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Well I tried out Wraitii's chrome shader, tah dah:

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of "0 A.D. Alpha 18 Rhododactylos", the eighteenth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. This alpha features improved performance, an in-game technology tree, a new map type ("Nomad") and more! Easy Download and InstallDownload and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. 0 A.D. is free of charge and always will be. Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to download 0 A.D. completely gratis, directly from the developers. Moreover, you can redistribute the game and modify it freely as long as you abide by the GPL. You can even use parts of the art and sound for your own projects as long as you abide by CC BY-SA. No "freemium" model, no in-game advertising, no catch. Top New Gameplay Features in This Release Nomad Game Mode: Players start with only some citizen soldiers and female citizens, and no civil center, and must build a base from scratch. In-Game Technology Tree: Allows players to see which faction can research what technologies, when and for how many resources. The default AI, Petra, now supports saved games. Toggle groups of units between marching in formation and breaking formation. New Seleucid buildings The new buildings are the house, storehouse, farmstead, towers and temple. The Civic Center is a placeholder for now and will be updated before the Seleucids are finished. Performance Improvements and Other Changes Under the Hood ​SpiderMonkey upgraded to ​v31: The Javascript engine SpiderMonkey has been upgraded to version 31. This greatly improves performance and reduces memory usage a bit. We have also adapted our code to support new and advanced memory management techniques and features of SpiderMonkey such as Exact Stack Rooting, Moving GC and Generational GC. In addition, this version of SpiderMonkey includes a new and improved version of the performance profiling tool called "Tracelogger", which has helped us identifying and fixing different problems and further improving performance. C++11 upgrade: C++ is the main programming language used for our Engine and we now support the C++11 standard, which was finalized by the ISO committee in 2011. It took a while until the standard was supported well enough by the third party tools we are using, mainly C++ compilers. Last but not least, we dropped support for older C++ compilers in order to move to the new version. As a consequence, we have also been able to remove some workarounds for bugs and missing features in these old compilers. C++11 brings many new and useful features our programmers can use and it was a requirement for the SpiderMonkey 31 upgrade. More Efficient Fogging and Visibility Calculations: These calculations keep track of what each player knows about all objects in the world. For example, you might see a tree with half of its resources remaining in the Fog of War. Another player might have more recent information because of scouting and knows that this tree has already been collected completely. This kind of information is now stored and processed more efficiently, which improves performance a lot. New Wildfire Games Server: The new Wildfire Games server hosts different services such as the multiplayer lobby, our IRC bot, the website and also the newly implemented autobuilder. The autobuilder builds 0 A.D. from source code for artists, players and other people who should not have to build it manually, and can now check itself with automated tests. (The payments for the hosting plan and server license are made possible thanks to our donors!) Selected other improvements: Several AI optimizations, reduced lag when selecting units, and more.Improvements to the Atlas Editor Right-Click Rotations of Multiple Objects: Normal behavior: Rotate objects in circle, Ctrl+Right-click: Rotate each of the objects individually in place, Shift+Right-click: Keep rotation but move in circle. Atlas now checks for unsaved changes when closing a map. Atlas now shows when objects are placed in invalid locations by highlighting them in red. Show template names of selected objects. Copy and paste added to Edit menu. Numerous bug fixes.Getting SupportPlease see the "Get Support" page on our website to find ways to get help from the active and friendly 0 A.D. community. We are well aware there is some room for improvement in 0 A.D. Some known issues are: Lag, visual glitches or textures not loaded, missing animations and more. When you provide feedback, we would ask you to focus on some of the other points that could be improved. Thanks. Please Contribute!We are seeking volunteer contributors in programming, art, sound, documentation and more. Programmers are especially welcome and can get started immediately. Interested? Log onto #0ad-dev on QuakeNet on IRC and meet the developers. Also, you are invited to register on our forums and start participating! Why "Rhododactylos"?We name our releases according to development status ("Alpha" or "Beta"), successive release number (1, 2, 3, ...) and a word relating to the ancient world, in alphabetical order ("Argonaut" for A, "Bellerophon" for B, ...). "Rhododactylos" means "rosy fingered" in Greek and is one of the poetical epithets of Eos, the ancient Greek goddess of the dawn. According to the legend, she would rise every morning from her home at the edge of the ocean and open the gates of heaven for the sun to rise with her "rosy fingers" or "rosy forearms". (Thanks, ltms!) For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter S. Keep it original and related to the time frame portrayed in 0 A.D. (appx. 500 BC - 1 BC)! Subscribe to 0 A.D. Development News Contact info for press, bloggers, etc.: aviv@wildfireLATINgames.com without the capitalized name of a language spoken in ancient Rome.

