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Wildfiregames presents: 0AD's unit upgrade. -Why do you work on this upgrade when you should be working on pathfinder and performance improvements? -Please note that this upgrade has been done by an artist who hasn't any knowledge in programming. This upgrade has not taken away any precious work time to 0AD programming developers who continue to work on the needed pathfinder and performance improvements. -Why do you make this upgrade? For a number or reasons: Unit models are very old, around 6-7 years old. These new models are closer to today's industry standards. UV mapping and model proportions aren't ideal on the current models. The new ones have realistic human proportions and much better UV mapping. Old animations cannot be modified, only created from scratch. With the new models we can maintain the blender source files of the animations and modify them at will. Since we share the blender source files, the team and the community can make variations for their own model variations and still use the new armature. Old model's armature (skeleton) is very basic and limited. With the new model's armature we can achieve more detailed animations and are capable of basic prop animation -Are these new models already implemented? Do they work with the old animations? -No. The models are finished and ready to start animation production. We will remake all the unit animations and implement them when there are almost all of the required animations completed. However, the models are commited to the SVN version of the game with some test examples that you can check in the map editor. These examples and the models will be released in the next Alpha release (Alpha18) if you don't wan't to set up a SVN version. To check some unit examples in SVN, go to the map editor and in the object tab, search for all actors and filter by "newunit". Once selected click on "Switch to action viewer" to isolate the unit and zoom in. (please note these are just examples and they aren't final unit setups) -Do you have increased the number of unit variations of the game? -Yes, now there are non-armored unit variations, and armored unit variations with some differences. There are plans to add some more in the near future if time permits. -Can I make my own animations for my mod and use these new models? -Yes you can! Check at the bottom of this post to download the blender source file(s) of the armature and check the SVN newunit xmls example for setting up your own units. Don't forget to check the presentation video where there's a short explanation of how the armature works. -What is left to be done before I can play with these new models? -Since the unit heads have different size than the old ones, all the helmets in the game must be resized to fit them. Also as pointed a few lines above, we're going to upgrade all the animations to fit these new models. When these two tasks are complete or close to completion, we'll implement them and you'll be able to play 0AD with them. -Is there something I can make to help with this task? -Yes! If you are a skilled animator with experience in human models' animations you can open a thread in "Applications and contributions" subforum, tell us about yourself and show us some of your animation works! Male unit variations (Old Work in progress): (Click following images to enlarge) Female unit variations (Old work in progress): Download the blend file and start animating! Enjoy! New unit upgrade animation template.zip

He was probably inspired by the roundness of his head

I'm probably going to see an exhibition in Dublin about Vikings, I'll hold you updated

Weeeell.. I'm kinda busy playing shadows of mordor these days.

Running: 2x speed. Automatic, not triggered by player. Usually when catching up to formation, when "kiting", or when running away from attacker (female citizens) Charging: 2.5x speed (infantry), 3x speed (cavalry). Manual, triggered by player. Units will not start the charge until they walk to within charge distance. Units will not charge if too close to target. Stamina used simply as a cool down for the ability (must rebuild stamina). Stamina bar shows in UI but not in unit status bar. Some units (cavalry) have more stamina than others (heavy infantry), so can charge 2 or 3 times before cool down required. Charge give 2x attack (infantry) or 3x attack (cavalry, elephants, chariots) on contact. But charging units also receive 1.5x damage from retaliating target units on first strike. Very simple. Some thoughts for: Make spear cavalry have a heavier charge than sword cavalry. Viceversa, make sword cavalry have heavier standard attack than spear cavalry. Same goes for spear infantry and sword infantry.Battering Rams can "charge" as well, against building.Cool down/stamina, charge bonus, etc. open opportunity for technologies, e.g. "Hoplomachia" - Increased running and charging speed for Hoplites. "Othismos" - Increased charge attack bonus, "Shield Bash", "Hippika Gymnasia" - Increase stamina for cavalry, etc.

I think that the Starcraft II concept is the best for 0 ad in a KISS sense. No running, no marching. Only charging. When a unit is near to another, they should automatically charge (it should be able to turn off the autocast and to manually select targets) when a unit is near to a enemy in x space. So units would charge continuously in the mosh pit until stamina is drained. (just small cooldowns for the ability) BTW, for immersion sake, I think that units in fight mode should use run animations. There are some design decisions here: if stamina is used, we should think about an ability system, instead of hardecoring the features (camoflauge, charging, healing) make them working in a more dynamic and comprehensive way for modding (thinking about warcraft 3/starcraft 2 ability system). But I know, that it's easy to write, and the important is getting the things done, so that it's only a humble opinion.

Added you! Thanks for contributing

Some more renders. I've not had any time at all to get things in the engine sadly, my day job is massacering all of my time:

Small correction, Spike, the version you use from the dev ppa is not the most up-to-date version. from play0ad.com ^ It is more up-to-date than the alpha releases but still not the newest. For the real dev version you should download the source code (this version is also known as SVN) For that, see these instructions: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/BuildInstructions#Linux