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Thanks for your thoughts! Each sound uses both random pitch shifting AND a range of up to 10 randomly chosen variants, each constructed from a combination of unique audio components. I recorded all of the source materials myself, as it is much simpler and faster than digging through CC sounds (and less legal hassle). I've been designing sounds for games (and sample libraries) since 2010 so I have a pretty substantial library of custom recordings I have done to speed this up. For example, here are all the variants of the weapon attack + impact combo sounds (which we are using right now to demonstrate the result, until actual weapon impacts are properly implemented). Each component of the sound (thud, metal, swing noise, handling noise, armor noise, etc.) can be remixed as desired at any time: There are a few problems we are working with at the moment: Many of the original sounds are from before 2010, when the standards and style of sound design was very different. For example, many of the original sounds are of more of an arcade-y or non-realistic style, which was the dominant style of the early to mid 2000's (for example, metallic 'sliding' sword-on-sword noises, which are not how Bronze or Iron Age swords were used or sound). However, now it is expected that games such as this sound more realistic and accurate (e.g. Kingdom Come Deliverance, Mount & Blade II, even something late 2000's like Age of Empires III, versus older games like AoE I/II, Civ III, etc.). Many of the sounds also seemed to come from old sources or poor recordings with low sample rates, for example, many are missing content above 8 or 12 kHz, which is what gives them the 'harsh highs' you described. All of the new 'raw' recordings I am doing are at industry standard 48 kHz/24-bit sample rate and bit depth, using professional recording equipment. It is then very easy to tweak and improve the sounds because no information is missing. Any positional sound effect must be monophonic (single channel) for the sound engine, which greatly limits the 'colors' available, sort of like black and white vs. color photography. Too much reverb for example, and the sound becomes very muddy and 'wrong' sounding. So, we still must be careful with effects and processing! There were issues with the sound code which caused levels of some sounds to be massively off, so we are still tweaking levels to get sounds at correct volumes. For example, just playing through now, goat death sounds are very loud and sword attack sounds are a bit quiet. These are very very easy to tweak though, so we can adjust these a lot! Regardless, these sounds are still in draft form and will certainly see tweaks. There are now at least three qualified sound designers working on these and other new sounds so if all goes well, we will get a lot of nice results. For example, the metal and stone sounds were not done by any of us so have not been tweaked at all yet, and there already are some suggestions by the others to tweak the woodcutting and bow sounds slightly. My general advice with the new sounds is to play through a few games with them, and see if you still feel the same way when you compare back to the old sounds. We are making a big change here so it will be shocking at first to anyone who has played for a while (myself included!). If you or anyone else has more specific feedback (e.g. "I do not like the weapon sounds because of the low metallic part" or "The building sounds seem too dry/thin and low-pitched"), that would be much more helpful for us.

An medieval stable - visit by 0ad-horses

I was thinking they could use their own look. Something like this:

I noticed that ranged units seem to cancel their attack and start reloading again when you click on attacking the same enemy again. So giving the same command again actually tells them to start again instead of to proceed. It's the same when given the command to attack someone else (for example when the other enemy is killed), in this case I can somehow understand it. Still it looks odd for example when the catapult is almost firing, the structure is destroyed and the loading is cancelled, just to start loading again and shooting to the building right next to it. This leads to jumps during fights, everytime a unit gets killed a lot of animations are cancelled and restarted. I noticed all this when watching a fight in slow motion that I randomly recorded. Also notice how the horse in the middle changes colour I guess it's because of promotion fighting.mp4 I don't know if this is really considered a bug, I'm sorry if you are already aware of that.