The current game covers 500 BC to AD 1, so we really don't cover "ages" like in Age of Empires. The unique buildings are a major feature of 0 A.D. AoE3 (2005) did reuse building sets for the main game (Europe), but the six civs added in the expansions all had unique building sets. I personally would swap the locations of the generic and specific names myself, but I doubt anyone would be all that confused either way. I would agree that 0AD is darker compared to AoE2 or 3, but it is somewhat similar to BFME2. It's mostly personal preference and I like aspects of both art styles. I do sometimes confuse the mill and the farmhouse on some civs, but that's something that can be fixed fairly easily I think. I wouldn't have an issue with 2D stairs for a low end setting or LoD, but otherwise I feel we should stick with 3D stairs (BFME1 had 2D stairs in 2004; BFME2 had 3D stairs in 2006). Would really like to see buildings get upgraded per phase. That would make upgrading more fun and help with gameplay. For example, the only way I can quickly tell if an opponent has reached city phase is when there is a fortress. (AoK used to give notifications also.)

Hello Kicking_Bird, It's great all this theory of design, we'll put it in good use. However, the part that you seem to be missing it's the global picture, I'll explain: This project started among people who loved history. And one of its big focus was unsurprisingly, historical accuracy. While not focusing on selling a game to the masses, they designed the game that they wanted to play based on their design points (which were more than historical accuracy ofc) the fact that it is liked by many and have several fans is a plus and consecuence that they had a nice idea. Some will like it for their historical accuracy, some for the gameplay, etc. While it is very easy to find things to improve upon a specific model look, it is harder to find a solution which encompass the historical point of design in it. Let's take as example as you did the persian civilization. Have you researched how the buildings looked? have you tried to absorb which were their main characteristics to make an accurate model? Guess what, they were quite blocky: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Persepolis_vue_d'oiseau_Chipiez.jpg (copy and paste on the browser or it doesn't show in chrome) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/2009-11-24_Persepolis_02.jpg http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Images2/Achaemenid/Persepolis/PersepolisWallCollapsing4.JPG http://www.tourismplaceinfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Persepolis-Iran-Attraction.jpg What you see on the current structure designs is based on the artists efforts to make a close representation of how the civilization would look. Sure it is easy to say, hey look! forgetting about history you can make the game follow better the principles of design!. While maintaining the game's design points and improve its visual read is a much harder task. Also, based on the game's design is the task of making each civilization to show traits of uniqueness between its set of structures, reflecting that they're part of a culture, which is unique to the rest of them in the game. Persians have blocky buildings, romans have a more delicate architectural feeling, mauryans had they curved roofing, etc. While we're looking for a different feeling for each civilization that reflect it's culture, we want to have similar layouts for the different type of buildings in the game. So the players know the function of the structure regardless of the civ they're playing. This improves readability a lot, and helps the artist to balance this with silhouette's readability. (And if I may add, your house design silhouette does not improve the problem you were pointing about current silhouettes, but I know it's a wip I'll wait until final) So yeah, we're not scrapping one of the design pillars of 0AD just because one (or 100 tbh) person think it's boring and we'll welcome anyone who wants to improve the game following its theme. TL;DR: Easy to make cooler models that the ones in the game if you scrap several game's design choices, Harder to make them following the game's design.

