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Here I post my tutorial about template modding and unit creation. Enjoy! I hope you learn a lot of it! If you still have some questions, feel free to ask. edit: the resulting files can be found here: http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_id=7532 edit2: From now on, the tutorial can be found in the wiki: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/CreatingNewUnits This wiki page contains additional info (compared to the pdf document) with regards to setting up your mod, to work with the Mod Selector found in 0 A.D. Tutorial Unit creationv1.pdf

Small Update

Finished 16.08.2013. "Aspec Desert" - the size is "Very large" like a eight-player map. Finished 20.08.2013. "Aspec" - "Medium"-sized like a three-player map. It has walls added at boarder-region. You starting with 4 civic centers, enemy-AI begins with 3 civic centers. Both versions are 2 player maps, player 1 Macedonians vs. AI Carthaginians Aspec Desert.zip Aspec.zip New version: Finished 09.04.2014. "Aspec Desert 2" here: http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=18383&p=288650

This is based on the Age of Mythology Major God selection screen. That game was quite competitive and no one was begging for a drop menu.

Spahbod: Glad you look into this. I rarely work with placers/painters but he wanted to paint tiles by height. So I wrote an example function HeightPlacer(). Could you check if I forgot anything to make it work with avoids/constraints? (That's what I guess is at least part of the problem)

Visual size vs obstruction size: But we can make the obstruction larger. Visual shape vs obstruction shape: Non-square/circular obstructions will most likely result in more unwanted behavior as well. Before introducing this (if at all) make sure those units can still guarantied perform all possible move commands. (I've seen no game where this worked so I'd say: Hands off!)

@FeXoR: Correct. I misinterpreted the equation. It will end up in one condition. It's even possible the "min" function calls will be gone (thus overhead too) anyway after inbuilt optimization of the interpreter (if it's doing any of course). That clarifies it all. If it's counterintuitive then don't worry, your solution is fine. I even doubt the division by 2 could help, division by dx and dy will probably often be the bottlenecks. Anyway, it looks like your calculations are already quite thought-through. Great! The wall builder can be improved once a more dynamic approach is possible. Would it be usable for generating hillchains too? Could emulate glaciers and their consequences then. Or perhaps generate shores/coastlines with it. Do you think we could employ some of your path builder algorithms in the engine? e.g. if a mayor decides to build a road, then it should float naturally (as it possibly mostly did in ancient times). Hopefully the rock and cliffs will be possible soon. I really would like to see how we could generate underwater characteristics randomly too.You finally emulate the real world. Even caves seem possible for your algorithms.

Now, what is going on???? The road + forest stops at class clOpen just as it should, but strangely it continues in clWater: var placer = new HeightPlacer(heightRange.min, ByHeight[2].height);var painter = new LayeredPainter([tWaterBorder, tWater], [2]);createArea(placer, painter);paintTileClassBasedOnHeight(heightRange.min, ByHeight[2].height, 3, clWater);setReliefmap(myReliefmap);var placer = new HeightPlacer(ByHeight[3].height, ByHeight[4].height);var painter = new LayeredPainter([terrainBase, terrainBaseBorder], [4]);createArea(placer, painter);paintTileClassBasedOnHeight(ByHeight[3].height, ByHeight[4].height, 3, clOpen);setReliefmap(myReliefmap);Strange, since exactly the same piece of code is used. Also it seems that the height is overlapping (since part of clOpen is in the water) You can see it because of the pigs and textures. I guess that clWater isn't painted at all (no sand texture) but why?

I had in mind plant oil (like olive oil, there's plenty of it around the Mediterranean), however never did any research on what they really used this way. Water wouldn't be that effective though compared to any kind of oil.

I like the fact that you can quickly see unique units etc and a more detailed random selector.

Hephaestion: - "If" instead of "min" would not likely be faster here because the if condition would be the same calculation. - The "1 -" at the beginning is for the negative square function (before the "+") that should give a probability between 0 and 1. Similar the "- 1". - The "+ 1" in the second part (after the "+") is just to make sure the probability is never 0 (would do nothing). (ATM I go from the center to the edge of the window. Reversing that could remove some "+/- 1" but I would find that counterintuitive) (I could get rid of the "/ 2" by just halving both parts individually but the way it is it's simple to combime multiple windows functions. I like that.) - I don't plan walls on this map but I wrote the RMGEN wall_builder.js lib (where every wall element length is "hardcoded" again due to the lack of entity access which is bad ofc.).

