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On Sunday we had a workshop with some other people. We showed to three or four how to mod the game, and to one how to translate the game. Hopefully there will be new contributors on the forums. We also had a talk with the person who made the GLTF importer for Blender, and we might contact him in the future when we make the switch from Collada to GLTF Finally I had a talk with the school head master about next year art contributions, so we might have 2D, 3D, Animation, and Web Design contributions next school year.

Hello everyone, Today I gave a presentation in Rennes for the GrafikLabor, you can find the presentation slides in the third post below. The presentation was recorded, so you will probably be available soonish, and you'll be able to see my face We also had a LAN party with 8 people here is the replay: 2019-03-22_0001.zip

It just means I enjoy coding for coding's sake. I've mostly worked on 'engine' things lately (pathfinding optimisations, code cleanups, things like that) because that's fun to me. Whether I was optimising an RTS or another type of game is not very relevant. I do have my own opinions on where I believe 0 A.D. should go as a game, some strong, other less so, but for me personally there are higher priorities right now and so I am not debating gameplay or playing much.

I just want to let you guys know that I'm already working on the "Great Bronze Athena" statue. I'm still trying to get pose and proportions right from every angle. Once done, I'll start sculpting. It'll probably take me some time to finish it all but we'll have a great statue at the end.

Hey guys, I have a change (D1871) that could significantly reduce the number of units stuck (and improve pathfinding behaviour overall) because of the use of 2 different pathfinders in 0 A.D. The change feels good to me and Itms agrees, but it needs to be tested (a lot). I'm asking for help on this: if people could try this differential and report how things felt. I'm wondering most if there are cases where units get 'stuck' walking (which generally doesn't happen in svn). In general, this will make unit movement more permissive (they can get closer to trees and other structures). Thanks for the help

Well I've already been totally willing to implement my mod to a24 if that is accepted. The mod has been widely accepted by players of all levels and great feedback, besides, I have not received any bug since the first version. So I think we're on the right track.

New map I'm working on... so far only physical features.

@gameboy

Which is why @Itms found two people to work on the design document, and we have @borg- working and experimenting balancing in his mod. You can find said design document here. The markdown source can be found here. If you wish to contribute in some way, please feel free to do so by contacting @Itms directly. Of course this isn't perfect, and I would be much more happier if the game had perfect balance in the first place. However, I was asked what, in my own point of view, were the pros and cons. Since the goal is to try to find pros I thought it was a pretty good one. As @wowgetoffyourcellphone said, balancing needs experimenting (and other stuff). Mods are a good way to experiment things between releases, as they don't follow the same schedule. It also allows one with no prior experience on balancing the game to learn things. It's kind of a way to get people to be competent with the balancing of the game by having a deeper knowledge. In the industry, of course yes. Here it's a bit different, all external people are potential game developers. You could also be. That is not the problem here The issue is that we have to ensure we are not breaking the game, that's what the review process is for: Ensuring quality. @elexis learnt the hard way that stacking patches on top of each other for years make the game unmaintenable and makes it require a lot of cleanup sometimes a full rewrite., so now he is very careful about everything he does which is a good thing. It's implemented in @borg-'s mod, and it seems to work quite well, but just because a code works doesn't mean it's good. We can't rely on quick and dirty code. Also, even though I do code, I don't have the programmer's hat, I have exactly the same impact there as say @Angen except I have the rights to commit my own code once it's reviewed. tldr; The patch isn't implemented not because it breaks mods, but because we aren't sure this is the best way to do it. Of course, and we sometimes help them to adapt. Well we are kind in a unique situation to be honest.

1) I've checked your stats and they don't really look that bad. You have about 50 % win ratio. In my opinion, as few as two games won could get you above the initial rating. I wouldn't switch for another account, not exactly because it's not allowed, but mostly because you now have a history of games won and lost, so people can check that you aren't a smurf or someone that just installed the game. There aren't so many people playing regularly, so it's even more important whether your name sound familiar or not. 2) Well, the regulars don't keep getting worse over time. :-) 3) You never know for sure. There are even some low-level players with high score. It's easy to achieve when you only play rated games against players you know you can beat easily (and especially if they are overrated). The rating serves as an indicator but it's not absolutely reliable. 4) I agree that communicating the host's intentions is really something we should work on. Often people get unassigned without any explanation. It wouldn't be hard to tell in the host name that the game is intended for higher-level players. On the other hand, I wouldn't say it's bad not to include newbies in all the games. I've seen way too many games getting spoiled by unskilled players that just want the game to start fast and then quit the host a few minutes later without any explanation. I wouldn't come join the training of Real Madrid CF and then be all surprised why they don't let me play with them, like come on, guys, it's just a game, right. I can totally play football too. Even though there are no real pros in this game, with all these leagues it's started getting more serious and more sports-like, so I see some resemblance. 5) The host name alone allows for more text than most stable hosts are willing to enter already. :-) 6) I don't know about any specific documentation of 0 A.D. rating system. Anyway, I know it's just a customized version of the Elo rating system, which is used for chess games. The important things to know include that only the current rating of both the players and the binary game result is used to determine the rating adjustment. The bigger the difference in the rating, the more points you can get if you win "against expectations", and the less you lose if you lose. The exact course of the game or factors like the number of total games played aren't considered.