Hi guys. I don't think berry bush need recolored if terrains reworked. Here, I take stan's terrains and add more variaton and color edits and spec maps and yadda yada. I think game does not need to get rid of the highly detailed terrains, but what I think the game need to do is use those high def terrains for punches of detail, like terrain eyecandy. Most of the map or the "base" terrain would be a more muted and less contrast terrain or set of terrains as you see here. You see the "bushy" terrains still exist, but more like eye candy:

Answering Ben's post here http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=19684&p=304999 This is my wishlist for the engine even if it can't be implemented finally or things to look for Part2. Ask any questions for any of the parts in the post and I'll try to clarify or go more in depth for better understanding of what is being requested. - LOD system -Up to three levels should be enough (mabe even only two). There should be a distance between the camera and the model to switch between meshes. It would be nice to be able to override the global distance to customize how close the camera has to be to the model to switch to higher detail mesh. i.e. (inside the <variant>) <LOD detail="detailedactor.xml" medium="mediumdetailactor.xml" low="lowdetailactor.xml" distance="50,100"/> (distance overrides the default) - Up to 3 UV coordinates per model.Being able to specify which UVs a texture should use specifying the number of the slot of the UVcoordinate. Example: <texture file="textures/wall.png" name="baseTex" UV="1" blend="mix" order="1" tiling="no"/> <texture file="textures/wall_damage.png" name="baseTex" UV="2" blend="mix" order="2" tiling="yes"/> - The possibility to enable tiling for a texture.(not-tiling textures is only useful right now on trees, because it extends the transparent pixels on the texture used by the branches) Or maybe make it the default and use a tag instead when we want the texture to not tile. Example: <texture file="textures/bricks.png" name="baseTex" UV="2" blend="mix" order="2" tiling="yes"/> - Up to 3 (or maybe just 3 for diffuse component, 2 for normal component) textures per shader component:For diffuse and normal. Spec and AO being the exception. Each texture should have the possibility to use different blending modes: normal(or mix), add, soft_light, overlay, multiply, screen, burn.....The texture will have the "order" value which determines wich texture is in the bottom stack and which in the top (for the blending operations).This would allow cool things like adding almost transparent textures for snow, damaged buildings, detail maps for variation... lots of possibilities. Also being able to have 2 UV coordinates for diffuse and normalmaps and use them with overlay or soft light will make possible to have awesome detail even in first person view. Example: Transparent damage texture with cracks that will show on top of the Base diffuse texture:<texture file="textures/BaseTexture.png" name="baseTex" UV="2" blend="mix" order="1" tiling="no"/> <--- Base diffuse texture<texture file="textures/DamageTexture.png" name="baseTex" UV="2" blend="mix" order="2" tiling="yes"/> Normalmap of the damage texture added on top of the basic normalmap with soft_light blending mode:<texture file="textures/BaseTextureNormal.png" name="normTex" UV="2" blend="mix" order="1" tiling="no"/><texture file="textures/DamgeTextureNormal.png" name="normTex" UV="2" blend="soft_light" order="2" tiling="yes"/> - Reflection coordinates/map.Being able to set the alpha layer of the specmap as the intensity for the reflection. (wraitii's approach seems to be in the nice direction)http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=19650&p=304957 - AO factor that is calculated as multiplied mode!Right now I think it's overlayed?? The thing is that AO now needs a neutral grey where we don't want shadows, anything over mid-gray would make the model to be brighter than it should, and that's not very intuitive/useful. The common practice is to have a greyscale image, where the full white doesn't affect the texture at all, and full dark makes the texture almost black. -Being able to set the specularity intensity per-model basis.This would allow to increase/decrease the specularity intensity without having to alter the specmap and have control over objects with "full specularity" (those are objects that do not use a specmap to drive the intensity but have specular shader) - Double-sided geometry option per-model basis.This would come in handy with foliage meshes. A tag in the actor .xml would determine if it should render both sides of the triangles. Also would make possible a translucent shader. - Translucent shader.The fake and cheap (but good looking) way to fake subsurface scattering on leaves/flora. This normally uses an additional map which is normally a very bright and saturated diffuse which is shown at the opposite side of the face that is receivig direct light. This makes flora look much better when being lit and avoids hard contrast shadows when looking at non-lighted flora geometry planes (there is a nasty trick used now for farms that is make the flora to be less affected by shadows, but it looks weird in night-lighting maps) Example: <texture file="gaia/leaves_diffuse.png" name="baseTex" UV="2" blend="mix" order="2" tiling="no"/><texture file="gaia/leaves_translu.png" name="transTex" UV="2" blend="mix" order="2" tiling="no"/>

