives 0-1 garrison (this tower is the one that presents the least incovenient, could leave it as it is) Tower 1: occupies 2-5 population, gives 3-5 garrison Tower 2: occupies 3-10 population, gives 5-10 garrison Fixed siege tower (if it exists): occupies 5-10, gives 2-5 garrison Mobilble siege tower (built in fortresses) occupies 5-12 population, gives 10-12 garrison approximately Light and medium boats: 2-5 population, gives approximately 8-30 garrison Heavier boats: 5-8 population, gives 30-45 garrison By making these changes, you would have to increase the damage of towers and ships as they occupy population, in addition to other adjustments such as build distance or perhaps, only perhaps a limit for certain types of structures according to the level of the CC. The goal of this is to make ships and towers more military, something like siege machines. Third. The phallic Babilonic tanks and elephants with archers are almost useless in the current game. First there is the penchygeon stroller, it is only driven by 1 person who does not seem to drive and essentially only has more life and mobility than an archer. They should make it cost 2 population (driver and archer as it really was), make it possible for you to attack automatically while moving and so that it is not OP to lower the range as it is difficult to shoot great distances with precision while moving at high speed. In addition, I saw that they have a detail on their tires and that detail can be used to make melee units (perhaps not lancers) attacking the Babylonian falcado tank lose life. Something similar could be done to the elephant with Hindu archer, the damage to melee units could be caused by the elephant. The goal is to make them more useful. But not as OPs as battering rams xd Like many other players, I don't lack ideas, so just say the ones I think seem most useful to developers (there's more where they came from). I've seen many of your discussions in these forums and I know that your game, the way you're developing it, has a lot of potential, from soldier-workers' ideas to naval and territorial battles. Remember that there are games like Dota 2 that came from independent projects, where marketing doesn't matter and where the dreams of a community are reflected with total freedom. Playing something that has been done with such fullness does not need strategy to be played, the game creates the kind of strategy needed to be played. It is only in you to decide the right path to the greatness of this game. Forgive the grammar, I don't write English often. Thank you for this great game and don't forget to make rams only can attack buildings by putting 0 their cut damage (maybe) and reduce the size of merchant and warships as they are often stuck in a epic way. And making women unable to build military buildings, so Spartans would be more useful.

zapo_wonder causes the following error: ERROR: CCacheLoader failed to find archived or source file for: "art/actors/props/structures/decals/dirt_theatron.xml" ERROR: CObjectManager::FindObjectBase(): Cannot find object 'props/structures/decals/dirt_theatron.xml' ERROR: CCacheLoader failed to find archived or source file for: "art/actors/props/structures/decals/dirt_theatron.xml" ERROR: CObjectManager::FindObjectBase(): Cannot find object 'props/structures/decals/dirt_theatron.xml' ERROR: CCacheLoader failed to find archived or source file for: "art/actors/props/structures/decals/dirt_theatron.xml" ERROR: CObjectManager::FindObjectBase(): Cannot find object 'props/structures/decals/dirt_theatron.xml' ERROR: Failed to build prop model "props/structures/decals/dirt_theatron.xml" on actor "ball_court" ERROR: CCacheLoader failed to find archived or source file for: "art/actors/props/structures/decals/dirt_theatron.xml" ERROR: CObjectManager::FindObjectBase(): Cannot find object 'props/structures/decals/dirt_theatron.xml' ERROR: CCacheLoader failed to find archived or source file for: "art/actors/props/structures/decals/dirt_theatron.xml" ERROR: CObjectManager::FindObjectBase(): Cannot find object 'props/structures/decals/dirt_theatron.xml' ERROR: CCacheLoader failed to find archived or source file for: "art/actors/props/structures/decals/dirt_theatron.xml" ERROR: CObjectManager::FindObjectBase(): Cannot find object 'props/structures/decals/dirt_theatron.xml' ERROR: CCacheLoader failed to find archived or source file for: "art/actors/props/structures/decals/dirt_theatron.xml" ERROR: CObjectManager::FindObjectBase(): Cannot find object 'props/structures/decals/dirt_theatron.xml' ERROR: CCacheLoader failed to find archived or source file for: "art/actors/props/structures/decals/dirt_theatron.xml" ERROR: CObjectManager::FindObjectBase(): Cannot find object 'props/structures/decals/dirt_theatron.xml' ERROR: CCacheLoader failed to find archived or source file for: "art/actors/props/structures/decals/dirt_theatron.xml" ERROR: CObjectManager::FindObjectBase(): Cannot find object 'props/structures/decals/dirt_theatron.xml' dirt_theatron.xml ==> dirt_theater.xml

Yes but delenda est partially depends on the public mod. I changed those files.

