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Version 1.3 is here. Fixes issues with Fresnel refraction factors with light going into the water, and with light coming out: e.g., when the Sun is low, very little sunlight should be able to enter the water, most of it reflecting back up instead; therefore bottoms of water bodies should darken faster than by mere ray-dot-normal. The light reflecting off the bottom and coming back out again is modulated by fresnel refraction, except in this case it is calculated by eye-view vector angle, rather than the Sun's angle. Particularly noticeable in the second picture below: The shadows of the floating leaves are not too dark. Why? Because sunlight is attenuated by Fresnel, and so most of the light the bottom gets, with the Sun so low near the horizon, is bluish light from the sky, rather. The wet coast hack looks a bit better now. Modulating water's specularity linearly over a couple of yards is a noticeable artifact, really. I now modulate water's index of refraction, instead, as I fade in bottom darkness. The way it works is it darkens the bottom early (as if we are walking towards the water), but water's reflectivity (and foam) fade in more slowly. If you have any problems with the mod, try maxing out settings like "number of shaders" and most graphics quality options, EXCEPT sharpening and MSAA. I keep MSAA at (4x); good enough for me. And be sure to report here. And if you have nice screenshots to share, don't hesitate. metal_shader_set_v1.3.pyromod

I made a little demo video, for the undecided ... The fish need alpha.

The biggest proof that a24 is better than a23, is to join a team game and see at least 6 different civilizations, where before we only had two haha

The walls were given because they usually did fortifications on hills (like a lot of cultures, btw) "The guerrilla warfare" (associated to Spain in Napoleon times, where the name came from the spanish) was more a Lusitanian thing. Iberians tactics weren't so different from spear walls. Also the sling thing it's more a feature from Balearic Islands, that were'nt connected to Iberians by any kingdom or Empire Before redesigning the uniqueness of civilizations, make a table and think collectively instead of adding and deleting design quirks individually on every civ. I would give the guerrilla/ambushing features to Britons.

The "Rathaus" oder "Bürgerhaus" ...

It'd be good if you could get a more consistent description because it sounds _very_ broken, but we've not really had reports of anything like that except from you as far as I recall. Maybe try playing and recording your screen/input? Ah, yeah, that problem. Indeed that will trigger H if you drop space before H. TBH this is really my fault, I did not anticipate that this would be a problem, and I guess I'm lucky in that I don't personally experience it using control groups (I guess I naturally drop the # first). I'll fix it for A25, but in the meantime the best advice I can give you is to avoid conflicting/ambigous hotkeys or train your brain to drop the letter first. The reason why I changed this was that there was unexpected behaviour in A23: for example if you pressed Ctrl, then D, then 'Ctrl' hotkeys remained active, but his did not happen if you went "D then Ctrl". There were a number of related oddities. Unfortunately in fixing that I assumed that 'retriggering' hotkeys when releasing a key was the most logical behaviour, when it probably would have been better to not do that.

I know I'm totally irrational about this, but I loved watching the elephants putting wooden beams on buildings with their trunks.

@mysticjimIn your user.cfg file, you can add `gui.scale = "1.25"` to increase the size of everything, including the icons.

Is it worth taking a snapshot poll of feelings towards A24 vs A23 now, and then again in a couple of months? I think my biggest worry is going to be if there is a gradual acceptance of things that are problems and a growing tendency to imply they'll be 'fixed' in A25. If a sizable chunk of the community simply find the game less fun right now, for whatever reason, their patience will be very short. And I don't think it's fair to tell people who claim to prefer A23 to simply go back and play that. They won't, they will drop 0AD altogether, like a stone - without looking back. There is a plethora of choice available in this genre, plenty of it cheap - if not quite free like 0AD. I'd be worried if the overriding trend is that A24 makes people less likely to enjoy playing 0AD - I wouldn't be telling them to go elsewhere. Probably because they will! I'm still getting to grips with A24 having not had anywhere near enough time to play with it, so far my only gripes have been the sounds (previously mentioned) and the slight shrinking of the icons (speaking from an accessibility point of view as someone with awful eyesight!). I've yet to encounter the balancing properly, but hope to see that first hand in my first few A24 team games. And until mods are working, specifically the Spec/Monitor mod, I'm not in a position to do commentary videos on other peoples games. I'm waiting to see if that sense of drama and action has changed negatively or been lost somewhat. If it has, if the I find myself getting bored commentating on an A24 game, then I'd say the whole project was in a bit of bother and it wouldn't bode well. Naturally, I hope that won't be the case, of course

At least it doesn't convert an enemy by shooting wololo at his face. I like the idea but to work it should be built really fast and I see how it could be abused by some players. By spamming it to block some units

Corinthian Ismuth4 does afaik. I like that bonus though What if you consider them surgeons and healers. Sure it wasn't 1940 medicine but they did exist. They didnt wave hands but it's a good abstraction IMHO adding healing camps might be too much mircro.

