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Progress Update May 2016 In this progress update we tell you a sample of what we have been up to since the last Alpha release. We have added new Seleucid buildings, more work has been done on animations for the new unit models and last but not least we’d like to tell you what Omri Lahav, our composer has been up to. A screenshot showing the new Seleucid wonder in-game New buildings and a new team member LordGood has been creating several new buildings for the Seleucids, meaning we should be able to officially release them in the next Alpha. The Seleucid Market We have a new team member: Niek, known as niektb. He is new to the team, but not new to the project as he has been part of the community for several years. During that time he has gotten to know the project and has contributed both art, some code and maps, and most importantly he is an important part of the modding community. And that will hopefully continue, which means he can be a useful link between the main game development and the mod development. We hope that his journey will serve as inspiration for others, being a part of a modding team is a great learning experience. Several buildings which have previously just been available in the editor are now possible to use in normal gameplay. They range from the Briton’s Crannog which is both a Civic Center and a dock, to the Persian Ishtar Gate, which increase the resistance to being captured for nearby buildings. More accurate experience Citizen Soldiers now gain experience (XP) per every hit they do rather than just when they kill another unit. This means that experience is more evenly distributed between the units. Previously one soldier might have dealt almost all the damage but another could still have gotten the XP just because it was the last soldier to hit the enemy before it died. New animations Our Art Lead, Enrique, has been busy creating new animations for the new unit models: From left to right: Walking female citizen, A unit mining, Walking with cape, Chopping wood with a shield on the back. There are still a lot of animations to create, so it is not likely that we will start to use the new models for a while yet. Every new animation created brings that day closer though, so it’s certainly encouraging to have more of them done. Fixes and improvements Sander (sanderd17) and Lancelot (wraitii) have changed the game engine so the simulation can set actor variants. This should allow things like showing damage on units and buildings, or defining winter maps that load actors with snowy textures as opposed to normal snow-free textures. The engine part is more or less done, but it will take a lot of work by artists before it will be visible in the game. New balancing of champions and siege changes the gameplay to make siege engines more important, as buildings can’t be destroyed effectively by champions any more. The timeout for the wonder victory can be set arbitrarily, previously it was set to 10 minutes, but now you can set it to anything from 1 minute to 120 minutes. Apart from that there has been work done on technologies and civilization bonuses, the in-game menus and more. For an in-depth list see the Alpha 21 highlights page on our wiki which is updated regularly as new features are added to the development version. Omri has released a personal album And some news from our composer Omri Lahav: He has been busy creating his first personal album, which you can check out at his Bandcamp page: We highly recommend you check it out. He has also just moved to the U.S. so he will most likely not have time to create music for 0 A.D. for a little while yet. He has mentioned that he’s starting to get inspired though, so hopefully it will not take too long. As a final note: We have disabled the contact form on the Contact us page as we haven’t received any emails from it for a while and have been unable to find the cause. You can of course still contact us in all the other ways: via the forums, IRC, and the email address listed on the Contact page. If you have sent a message to us via the contact form and not received a reply, please contact us in another way as we have most likely not seen it.

Hi guys. AI is back to its old trick of putting all defense tower toward top of map:

First of all thank you for the feedback! I have to say I am quiet impressed by your eyesight I indeed applied the parameters at the wrong size... (512 instead of 256) Of course I would like to help out with your test. I did some new renders of both the chicken and the deer at different sizes. For the deer I also fixed the glow. I found for 512x512 that size parameters between 60 and 50 worked well for the bigger glow (the one with the noise) and size values between 20 and 18 worked well for the screen glow. Also I generally made the size of the drop shadow about 3/4 smaller than what you suggested. Otherwise it seem to dominant to me and didn't bring out the 3D'ish look as well. So here are the new images: If your post gets transformed into a wiki page I would like to suggest one improvement. After you created the three glow layers (larger noisy glow, smaller glow, drop shadow), it is important to right click on each of the three layer in the Layers Tab and click "Scale layer to image size" before scaling the layers down. Since those three layers are bigger than your object layer, you get weird offset errors by 1 or 2 pixels otherwise (probably due to rounding). This is espacially noticable with the drop shadow layer. Shrinking the layers to image size fixes this.

I can't see why "going half way" is bad. Yes, the total numbers of entities per player possible somehow depends on e.g. if formations/battalions are used - for e.g. pathfinder performance reasons. But having a non-formation behavior optionally doesn't mean that the entire games breaks or something... Yes, only having "cosmetic" formations would mean (if formations are optional) that formations would have no use. That's why I am against formations only for cosmetic reasons. Giving units in formations that makes sense and doesn't make single units basically useless could still make formations usefull - at least in some cases. And IMO that's not bad but adds to the possibilities the game offers. However, those bonuses should not feel arbitrary but beleavable. There are many concepts that would allow to make formations usefull and strong like stamina/moral (and cycle e.g. exausted units - that could e.g. deal less damage - at the edge of the formation with new ones). Shielded units could also make ranged units safer within a formation adding armor bonus. AFAIK there is a strong opinion in the team for formations. I, personally dont like some concepts of formations. And I don't like enforcing them on the player. However, if the team decides otherwise I will accept that of cause! I'm not sure where formations will go in the long run and on the way we might come by cosmetic formations. Untill we have that working well it will be hard to add more complex formation systems anyways. However, I can't see any good reason why also having a "non-formation" formation would not be a good thing: It's good for testing, good to see how bad just cosmetic formations perform compared to seperate units and allows the players to use what they like. So That is all I ask for: Untill we have well working formation system with beleavable boni also keep a non-formation formation as an option.

I can't remember anyone but FeXoR saying that they are against the idea, I can remember a lot of programmers (who are the ones who are implementing things) saying they think it might be too difficult to do well. We haven't given up on it, but it's certainly something we are worried about not being able to do. At least not well.

I have to second wow's opinion; formations carrying an integral role to combat has been core to 0 A.D.'s vision for a long time, and denying those mechanics to combat would be a major turn from the game's original ideal.

If you guy s do not make the formations fundamental to the combat, then yes guys, you are doomed to failure. If there is not believe in the concept then why spend the effort to try to implement it? Srs questions. I have never seen 1 team member with strong voice say they like the concept. Are you implement it for mods? If that's true it is much appreciated, but in the end, for Vanilla game, you have to have a strong unified vision for the game's combat. Either you go all in with the formations and make them the core of the combat, or you just give soldiers a simple boxy/line formation (so they don't look completely unorganized) that they break out of all the time and be done with it.

@stanislas69: thanks!

We had a balancing team, but it was unbalanced. A balancing leader works better than a team for this.