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Shader effects 0 vs shader effects 10. It's not really a beauty. 842 model tris in atlas, 421 in blender, hope that is not too many @Genava55 @Ultimate Aurelian Should I make a stone baba and steles from the deer stones culture or would that be ahistorical?

WIP

Carthage 4: The Island of the Palace-builders After securing blessing at Kition, you continue to sail West, in search of new lands to settle. As supplies run low, you make a stop at Crete, the island of the palace-builders. You remember the lessons from childhood, about a great people who lived on the island, their palaces and wall paintings. All of that is history is gone though, Dorians from the North have been raiding the islands for centuries and there is little left of the palace-builders. You have dispatched two of your most loyal servants with a small contingent to secure food supplies. The hills nearby are inhabited by herders -- we must capture their corrals and secure a total of 650 animals for the journey ahead. To the West, lies a small Minoan settlement that we can trade with. Further to the North is a Dorrian city, well fortified and protected -- we must beware! We are likely to face attacks both on land and sea so build up your forces fast! News of our arrival has spread and we can expect a much larger Dorian army to arrive within 2 weeks time (~50 minutes game play) -- we must secure the animals by then! AI Settings: Dorians and Minoans should be set to Petra with a difficulty of your choice. All others should be Sandbox

It's true, it is open source and I am not a dev. So it is easy for me to complain about the poor performance in team games, even though I myself cannot put in the work to fix it. Nevertheless, I have been asking myself recently: should I really be playing a game this laggy in 2024? Time out of one's day is lost in games where actual time is significantly longer (2x, for example) than game time. WAY more than the unit rebalances or new units, I look forward to performance improvements like Vulcan. I also heard a27 will bring a way for the host to check if a player is causing lag due too just having a slow computer. So the host can choose not let that player in 4v4 games for example. That is annoying. Probably what you are running into is the fact that a maximum of 200 units can be selected at a time. 2 things can help mitigate this now: Hold alt while dragging the mouse to select military units only. Holding alt + y while dragging the mouse to select will select NON-military units only. Or, Play games with a lower pop limit. A bit of self critique: Some of the performance issues can be mitigated by choosing different options. We DON'T HAVE to play 4v4 200 pop team games. I think 3v3 is pretty interesting, actually. We can play lower pop limit games (albeit this effects the defensive structure vs unit balance). Just because we have the freedom to choose grander options doesn't mean that it's the best choice.

This stone baba is from the Scythian period so no issue. The deer stone pillar is a bit older vut it is fine, it was still used by the Scythians even if they didn't build it. For the sake of diversity we can let it pass through.

I'd bake some subtle shadows into the texture at least, give the illusion of a little more detail. Also remember that the stele we see today are very weathered. In their prime, their details woukd be easier to see. I wonder if there is evidence of paint.

the game is better at lower pop imho.

What I think makes the Seleucid cavalry so interesting is that they were, unlike other Hellenistic kingdoms, forced by external enemies to develop a strong cavalry force. And this necessity aggravated even more after loosing (and becoming enemies with) some of their own important cavalry suppliers, regions like Parthia and Bactria. This even led to a tendency to neglect infantry which turned out fatal in some battles. In the above text, I was focusing on the composition of Seleucid cavalry. Its role and importance probably deserve its own text. You worded it pretty well, if you're fine with it, I'm gonna use the passages you wrote, I couldn't write it better.