Looks incredible, great work!

Hello, I want to inaugurate this new A24 replay section by dumping a few of my multiplayer replays, showcasing the new unit balance and the increased diversity of units that can be reliably trained. I have a feeling sometimes players don't make use of all tools available to them. Champions, trade and siege (3v3).zip This teamgame showcases a lot of different unit types, but notably champions swordsmen, some champion archers, some trading, catapult+ballistas attack, and camel archer lategame composition on the other side. Roman sword cavalry champions (3v3).zip Features roman sword cavalry champions, quite a powerful unit. Cavalry and champions (3v3).zip Features sword infantry champions from Seleucids, cavalry compositions from mauryan and ibers (with a few firecav champions) Archer cavalry and roman champion cav (3v3).zip A teamgame that shows those 2 units in action. Valihrant (Koushites) vs Feldfeld (Mauryas).zip Small rush early game. Features town phase CC expansion, archers and elephant archers from Maurya, against archers and nuba skirmisher cavalry from Koushites Valihrant (Mauryas) vs Feldfeld (Macedonians).zip Features town phase CC expansion from macedonians. Skirmishers and champion infantry spearmen from mace against chariot archer champions from maur. Valihrant (Macedonians) vs Feldfeld (Athenians).zip Features a moderate early game rush. CC expansion from macedonians in the town to city phase transition. Gastraphetes from mace against slingers + ballistas from athenians. Feldfeld (Ptolemies) vs cl2488 (Ptolemies).zip Features mercenary swordsmen and mostly slingers against pikemen and slingers. StarAtt (Iberians) vs Feldfeld (Carthaginans).zip Features mercenary cavalry from Carthage. ElDragon (Kushites) vs Feldfeld (Carthaginans).zip Features village phase expansion from Carthage, with a composition of Sacred Band infantry supported by archers later. Archers and pikemen/spearmen from Kushites. You can download all replays bundled here: Feldfeld's replay dump.zip Hopefully that can address a few of the complaints I have read about the new version. For example, the diversity between civilizations has been reduced, yes, however keep in mind to compensate that the new balance between units should make some civilization specific strategies (eg. a unique champion, mercenaries) viable whereas it was not the case in A23 (which was notably a lot of slinger spam). About archers being OP: yes it is true that they have a very good accuracy, possibly making them OP, but they are less efficient than other ranged units against melee units (which have been improved in this version). Remeber there are other options than making citizen soldiers ranged units. Of course this doesn't mean we won't find OP units in the future. Champion melee cavalry look quite strong, champion archer cavalry maybe too.

The Fresnel function worked the first time; no debugging needed. It's now incorporated in the metal_shader_set version1.3 pyromod's modified water_high.fs. It works a charm and a half. So, let's get back to the problem of multiple diffuse light bounces within a dielectric glossy coat: I was making a table that was failing due to using Schlick's Abomination, er, I mean Approximation, to try and visually educe a formula to relate how much diffuse light gets out of a dielectric at each bounce. To re-do the table using real Fresnel would involve more columns than fit in my poor man's screen; so I'm going to use LibreOffice Calc, and maybe I will figure out how to copy the relevant stuff to insert here ... Darn! To have "50% reflection ANGLE" as a function of refractive index involves a huge math operation on the Fresnel formula. I'm not sure this is even possible. I think my table is going to be a multiplication of refractive indexes and angles as a multi-page column, and resulting reflective coefficients in the last column, and then I can visually select input angle for 50% result.

I had a diff to make use 'field hospitals' in the long lost past. The big problem with 'healing' is that wounded units should really lose fighting capability for it to make sense. At that point, the whole RTS abstraction we're using breaks down.

Iberians were particularly associated with quality horses and even had an important dedicated horse sanctuary, so maybe let them start with a stable? That would be a good example of a significant civ-specific bonus rooted in history.

I believe the Iberians were to be the quintessential defensive civ. Hiding behind their walled settlements sending out raiding parties and wearing down their opponents that way. Along with ambushing/guerrilla warfare, the Iberians would be rather unique in this way. But as development progressed this kind of thinking fell by the wayside, culminating now in what we have in A24. Part of the problem too as you pointed out is that the wall builder js creates ugly inelegant curtains of walls. If you check them out in DE's skirmish maps they look nicer. And another thing that makes them OP is that they come with free gates. In DE they do not.

