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0 A.D. Development Report - Autumn 2017 Wildfire Games, the international group of volunteers developing 0 A.D. : Empires Ascendant, is happy to present this monthly 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, we urge you to post your application in our forums or just grab a task from our list of open tickets and get right to it. We are currently looking for Gameplay, AI, Sound and Graphics Programmers along with Animators and 3D & texture artists. You prefer to do something else than programming or drawing? Head to our forums and join our active community! 2017 Indie of the Year Awards We made it to the final 100! Now we need your vote once more! Support the team and community by voting your-favourite-historical-real-time-strategy-game in-the-making to the top! The list of planned features is dwindling, and with the extra attention a prize brings, new contributors flock to our forums. Programming Itms, our project lead, worked on the build system with the update to premake5 and added VS 2015 support. Now he is showing SpiderMonkey some love... All on top of managing and directing the efforts of the team! mimo , our AI programmer, cleaned a lot of legacy code, as the first AI prototype was added many many alpha versions ago. He also removed the old tutorial AI and improved mod support. elexis has refactored the majority of the random map generator code, making it easier than ever before to create of new random map script, implemented tab controls for the options page and reviewed many patches by external contributors. The engine code become more fail-safe (by marking simulation states as read-only), simple (only one way to access JSON data globally) and versatile (implementing it in JavaScript instead of C++). bb has been busy coding the prerequisites for secondary attacks. Imagine your legionarii throwing their pila before drawing their gladii (just dropping some Latin like it's hot). He also worked on combining victory conditions (so one can play regicide + wonder victory for instance) and has been cleaning up templates for readability (among his work on the template viewer). He is also working on an updated user interface for the game setup, with more space for the options, so more can be added in the future. Vladislav has written some validation scripts and has had some experiments with Atlas and cinematics. fatherbushido has mostly worked on the attack component, both his own code and reviews of features like the destruction damage ( for instance fire ships exploding upon destruction) by others. wraitii has finished some of the pre-requirements of the unit motion rewrite (more fluid movements of units) and rebased the single player campaign patch, laying the groundwork for campaigns to be added in the future. Imarok has worked on the mouse wheel batch size (a feature that allows the player to specify the number of units to train by scrolling the mousewheel) and an anti-impersonation lobby patch, which further secures multiplayer lobby authentication. s0600204 and FeXoR have finished the patch that would make the random map generator wall-placer civ-agnostic. leper has been auditing patches by other programmers, which is a crucial yet tedious task. As usual, community members played a key role in our open source development process! Sandarac has implemented an attack range visualization that lets you preview the attack capabilities before placing the buildings. fpre contributed a number of enrichments to the multiplayer user interface. Last but not least, temple has helped tremendously with a lot of patches and reviews! His contributions on an issue with the pathfinder, which was the cause of additional lag, were crucial! Art & Sound LordGood and Stan have been working on new graphics for stables, workshops and archery ranges. Stan also committed a patch by Alexandermb which added animations for siege engines. Ever wondered how a zebu would fall lifeless to the ground? Programmers call this ZEBU DEATH ANIM, tells you something about them, right? Well, Stan has been struggling with his animation for quite some time. He has asked for a Field Study trip to South East Asia but our budget only stretches so far... after all: we're free-to-play. Stan also worked on the visual move order indicator. Omri Lahav, our ever talented composer-arranger-musician, has been working on another music track, and has acquired vocal recordings to enhance a current track! Head over to the 0 A.D. Bandcamp page and check out the 33 (so far!) original recordings for this project. Judge the zebu death animation for yourself!

This is great, things like this remind people about the game, specially in social networking sites where 0ad have accounts. This gives people who have once in their life have played the game (whether several alphas ago or these past two alphas) to have faith and renew their enthusiasm to the game. This is good news.

He did retire, and it was his choice to leave without big announcements. It goes without saying that we are extremely grateful for all the work done, as the community is. He is greatly missed already. We did as well! But I'm thrilled to disclose that @plumo is very happy to be back and that you should see regular development reports again The cavalry models will be for a future report This one is already going through validation on IndieDB.

That solved it.

Commited. I had to fix a bunch of stuff from anims to the skeleton itself because it had custom properties that completely destroyed the anim on export as the skeleton reverted back to the dear one. I changed the texture, and made two variation of the rabbit, one normal and one fatter.

I'll add that to my list. Thanks. Probably need a new texture though. EDIT : Added then removed when commited

Fixed it. The identifier was the same.

Unfortunately there are no hares yet, although they lived all over Eurasia (and still do). Rabbits were historically limited to the Iberian peninsula and did not emerge beyond the Pyrenees until Late Antiquity and the Early Medieval Period. (Also, rabbits were considered pests, not food, as were mice and rats; hares, on the other hand, were considered food and were hunted and eaten.) 0 A.D., as with many other things, flatly contradicts historic reality and includes rabbits in India maps.