I don't want to flog a dead horse, but a while back, the idea that Kushites had stone vaults was ridiculed by one of our forum members. Although none of the structures in-game actually feature any stone vaults (our vaults are made from brick). That said, just for the sake of being complete and setting the record straight, Kushites did in fact have stone vaults. Here's an example: Remains from another stone-vaulted chamber, I think from a grave (some of the pyramid chapels also had vaulted chambers): I have been sooo absent these months. Sorry guys... I've been focussing heavily on visualizing many other aspects of various African histories that are unknown to the general public and aren't known to most specialists either, so I feel a heavy responsibility to make it more accessible to people. I've been posting this visual material in another dedicated history forum, which has been eating up my time. Also, I've been having serious issues loading most pages on this forum for some reason... Anyway, research into Kushite history never stopped, and I now have a scary amount extra reference material, that I'm having some trouble organizing it in a presentable way. Anyway, I'll just make some bite sized posts for now. One thing that's quite unique to Kush in African history is the use of water pipes/plumbing in some of their elite structures. I believe aside from the Kushites only the later Swahili had developed plumbing. This one is from Meroë, pretty sure I posted it before, but here's a different angle of the drainage pipe from the Royal Baths: And this one is from Musawwarat es Sufra: I also wanted to share this cool image of a tiled floor in a temple in Meroë. These kind of tiling is usually obscured by sand, which is deliberately used to cover the ruins, to protect them from the elements, but it also, well, obscures them, which means that most people don't really ever get to see them. I think they're an excellent demonstration of elite architectural finishing rarely associated with Nubian archaeology, but very much a part of the mix as well: Most of the floors of course wouldn't have been quite as luxurious. Remains of some stone flooring in a Meroitic temple at Abu Erteila (turn of the Common Era): Another chamber from the same temple complex: I actually don't think I've mentioned much about the site of Abu Erteila before, but it seems to have been yet another royal complex, complete with temples and a palace, probably built during the reign of Queen Amanitore and King Natakamani. Site plan of the excavated sections of the temple complex at Abu Erteila: Site plan of the excavated sections of a palatial structure at Abu Erteila: Few more details from Abu Erteila: Lion headed water spout from Abu Erteila: Some of the stone lions of Abu Erteila: I'm still a little surprised that no-one has dubbed the Kushites: "The Lion Kingdom" yet. Seems exceptionally appropriate.

now they are a little bit safer ...

I think I saw iddle units attacking houses/barracks instead of capturing them too. Maybe I am not getting your point but in a23, this happens only for palisades/walls/fields that can't be captured, no? I think houses, corals, dropsites and market (????) for ptolemies now have the same construction time but they are cheaper. They do have less hp too but not sure it compensate for the economic bonus it is giving, especially for dropsites. Did I miss something there? The main change to the game experience seems to be unit movements for me (rather than sounds ). It feels less fluid in overall. Units change frequently speed between walk, run, stop, rotation, formation. Maybe it is something that I have to get used to but currently I find difficult to predict units movements and therefore more difficult to control them accurately. Maybe there could be some way to play with the numbers (rotation speeds etc...) to improve it if it is effectively a problem. I love many of the graphism changes.

Yes, I was fully aware of the saturation risk; unfortunately, there was no elegant solution to the problem, as having a bias while preserving average luminosity implies going above and below 1.0; but in my mind this was no life or death issue, since neither should the grounds be too close to white, nor should ambient light. I was tempted to forgo the preservation of average illumination, as I find most maps in game have excessive ambient light; but then I figured I might become a political refugee after darkening ambient generally.

Boudica yesterday in the Lobby to me: "Hi, long time no CC!" Not only a way to say hello, but also a subtle way to roast me, reminding me of the matches where he destroyed my Civic Center, which I had to rebuild then...

@DanW58 Okay, I tested the improved graphics file you provided again, but I saw that the shadow became like this, and the shadow on the roof was strange.

LOL, well, the only place I've heard people say you see light coming equally from all directions is inside the Sun... Europe won't cut the mustard. Not even London in the sunniest, foggiest day. Wait! Was OGL designed by Sun Microsystems? I guess that's what you get from graphics hackers when they spend too much time in the sun...