Ah, really good, I believe you will do better! Let us wait.

ROTFLMAO! That is EXACTLY what I just finished doing. I found that the original shader had no light computations onto the ocean bottom, or floor under the water. It is as if it was emissive. Needless to say the light was not modulated by the fresnel refraction factor. So I put that in, but then I forgot that on coming out of the water, there's another fresnel refraction factor to account for. I just added it. However, the two are not the same: One is calculated on the light vector angle to the water; the other is calculated on the view angle to the water. Right now I have the same fresnel refraction factor used twice. Have to fix that. And I also have an idea that might improve my wet coasts algorithm; a crazy idea, have to try it. So expect a version 1.3 by tomorrow morning.

DONE! The water shader now uses TRUE fresnel for reflection and refraction coefficients. This is the Fresnel formula from Wikipedia; no approximations; no hacks. And it works! Updated also the Phabricator water_patch: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3603 metal_shader_set_v1.2.pyromod

It's Sunday! Thought I might be thwarted by A24 dropping and none of the Mods working, so had to improvise a bit! Now you can see how shamefully bad at 0AD I really am! Compare the speed my brain works at with the likes of @ValihrAnt in his replays, it's pretty embarrassing! Ah well!

I'd also like to hear some thoughts on altering or removing the passive stance. The main problem is with units doing the weird run and thus avoiding shots and baiting the attacking units after them. Most noticable on healers and women with the loom upgrade as units will run straight into the enemy army to try and chase them. Then there's also players who put the hero on passive stance and position the hero in front of their army as an easy alternative to dancing. Edit. Also with melee units becoming more usable and necessary, dancing should be far more difficult.

The thing with dielectric layer over diffuse is that angle is not conserved across multiple bounces. Imagine, in the picture in the previous post, that we have incident light ray 'a', splitting same as before into a reflected 'b' and a refracted 'c'. However, ray 'd' will never happen: once 'c' hits the diffuse layer, it bounces off it in all directions spherically. Some of those rays may come out; some may reflect back in; and when those rays going back in hit the diffuse layer again, each of them will bounce back spherically again. We again have some kind of geometric series to solve, but the ratio of light going back in after each iteration is no longer connected to the original angle of incidence; it is only dependent on the base color and the index of refraction of the dielectric layer. The light that gets out gets out spherically; not specularly. This is interesting, because it means that an object with glossy paint does not reflect diffusely following the standard diffuse model at all. Only light that penetrates the dielectric layer can possibly bounce off the diffuse layer. Light coming at a shallow angle probably mostly bounces off specularly and never refracts in. So the intensity of the color reaching your eye is not proportional to dot(v_light,normal), but rather the square of that, or a polynomial of that. MUCH brighter towards the light source than a diffuse material. Furthermore, you are more likely to see more of the diffuse layer reflection the more aligned your view vector is to the surface normal. Why? Because photons bouncing off in the direction of the normal have a much greater chance of making it out of the dielectric layer than photons trying to come out at a shallow angle. For each index of refraction there must be an angle relative to the normal that photons coming out at that angle have a 50-50 chance of making it out, or reflecting back in. Having that angle, I could use it as radius of a cone and calculate solid angle of light making it out versus reflecting back in. Okay, so, if R0 = ((n2-n1)/(n2+n1))^2, we can calculate R0 for a number of refractive indices, then ask at what angle is the reflectivity = 0.5. We have, refl = R0 + (1-R0)*(1-cos(a))^5 (1-R0)*(1-cos(a))^5 = refl - R0 (1-cos(a))^5 = (refl - R0) / (1 - R0) 1 - cos(a) = ( (refl-R0) / (1-R0) )^(1/5) cos(a) = 1 - ( (refl-R0) / (1-R0) )^(1/5) a = acos( 1 - ( (refl-R0) / (1-R0) )^(1/5) ); Let's make a little table: IOR n2-n1/n2+n1 R0 refl-RO 1-R0 Div. root5 1-5rt deg. === ========= ===== ======= ===== ==== ===== ===== ==== 1.0 0.0 0.0 0.5 1.0 0.5 0.871 0.129 82.6 1.5 -0.2 0.04 0.46 0.96 0.48 0.863 0.137 82.1 2.0 -0.333 0.111 0.388 0.888 0.44 0.847 0.153 81.2 2.5 -0.428 0.184 0.316 0.815 0.39 0.827 0.173 80.0 3.0 -0.5 0.25 0.25 0.75 0.33 0.803 0.197 78.6 3.5 -0.555 0.309 0.191 0.691 0.28 0.773 0.227 76.9 4.0 -0.6 0.36 0.14 0.64 0.22 0.738 0.262 74.8 4.5 -0.636 0.405 0.095 0.595 0.16 0.693 0.307 72.1 5.0 -0.667 0.444 0.056 0.556 0.1 0.631 0.369 68.3 Well, there must be some kind of mistake. Angle at IOR 1.0 should be 90 degrees, and should be getting smaller faster as the index of refraction icreases. I'm too tired, though; going to bed. If you figure out my mistake, please post. Going backwards for the first row, IOR of 1, the result should be 90 degrees. That means, the cosine, or 1 - fifth-root yada yada should be 0. So the fifth root yada yada should be 1. Fifth power of 1 is 1, so the division of (refl-R0) by (1-R0) should have given us 1; not 0.5 as it did. Now, 0.5 is the arbitrary reflectivity threshold I set; and this threshold should not matter in the case of IOR of 1; we should get 90 degrees for pretty much any reflectivity. Hrrrmmmmm.....