Hi everyone, For a few years now we have pondered whether git would be the right VCS for the development of 0 A.D. One of the main selling points of git is the ability to create numerous branches for parallel development of features and bugfixes. Several popular platforms (Github, Gitlab.com, ...) leverage this to provide a feature-packed development environment, where people can contribute, discuss, review, and test patches. Historically, the development of 0 A.D. has been performed using SVN, which is a bit old... but suits our needs in a number of ways, already discussed elsewhere. We are using Phabricator to supercharge SVN with a review and CI/CD platform, but alas, Phabricator has been abandoned by its developers. In any case, a lot of contributors in the past couple of years have expressed disappointment with the peculiarities of Phabricator. Thus, we have discussed finally moving to git, without any strong urgency or hard opinions on the matter. I have proposed myself to set up a migration path and a new development environment for 0 A.D., and I am proud to present it to you folks today. I have started working on this "for real" more than a year ago, and started dedicating all my "0 A.D. time" (which has been very scarce) on this project at the end of Spring 2023. It is still, unfortunately, very much a work-in-progress, but now is the time to reveal it and receive feedback. Ideally, I would like to collect feedback from the community, finish the CI/CD system, and fix bugs, over the course of the spring, with the aim of performing the actual migration, if the community wishes to perform it, during the summer. As always, delays should be expected. It is worth noting that personal changes in my life/work balance will give me more free time after the summer. Thanks in advance for the feedback you will provide Presentation of the Proof of Concept I am self-hosting the services for the duration of the tests, so that I have full control and do not divert resources from WFG. All URLs are under itms.ovh, which should eventually become wildfiregames.com Email does not work on this Proof of Concept! I have no will to setup email and I certainly don't want to spam anyone with tests. The services are not updated automatically: the full migration takes around 48h and necessitates some human input. The PoC I am presenting was generated from scratch the past two days. I will update stuff from time to time, when I fix bugs or when I'm bored, but don't expect the PoC to follow the actual development of the WFG services. Please test as many things as you want and don't hesitate to try to break things! Now is the time to make sure I didn't forget anything. All the data sent to the PoC will be wiped out whenever I re-migrate the services, and of course whenever the actual migration happens. Please feel free to play around all this. The services (this will be regularly updated) - gitea.itms.ovh The development platform. This is an instance of Gitea, a self-hosted lightweight alternative to Gitlab/Github. If, in the far future, we want to stop self-hosting stuff, Gitea is compatible with Github features to allow for easy migration. The git repository is at wfg/0ad. Commit messages were reformatted, contain the original SVN revision, links to other commits are preserved as much as possible. The HEAD revision is the HEAD of the SVN repo. A currently WIP of the "future" branch of the git repository, adding commits needed for development with git, is at my fork Itms/0ad. All Gitea users were imported from Trac. Since email does not work, if you want to login, shoot me a DM and I'll send you a password. All Trac tickets are imported at wfg/0ad/issues. The Trac wiki is imported at wfg/0ad/wiki. I tried to self-document the PoC as much as possible, so please read the updated pages, especially BuildInstructionsGettingTheCode and BuildAndDeploymentEnvironment. The FAQ is defaced beyond readability because of its formatting peculiarities, work is needed, my apologies to everyone who worked hard on the visuals of the Trac page... - trac.itms.ovh A read-only copy of Trac, upgraded to the latest release. This serves as a reference, and can stay online as long as needed. See below for the redirect tool. - code.itms.ovh A registration-disabled copy of Phabricator, upgraded to the latest version (RIP). All the inactive accounts were deleted, especially the dormant spam accounts. This should stay up as much as possible. We need to keep all the discussions on patches and commits. TODO: I need to find a (possibly ugly) way to disable the upload of new diffs. - svn.itms.ovh The old and new SVN repositories. This holds the current ps repo (which will stop receiving commits after the migration), the audio and art sources (which will keep working as-is), the new libraries repos for precompiled Windows and for bundled libs, and most importantly the new nightly-build repo WIP: This is currently the biggest missing piece, as I am now going to start working on CI/CD, and the generation of the nightly build. Please read NightlyBuild if you want to know how this will work in the (hopefully close) future. - ariadne.itms.ovh Ariadne is a small redirect tool I wrote as a drop-in replacement for Trac or Phabricator when/if we decide to drop them. A lot of links to Trac exist on the Internet. You can follow Trac-like paths on Ariadne to find the relevant content. Each Trac page displays a link to the associated Ariadne path. For instance : A ticket https://ariadne.itms.ovh/ticket/666 A wiki page https://ariadne.itms.ovh/wiki/Manual_Settings A SVN changeset https://ariadne.itms.ovh/changeset/28056 A Phabricator commit page https://ariadne.itms.ovh/rP28056 A file in the Trac browser https://ariadne.itms.ovh/browser/ps/trunk/source/test_setup.cpp Ariadne also provides a nice page for knowing commit correspondence, just use `rXXXX` as path: https://ariadne.itms.ovh/r28056 https://ariadne.itms.ovh/r28000 Enjoy! And see you soon for regular updates