No game will please everybody. We all have different opinions about how it should look and play. Taking this into account you can't make game that everybody will like, what you can do is recognise your target market and alter the project to fit them. Kicking_bird I don't think you have understood that this project has a target market, or the general direction that the project is changing to fit that. The target market for this game is not the hardcore aoe players. If it was, sure alter the game to fit that, but it isn't. The fact is the people who are on these formus are the target market, and they all disagree with the major changes you want to make. Its not because the team is a conservative unchanging bunch of people, its because they are making the game THEY like and one that the community will like. I don't disagree about the art aspects, the game could use improvements in that respect, some textures are old, look strange now. Thanks for your contributions but you haven't tried to improve the the game which has been brought before you, you have tried to alter it to some alter aoe game. To the game developers: it is important to listen to what the community says, and consider putting their suggestions in the game, but it is also important to stay true to what you originally wanted to make and what you continue to what to make. Allow small alterations but be careful of massive changes like what kicking_bird suggests. I'm pretty sure you know what your doing though

Thanks Enrique. Updated it with bigger eye zones so you can make them out at normal zoom (doesn't matter beyond that). Redid the animation, I think it actually looks pretty good now but I've got some looping issues now and then. Posting the current .Blend for comments. Hyena.zip

Well, if you really can't communicate better than you have done so far you are probably better off on your own rather than working in a team, at least an existing team. You might have skills and knowledge for all we know, but it would be a lot easier to take you seriously if you wouldn't use swear words, insult people without knowing why things are the way they are, assuming things without finding out whether there is any basis for your assumptions, etc. Also, our goal is not necessarily to reach the same demographic as the History channel. Or perhaps rather, to make a game that can be interesting to both people with a genuine interest in history and to those who just want to play an (mostly old-school) RTS, hopefully encouraging the latter to become more of the former. And to be honest I don't really see why you make such a fuss about the custom names, everywhere they are used the English name is also written right next to it.

Coding issues linked to the fact team is made volunteers. Thanks, for your work. It's not that, it's just you can't just come and reverse the base of the game...

Kicking Bird, for someone who claims to have known the game for awhile, you seem awfully misinformed. 0 A.D. simulates the time period circa 1 A.D. to 500 A.D. The concept of "phases" simulates the increasing resources a booming city will have. This is, to take a completely unrelated example, similar to how Cities: Skyline handles cities: you start with limited stuff and a small map and as you grow you have more "resources" (in a very general sense) and you have access to more features and a bigger map. We want our art to be as close to history as possible, not the gameplay itself, or we'd have to start coding in some latrines. I think re-evaluating what you are doing here would indeed be a good idea.

I don't agree, it's not about being boring. But that's a good point, here you're talking about realism, obviously a game can't be 100% real, because guess what...It's a game, a simulation. We need to define a domain, decide what variables can interfere with the game and others that can be neglected. To simulate a war there are a lot of things that must be neglected and the number of the arrows, or the sword destroying buildings are not the greatest. The realism of the simulation must deal with the codification of the game and with the habits of the players, depending on how war has been represented in the past RTS. For example a chess player do not complains about the fact that horses does not walk like L in real life. I found the same fact in map designing: in this game the most of the maps start with two mines of stone and metal on the side of the CC, that's not realistic, it would be better if the resources were spread randomly, but the players don't like that, the most of players tend to rehost when the maps don't have enough resources. There are some things that remains symbolic and can't become 100% realistic without screwing up all the balance of the game. Infinite Arrows and swords that can destroy buildings are just two of them, just like the horses in chess.

Congrats on the release everyone!

Multiiple rotate in Atlas is very nice. Good job to programmer who add this neat feature.

Speaking of sound, I attach edited ship sound from my mod. It chop the current ship sound in half and I use first half for select and last half for command order. ship_select_01.zip

Now it's out

Correct. Nice work projecting it though. Stan you should try to improve the texture once projected through GIMP or Blender's texture painting. I finished texturing this fine model. I think I scaled the model though, not sure if it was already set to in-game scale. Good job everyone. white_rhino_final.zip

The early Muscovite Period marked the starting point of the rise of Russian Civilization. Not European, nor Asian, the Russians are a people unique. Join this glorious civilization, as they break the shackles of Mongolic oppression and march towards the construction of one of the greatest empires to ever exist on earth. MILITARY AND WEAPONRY -Two centuries of Mongol domination weren’t just about submission. The Eastern Slavs learned and incorporated a great deal of the Golden Horde’s combat techniques. Extensive use of cavalry and archery play a big part in this faction’s fighting. Agile archer riders, often having a powerful saber in the reach of their hands are the strong point of the Russian Army. -Long swords, as found in Western European lands, were almost totally surpassed by the Asiatic-style saber, a much cheaper, faster, and easy-to-handle kind of weapon. Long swords are restricted to a few noble champion units. -The crossbow, a lethal artifact imported from the Far East, is one of the aces used by this people. Have a regiment of quick-fire crossbowmen in your army to shoot certain death at your enemy. -Units are cheaper and faster trained than most civilizations’, what eases the possibilities of an early attack. Warriors have, however, weaker armor. ARCHITECTURE -The vast majority of buildings are made of wood, what makes them cheap and fast to build. -Unique structures include the Bath House, where injured units are healed quickly. GENERAL BONUSES -The Orthodox Priest has one of the strongest conversion powers. Update him to Patriarch to enhance conversion power, especially over non-Christian units. -Lumbering rate is the fastest in game. -Train only pigs at corral, which are more nutritious than cattle and also fastest to breed and butch. -Cheap and fastly trained military. - Low use and need of metals. Concepts to follow soon.

I felt like trying to model this evening, so I went out and made a Hyena. I think the model itself is fairly accurate (enough for the game at least), I did some crap texturing job but I really suck at texturing. Will probably try to armature and possibly animate it later. Any comments? Edit: update below.

There was a crashlog.dmp, but it was totally empty and never populated with any information. Since the issue is easily reproducible, I'll go and see if I can coax a crashlog file with actual content out of the game binary.

ambas y estoy en el poli JIC y trabajo en temas de arquitectura de software como independiente Gracias, por el momento estoy en la tarea de mejorar atlas , veras nuevas cosas

http://trac.wildfiregames.com/changeset/16390 They were broken (kinda positive iron costs when training them), string freeze didn't allow to fix them....aaaaand, kinda op anyway (?)

Looking pretty good! It could be slightly improved though, I'll be working on that a bit. Do you use A18 or the SVN version? For your latest post: it is certainly possible to code a new component that does that, I'm not too sure about existing ones. The alpha in the normalmap is already being use by the parallax effect. However the alpha of the specularity map is only used for self-illumination effect which is almost non-existent, and it needs a flag or a different material type to be enabled, so I think the alpha layer of the specmap would be perfect for this.

Hola, Yo tambien hablo español y soy de colombia

I like the desolate feel of the first few pictures. I't's very different than the maps we're used to seeing. It would be nice to fight on an 'apocalyptic' scenery like this. I agree that there are probably too many skeletons (though a few adds a sense of impending doom). I'm not sure why the green hill/mountain at the center is surrounded by walls. I also like the snowy mountains scenery with a lot of ice and rocks. Nice touch with the snowman, though personally I find it distracts from the serious tone. Hope this helps.

So you try to defend your historical inaccuracy art, mixing with gameplay, that is a big fallacy, you are saying because the units don't eat or sleep the game is not realistic, guy this game is not a simulator, is a RTS based in building of empires, but don't pretend use that to excuse to defend your poor historical concept, whst is next... Adding Minotaur or 300 style combat because the history is too "boring"? You have good art arguments about some technical, but you are mixing your good points with childish speaking, so if the game don't like you, don't play it , or maybe make your own mod Age of Empires online concepts + GTA V or whatever. But you need understand game concept first, read the trac, try to be less childish with some comments and mostly important make things. If you don't show us your work applied to 0 A.D many of us can take you as a internet troll. Sorry but is the true.mnobody knows you.

Kicking_Bird : Again, your post is very insightful, and thank you for it, but please don't call the designers lazy : they don't have a lot of resources and do the best they can. For the "regional sets", factions of the same civs already share some building models (see the three greek factions and the two celt ones). As for your persian house, like wraitii, I find it a bit too modern, and the round parts around the roof look like inflatable tubes. But if you can make some more historically accurate buildings with the same visibility characteristics, I'll totally go for it Finally, I would like to add that I share Kicking_Bird impressions on the atmosphere : the game feels dark to me. It's hard to explain, that's why I didn't tell it earlier : it doesn't *look* dark, it *feels* dark. In other words, it's a bit depressing, despite the lightning and the graphical quality. The reason is hard to identify, at first I thought it was because the fog of war was too dark, or that the lines of sight were too small, but as Kicking_Bird says, the lack of variations in the colors and shapes might be the reason (or one of the reasons) for the dull atmosphere. And I totally support the model variations depending on phase, even though I fear we don't have the manpower for it.

I utterly disagree with you that 3D stairs are a waste of memory. It's been proven time and time again that 2D stairs using normal maps look terrible. About the persian set not being instantly recognizable: you're taking huge shortcuts here, particularly as the silhouettes tend to be on desert ground and thus not that noticeable. The forum is instantly recognizable because of its center alley. The market is because it's got the most tents. The temple is tall and has all the columns. The only ones where there actually are issues are the fortress/special building/that other blocky one which I don't know of. Houses are voluntarily indistinguishable between themselves. I think your house model looks pretty good but looks too modern. This is not Tangiers. And unless we have some historical proofs for wooden roofs, we won't do it.

He's talking about Kicking_Bird's suggestion to make Spartans and Romans use the same buildings. This is non-starter to me and probably to team. Kicking_bird thinks this game is Age of Empires. I agree that building should progress visual though. Kicking_Bird, there is discussion of making civic centers upgrade appearance when phase up. Team only need some concept art to do it since capability to swap actor is already in engine. Current CC models can be basis for concept and they can be one of the 3 model phases, so now only need 2 more variation.

Check this He don't understand the project is obviusly

The "useless insets" offer architectural character, whether done with geometry or normal map I don't care, but note that this game is meant to look good on low end comp. One thing to mention, ambient shadowing/occlusion should not be baked into diffuse texture - game has ambient occlusion maps capability. Also architecturally, just because you can round corners doesn't mean you should. And the current Persian diffuse map is excellent, it is not "dark." Everything else, yes, silhouettes. However until you no one has complain that they cannot tell storehouse from a civic center easily. You also get into gameplay discussion in your post, you should probably focus on one topic at time.

Congrats to everyone. Now start with A19

The effect is not bad if it is use sparing. See how in my shots I make the "main" terrain have less detail, but is still interesting. Use the busy terrains for splash of interest.

Congrats on everyone who made this new release possible!

http://www.gamersbook.com/News/Article/ID/1954/WarCraft-Armies-of-Azeroth-Trailer-Shows-Alliance-Gameplay

Just saw my first walk anim on this thread, and got a little bit sick. So here is an attempt to make it better (note that i should fix the head movement, didn't look so exagerated before 10min rendering) If someone can tell me how to make it animated without having to click on it that'd be nice.

new Lybian units @Stan we can change an own cape ?(I request a new cape)