It was actually a menace, because it contaminated water of the wells in a dry region. Although I have only seen reports of its use during the campaign of Bahram Chubin, the Sassanid General, against Hephtalites and even that's not much certain.

@All Councilors As I said, I would forward a request for our sub, and I have. To also be transparent for the council, here's my submitted request. Hi feneur Today I'm submitting a request to you on behalf of CoM to have a sub directory tree made. For reasons that are proving to highlight our need for this, amongst them include; A, most importantly a space that's orderly in which to better run and facilitate the council, it's members and it's tasks. I initially, when we last had our discussion, wanted one for my mod. But indeed, the importance of the council far outweighs the importance of that. I see this council as a perfect way to strengthen our aims and ideas and by uniting everybody working on their ideas, we have a catalyst of enthusiasm, and drive, that ties all of our minds in one sync and we all able to achieve our ideas collectively. What I invariably want to achieve with this council, is to encourage more and more people to mod, and possibly promote the game more. And because 0 A.D. Is one the of the most beautiful RTSs I've seen and played, I see loads of potential. From playing this game, my ideas and vision for these possibilities ran wild. Then I discovered other people also had amazing ideas too. But I saw them struggling, not just with implementing their ideas, but their teams falling apart. I saw many things wrong here, and having seen to few members working on them, I knew there's a better way to solve that. CoM is now here, a hybrid team composed of many, but as a management team which still keeps their teams in check, but as a council we now take on a new role, and that is to ensure that the pillars stand. So in a way CoM is basically there to support the structure of everyone and we all work as one team. C for creativity and M is marble for strength Creativity in marble for strength. So effectively I wanted to contribute to 0 A.D., now I'm doing it, my way. But not quite there yet, but I'm sure given enough time, things may change for the better So here is the structure we agreed on: /Council of Modders /Projects -/1,000 A.D. -/Aristeia -/ROME /Announcements /General Topics: - general discussion and ideas - FAQ - recruitment /Game Dev Topics: - Bug reports - Programming tasks tracking - technical discussion /Art Dev Topics: - Art task tracking - Fan art /Tutorials & Guides /Project Managment

Actually not necessarily. The game still uses .DDS, the PNG files are more to make it easier for artists/modders and I doubt using PNG files in the actual game would be a good idea. And unless there are better versions created of those skyboxes I doubt they will be replaced. It's not too easy to create a skybox as well as the texture has to be seamless in so many directions (I gave it a quick try Actually, now that I remember it, when I tried it it didn't work using PNGs, but when I saved the same images as DDS files it worked - in the sense that the game could load it, I didn't spend enough time on it to make it actually seamless.)

Sorry guys, I have to bail on this for a few weeks. I'm taking a trip - leaving this Friday and won't return until 4/7. I need to spend my free time in preparations. Keep fighting the good fight, I'll try to lend my assistance again when I return. The next steps I would take is the following: Create a simplified animation (maybe 2 bones bending a 4 sided cylinder) in max with some test prop points, then work to get that into blender. Try to export a .dae from max and blender again. Compare the contents of the .dae files with a smaller dataset. I'd also be curious to better understand how pyrogenesis converts the .dae files into .psa and .pmd files - and what parts and pieces of the .dae it uses in the conversion. I also thought it might be interesting to make a custom texture and paint it so that the vertexs in the scramble would be obvious in their before and after positions.

Will be hard (I'm quite busy with school currently, I've got my hands on a very large, time-consuming project): TODO: - make map circular - revert biome changes - Rewrite path placement - Make sure the water and a open space around it stays clear of trees. (Might even require a total rewrite of heightmapgeneration) - Add resources - add eyecandy This is an initial list, there might be items added to it.

Wip

http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Rmgen_Library#EnvironmentHelpers Hephaestion: Thx

Well I'm not Using Blender. I'll make a video on how I do it.

I see. Thanks for helping me guys. All of your inputs really open up my mind. I got a lot of sources to look up now. I've taken some notes on a few tutorials and there are a few books in my University store to check out on the topics too. I should be able to help you guys in no time. I'm excited. Since I am a student, I am lucky to have access to Microsoft Visual Studio for free. Oh yeah!

Here is my first map-download to grab.