I regenerated the repo and associated data (that broke some links, I can't do much except rewiping the databases and users, which I'll try to avoid doing too frequently). I'm going to stop changing/fixing bugs in the PoC for now, thanks for all the reports and testing. I am now going to focus on the Unix build environment and the setting up of CI/CD. Changelog: git repository: - used short hashes in messages (I didn't have to choose the length, git automatically chose 10 chars) - wrapped the content of commit messages to 72 chars, ignoring the first line - grouped metadata lines in commit messages as much as possible (my regexp detects "[...] by:" and "Differential Revision:" but not for instance Trac tickets:, I can't cover and test all cases) - handle phab: links and [Pp]hab: links to non-commits - added a Bugs herder team Imported issues: - updated label display (typography/color), removed activity labels - disabled time tracking - do not publish a Patch change if the new value is empty wiki documentation: - added notices to install git LFS - adapted contents to label improvement Cosmetics: - added link to docs.wildfiregames.com in top menu Future branch: - merged Stan's update to .gitignore In gitea 1.22 (currently RC, will upgrade when it's released): - command-line instructions to merge will be adapted to our merge strategies - username will be correctly used instead of real name in commit feeds (including the RSS consumed by the IRC bot) Didn't do: - rename TracUser, I really think it's important to be explicit about the fact content comes from Trac - keep the Trac registration date of users... because Trac doesn't record that at all (only the last activity date) - I cannot reproduce @hyperion problem with "issues created by me"

Thought this might be helpful for those of you working on their first own linothorax.

It would be cool to if when you click on a unit you can see how many other units they killed, possibly even "humans" and buildings and siege. I cant take full credit for the idea. JBC (in game name, not sure if same on forum) mentioned it in a chat. Not sure how hard/feasible this would be. But it would be helpful for people to learn what units are better suited for different type of situations. Thoughts?

I think best to have the option to have 2 versions of world population with one distributed per player and to have one distributed per team.

PR for two more articles:https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/134 Battle of Gaugamela (I wrote this one a long time ago, but forgot to submit it). It is good text in my opinion, but I'm unsure whether its length actually fits in the scope of the encyclopedia. Same for most other texts in the unused folder and some heroes. I am going to try harder to keep the texts shorter and leave out irrelevant details from now on. and cavalry warfare during the Hellenistic period (lengthwise much better): The UI work on the encyclopedia page has been on hold for the last weeks, but I will resume working on it this weekend or next week.

I think this is a great idea. Bigger houses should need less time for producing women. That would be fair for civ balance. Moreover, reducing women training time from houses would give an alternative way to boom. I would go as far as: - 25sec from small houses - 18sec from big houses - 12sec from apartment

@Genava55 Great, thanks! My plan is to create 5 or 6 steles (2 potato heads, 2 deer stones, 1-2 babas). @wowgetoffyourcellphone When all meshes are ready and I have a final UV layout I'm gonna bake it again. I need to tweak the normal strength again. On the first one the stone texture normals are too strong and the highpoly normal is too weak. I added ambient occlusion to my material setup, no idea why it didn't bake that, but I'll find a way to add shadow. When everything is baked I could add some moss/ weathering effects/ bird @#$% with texturepaint. When all is done I plan to use them for the kurgan wonder that I'm already working on. @real_tabasco_sauce Are there models that would only need existing textures? I could try to make a mesh then

these look really cool. If you need other ideas, we will also need a Scythian dock, a Scythian version of an ovoo, nomads stable, and a 'royal yurt' (other discussion):

next one, left side view

Manor Lords

On the battlefield, the Seleucid cavalry arm was often the most successful in the army, often driving off the enemy cavalry in order to turn and make devastating flanking and rear charges into the enemy center.

So that is why some cultures used war dogs.

Seleucid cavalry: https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/136

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Edfu

PR for the general corral and field. These articles can be used for civilizations that we can't find something intresting to say about their agriculture. https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/135

I hope you enjoy looking at end game statistics as much as I do. The current stats are quite nice, and I propose to add some: Regarding units: We have aggregate numbers from the entire game, but these 2 can be interesting: Peak Unit/Army Size: highest number of military units at any time Unit/Army Size at Finish: this would reflect the number of units at the end Regarding technologies: We currently have no statistics regarding technologies. We can have info like: Technologies researched: number of technologies researched by the players Technologies researched (percentage): technologies researched by the player as a percentage of total technologies available to the player Time to X Phase: the time stamp at which the player has reached town or city phase

Yeah, I also would like some more stats. I put some effort into leveling up units, so personally I would like a number regarding that.

@ShadowOfHassen I guess its a multiplayer inside joke, but ill explain. Basically this player has been regularly playing for multiple years and only plays Mauryas. he's known for funny all-in rushes and playing maury but this was the first game ever playing another civ.

So if its 3x3 and one person rage quits (no names) then the team with 2 still has a fighting chance!

it could be good, although I don't like the idea of better players on a team convincing a weaker player to throw in the towel so they get more pop space. But this is why options exist, so not a huge concern.

@Grautvornix I think the idea is more for novelty, for example, identifying a hero swordcav that took down 20 skirmishers. It could be enabled only for spectators to avoid clutter.

I'm on debian sid, so it affect my device. I suddenly checked my xz-utils and liblzma and debian community have already reverted to 5.4.5 For further infos read here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39866307

Chapter 3: Blessings You have finally arrived in Kition, a Tyrian colony in Cyprus where your husband's brother is the head priest of Astarte. You grieve your husband's death together. But work is to be done. The priest is ready to provide Astarte's blessing for your journey but there is trouble that needs to be dealt with first. News of your assault on the Assyrian fortress has reached these lands and the general in the Assyrian colony to the West of us has vowed revenge. To the north east, a band of Greeks live in the hills and have decided that now is the time to plunder. You must help Kition defend itself. Defeat the Assyrians and the Greeks! Your scouts report that there are friendly traders in the area -- we should search by boat and within land. We do not have the resources to establish a settlement and will need to rely on trade to support our forces. Directly to the north, our scouts report the presence of barbarians -- they may have useful loot and perhaps even weapons that will be helpful to us. AI Settings: Greek Traders should be set to Sandbox. Everyone else, Petra with a difficulty of your choice. Note: any buildings you capture will not decay due to lack of culture influence.

I have an idea so that no one notices. Have you heard the paradox of Theseus? It's all about changing things so slowly that you don't feel the change until it's no longer 0AD, but rather DE.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deer_stones_culture

I have no recollection of this, but apparently it made a big impact on you, so I apologize. If I were to be made leader I would merge DE instantly and make everyone angry.

Using Vulcan should drastically increase the performance and reduce the lag. The list is there: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/query?status=assigned&status=new&status=reopened&type=defect&milestone=Backlog&group=type&col=id&col=summary&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&col=component&col=time&order=priority People making balancing changes and small features are not the same people than those working on the engine and on the core of the game.

games are not open source and only maintained by volunteers. it's an impossible comparison.

Hello everyone, It is with great sadness and a little relief that I am announcing my retirement as project leader of both 0 A.D.: Empires Ascendant and Wildfire Games. It has been an awesome 12 years and 8 months, with its ups and downs. Making it to the team will remain one of my greatest achievements ever. After 6 years of 3D art struggles, getting the chance to join the team was unexpected (and, to this day one of my proudest moments), and two years later to be offered the leader job came even more as a surprise. It has been an incredible opportunity to be the leader of such a project. I would not have met half of the awesome people I met if it were not for it, and I would certainly have not have had the opportunities to go to the places I went if it were not for it. I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. Being able to spread the word about the game around the world has been an honor, and I hope the game will continue to shine at events. Recently, I had less and less energy and motivation to give to 0 A.D. The delay followed by the cancelling of A27 was no exception; I simply could not give the same energy I gave for the previous ones. The lobby became a source of permanent mental load and anxiety, first because of it is lack of moderation, then because of it started becoming moderated, and now because mods splat the community even more and the cheating is rampant. And it went downhill from there, as I started the longest break I ever took from 0 A.D. Those of you that know me know I was not really far, but I was simply not there. On the development side, I cannot seem to find any fun anymore. Everything feels more like duty than an actual desire, which can only work for so long until it breaks. The learning curve is just simply not worth the burnouts anymore. There are so many things I wanted to add to 0 A.D to showcase the true potential of the engine, as it is just immense, look at all the mods have done, look at all the thing people learnt about history, programming, art, bugs.. But I don't feel I can carry that vision anymore. I believe it is time for a change. I am therefore, effective immediately, quitting my functions as programmer, artist, video editor, documentation manager, translator, human resources, moderator, social media manager, public relations, system administrator, mod signer and modder, (all my mods can be considered archived until further notice). It is the only way for me to ever move on. I cannot just keep doing one thing for 0 A.D., unless I get a clean break I will continue feeling everything not covered by someone is on my shoulders, and it is a weight too big for a single person. I would like to thank everyone that made some or the whole journey with me, I will miss you all very much. I hope we shall meet again. I would also like to thank all the players that took action in the balancing department it has not been an easy task. I do not have ideas for the person who can or will replace me, nor do I know whether I should be replaced by a single person. I will leave it for the remaining people to decide what kind of leadership model they want to go for from now on. As for what I'll do next I do not know yet, but I've been working on Godot tools to import 0 A.D. assets and it's been fun, so I might continue that. I'm still working with Activ' Design this year as well. tldr; So long and thank you for the fish. May Wildfire Games and 0 A.D: Empires Ascendant live a long and healthy life after I am gone. Best regards, Stan