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Capturing individual units, especially small/numerous ones sounds like too much micro. Reminds me of a less crazy (but still complicated) version of the disastrous feature in Ancient Wars: Sparta and other games of that franchise, where you could pick individual weapons from the battlefield to sell them or equip soldiers with them reducing their costs and creating new unit classes that could be unavailable to your civ. Not every cool sounding concept translates well to gameplay. A percentage of kills as captured slaves granting some bonuses is a nice idea though to reward combat and add another layer of realism. Some Civs could be bonused in capture percentage or exploitation of prisoners.

Position: Gameplay & Graphics Programmer (Maybe AI) Do you understand that Wildfire Games is a non-commercial project, work for 0 A.D. is volunteer, and work is done for free? Yep Do you agree to distribute all your work for Wildfire Games under Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license? Yes, of course Name: Vladislav Belov Email: thebvog (at) gmail (dot) com Location: Eastern Europe/Russia (UTC+3) Availability: I can spend on average 11 hours in week Age: 21 Occupation: Student & teacher Skills and Experience: I have started programming and learning algorithms since I was 13 years old. I'm interesting in a procedurally generated content, data mining, graphics or gameplay programming. Most used instruments & languages & platforms by me: C++/Python/Javascript + OpenGL/OpenCV/SDL + Linux/Windows. My projects: - The Project: Shining Star - Space RTS - PGPlanet - lib to procedurally generate planet landscape and render it, source not yet open. - PTestgen - lib to generate tests for science or students testing (using if acm.kpfu.ru for programming contests) - other projects related to the research activities. I also teach students to algorithms and create programming contests of our university. Motivation: I enjoy solving problems of programming, algorithms and etc. Personality: Serious, creative, and of course, optimistic guy. Short Essay: I like RTS and I try to follow the news in this area. But I have learned about 0 AD only about 2 years ago and I liked this project. It is the successor of of Age of Empires, but much better. The game is still in development, there are issues and bugs. And I would like to help solve them, contribute to the community of 0 AD, and develop the game further. Interests and Hobbies: Cycle racing, art, drums. Staff: Unfortunately no. Community: gamedev.org/gamedev.ru most interestring for me, but many good articles about algorithms and technologies are divided between personal blogs. Favorite Game: Many of them, but short list of most favorite: - American Conquest & Cossacks series - TES series - Freeciv - Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven - Age Of Empires series - Battlefield series - S.T.A.L.K.E.R series Work Examples: The Project: Shining Star - Space Procedurally Generated RTS (http://www.desura.com/company/0-planet/news/pre-alpha-space-strategy-game), work in progress, beta will be released over autumn 2015.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvoeWHV2-D8 Actually, I think RTS engines are not really suited that well for cinematic stuff.. If you compare the link above with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb4iul35ZcM You see the difference... most fps engines deliver way more powerful tools for cool and awesome stuff.

Appreciated, however, what you have said brings to mind the "Smush" in AoE, (the Saracen monk rush). You could do a monk rush with other civs too but, Saracens had a trade for gold advantage at the market. If you could get to your opponents villies quickly enough you could stifle his economy early on in the game and win. I'd also like to say that having a few alternate ways to win a game instead of only the carnage of war would be nice. Of course I'm not even insinuating that we should curb our exitement and do away with warfare as the prominent route to take to victory but some alternatives are sometimes appealing. Just a thought for the future bearing in mind that as you say, the dynamics of conversion aren't known yet. Zy

Yep, that is Brendan. He is a fantastic artist. I enjoyed working with him. Here is his blog: http://keo-art.blogspot.com/ For the last 6 years Brendan has been working at: http://www.venan.com/ He may still be connected to the PM system here on the forums. You could try: http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showuser=579 Otherwise I'm connected with him via LinkedIn and I could make an introduction for you.

I don't really like capturing as a classic RTS mechanic, it feels to me more weird and messy than soldiers just attacking structures when you have to control basebuilding, combat and a rather detailed economy at the same time. That said it might turn out good in it's final form. Certainly though more expensive units (considering overall mass-ability through resource/time costs and how many structures can produce the unit - fortress only units could be considered slightly more expensive for example) should have more capture points/second else massing weak units will be a huge advantage. In addition to that, Swordsmen and especially champion ones can be extra bonused here as assault infantry, while units like Pikemen are more effective in open field battles.

Ah, so the state is not in the C++ code it is in JS. I need to look at the code to see how the API is implemented. We were talking about putting a lot of the objects back in the C++ side and providing interfaces to JS several years back because of the overhead caused by the AI. I will review the code and read forums to see what came of all of that. Cheers!

One thought: Capture animation by poking building with a fork is sillier than units destroying building by poking it with a spear. Use the cheer animations for capture please. I can see that the game has 5 or 6 of threse.

Capture animals and herding need boost so that early food eco is more interesting before switch to farm.

@Karamel, you can attack buildings by using the attack hotkey (which is rather inconveniently set to the default CTRL+ALT+Right_Click). @zippy: not when the attack starts, but when the attacker is halfway. In regular attacks, first the attacker will gain momentum, as it takes a while for the defender to see what the attacker is doing, and go defending the right building. But as the attack goes on, attacking units get killed by the fire from the building they attack, or by defending units. While defending units stay rather safe in their buildings. So it's perfectly possible (and even likely) that the attacker first brings the amount of capture points to about halfway, and still isn't able to capture the building. As such, deleting your own building, when you still have a pretty big chance to keep it, would be a shame. Of course, that being "halfway" is just an estimation of where the odds turn. If playtesting reveals other estimations, we don't have to stick with the halfway boundary.

Entities can be made undestroyable without a problem. Next to that, there's still the herding food source, and traders provide an infinite source of everything.

Like on desert maps. That might be a LITTLE BIT too complex. What happens when all the food is destroyed? Do you just.. die?

There's actually a new pathfinder being written: https://github.com/na-Itms/0ad/tree/pathfinding Check the documentation here: https://github.com/na-Itms/0ad/blob/docs/docs/pathfinder.tex

There should be a balance between realism and 'arcade' (as in: hyper fun, but no sense of realism) gameplay. But that's where the difficulty is: everyone (more or less) has a different opinion about what the balance between realism and 'arcade' should be. 0 A.D. (at least that's what I understood from my time around here) tends to try to follow history where possible (especially when it comes to unit rosters and civ bonuses) but ofc realism has to be sacrificed every now for the sake of fun. I think that there should be some sort of design commitee (The previous one is no longer active) (preferably consisting of some longer active, well-known guys that are quite good players (that excludes me)) that takes a thorough look into the balance of these two aspects (amongst other stuff ofc) and really set those in stone, accessible and readable for everyone. <= that's what I lack a bit ATM. (these are just my two cents )

My answers directly in blue as idk how to split quotes in this forum software. I actually don't get why people talk about balance in this game all the time. There can't be a real balance until the core game is finished and set in stone. That's what I've been trying to say with the last posts I've written in here. And unless that is done you cannot finish it as there will be always stuff to change which leads to another overhaul. Idk, but I think people have often the wrong impression what "balance" really is or how it is achieved, and what the requirements for balance are. Also, I really hate how people always come up with realism. Seriously. If someone wants realism go play a war sim game like Rome or some other Total War game, which gets pretty close to realism. RTS is not about realism. It's about interesting gameplay. Choosing a strategy building counter units and countering your opponents strategy and units. Having many strategic options for comebacks and surprising your opponent. About a working counter system. Also, how is having a game with 200-300 intended pop cap realistic in terms of warfare? Ancient larger cities usually had thousands of citizens alone, on top of armies consisting of thousands of men stationed everywhere. Edit: Don't get me wrong, it's good to have realism to a certain amount - it adds up logical points to the game. E.g. Spears being good against cavalry units, or Skirmishers having high damage on their javelins against enemy infantry and stuff like that. Additional features like flanking attacks and so on also create more depth and tactical options ingame. Optical, historical accuracy for buildings and units is also important for the game's atmosphere. And I certainly appreciate stuff like that. What I don't appreciate is what I call "overburdening features" or "unnecessary realism". Game features should be interesting, intuitive, rewarding and overall, most importantly, FUN. If they aren't, they're not worth integrating into the game. And whoever executes his strategies, tactics faster/better and/or surprises his opponent wins. That's RTS. Everything else is not RTS. It's called Real-Time-Strategy for a reason. Time is one of the most important resources in this game type.

I like, is very exotic like Mauryans

See http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17730 as a start The hippo has a thread, and in that thread, you can see the progress. Making the actual mesh is usually the first step. After that, it needs to be textured and animated. Apart from that, before you work on something, it's best to search through the forums first. Someone might have started but not finished the work. And also open the map editor and try to see if the animals are present. It's not always finished when they are present. Many animals in the game editor are still missing animations. I hope this helps a bit.