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I'm not an artist but I'm amazed by what they can create and very proud of participating to a project that is so visually appealing. I would be very sad to see this work from humans replaced by generated contents copied over from someone else's work (because "generative" AI creates from plagiarized content, for now). Jason, the content you sent is beautiful, but knowing that no one spent time on it, demonstrating their skills through it, removes all the value in my eyes. I'm on 0 A.D. to do something selfless, spend much time on something for the love of it. The end result is not by far my main metric of satisfaction. Similarly, genAI could generate documentation and increase our metrics on this front... but without real added value. If an AI can deduce what the code does, maybe documentation was not absolutely necessary at this place. Worse, it can generate low-quality comments which mask the need for detailed information written by competent developers. And, my main concern, regardless of the very personal input I'm giving above, is the carbon footprint of these tools, which is ridiculous. If we're accelerating the catastrophe just to splash shiny images on a hobbyist game, we're being very careless. That also includes using genAI for inspiration.

This is something as I said I have a few ideas-- I'll make a dedicated post once the encyclopedia is getting close to be merged

https://www.lpi.org/blog/2024/12/04/0-a-d-reviving-history-in-real-time-in-foss/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=fosspotlight

Oh, I forgot, the interview was very good. Good job! I didn't know the formations were based off my favorite RTS Battle for Middle Earth-- will the 0 A.D. formations get bonuses eventually like in the game?

The thing with AI is it's very very derivative and even if you do it for just planning purposes it's going to be very similar to tracing over someone else's image. (Those two pictures are literally colorized faces of coins) and those icons look like things I can download off opengameart.org I think the complaint of copyright by now is a lost cause legally, so there is no worry about being sued. But I do think we should think about the potential costs. It's obvious that having a professional artist draw it will be better than tracing over any AI. The thing is most artists and other non-programming creatives hate AI with a passion(and for good reason) I'm afraid that using AI for 0 A.D. would scare people away. And while we'd get half decent art sooner, we'd be losing the chance of more artists later. But artists aren't here right now!!! Be patient I think after this release things may be turning up, we literally have the coolest open source game here if Battle for Wesnoth can get artists we can too. (I have some marketing ideas we can try with the encyclopedia and I might be able to get a history Youtuber's attention, but I make no promises.) That said, I do think AI art might be useful for prototyping and stuff, but I don't think it should be used for anything that is shown in the main game. To the point of music, we don't need that we have an amazing soundtrack, and if we really need more songs I know some guys. It might not 100% real instruments, but we'd not be getting that if we use AI anyway. I said from when the Encyclopedia was just a GitHub on my profile that I wouldn't be accepting any AI writing for the encyclopedia. The number one reason for that is the same with Art and Music, if you know what you're doing, the AI created content is very obvious compared to proper English. Even if I couldn't 100% detect it as AI, I'd probably a ton of edits because it's just terrible. I don't know what Vantha's feelings on it and as he's a very big part of the encyclopedia he might have different ideas, but I know I wouldn't be accepting anything that I knew was AI. Additionally (and this is a potential problem with art too). We want to be historically accurate and AI doesn't know how to be historically accurate, an article or picture of a hopilite would have to be scrutinized to be sure it was right-- We'd have to do all the research anyway on how it looked, and we'd have to know what to do in order to fix a bad image/article so we'd need the skills anyway to do that which begs the point why we'd start with that anyway. Again I think the art is OK for prototyping for things like DE (which I really need to get around to playing) but I really don't think anything AI generated should make it in the base game.

This is a very important topic in my opinion. I fully support the team's decision. I believe it's right to resist the temptation of the potential development boost it could provide. It'll prove to be the right decision in the long run. @Itms worded it really well. Part of what I find makes 0ad so great is the fact that so many talented individuals from all around the world got together and invested so many selfless hours of work to create an awesome game for anyone to play completely for free. 0ad's value goes far beyond the software and gameplay experience. Imagine a future where projects whose development was assisted by generative AI (to any extent - be it just a few textures) are required to be explicitly labelled as such. Most AI-generated content online is already frowned upon. A small label like this could significantly (terrifyingly) devalue the reputation and history of the game. And that would be incredibly sad, and simply irresponsible towards this great legacy. Generative AI is a fascinating, and really capable technology, I'd be the last one to deny that. But I think it's a bit ... pointless. Creating something impressive is supposed to take effort. That's what makes it impressive in the first place, no? Regarding the encyclopedia, I therefore share @ShadowOfHassen's views; we shouldn't and won't use generative AI for texts or images at all.

I think with https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/pulls/7047 , he will at least be less able to hold hosts hostage by threatening to leave if a spec he doesn't like isn't banned.

@MeisterHost of the game can make own rules & policies and can even ban anyone without noticing.. upto this part all is ok no matter who host. What is not good is "new" smurfs account with ability to immediatly host new game. Other players gladly will join without caring much who is the host as there is in general not much games hosted at peak time. I would like to offer devs team to implement some "smart logic" whoch would not allow host game from lobby for these "fresh accounts" and maybe additional conditions to make it harder you define... I don't have single proof mentioned person is Geriatrix (probably very first account was Cedric_O) but In general I never been banned by anyone else than him... if it helps..

As long as it's still relevant maybe it would be good to test and have reproduction steps on the nightly build.

Splat.

Now you are catching on, nice work

Good work.

I was using this one just because it is free, and the tokens recharge daily: Images - Microsoft Designer You can review the terms here: consumerTermsOfUse.pdf A quick look over the terms outlined, it seems that the primary concern would be whether the use of images created by Microsoft Designer in the game could be considered "personal use" or if it violates commercial use clauses. For non-commercial open-source games, it would appear to be in the clear, but commercial projects (or projects that raise funds) there could be legal challenges.

You can't understand how crazy it is to see the encyclopedia listed as a feature for the game upcoming. It won't be in A27, but we'll be able to get at least part of the encyclopedia out in A28. We want to do some reorganizing after Vantha and the other smarties get the UI figured out, but after that we should be ready to set up the stuff we currently have and writing more.

@Lion.Kanzen Frankfurt silver inscription

Archäologischer Sensationsfund "Der älteste Christ nördlich der Alpen war Frankfurter" Es ist ein Fund, der die Geschichtsschreibung verändern könnte: In Frankfurt wurde ein 1.800 Jahre altes Amulett mit Inschrift gefunden. Experten halten es für das älteste Zeugnis christlichen Glaubens nördlich der Alpen. They found a 1,800 year old Roman silver amulet with a Christian inscription, believed to be the oldest evidence of Christianity north of the Alps.

Yeah, I thought my horsie was around, but he was actually a few meters away: So everything's fine, please excuse the interruption...

I'd like to clarify, I don't think the game is completely off the first design - I'd estimate it is 80% there. You guys have done great.

Andy has said he's not interested in taking these maps. Best to have an an official "Legacy Maps" mod. Once we've finished polishing 30 good maps for the base game, we can polish 5-10 more maps from the Legacy Maps mod and merge them back into the game. rinse/repeat. Retold has 40 well-polished procedural maps: https://aom.heavengames.com/retold/random-maps/

Working on a new Savanna biome. Will have Wet season and Dry season like the other one. Improving the assets too, such as stones and rocks.