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But... I like sharp shadows... at least for a "sunny" scene. "Soft" shadows indicate a lot of ambient light, such as during a cloudy day. It would be great to be able to adjust this, maybe with a slider, so that a cloudy/rainy scene can have really fuzzy shadows, while a "high noon" desert scene can have sharper shadows.

New unit texture variants. Bonus screenshot.

I think you guys are misunderstanding what "soft shadows" means. In the context of graphics, 'soft shadows' means 'variable penumbra shadows'. In real life the size of a shadow's penumbra increases based on the size of the light and the distance between the shadow caster and the shadow receiver. So for example a tall tree casts a blurrier shadow than a short one: Or a giraffe's head casts a blurrier shadow than its legs do: And you can see here how the shadow smoothly becomes blurrier from the base of the tower to its top: The shadows are still sharp, but they look dramatically more realistic in terms of creating the impression of distance.

I think @leper and @s0600204 deserve some credit too for the maintenance updates and fixes they did since last release

Done:

Sorry for the edit, but it was really unreadable to me. Thanks so much for working on that @asterix it helps a great deal.

Those do look awesome and more realistic. Thank you for clarifying. Your earlier screenshots did not convey this effect effectively, but these create a nice affect. Maybe I think it blurs slightly too much, but I'm nitpicking at this point.

Can I have an actor viewer that doesn't take ages to load ? Can we have brushes to paint trees or other objects ?

I'm also a fan of very sharp shadows. It shows every polygon twice and gives an impression of higher quality and precision. At least for sunny scenes as wow mentioned.

Almost there, just need to figure it out what im doing and move the fire at the front of the ship:

Agregare el fuego griego como upgrade del bireme bizantino si es que logro crear un template que funcione sin estar muy roto I will add this greek fire as an upgrade to the bireme if i can achieve a working template whitout being overpowered.

The famous siphon , we can do that @Alexandermb @stanislas69

Welp, I ended up implementing percentage closer soft shadows. I wasn't originally planning to because I thought it'd be unworkable in openGL, but I got bored and made it work anyway. Sadly none of this will be in the game until a24, but at least it makes pretty screenshots. There are still plenty of things to do for graphics (mainly performance improvements) but for now I'm considering diving into the random map generator and improving the quality of the maps it produces. Right now the maps it creates tend to be boring or ugly, have bad lighting/environment settings, are often imbalanced, and so on. I think it could definitely produce some stunning maps that are well balanced and fun to play, it's just a matter of tinkering with the settings and generation scripts. Some screenshots of PCSS+DOF:

@asterix Also, when writing about the Carolingians, in my honest opinion, we should credit @stanislas69 for pioneering the work on them. He's done most of the templates and structures for them, and the initial units too. Faction contents for the Carolingians were already in the game for several alphas now. It was just that the development was slowed down. He's French by the way, so he kinda represents the Franks, IMO