@Freagarach@Stan` I tested again and I seriously think something went wrong with canceling attacks. The first video is from a23, the second from a24 OnagerA23.mp4 The onager is loading, then you give the command to attack the other house -> the loading continues and it turns and shoots OnagerA24.mp4 The onager is loading, command to attack other house -> cancels loading Is that intended? In this case it doesn't look too bad, but with other animations like the javelinist it looks really strange. and of course it changes gameplay too

The one for gathering wood is the only one I noticed to be completely off. Like two wooden sticks used as an instrument as a beat in a track. When it sounds like this you certainly wont cut a tree within a decade. There are sure quite a few sounds to get used to, overall the quality of the sounds seems better.

i just noticed that the imp_watchtowers from DE might be even better than the sentry towers

List of possible problems and complains from game played a24 4vs4 random map, take into account that performance is comapred with a23. (last svn revision as for 2/6/2021 windows build) 1) Very heavy lag when using the scrollbar in gamestup. All players looks like they are about to disconnect. (Ex. Relic count, Relic duration scrolls) [this issue I think is very important to fix] 2) Chat with too much interline space (in a23 is much less space) 3) Map browser doesn't select first result if Entrer is pressed 4) Construction countdown time texts and number of number of units building it text are too vertically close 5) Camera stutters hard when moving it with keyboard (also happens with middle click mouse) 6) Buildings icons too small/hard to see 7) Some orders/actions seem to be lost/ignored when in late game/lag/low fps 8) Sometimes untis seem to attack houses instead of capture if they are left idle 9) When ending game (session) and load -> stats page loading freezes and even Windows suggest to close 0ad as it doesn't seem to be responding. 10) Multiple occurrences of random 1-2 seconds for when the game drops to 4 fps on my case (looks random) and then returns to normal 17-30 fps Graphics settings for me: no MSAA, GLSL on, no shadows, no particles, no mods metadata.jsoncommands.txt mainlog.7z In the mainlog you can see the insane absurd amount of net gamesetup messages when using scrolling for the settings ( i suggest using some kind of debounce function) @Stan`

forge or workshop - interior and/or eyecandy follows up ...

A little church ...

I always say that profanity-phobics make profanity necessary. As long as there are people offended by it, there will be a need for people to provide the required offenses. But yes, consistency, or the lack of it, is a whole other story.

Interesting leather armor finds (From Post Meroitic period): https://www.reddit.com/r/Sudan/comments/ki6uy7/cool_pieces_nubian_blemmye_hide_armour/?ref=share&ref_source=embed&utm_content=title&utm_medium=post_embed&utm_name=02813219303d4bda845ddb68ac0db97e&utm_source=embedly&utm_term=ki6uy7 http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=20495

Wanna wish nice christmas to 0 a.d. community, programmers and artists. Thx to @Stan he is helping other players in forum everyday and other programmers / modders because their amazing work for spend much time in this game. Artists @LordGood @wackyserious @Alexandermb(hope he will have better internet some day) and @OmriLahav make the game look amazing. I am hoping that @Lion.Kanzen and @Sundiata will come back soon. Keep healthy

Interesting video, not directly related to the Kushites but still interesting to the topic:

Other stuffs: https://www.facebook.com/dorsetodinists/posts/974389453043295 https://www.facebook.com/SamsonIllustration/posts/3314557838656844 JFOliveras made some illustrations weeks ago about Pytheas' journey, if I really like his art and his skill, I find it sad he isn't properly advised about the material he relies on.

Something that needs discussing is; if y'all do decide to give the Ptolemaics this shield, which unit would get it? They have very little Egyptian influence in their roster, and the most Egyptian unit is just a lower tier Hellenic unit. A possible re-construction of the Ptolemaic roster based on cheap Machimoi units early game with a more powerful hellenic units mid and late game would definitely be interesting, and I would totally help construct that, but that's probably a debate for another thread.

Phase III Update So I have started building Phase III, but due to my inexperience with ancient history, took a long time. Right now only Athens has been reworked. It is playable, but AI cannot upgrade building yet so it is recommended to not assign AI to Athenians for now. This should be compatible with current version of City Building Mod, but it is recommended to play it separately as I haven't tested the integration fully. Notable changes: Phasing is now automatic, but Agora still has to be upgraded first, from Village center to Town center to City center. Market and Fortress are now unbuildable, but upgradable from buildable village center. Agora can now trade, so bartering can be done in village phase. Athens can now build Siege Workshop and Stable. New units and technologies based on social class. and more. Enjoy and let me know if there's some bug or some gameplay changes that don't make sense. Citizen-Mod.zip

City Building Mod: Building Aura This is Phase I of my city building mod that focuses on improving building auras to simulate city-building. Download the latest version here on GitHub. Overview Base-building is one of the main parts of RTS games, including 0AD. However because of 0AD focus on combat, base building mostly revolves around build order, with building placement is usually optimized for resource gathering and defenses. The resulting city layout becomes strategic but unrealistic. Civic center surrounded by farms, houses built in countryside as walls; these are strategically viable but not realistic nor historically accurate. This mod attempts to bring realism of city planning to 0AD, to encourage careful building placement. Features Fluctuative Population With this mod, population cap is no longer based only on how much house you built, but also where you place it. Every single building in 0 A.D. has been revamped with new aura effects that influence desirability of its nearby area, simulated by house population. This means that a house built next to a civil center supports more population than a house in country side. Building a military base beside it will reduce the population even more. This will encourage you to find a good place to construct houses, just like a city planner would. Every building costs population to run, and default house population has been reduced by half to keep it spicy. Production Chain Imagine how a soldier got his weapon. Wood and metal are collected in the storehouse, then they will be brought to blacksmith to be forged, then they will be received by the soldier at the end of his training. If all of those building are very close together, the soldier doesn’t have to wait too long to receive his weapon. This mod emulates such situation by giving effects if the buildings are nearby. Storehouse fastens nearby blacksmith’s research, and blacksmith fastens nearby barrack’s training. By arranging the buildings in specific way you can optimize your barrack to pump armies as fast as possible. Infrastructure Units are also affected by this mod. In real life, in the area where a city center stands, roads and other convenience are made to anticipate crowd of people running around. This mod simulates this by giving units speed boost while walking around the city center. Putting your storehouse right next to a mine also gives gatherers one extra resource to bring back. Mix and Match Since every building influences another, there are bound to be some compromises. Barrack will reduce nearby house population, but house will fasten barrack’s training, so if you need soldiers fast then you can build them next to each other at the cost of one population. There are so many possibilities. Experiment and discover your ultimate city that serves your strategy to conquer the world. Improved AI Now AI has been taught basic lessons on city planning. Beware that the nature of this mod allows AI to optimize this and might get surplus population early if you're not careful. The city pictured above is not my creation, it's purely built by AI with tremendous efficiency. New update also reduced default house population to nerf the AI because it was just that good. Installation Mod is available for download on mod.io (waiting for moderator's approval). It is available both for Alpha 23 and Alpha 24. Simply download the one compatible with your installed 0 A.D. version. Extract the entire content into My Games\0ad\mods\public folder and enjoy. Alternatively it is available for download at GitHub. Choose the branch according to your installed version and download. As I am not well versed in modding nor I am in history, please let me know if you think the modding could be improved or if it can be made more historically accurate. Enjoy!

Yes, that may be true at run-time; but if I load the model I just saved and it's all triangulated it is impossible to work with; and Blender does a terrible job of converting triangles to quads; whoever coded that should get life in prison. Anyways, I found the culprit: A stupid flag for triangulate on export, hidden in a second tab in the Collada exports options, absurdly defaults to checked ON. Another candidate for life in prison... Yeah, about the problem, I remember dealing with something similar, a very long time ago. I tried adding a thin outer trim to the terrace floor, but it made no difference. Now I'm trying a brute force approach, adding a hidden light-blocking frame. Of course, doing so is not ideal, as it causes the very problem I was talking about regarding graphics performance: overdraw... Which is a misnomer; should be called "over-visit", as the problem is revisiting the same fragment, whether it results in something drawn or not, z-buffer notwithstanding.