Hi, this topic is not used to explain a problem, but a big congratulations to Wildfire Team for the Amazing new Alpha 24! Keep it going! Don't give up!

I think you underestimate the power of user friendliness. I think redownloading SVN has been one of the more challenging things I've ever done technically in the last few months. I'd wish I was joking.

I personally don't use walls because I don't like them and I don't think they should be in the game. Strategically, I am rarely in a position where I need to use walls because I am usually the player on my team that makes the offensive push. Regardless of whether you think it makes sense or not, it is empirically true that the vast majority of top players never use walls. If anyone uses anything, it is palisades, which the vast majority of top players never use. And there have been threads/complaints calling out the players that do use palisades for their abusive tactics. and there will be complains for Roman's being op because they have siege workshop and camps to produce rams which most players don't know how to counter? There were siege camps in the last several alpha and very few people complained about them being op. And, the players that did complain about them being op were the ones who did typically did not know to use swords on rams. If that is the base level that you are concerned about then siege shouldn't be in the game or at least should be extremely difficult to make (unlike now). The Nisean horses technology (city phase) is still available to pers and sele only. The techs have changed. The Nisean tech in old alpha is more analogous to the horse breeding tech that gives a 10% health buff in this alpha. Horse breeding tech is available to all civs now. Before the Nisean tech used to be a 20% health bonus to all cav. Now the Nisean tech is a 20% health bonus buff, 10% increase in production time for champ spear cav only. Persia/Sele's bonus used to be relatively stronger/more versatile. This without a doubt makes persia/sele's cav less special than it was before. This is unfortunate, I don't like it much either. The reason it happened is because it's more important to get the basics right and having a balanced core gameplay, from which to further differentiation later. This isn't really necessary, though. There was differentiation before. The biggest problems with balancing was that slingers were too strong and archers were too weak. That problems were corrected this alpha. And, those changes have nothing to do with anything I have complained about or about the civ differentiation. In fact, I initially said this is one of the things I like most about this alpha. Regardless, is having 12 civs that are boring and really just one civ better than having 6 OP civs that are fun and 6 civs that need a buff? You can ignore that 6 bad civs, but you don't get the choice is all 12 civs are basically the same. Regardless, as I have said earlier, a lot of the civs are basically the same as one another with extra features, which will eventually prove to make a new list of OP civs that everyone plays. I'm sorry your experience has been an unhappy one. We're all human in an imperfect world. Gameplay and balance are discussed in numerous threads on these forums, as well as in private conversations and via other channels. It's impossible for anyone to keep track of everything. Moreover, making changes is a slow process, it's not unusual for a patch to be committed (or abandoned) months or even years after it's proposed, which means that even if some comment was read and replied to in the past, it may have been forgotten by the time a final decision is made. Therefore it's really important to keep the discussion unified in a single place: the relevant patch on https://code.wildfiregames.com/ , because it's there the actual development happens and commits are made. In case you're referring to https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2507 : you left one comment there and disappeared. Others continued the conversation, on-and-off, the patch was revised six more times, and in the end several people agreed it should be given a try; it was left open for a couple more months and finally committed in December. If it turns out to have a horrible impact, then it can be reverted in A25, of course, though so far I haven't seen people complaining about palisades in A24. Can you clarify which change you're talking about? We certainly want to avoid this type of situation. If you no longer voice your opinion, your opinion will _indeed_ be ignored. 'We' are not some secluded private studio with a completely opaque decision process: every diff and commit is available and open-source on https://code.wildfiregames.com. You literally have no reason not to voice your disagreement or concern with changes there. It's possible a few diffs get committed without player consensus, but I want to highlight that this really isn't how things have been done in general in the A24 process: most if not all gameplay commits got some agreement from some top players, including usually borg-, feldfeld or valirhant. it is water under the bridge. This was a hot topic for a week or so and I thought I had added more to the thread but apparently it was just talking in the lobby with and without devs. The general feeling was that we had been ignored, so we didn't beat a dead horse. I have been asked in lobby by devs for my opinion on other matters and felt I had the same experience. I am not trying to be petty, I am just trying to point out how in the ideal world we can all improve and in this instance that safeguard of borg, feld, vali clearly fell apart because in this instance only one liked the proposal and others did not. I have been around for multiple alphas. I remember when a22 was released and players immediately recognized that cav was broken. And, I remember when a23 was released and players immediately thought it was an improvement. I am not saying all changes are bad. But I am saying that some changes are undesirable. Regardless, the point of this is try to make the game better now that I (and a large number of other players) think we have taken a step back.

