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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.

Look for the unit that has `VisibleClasses` you want: https://github.com/0ad/0ad/tree/master/binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/templates 0ad also shows the classes of the unit if you open the detailed stats modal (right click somewhere xD)

They are boolean expressions that every unit must pass (result in true) to be selected when the hotkey is pressed | means OR & means AND ! means NEGATE value ! has precedence over & and & has precedence over | You can use parenthesis Example: imagine you want a hotkey to select only the cavalry units and your dogs units, then hotkey.autociv.session.entity.by.class.select.Cavalry|Dog = "your preferred key" Example: imagine you want a hotkey to select only units that are cavalry and dog at the same time, then hotkey.autociv.session.entity.by.class.select.Cavalry&Dog = "your preferred key" Example: imagine you want a hotkey to select all units except cavalry units and dogs units, then hotkey.autociv.session.entity.by.class.select.!(Cavalry|Dog) = "your preferred key"

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.

Or keep healers but remove their range, requiring them to be adjacent to units they heal. Infantry can't repair structures at a distance either, nor can workers gather resources they're not adjacent to.

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

Well done @Yekaterina- your match play is really improving massively. I'm sorry we're not going to get to your A23 replays you sent me, but will be in the market for A24 replays really soon. It's only a matter of time until i feature one of your games I'm certain

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.....

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 was featured in Robin's video here: Had to admit some of my moves were cosmic.

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

Temperate Terrains on a new map I call Gallic Highlands The Belgian Bog map using new Temperate terrains A reimagined Lorraine Plain map using new Temperate terrains How a jungle map (here using the India set) can look

Slightly late this week!

Some Sunday 1v1 fun!

Just another video from some gameplay with Wraitii and Langbart.

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.

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

This episode was brought to you in conjunction with colds, sore throat and sniffles! More midweek Madness!

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:

Happy Sunday

Yup, was just trying to keep on with the previous model, fixed it

Thank you here you are, maybe some optimizations are needed but i think its good GaulFARMSTEAD.7z

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.

Fixed his model, and improved textures.

Hi =) Added the entrance en the back, and the dummy I'm using 3Dsmax, No texturing program yet since you gave me the UV I guess i should be able to import a model with the Dae plugin.

Hi, any better ? =)

I've heard that some of the mods here needed some building models. If you could give me artworks or something, i would be glad to model them. By the way i own 3DSmax 2011 and the collada plugin. Note : I cant model units because i have no idea how to animate them. So if someone could told me I could maybe be more useful.