Star is because of D2503 No, stan, the files in the picture has only to be change their <MainTexture> to the new "selection-shapes" (i think they were only forgotton to change) also Promotion is because of the animation reexport. I guess maybe updating /deleting variants should work. the file (red marked) no longer exists

the following row in he "epir.json" has to be changed: otherwise it's throws an error: 0 A.D. (0.0.24) Main log (warnings and errors only) ERROR: CCacheLoader failed to find archived or source file for: "simulation/templates/units/{civ}_cavalry_scout.xml" ERROR: Failed to load entity template 'units/{civ}_cavalry_scout' ERROR: Failed to load entity template 'units/{civ}_cavalry_scout' ERROR: CCacheLoader failed to find archived or source file for: "simulation/templates/units/{civ}_cavalry_scout.xml" ERROR: Failed to load entity template 'units/{civ}_cavalry_scout'

You can pm or ask here and ping me (the latter has the advantage that everyone can benefit)

Some wanted to make it a special building to show both existed

I am not sure. Need to make up my mind about the brit wonder firsr.

@user1 My name: ishaan777 Offending player: jangers Jangers (the host) abused me several times and eventually disconnected the game since I did an early rush on him. Of course at this time the game was not won but I was hampering his ability to get resources and this pissed him off enough to disconnect the game. commands.txt

Hi again @user1 My lobby name is 'DaveTheBrave', my opponent was 'than' He left the game without saying anything Now I feel like I'm the only one upset with those quitters... commands.txt

Interesting if there will be a video i will send to Alexander to his WhatsApp . He are experience big trouble to connecting .

Hi @user1 my lobby name is DaveTheBrave. I was playing against godmodon2000 another day another quitter Just when he started loosing he left the game without resigning commands.txt

Calculating the distance between two units is fairly easy: The distance between the centres of two units can be computed by querying the position components and ask for the exact positions of the units. If you want to compute the distance between a unit (with obstruction, like you have with the walls) and a point or another unit, you should be able to use one of the following functions in the obstructionManager: /** * Returns the distance from the obstruction to the point (px, pz), or -1 if the entity is out of the world. */ virtual fixed DistanceToPoint(entity_id_t ent, entity_pos_t px, entity_pos_t pz) const = 0; /** * Calculate the largest straight line distance between the entity and the point. */ virtual fixed MaxDistanceToPoint(entity_id_t ent, entity_pos_t px, entity_pos_t pz) const = 0; /** * Calculate the shortest distance between the entity and the target. */ virtual fixed DistanceToTarget(entity_id_t ent, entity_id_t target) const = 0; /** * Calculate the largest straight line distance between the entity and the target. */ virtual fixed MaxDistanceToTarget(entity_id_t ent, entity_id_t target) const = 0; You can query them from JS using Engine.QueryInterface(SYSTEM_ENTITY, IID_ObstructionManager).fooDistancefoo(foos) Hope this helps

@wik : aye that's actually just caused by my unfinished patch . As written here https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2752 "I haven't yet bothered to reimplement "renderer incremental loop". If you start the actual game a few times, it'll populate your cache and the issue will be fixed.

Sorry for the long wait, but here are the first sketches! A mix of the city stadium statue (left) and Wikimedia bust (right) with the model already in-game. First image was uploaded at night so yellow lamp was used. (Edit) The second one is the same but uploaded during the day. If you want more whiteness, could re-upload in the daytime. Feel free to use these in your editing programs. Do you need more sketches of King Leonidas, or how about other heroes (Brasidas, Agis IV, etc.)?

Note to self: Next time, check history before modelling a building. Also RTFM. mausoleum.zip