Thanks @borg- @Feldfeld and @ValihrAnt for testing. I felt pleased that players would defend, then build a counter unit and then go on the offensive. In vanilla I don't normally see that back and forth gameplay. The civs were played differently to their unique strengths and I saw players choosing different techs which makes me think there's probably no obviously best strategy! But I agree with the consenus that cavalry was too strong and melee infantry too weak so I've made some changes: Cavalry -40% hunting gather rate, except for camels which remain fast hunters (but weak fighters) Swordsmen +20% attack Spearmen and pikemen: slightly buffed When you update to the new version make sure to delete the old version first!

Um would vote to have mini map either right or left depending on user setting... but meanwhile would like to make the minimap just disappear, makes the game more fun for me. beyond control-alt-G is there a setting to obliterate my mini?

What about a staff match sometime this week?

Sure, and I believe updating the design document to the current state of the game is the first step, though the biggest part is yet to come after that. Well most of the active devs are more on the engine part of the game than the game itself. We are cleaning the code up and updating the pathfinder which are needed maintenance task but only visible to the player through performance improvements. Sure but those qualifications are based on selection, and selection usually takes place when you have the choice So most of the time we are not adding new "game devs", we are only adding "devs" because we need them for the engine. Yeah but internal testers are usually people hired to use the dev version. Most of the mod players don't even know there is a dev version, and even fewer know how to compile it and use it. Depending on the platform it's even more complicated for non technical people. Sorry when I said stacking I meant that over the years the rmgen code had been added without much consideration about the overall architecture, which is why it ended up biting us before @elexis started to rewrite it. So when adding new features such as the growing and the fattening, the person reviewing the code has to make sure we aren't adding spaghetti code that while being functionnal, might be a big bottleneck in the future. That's right I guess we could be more useful Well I don't think there are much rts games with that many factions Also I disagree on the AOE clone because we are free an open source. It's like saying you don't need blender to exist because you have 3DSmax We do have a bunch of features AOE didn't have though, like territories for instance. That's an issue for me. I just don't have the time which sucks.

You propose someone to write a different design document. My point was that the ones who do the implementation should not leave things up to chances but should attempt to keep the game enjoyable (even if you don't consider it enjoyable).

You can ask @feneur if you decide to go that route.

SB 1 Ceremonial Water building or Nango-Ohigashi. https://orjach.org/module/power-of-water-rock/ granary. Storage pit / Warehouse. Wei Battery Ram. Archery

I answered directly in the post. Though I can understand quite a few of your points, I don't really get the whole development process as a whole tbh. There is no point of balance changes because there is no coherent gameplay in the alpha. This was discussed numerous times in the past already. As long as key gameplay features do not work it's only wasted time that can be spent on other, more useful stuff. Like making planned features work. "Reluctancy to commit balance changes is attributable to many reasons, getting artists or programmers to commit balance changes is probably not the most time-efficient or quality assuring procedure and the reluctancy would be justified in that case." Which is why I proposed that you should hire a lead gameplay developer who works on the design doc combined with changing gameplay related stuff. That was almost 2 years ago now.

The navy comes from China and Korea. Haniwa art - Jomon boat.

Thanks! I'll bear it in mind.

Also, the Aegean Sea random map doesn't look like the Aegean at all:

Yeah, m8!

They're related phenomena, along with mirages, where layers of different temperature air refract light to give neat trippy visual effects. Work on my Palmyra map continues. Can anyone tell that I like the desert art set? Anyway, the map has a trade route down the middle of it with 6 capturable desert trading posts along it. The map also has a number of fruiting Date Palm groves ripe for the picking, along with some open sandy areas and craggy cliffs. This is one of two small oases on the map, long with this guy previously posted... Each player will have 2 nearby stone quarries, like this one, right outside their starting territories: Anyone want to model the Palmyran Temple of Bel for me? lol

Not quite historical just an other way of saying mythological English is a dense language their is no one way to say anything. Enjoy the Choice

semi historical?

there alot ideas for Romans props from a Fort/Castle frontier.

The easiest solution to hide hide the black corners of the minimap is to use à ring enough large. I began to implement the gui designed by Shyin. However, it will take me a lot of time.