Thank you All! For those of you that haven't realized yet, "The Kushites" will feature in the next release of the vanilla version of 0 A.D.: Empires Ascendant. Naturally, I couldn't be be more excited about this It is the culmination of 16 months of research and development. An epic collaboration between many esteemed (volunteer) members of the Wildfire Games Forum. This mammoth task would absolutely not have been possible without the contributions, support and interest from the community, and for this I will be forever grateful! It has been an absolute honor to collaborate with you all, and I sincerely hope to continue this collaboration on other projects as well. I would like to take the opportunity to formally thank the following people, who were instrumental in getting this project off the ground (apologies for tag-spam): @LordGood: The Master Modeler... Miracle Man... The Virtual Architect... The Guru... Imhotep Himself! @wowgetoffyourcellphone: The Master Modder... The Bringer to Life of the first playable incarnation of the Kushites... The man with a million good ideas! @stanislas69: The dude that made the major commit. The Tireless Fixer of Things. The skilled texture and modeling artist. The organizer! @elexis: The Code Charmer, Maker of Worlds (maps), also a tireless fixer of things, getting things done! @wackyserious: Commander of the Wardrobe, The Digital Fashion Designer, Maker of Units! @Hannibal_Barca: The Statistician, Master of the Tightrope, balance is his game! @Alexandermb: Maker of all sorts of Things, Lord of the Horses, The Virtual Weapon Smith... @Lion.Kanzen: Spanglish Man, Fashioner of Emblems, your enthusiasm should inspire us all! @balduin: Maker of the first Github, Organizer of Info, Asker of Questions @Skhorn: The City Planner, Major of Napata, Builder of the Great Temple Complex at Jebel Barkal @Sundiata: The Man That Just Tagged Himself, Knower of Things, the "could-you-maybe-do-it-like-that"-guy In addition to that list, a number of individuals contributed significantly behind the scenes in fields I honestly barely understand (code/balancing/testing) and provided invaluable feedback: @mimo @temple @Imarok @Grugnas @borg- @s0600204 @Itms @feneur @Pureon Thank you all!!! And thank you for the many likes and kind words of support for this topic: @Servo, @shieldwolf23, @GunChleoc, @av93, @fatherbushido, @Loki1950, @tuk0z, @Palaxin, @Prodigal Son, @Enrique, @Desophaeus, @AgamemnonPhlemnon, @Zophim, @Juli51, @SDM, @Nescio, @niektb and others. I sincerely apologize to anyone I may have left out (let me know) The second reason I tagged you all is because: In preparation for the next release and future reference purposes, the original post that started this whole journey has been completely and comprehensively re-written and updated. All images have been replaced by higher quality versions (directly uploaded to the server) and hundreds more have been added. Almost everything that was used as a reference in the creation of this new faction can be seen there, and so much more. I wished to update it further and eliminate some spelling mistakes and awkward sentences + more detail (I tried), but alas, I am no longer able to edit it any further. A more comprehensive and updated pdf version will be made available in the coming months. Feel free to give it a read and provide feedback. Maybe you might get some future ideas / see something I missed / improvements for the Kushites in-game: Maybe some of you reading might be wondering, what makes the addition of this civ so special? Why is the research so important to this guy? Simply put, it was a labor of love. Kushite history has been unduly obscured for a very long time, but times have changed. This is the most historically accurate representation of the Kushites in a computer game ever, and one of the first times that the Kushites even feature at all. Only Rise of Nations features the "Nubians" in the standard version and there are a few mods and DLC's (for Civilization VI (Nubians) and Total War), but they are not all that historically accurate... In fact, the Kushites in 0 A.D. may be the first truly historically accurate African civilization in a game ever. The original research post has become the most richly and accurately illustrated history of Kush ever published on the internet and has formed the backbone for the references of models, units and gameplay. This is the most important Sub Saharan civilization of Antiquity and one of the longest lasting civilizations anywhere. A forgotten powerhouse that should really be remembered. By adding the Kushites, 0AD has also added the only civilization in-game that was invaded by Rome, and successfully maintained their territorial and political integrity. They also stood their ground against Persians and Ptolemies, while reaching high levels of culture in almost every respect, making this new civ a formidable and well fleshed out faction. Diverse, and absolutely beautiful! Once again, thank you all! And most importantly, have fun playing!

Ship:

lol @stanislas69. My avatar just got burnt because of your comment. Anyway @Lion.Kanzen I found this screenshot from that latter link. Is this really from THE resonance22? If it is, then their publicity is backfiring.

We don't have the infrastructure at all to do it. I don't believe there is any mod translated. Only parts, because the main games translates it. If you happen to make the Anglo Sutton Hoo helmet would you mind recording ? I'm looking for a way to do such stuff but the level of details is too big for me.

is it possible to translate soon? i wouldn't mind take a look at some things

Yep you and others are welcome

Meh, it's difficult to get something that works well in all situations, but imo it's better to have too much than too little. Too little and unit shadows and towers don't get any penumbra at all.

Putting the mini map away from center is imo a discomfort to most average players for MP games. In my case (I seldom use QWEASDZ camera control) it’s inefficient if located on any corner as pointing time and accuracy will be much less. I think unit interface and structure interfaces should have different locations even if they pop out one at a time right now. I guess UI to bottom right but not too far from the middle and structure on the bottom left not too far from the middle too. Both unit and structure interfaces could even stay on at the same time for a moment too.

@vladislavbelov can we some button to group object in-atlas without doing the grouping templates manually? Can we save those grouped objects? Can we have an add units in other animation than idle? Sometimes mappers (not-me) make huge maps with a lot of objects, running the game becomes virtually impossible and a sure kaput, thus, whenever the mapper wants to make a little showcase of the map it has to cross-fingers and move/order units slowly to give the feel they are moving or doing something. So, what i ask, is: Can we have a units placer while on a different animation stance without having to simulate the map? Can we have a favorite list of objects? Or some sort of panel that indicates which objects are placed? Perhaps even a counter could fit well too Can we have terrain brushes with more settings and variations? Like triangles, polygons where we can add more axis Is it possible to reduce the size of the squares on the grid? Don't know if the size of each square it's used by the path-finder, but i think if each square were half the size or lesser, terrain brushes or paint brushes could allow to more or better modifications of the map, or at least it could give a smoother transition between different paint textures. Sorry don't know how to explain this very well, neither i can't make an example using atlas, neither i don't know the implications of the size of each square in the grid, don't know if it is performance or path-finder...

Yes, you can How long is it loading for you? The brush seems not hard to implement. Let's see after the FF.

Ykkrosh hasn't written patch for 0AD for few years now Also wraitii seems to be busy with Pathfinder right now but he still does reviews which is nice Dont you have a lot on your plate @vladislavbelov ?

How unfortunate.

Probably it should go together with the "Weather" option. Yeah, obstacles should be far away to have such blurry shadows. Or a pretty cloudy weather. We have @wraitii and Phillip. I'm not active currently in the renderer (I hope I will), but I review patches for it. So all graphic improvements are welcome

Won't likely be soon because it's annoying but it should allow me to fix something.

Welcome at our forums, but please don't warm up years old threads...

Dyed padded cloth (Might sacrifice a little of ownership distinction) A company of light infantry

http://www.hellenicaworld.com/Byzantium/Military/en/ByzantineBattleTactics.html

Asedio árabe de Constantinopla (717-718). Los bizantinos destruyen la flota árabe con fuego griego. Autor Peter Dennis

https://arrecaballo.es/edad-media/los-avaros/el-ejercito-avaro/ -Jinetes ávaros. A la izquierda jinete ligero, a la derecha jinete pesado y un infante eslavo Jinete ávaro siglo VII. Está armado con lanza y arco siglo. Autor Zvonimir Grbasic Anillo o ring ávaro. En el centro del mismo guardaban sus riquezas Movimientos ávaros del siglo VI Guerreros ávaros siglo VI-VII: A Jinete pesado ávaro; B infante mercenario eslavo combatiendo a un finfante pesado bizantino C. Autor Mikhail V. Gorelik Jinetes ávaros contra carolingios a comienzos del siglo IX. Autor Angus McBride

Files with latest screenshots:Rome Helmets.7z

The flag spear was made by me for request of Alexander. Chi-Rho symbols in Scutatoi too.

Ship done:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nineveh_(627) (represented in the image) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclius

Can you share the files ? it has a good looking. i'm trying to deliver at least 1 ship

@Alexandermb It could be, most depictions show them wielding a long axe but others depict them with swords too.

it has the same windows direction of two other towers in vanilla:

Thanks! but i guess we will need another texture piece for the player colour, something similar to the spartan texture but i can't copy the alpha lines on Paint.net, for now it looks like this: and added the windows to the civil centre.

when you look from far the texture still become dark some zones ?

@wackyserious should i commit?

and the problem with gcc was with gcc 7.3.1+20180312-2 try compiling int main(){} , I got the same errors

You mean in the /public code? Or the elevations? By the code, i didnt changed anything, just used the Atlas as it is. About the elevations, well, i can post them without any buildings so you could have a idea of the mess Added new icons for the bug and translate buttons. ^^ Oh, and sure, i can give a go with a bit more warmish tone for the stone lightning

Does the team really want depth of field to always be on?

I didn't mean the lighting from bloom, I mean a visual effect for players. HDR allows you to store a true brightness of each pixel, so on the HDR>LDR step you will get a more correct lightning.