Believe in the process, the first release that actually accounts for balance taking player experience into consideration will always be controversial. It had to start from somewhere, remember all cav or all champ metas, how is it that different? If you feel a game is slower you can make proposals, e.g. decrease economy requirements overall (buildings/training cost) etc... Granted, 0ad does not make it easy to provide accountable feedback, no continuous testing mechanism or a better platform (forum is too difficult to track and prioritize channels and discussions). Testing dev version requires dealing with SVN some technical prowess, synced rev, etc.. Hopefully with 6-mo cycle it will be more straightforward (though I'd better have a weekly release, make an AppImage for linux, exe for windows built by CI gg). The only thing that has turned me away are the sounds, maybe I'm a bit autistic but I can't absolutely play with those sounds so preeminent in the foreground (unit selection, unit move, fight actions, etc). Maybe I'll play when there is (or I make) a mod to have unit selections/actions sound fader.

I do think the mod selection screen is a little... open source. Meaning, unintuitive.

Slightly late this week!

Some Sunday 1v1 fun!

Still short on time, but managed to cobble together a couple of quick games to demonstrate a specific tactic when playing as the Britons. Love it or hate it, you can't ignore a Slinger Rush!!!!!

It is turned on and off with Space+Ctrl or Ctrl-Space. It's a must have I think.

I haven't spoken to @badosuabout his spec mod for a few weeks - but the upper left section is the bit I really appreciate in terms of displaying clear visuals for the viewer in replays, and ease of reading for me when I'm doing commentary. I still use the FGOD overlay but it's much harder to read. The production section - in the version I have, is still a WIP. I believe Badosu has plans for a much more integrated GUI replacement idea with a lot more matching visuals. The aim of it has always been to show the data of what each players are doing at a given time. You can easily see their build orders and see who is ramping up production, or who is falling behind, etc. From a commentators perspective, it's pretty useful. I find it really handy from a training perspective as well - you can properly analyse what a really good player is doing - where they are finding or utilising time better than an opponent.

More midweek 0AD fun! Naked Fanatics proved popular last week, so thought for the last video of 2020, why not feature them again!

Hey, merry Christmas everyone At 7pm tonight I've got a premiere of a 1v1 game featuring Borg that was very kindly donated. Alas, I don't think I'll be able to make it for the prem - I shall probably be indulging in a late Christmas dinner!

I love a bit of gratuitous conflict on a Sunday morning 0AD 4v4 Insane Body Count!

Empire is a great map! also very easy to make eco wrong, most people get confused. Nice vid.

Some fantastic midweek action

Comment @1:03:50 "It's a good game but the voices need improvements. They speak mostly Greek but the accent it's so funny and hard to understand that me as a native speaker rolf so hard. "

Some Terra Magna love:

To brighten up your Wednesday

Okay, no problem.

Better ? Wondering what to do with the fence

Here are two variation of the model. The historical one and the other with just the height of the roof fixed. I don't really know what to do with the back part on the last one, that's why its flat.

From here that looks that they are too big. Maybe Adding the elephant model to you workspace would help you

The textures are not hard to fix. Just have to play around with the UV's I made this, using the reference.