I actually think this is a decent, simple solution. Houses are indeed important, but also very weak, so it does make it more realistic, like you say. Have you checked out Delenda Est mechanics? farms can be built in neutral territory, and there's a gather rate penalty or something if you do build them inside your territory. The solution? Seems very logical that farmstead improves the performance of fields, no? I like this, why didn't I think of that, lol

Constructing walls is difficult, and the AI isn't able to cope with this either. Not just people (human players can do what they like), the problem is that the AI has this behaviour as well. As for why, it's because it's the most sensible thing to do under the current mechanics. Which is something I don't like either. I tried out a building restriction in my mod, 0abc, e.g. farms at least 75 m from centres; however, structure distance is calculated from object centre to object centre, and shuttle distance is edge to edge, thus perhaps 40 m. More importantly, the AI continues to build farms as close to centres as possible (which looks even weirder), so I'll probably revert this construction restriction (I don't want to penalize the AI). Apparently the ugly "farms around centres" behaviour is hard coded in Petra. Another idea I have is using auras instead, e.g.: 50 m from centres: structures +20% capture points, workers -20% gather rates 100 m from centres: structures +10% capture points, workers -10% gather rates farmsteads and storehouses might get a slight gather bonus aura (cf. rotary mill) The AI seems to be aware of diminishing returns, so maybe it can also take auras into account, and decide to build farms around farmsteads instead of centres. [...] I was thinking that the CC could be programmed to only be able to store a nominal amount of each resource, like max 200 of every resource. [...] It seems you're talking about two different things. On the one hand, there is 5000 metal and 5000 stone within walking distance of your starting centre on about every map. Moving mines further away to or beyond the edge of your initial territory would be a great improvement. On the other hand, the suggestion to have maximum resource capacities, which worked great in Caesar III and Stronghold. This is an interesting idea to explore (e.g. no buildings mean you can not gather any resources; centres increase every resource capacity by 500 each; small houses increase food capacity by 100 and wood by 50, big houses double that; granaries food by 1000; storehouses wood, stone, metal by 300 each; etc.), although it would mean significantly more micro-management, which is not necessarily an improvement.

I think I've got the answer to why people put farms near the CC's and don't use farmsteads. Farmsteads can't be built on neutral territory. Building them away from the base is only possible with expansion. Sure they could place them along the border of the territory. That not only looks stupid. It is stupid from a defense standpoint. The farmsteads don't provide any real benefit to the farms other than a quick drop off point. Give them a less boosted aura similar to the rotary mill (or an hp boost)? If it was possible to add a restriction to the amount of distance one could build outside of their territory that'd be nice. A can't be built more than X meters into neutral territory kind of thing (for farmsteads and storehouses). It'd make the game a lot more enjoyable. As for house walls. Just reduce the hp of them. They will be forced to build actual walls if they want to stay safe (and keep training troops/workers). The house is one of the most essential thing you could lose. Force them to believe it CAN be lost to a few soldiers. Make it more realistic.

In some games the trees reappear if the buildings get destroyed, although that might be an immersion breaker.

Surely that's your own territory you are spoiling since you can't build buildings in enemy territory.

I'm not sure destroying tree is a good idea. That looks like a good multiplayer exploit where you spam enemy territory trees with buildings to destroy resources.

Fixed. (Aristeia and Millennium AD also updated.)

If you manually ungarrison units that were garrisoned by the bell, those units will be insensitive to the next bell

@wowgetoffyourcellphone I'm in love with your (retextured Ptolemaic?) Kushite cult statues in DE I didn't notice them before... Thank you!

Fix them and make a pull request ?

Niek already retired from the Council of Modders, he's been very busy, I believe. I think that the Council is somewhat in a state of semi hiatus, with Stan handling more responsibilities as a member of the official art team and the other members being quite occupied, including myself.

@stanislas69

Napata, the second capital of Kush High quality 3D models of the central temple district This post is dedicated to Napata, and features the highest quality 3D renders of the many Napatan and Meroitic period temples at the site available to date. Napata was an ancient site centred around Jebel Barkal, a steep, flat-topped "mountain" that spoke heavily to the imagination of Kushites and Egyptians alike. During the 18th dynasty, the Egyptians conquered the site, and proclaimed it the Southern Home of Amun of Karnak, and even promoted the idea that it was older than Karnak itself. The Egyptians called the mountain Dju-Wa’ab: “Pure Mountain”, and Nesut-Tawy: “Thrones of the Two Lands", and it was the source of Amun's epithet "Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands". It was the source of Kingship itself. The mountain's spiralling peak was variously interpreted as the phallus of the Creator, a rearing cobra, or the white crown of Upper-Egypt. This is the site of the creation of the world! According to Egyptians and Kushites.... The earliest Egyptian text from the site, Thutmose III's Barkal Stele, 1432 BC, describes the god of the mountain as “the great god of the first time, the primeval one." After the Egyptian withdrawal from Kush, the site became the seat of local rulers (descended from intermarried Kushite and Egyptian royals), who, eventually, with support from the priests of Amun reunited all of Egypt and Kush. Even after the loss of Egypt, Kushite Kings still considered themselves the true, and only heirs of the ancient kings of the Nile. Even in later Meroitic times, the rulers of Kush considered their own Kingship, granted by Amun of Jebel Barkal, to be older than that of Egypt, and had descended directly to them from the Sun God at the moment of creation! This is echoed in Diodorus Siculus' "Bibliotheca Historica" (Book III), in which he states, among other things, that the "Ethiopians" were the first of all men, that heaven is most pleased by the "Ethiopian" sacrifices, that they were never ruled by foreign invaders, and that Egyptians were actually colonists from "Ethiopia": "Now the Ethiopians, as historians relate, were the first of all men and the proofs of this statement, they say, are manifest. For that they did not come into their land as immigrants from abroad but were natives of it and so justly bear the name of "autochthones" is, they maintain, conceded by practically all men; furthermore, that those who dwell beneath the noon-day sun were, in all likelihood, the first to be generated by the earth, is clear to all" "and it is generally held that the sacrifices practised among the Ethiopians are those which are the most pleasing to heaven", which has a strange parallel in the bible: "Are not you Israelites the same to me as the Cushites?" Amos 9:7, indicating a shared status of chosen or holy people. "And they state that, by reason of their piety towards the deity, they manifestly enjoy the favour of the gods, inasmuch as they have never experienced the rule of an invader from abroad [...] Cambyses, for instance, they say, who made war upon them with a great force, both lost all his army and was himself exposed to the greatest peril; Semiramis [an Assyrian Queen] also, who through the magnitude of her undertakings and achievements has become renowned, after advancing a short distance into Ethiopia gave up her campaign against the whole nation; and Heracles and Dionysus, although they visited all the inhabited earth, failed to subdue the Ethiopians alone who dwell above Egypt, both because of the piety of these men and because of the insurmountable difficulties involved in the attempt." They say also that the Egyptians are colonists sent out by the Ethiopians, Osiris having been the leader of the colony. It is clear that Kush and the Kushites were regarded with great esteem in the ancient world, and the seat of their great spiritual authority was Napata, the second capital of Kush. Napata, with at least 13 temples and 4 palaces was a great metropolis, that stretched for miles along the banks of the Nile. Today, only the central temple district has seen extensive archaeological investigation, but surveys of the area indicate a major ancient settlement. Without any further ado, Napata, the second capital of Kush: My main source for the models, essentially a 130 page academic tour-guide for archaeologists studying Jebel Barkal: http://www.jebelbarkal.org/frames/VisGuide.pdf

I'm some sick the people they can't play in sportsmanship. years ago I was open to this.

Files with pony-horse (added fauna pony) Horse_new.7z

Ignore the weird neck uv, i already fixed it

It wont happen again, we were beting games just for fun, that´s all´.

I'd instaban them all XD Known and trusty players do not need any rating to play in high skill games and no reason at all to adjust own rating as long as there is no improvement in the balance overall. A "seasoned" player knows the policies thus it seems more like a provocation to me since they do this in front of moderators if those ask them to stop. EDIT: Anyway i hope that the rating system will get a reset after the alpha stage for something of more sophisticated like "Quick games" search made by picking an average of rating of reference

template_unit_goron_citizen doesn't have a _field entity in it's Builder list. You've probably got it set up the same as you did in the previous release (Farmstead/Field or Farmstead/Corral) combos. The farmstead needs to be renamed as a field, have the class Field, and be added to the build list. I posted about this problem ages ago about the hyrule and gerudo. The farmstead should be named as a field if it is to be used that way. The corral, a corral (and have class Corral). so on and so forth. The farmstead is treated entirely different. The reason it was being built first is because farmsteads always are (near berry bushes). It's not finished because the AI was forced to build it in starting strategies (because it has a building named '_farmstead' in it's build list) and the AI literally has no use for it as no resource that it can gather is around it (thus, ignored). Ban Farmstead from your mind unless you literally just want a building to be considered a dropsite for food. Sorry if I sound frustrated but age's ago. Everything that I can tell is correct, except for the no goron_field part which literally equals = no field. Removing the counts will force the AI to stop waiting for berry supplies to be gathered. It again, will affect everyone. Template name's mean everything to the AI. @mimo this fact is more annoying than a pack of rabid badgers - plus is this Farmstead/(Field or Corral) combo supported in any capacity. I think the Corral class is counted as a trigger for needCorral... and needFarm... wouldn't matter if it is or isn't they only know to build _field and _corral when dealing with them. The variables seem to be everywhere in A22, I haven't really looked over the newer code.

Very High*: Low, which is close to what they used to look like for me: *I really think there should be an Ultra High setting for those with good cards, if only for cinematics and screenshots.

inb4 Lordgood goes crazy : ↑ he's talking about *actual* ponies

Lighting makes or breaks 0 A.D. I think the lighting settings could use a lot of tweaking to get the full effect, and of course the new shadow map for the next alpha is a vast improvement and should make the game look a lot better. I just often wonder why the game looks ugly on some videos and good on others. I think it's the maps they choose to play. Some really make use of the game's assets and lighting in a good way and some don't. Just some random musings. This guy does a pretty good video discussing the game. There's even a poll.