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Dear players and contributors, As some of you may know, I have been working on integrating the new pathfinder, designed by Philip (Ykkrosh) some time ago. After months of work, I am proud to announce that the new pathfinder has been included in the SVN version of the game. However, you must not think every problem 0 A.D. encounters has been solved. The new pathfinder is in, but a lot of features are still to be implemented and some new bugs have necessarily been introduced. What is the new pathfinder? The new pathfinder is actually a new long-range pathfinder, and the short-range pathfinder has been modified and tweaked a bit to adapt it to the changes. The new long-range pathfinder implements an optimization of the A* pathfinding algorithm, known as JPS (some information here). It also comes with an entirely new "hierarchical pathfinder", which doesn't compute any paths but deals with the connectivity between two points on the map. As a consequence, it is now possible for the pathfinder to know when it is useless to try to compute a path, thus improving the performance. Before, the pathfinder computed a lot of paths before understanding that some point was unreachable. Why is not everything fixed with the new pathfinder? The main thing is that the new pathfinder is designed to solve the big problems that the old pathfinder had (for instance the discrepancies between the long-range and the short-range pathfinder, the fact that the AI couldn't access the pathfinding code, and also performance). However, not all its features have been implemented. There is still a lot of things to do, but now that the new pathfinder is in, this work can be done. On top of that, things that used to work, like formations, are not properly supported yet by the new pathfinder and are currently disabled. A lot of bugs that were fixed in the old implementation are likely to reappear in this new one. What is still to be done? - Already almost ready, but still not in: Improve the grid update performance - Coming soon: Reenable formations JPS cache Remove the AI pathfinder Discover and fix unit motion bugs introduced by the pathfinder change - For the future: A lot of things that are now possible! What else can I learn about the new pathfinder? A PDF, written by Philip and currently being updated by me when I have time, is here. You can also take a look at Philip's progress reports he wrote when working on this new pathfinder here. What can I do? You can help us by testing the game and giving some feedback! Please open Trac tickets only when you are 200% sure it is not already reported (see the list of open problems here), else post in the forums and we will do our possible to file the issue and try to fix it. We would like to have a not-too-buggy A19 despite including this huge change, which is not a simple objective. Please help us!

I just finished making 2 custom maps for 0ad, so i wanna hear you opinion about them. you like it? or do i need to change or add stuff?

I like how you have taken care to make the maps playable. Many people make the mistake that they just try to make good-looking maps, which are unfortunately not fun to play. Well done: Both players seem to have more or less even chances on your mapsThe maps are laid out so that the terrain contributes to gameplay (narrow gaps, potential locations for expansion etc.)Terrain textures fit well. You adjust them to altitude and environmentYou use different trees for different environment types (palm trees on the shore, conifers on the east side where the terrain looks more rocky and the terrain is less green, burnt trees close to the vulcano)Terrain elevation makes it interesting but still in a way that should not infer with gameplay negativelyI think it's by purpose that there's (apparently) not enough room for a civic center on the islands in the middle of the second map? That could be interesting because it requires players to gather resources using docks first, I like it!Possible improvements: Terrain texture tiling is very visible on some places (especailly the grassy part in the middle).Could probably use some more eyecandy bushes and things. Would also help to hide the texture tiling.The seams between textures are too visible.Keep up the good work!

Awww lookit me show off my new maps! ha!

Well done Nicolas. Thanks for all the work.

Hello, I have written a little plugin. When you type "P" it turns kind of a playable pause mode. Actually, it toggles game speed 0.00001 / 1. Like this I can play as in AOE2, playing during the pause and optimizing everything. --> https://github.com/lebarde/activepause What do you think of this?

Welcome to the 0 A.D. Forum The maps looks nice to me. The second one seams to grant little space for buildings (but I guess that's intended).

It works on XP SP3, though in A18 it's necessary to patch the broken AtlasUI.dll file (see this post). In A19 it won't be necessary.

In the desktop version of Facebook you can report ads, is there a way to do the same in the mobile app? And if so, could you please do that the next time you see something like this? I don't think there's anything we can do, at least not unless we see it ourselves, but if people report it there's at least a chance that it will be removed.

Thanks for all the work on this so far Philip and Nicolas (I added a link to the "testing the game" part of the announcement in case someone who isn't already using the SVN version wants to help out test the game )

Another tiny update: It's slowly starting to look like a proper warship I hope you like the progress

As the guy who sorta planned to do this but completely failed to push through, I must say great work. This is a really positive accomplishment for the future.

If I finish up my other games or get to a point where I can work on all three at a decent pace I'll probably come back.

I like these kind of global consideration about what it is meant to do. Even if I think the aim of formation is to reach the target more efficiently (and not always faster). There's a proverb that says "if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together". Stances Because formations is bound to behaviours and this is related to stances here is what I think about it/what it does Violent stance: attack on sight, follow until death even if faster (and unreachable)Aggressive: attack on sight, but abandon if it goes beyond line of sight if still viewed by someone else (this is the default one)Defensive: attack on sight but do not chase, return to position when finished, and maybe stay in a short radius of protected areaPassive: do not attack, flee when attackedStand ground: do not move, attack when a target comes in rangeDefensive stance is somewhat the nearest to what FeXoR suggest as default. Maybe gatherers could automatically attack in this stance for auto (though basic) defense, but that's out of scope for now. Violent and aggressive are formation disrupting, and from my point of view not different enough from each other. Target wise aggressive could pick the most decent target close to the one selected, with use of preferences, range and so, violent could stick to the one picked (thus "berzerk" like micro, ignoring all surroundings) In that way, in formation defensive keeps units gathered, stand ground keeps them as walls, aggressive is more a "charge and kill'em all" stance and violent is more suited for small strategic raid on a dedicated target. There is still to consider "pre-battle" and "in battle" formations for the aggressive and violent stances, because in-battle formation should not be disrupted and won't work in violent stance. Formations Back to it, formations may be slower that individual units (and it may be reallistic that way, but I don't have any proof), but allows for your units to arrive organized and ready. If the time you need to organize is too short, the benefit from it is useless as FeXoR pointed out. If you get your cavalery arrive first, then your support, then your infantry, it should be waaay less efficient that having support walled with infantry occupying front line for cavalery to flank them (for example). And making a formation DURING a battle is to avoid at all cost. It should even be impossible to do. The current behaviour does it frequently and provides a lot of frustration. As for two commands for a move and attack formation, why? If the target is too far, moving there in formation will be slow, ineffective in more narrow areas and tiring. When coming closer though the initial formation should be remade. It may be a "force" command for some special cases but I don't see one just now. greenknight32, could you explain how you would use both commands? And to end with the default formation, I don't know if the none formation suits well. I agree it is useless for civil tasks and a lose of time. But once you pick some to go to battle, if you forget to assign them a formation it may be really risky (in a world where formations gives a strategic advantage). So the default may be None for civil tasks, but keep close line (or maybe open line) for battle tasks. The column can be auto if you are not in none formation, but women should then have 2 formations to have this behaviour or not. As everyone seems to agree to smooth the current state. What I can try to do is preventing going in formation for close targets. Then I could try to use target preferences for area attack (ctrl+click).

First Batch of concept art done! Although honestly I think it's a bit crap! Please note that the archer's bow and quiver are on the wrong side. I chose not to flip him coz it looked weird. Which demonstrates my inept abilities in illustration. These represent early game archer, spearman and shock trooper units. The colouring is done if the player colour is blue. Also note that the spearman and shock trooper would have shields and the shock trooper may also use axes and maces (they get random short weapons after popping out of barracks). I will do concept arts of equipments and the rest of the units and buildings too.

The archers of the Athenians surpass everyone. The tempo of their attack is too fast. there

Slowly cobbling everything back together, wee!

Hooray I got it to glow, it looks like postproc = true was the culprit. Thank you very much for helping me figure that out: