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Step 6: The ditches require bridges to pass. City fortifications usually had a path around the city walls too (yellow). To fire up more inspiration and give a more realistic impression, adding Forests and more generic Roads. Step 7: Adding the buildings with the CityPainter created when Jebel Barkal was introduced. Time to get rid of the ugly sketch textures and find something that looks better but isn't fine tuned at all. Step 8: Instead of asking Stan to create variants of the bridge models for different sizes (like we have for foundations and rubble), I decide to increase the size of the bridges to fit the model, yielding a more impressive fortification. The terrain at the bridge painted with the wood texture.

So, for a while now this idea has been stirring in Wow's head. It's about the ambient noise in the game, specifically the music and the ambient sound, such as wind. So, imagine these three things happening, independently, and how it could immerse a player into the game world: Music Music is ever-present, but fades away the farther away a player's civic center goes out of camera view. So, as long as a civic center belonging to the player is visible, the music plays at full volume. But once the player can no longer see any of his/her civic centers the music starts to fade. This fade is proportional to the camera's distance from the player's nearest civic center. Secondarily, the music also fades the greater height the camera goes. So, if you zoom out, the music fades proportional to the distance, even if a player's civic center is in full view. The music never full fades out, but it's a noticeable effect if you listen for it. Wind This is an ambient sound effect based solely on the altitude, or height, of the camera. No "Wind" at standard camera height, but this sound effect starts to fade in proportionally as the camera is zoomed out to max altitude. So, as the music fades out, high altitude wind starts to take over. Map Ambient This is ever-present on the map, but fades in louder the farther away the camera is from any player's building. It fades out as more player buildings come into view. It also fades out to nothing as the camera approaches max altitude. Wow's not sure how difficult this would be, but Wow thinks if it's a subtle well-done effect, then you'll start having a memorable soundscape for the game. Each effect would have its own constraints and constants, so would largely be independent from the others, though would mesh together in the gameworld.

Americas Ancient Empires Mod DD v 2.0(Or some better name xD) Gameplay: It is very similar to 0 A.D., with some changes listed here: A new resource water. Civilizations have different ranges for their units There is no cavalry or stable. Each culture has its own animals. The boats are classified in this way: Canoe, Median Canoe, Large Canoe. Current Civilization are: I decided to remake everything, there no added civilizations( I don't like how was the civilizations except models and textures so i will redo all the ones I already had ) Well here is the final Planed Civilizations(whit names and some incomplite general information, need investigation) i like to show this as a table but i don't find an option for this Note: School of Nobles and School of Common People/Plebeians? are available for the mexicas,tlaxcalans and toltecs also unique militar and economic tech respectively and the chinampa are available to the nahuas civilizations Mexicas(Main Bonus: 25% in trade profits and They gather food for 5% faster,Team Bonus: TODO,Unique Buildings: Skull wall defence aura?,Cultural Bonus: They can have a greater influence on the villages / communities that are under their control(more benefice)). Tlaxcalans(Main Bonus:Militar Buildings 15% more strongers in every phase starting in city phase,Team Bonus:TODO,Unique Buildings:Mountain Fortress,Cultural Bonus:TODO) Toltecs(Main Bonus:Gather rate stone is 15% faster is added 15% Gather rate in every phase starting in the villager phase ,Team Bonus: You ally can train your basic soliders from embassy ,Unique Buildings:Toltec Embassy(your ally can build),Cultural Bonus: TODO) Incas(Main Bonus:The Tambo generate metal and the buildings only cost stone, but the units cost 5% more metal ,Team Bonus:TODO,Unique Buildings:Tambo,Unshu,Pukara,Cultural Bonus:TODO) Mayas form Tikal(Main Bonus:They have 15% more cultural influence,Team Bonus:TODO,Unique Buildings:Observatory,Cultural Bonus:TODO) Mayans Kaqchikels(Main Bonus:They buildings cost -25% of stone,Team Bonus:TODO,Unique Buildings:TODO,Cultural Bonus:TODO) Pipilians(Main Bonus:Her soldiers are 15% more weak but get 15% of attack,Team Bonus:TODO,Unique Buildings: TODO,Cultural Bonus: TODO) Tupis(Main Bonus: All buildings cost wood,Team Bonus:TODO,Unique Buildings: Warhut,Cultural Bonus: TODO) Hopis(Main Bonus: Some of its buildings have double functions,Team Bonus: TODO, Unique Buildings: Pueblo,Cultural Bonus:TODO) Tarahumaras(Main Bonus: All units are 15% faster(Who needs those dirty horses?),Team Bonus: TODO,Unique Buildings: Trading Post?,Cultural Bonus: TODO) Auracanians aka Mapuches(Main Bonus: Adaptable civilization, has better defence,Team Bonus: TODO,Unique Buildings: TODO,Cultural Bonus: TODO) Villagers/Communities A neutral village you can capture the villager to get soldiers, resources and techs the resource depends of the villager, i dont complite the idea but heres the avaliable villagers Zapotecs Villager Caribeans Villager Nabajo Villager Mixtecs Villager Huastecs Villager Chichimecans Villager Muiscans Villager Moches Villager Apaches Villager I will add more Cultures: Not info for now. Maps: Here is my idea of the posible maps. Sonora Desert,Western Sierra Madre,Eastern Sierra Madre, Southern Sierra Madre,Chihuahua Desert,Paint Desert,Texas,West Ocean(Veracruz Coast),Anahuac,Yucatan Peninsula,Chiapan Jungle(Old name of Chiapas),Coast of Oxaca,Cuaxtemalan(again other old name this time from Guatemala),Orinoco,Andes Mountains,Atacama,Auracana,Patagonia,Pampas,Amazon Jungle,Antillas,Easter Island,Llanos Hiden Civilizations: They are unlocked by doing certain actions during a game which unlocks a button that allows you to become one of the civilizations that are available based on what you have done to unlock them(i dont make a spoiler :v) Soon I will make the technological trees of the main civilizations and the villages. Note 1: I hate writing in English >:( Note 2:If someone wants to help improve this design document feel free to post your suggestions, i realy needed xd

I think the double mention of Toltecs is a typo, and @Trinketos meant Tupi? Also *Puebloans (from New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and Colorado) , and not Pueblans (from the Free and Sovereign State of Puebla, Mexico) One other possible suggestion could be to call the mod "Nuevo Mundo", instead of "Pre-Colonial Mod"?

This thread will be used to document the development of the new mapgeneration script that should become a proper successor of Danubius and Jebel Barkal, i.e. a procedurally generated scenario map for arbitrary amounts of players, mapsizes with a scripted opposing city with fortifications depending on a difficulty setting. The theme of the map are the forests of Gaul, the opposing enemy village is an Oppidum again. Map Design The design is the most decisive step during feature development. I start with the terrain design and show how it shapes gameplay. Since the primary aim is to create a better map than Jebel Barkal, I first analyzed what made Jebel Barkal a success. You might want to take a look at the Jebel Barkal - Illustrated Walkthrough in case you are not familiar with this map yet. The below sketch displays: red: fights (location where fights occur frequently) green: trade (location where fights rarely occur, that are safe for women and trade carts) blue: expansion (locations that are feasible to build new bases at or expand the current base progessively) white: barriers (here irrigation canals that allows quick and effective walls) We record and evaluate the observations about the map design: Most maps are circularly symmetrical, which makes them one-dimensional and so the gameplay becomes one-dimensional as well. Most maps consist of a random composition of natural resources, trees, lakes and hills. This means there is no information, no meaning, in the terrain, no essence, nothing shaped by man, no points of interest. On Jebel Barkal, there are four distinct areas with a unqiue biome and different meanings / use cases for players to reside there. Water: Low Risk / High Reward Fish is faster income than fields Collect wood remotely in a safe location Transporting siege engines quickly and directly to the enemy base Survival on the water after being wiped out on the land Fertile Land Low-Risk/Low-Reward: The only location with feasible amounts of wood, even abundance Farthest distance to the opposing city Irrigation canals allow easy walling. Allies very close by to help out quickly and effectively. No mines and few space to build, one has to build up trade or expand. Desert: High-Risk/High-Reward Very attractive as mines occur in abundance and other places don't have mines at all Very unattractive because the occupying units are dislocated, there are no natural barriers, no wood, no neighbors. So the location is an easy target for the opposing city, hard to defend and maintain. Hill: High-Risk/High-Reward: Conditional Use: Since the hill is heavily defended an since the home base is usually already established, the hill can only be captured in games that last long enough for one player to be lose the entire home base, but have enough of an army left over to wipe out the large number of troops on the hill. It can and does occur in Diplomacy games more often than in team games. Once the mountain is conquered, one can pickup treasures and build a base that is extremely easy to defend. The city in the center of Jebel Barkal is the most significant difference to every other map due to the following gameplay design traits: Balancing factor: Military buildings spawn different attackers per building, so there is proportional reward for the player to take out individual buildings. Surprise factor: The city is composed of different buildings every time. Eyecandy factor: Since the city is not created by a player after the gamestart but at map generation time, the terrain can be changed in accordance with the city, i.e. there are different ground textures in the city and for paths, there are trees and ditches. This is currently the only way to show how men shaped their environment and makes everything appear much more naturally, resemble actual cities or villages. Problems of the Alpha 23 Jebel Barkal map (see also #5150): There is no victory condition or other sufficient incentive to invade the city on Jebel Barkal. Players have to play with the general Conquest and other conditions. So it is economically much more feasible to destroy the multiplayer enemy rather than the opposing city. We see the city only being taken out in rare diplomacy games where one player claimed the hill. Balancing is hard and has to be derived experimentally. Examples: Hardly varying Soldier count is by far not as relevant as Elephant/Siege Engine count varying drastically. It should not depend on map generation (randomly 0 to 10 elephant stables on a normal sized map). Lag: Since there are much more buildings and gaia units around (up to 8 * 150). Formations make it quicker, but can also have separate problems, especially pathfinding ones. In the next post I will show an idea I had after the above analysis and set aim.

An illustration of the possible resulting military tree with some suggestions for the names:

Implementation Having gathered enough design constraints, the implementing of the sketch is started. It will be easier to implement the sketch and derive new design goals and inspire new ideas from the implementation rather than to try to imagine something great and predict all possible complications that weren't thought. Step 1: Player positions, main streams Step 2: Confluences of the stream, city area, main road Step 3: Civic Center with a little stream or ditch around it. The central attractor and eyecandy of the city is the purple area and will become some kind of marketplace. Step 4: The oppidum receives a set of walls. There are paths (yellow) around the walls to make it more rich than Jebel Barkal. Step 5: A ditch around the walls makes this a lot more attractive. Paths from the CC to the gates of the fortification invoke an initial city structure.

Set the mod version to 0.0.02 in the rebundle (.03 for the Git repo). Added a merc unit for the Indians, finally. The Deccan Tribal Levy, a skirmisher. Any other suggestions? @Sundiata Will rebundle and upload tonight.

Ah, public outcry saved the day. For now... But beware, they'll be back, under a different name...

Why don't start adding features to avoid that horribly title "AoE Clone" but at last that title now is for Empires Apart. Secondary attack. Dock give some territorial bonus New building that's no depend of territory but can be easily to rush. Minifaction design or layout Capture units More variety and counters Mercenary system. Slave system New minimap features Diplomacy features like trade units between players. New relic types More nomad styles like scattered unit over the map. More mission maps Add objectives

Sure. Adsedos: resident Atrebatos: dweller Andogna: native Atectos/Atextos: peasant (serfdom like) Cerdon: Artisan Dugilos: manufacturer Gobenos: blacksmith Uassos: servant, under-class member

Well... How about to add some descriptions into game encyclopedia (History pages etc.) such as unit phrases, interpretation of hieroglyphs at Ptolemies buildings, Kushites pyramids voices etc. I guess it will be nice experience. Prostagma? Bulome. (I know that not all national phrases are ready.) And what about to add some national musical introduces like at AoE2? About phrases: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/266125.html Miscellaneous features:

Oh! It`s even much better than AoEIII way.

Do we have a word for villager, citizen, townsfolk, peasant, artisan, anything like these?

Map Idea The next step was to generalize some of the design properties worked out in the sketch analysis and apply them to a new map in a different context. One of the problems of Jebel Barkal is that the central area is occupied by the city, one can only use the lower 35% of the map effectively. So this time I thought to put the city on the left side. To be able to use a greater part of the map for player purposes, the players are located on opposing ends, rather than confined to one half of the map. The Irrigation canals on Jebel Barkal made it not only easy to wall off, but also prolonged the distances to travel between players, and split the map into compartments. That can be maintained and defended independent of each other. On maps without natural barriers, map control is often total. So on this map we could have these compartments again by adding streams and confluences of the streams. To distribute the gaia attackers more evenly on the players, I don't align playerbases in a linear but an alternating pattern. There must also be shallows so that the scripted opponent can reach the enemies at the back. Due to the design trait to be able to wall off compartments of the map near confluences, it would be likely that gaia is walled out from the middle strip of the map. So there must be a safe path for the scripted opponent / gaia in the middle of the map, horizontally. Legend: Black: player locations Purple: scripted opponent city Light blue: Streams / water Green: Safe economy, trade Blue: shallows, direction of playerbase expansion Red: Places of frequent fights

I know. I just wonder because most of other civilisations already have their own wonder-buildings. BTW, hope to see someday CJK without mods, but I even can`t imagine which their wonders would be suitable from -500 to 500 A. D.

Triskelion. The symbol doesn't belong to any one civilization in particular, pre-dates Celts and was widely used across Europe. It's just popularly associated with Celts, as they did use the design and it remains popular among neo-pagans today. Nothing wrong with using it for both civs, but its use as the Gauls emblem, as well as a Briton prop could indeed cause confusion. Maybe the civ-emblem itself could get a redesign? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triskelion

The new capturing system does not become better than the old system of destroying objectives because if we put 5 women in the CV, defeat 40 units of body leaving almost impossible to take and defeat the enemy.

If it's just putting installed mod into archive and if i didn't screwed up link somehow - then there you go. http://www.mediafire.com/file/dufj45hxy2arpsk/Hyrule.rar/file

Hmmm, actually... There seems to be a total lack of Hellenistic influence in 0AD's Mauryas... Mauryas ruled over Greek Kingdoms and are known to have employed Greeks as ambassadors. They had specific names for Greeks, like Yona (from Ionian), Yavana and Yonaka. So perhaps something like the Bactrian Thureophoroi/Yona Skirmishers as 3rd phase elite merc? Deccan Tribal Levy sounds nice... Looking forward to checking it out

Not really. Imagine someone put some really evil code that steal users data and send it somewhere. So passwords etc everything is sent.

I like your mod idea very much. Since you consider an Amazon map and a big number of factions, I would suggest to consider representing some of the Amazonian peoples (that would be not only nice but also new to RTS games), such as the Marajoara and Tupis. Despite there being around 5 million people living there when the Portuguese arrived these nations are largely unknown by most people - and there is a very prevalent myth that the Amazon forest was a pristine uninhabited place. This couldn't be farther from the truth. In fact, the very forest according to recent findings seems to be largely "man-made". Some of these evidence like the large geoglyphs were only found recently due to recent deforestation of Amazon for large scale agriculture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_rainforest#Human_activity Of course this is just a suggestion, but it would be nice for historical reasons and techniques such as "forest gardening" could be interesting gameplay inovations. PS: I offer my help with reference material, testing of the mod and whatever else my skills and time permit. PS2: I just saw that you mentioned the Tupis among the civs in some comment in another post, so my suggestion is not even that novel.

Does it?

I can do the denoising for you if you'd like. Record the voices in a single take (remember to leave some silent/motionless time at the start) and send it over, and I'll send you back the denoised audio. Recording software doesn't really make a difference, all it does is capture the digital signal, so Audacity is perfectly fine for the job of voice recording.

Thank you, I did not know.

You're welcome! The plan at the moment is for the Israelites to be represented by a single faction called the Hebrews; the timeframe will mainly cover the United Monarchy period, so yes, King David is a planned hero. If a second Hebrew-related faction were depicted, it would cover the northern kingdom of Israel from the Divided era.

Currently I'm trying to add features that popular in modern engines and liked by players to find different implementation bottlenecks in our code. Yes, I mentioned, that it doesn't support many lights per model. Usually video card can support from 8 to 128 lights per model. It uses simple uniform structs (even not UBO). // 8 floats per struct. struct PointLight { vec3 position; float radius; // vec2 - compressed 4 components, instead of unsupported "half". vec2 color; vec2 coef; // Cubic curve coef. }; So we can calculate how many lights we can use from GL_MAX_FRAGMENT_UNIFORM_COMPONENTS. There're 2 import notes: 1) we can use forward and deferred rendering simultaneously (i.e. for different distance), 2) as you noticed we don't have a lot of semitransparent objects; trees, bushes have transparent only for soft edges, so on enough distances we can render them without alpha blending and they're not transparent objects anymore (we don't need to be honest for rendering always; if it looks the same/very similar but cheaper, then we'd can use the cheaper one). If we assume that we don't have a sun at rain, then we'd easily add shadows to the lightnings Nope (at least not yet). It'd be confirmed when it'll be in the our main repository It uses 2D rain texture (drawn by me in Ps for 5 mins ) on many long crosses with double side rendering (because many particles would be slow). They're not moving when the camera is moving. So it seems a correct rain. Current implementation doesn't use shaders yet, but with shaders it can be a little bit nicer.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44712475

I have searched Transifex for [, and these are the current uses for tags: Whole manual segments that have a font tag at the beginning only, and no closing tag Some in-line headers that are separated by dashes in the manual Warnings in map descriptions Icons on the splash screen Maybe this can be resolved by parsing [font, [color and [img rather than just [? I any case, I think the tags should be removed from entries like: [font="sans-bold-16"]Graphics settings

Yes, hard counters ensure every unit is useful. Yeah, uh, some elite archers in EA have something like a 0.6 second firing rate. Whaaaaaaat? Not every archer in antiquity was Lars Whatshisname or Legolas. The whole diplo screen needs redesigned. I can design something nice, but I have no skills to implement it. Absolutely. Let's do this. Do you know any programmers? lol Yeah, I was watching a Battle for Middle Earth 2 campaign walkthrough the other day and I miss those cool battalions. Was playing Rome 2:Total War last night and missed the battalions. I proposed to allow certain civs, such as the Celtic and Iberian civs, the ability to allow their battalions to "garrison" into forest groves for an ambush effect. 1 or 2 battalions per grove. Forest Groves, such as those in DE, solve many issues and open up the possibility for interesting gameplay additions.

---My topic is about gameplay only--- because we have art department discussions, but we have planned many features. Yes counters must back.(again) I don't see problem with diplomacy, advance diplomacy takes than one alpha. https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GameplayFeatureStatus

Things I would like to see in the upcoming versions, some of which I know are being worked on: GUI -- hotkeys for farms, other buildings -- customization of hotkeys (down-scroll for idle villagers, shift+down-scroll for all idle villagers, up-scroll for idle military, etc.) -- the ability to ping to locations on the map Art -- the cavalry are much improved from A22, but I would still like to see more of a gallop/run than a trot when attacking -- some minor building fixes and improvements, but overall I think the art-work and detail on buildings, etc. is incredible -- dynamic weather with varying effects on gameplay, such as wind affecting accuracy of ranged soldiers as one example Gameplay -- hard counters; too many games are predominantly slinger or skirmisher spam. This is unrealistic, as slingers, for example, would not be able to clump or effectively fight in close range, and melee cavalry or infantry would decimate them. -- nerfing rams and seige catapults; some civs can get 7-8 seige catapults and obliterate entire armies, which is highly unrealistic -- I like some of the formation/balancing mods and their focus on strengthening melee as this was the predominant form of fighting during this time period -- continue the development of formations, with better path-finding and various tactical advantages/disadvantages to each formation. Also implementation of advantages/disadvantages to the direction of attack/defense (archers firing on backs of enemies deals greater damage than to front of hoplites with shields raised). -- charging of melee infantry, cavalry, and elephants and trample damage for the latter two. Along these lines, I think cavalry and elephants should have insta-kill or at least heavy one-time damage for the front lines of whatever enemy is being charged and/or depending on the direction of the charge (into the back of an archer line). This could be used with a cool-down before re-use. Elephants should have splash damage. -- a minor gripe; in almost every historical RTS, ranged units fire much too quickly. I would rather see a more realistic fire rate for archers, for instance, with higher damage with each fire -- An ally resigning should not be turned into Gaia that can attack you -- There should be no option to send resources to enemies unless there is some diplomatic advantage, or at least it should be a separate menu from donating to allies to avoid accidentally dumping resources to an opponent -- implementation of a more complex diplomacy system, and I love the glory from Delenda Est as a resource. If I remember correctly, Rise of Nations had ways to win that weren't through military means -- I do like the idea of battalions, as this gives the game a grander scope and makes battles seem more epic in scale -- ultimately the ability to ambush in trees, implement weather and terrain more effectively, etc.

kiudwildff lost, cancelled the game; no rate change.

Was thinking the same Could work pretty well for nomad mode. Now having the ability to build buildings on very specific sites would be great bridges or no bridges implemented You could make a bridge entity that can be built and garrisoned over water on specific sites. Even draw bridges

@Trinketos, I think your model for the Aztec Civic Center looks pretty cool. The thing is that it reminds me a lot more of Mayan palatial buildings than Aztec. It looks particularly reminiscent of the Mayan palace at Palenque. Aztec elite residences used extensive use of white lime plaster, with some bright red highlights, like a red band running along the lower part of the building (maybe even the occasional red floor). They had flat roofs, inner courtyards and decorated colonnades. Oddly, they have an almost Minoan feel to them... This rendition of Moctezuma II's palace in Tenochtitlan is the finest reconstruction I've seen to date, and provides you with an excellent idea for Aztec palaces (which should ideally be your reference for the Aztec CC): I understand that that structure is little bit too huge for a CC, but since it's modular, you could use either the courtyard structures in the foreground, or the elevated part in the middle as you're reference for a CC. I shared some of the following images in the previous reference post, but I'll share them again here, as the above image of the palace puts them in context: