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historic_bruno

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Posts posted by historic_bruno

  3. How feasible are graphics like these? Link to aoe2 digital painting

    in Art Development

    Posted

    These graphics are awesome. I want to know if graphics of this quality are feasible with 0 a.d. If not what about other games?

    What exactly are we referring to, extremely detailed graphics, or the painted aspect of those graphics? I imagine some artsy effects could be produced by shaders though I have no examples in mind.

    Backgrounds - like Campaigns with voice overs, as Aoe2 had before every mission sketches and drawings

    Drawings and voice overs aren't really technically challenging, the only thing there is needing artists to do the work (oh, and we would need campaigns implemented :))

    Gameplay - if actually in a Random Map, would this place big limits on the processor, number of units, path finding, Gpu?

    Do you mean background images derived from gameplay scenes? In fact, I would like to see something similar in at least one case: an actual rendered scene of the game for the graphics settings menu (to see how adjusting things affects quality) For that it might be handy to have a way to "export" a scene in 0 A.D. for later viewing with all the correct meshes, textures, materials, etc.

    Age of Empires II HD was a big disappointment graphics wise, and caused me to sit on the fence.

    Considering that series started in the 90s, it's not fair to expect "modern" level of graphics in those games, is it? :P By the way, you can get most of the changes in the HD edition for free, but by no means did they rewrite the whole game for modern hardware which would be required to even reach 0 A.D.'s level.
    • Like 2

  4. Art Dev. Task tracking

    in Official tasks

    Posted

    I hadn't thought about the LOS issue though, I'm not sure it still applies.

    It does, and should be fixed (efficiently). Punjab has always been a good map for reproducing this, because there are big clumps of grass that "pop" into view as you explore what looks like open terrain.

  5. why does multiplayer lag?

    in Game Development & Technical Discussion

    Posted

    Sorry about that, just feel like it didn't deserve a new topic since i had like 2 questions. I feel like there should be a general discussion thing for this sort of thing, but ah it's fine. Where might I discuss this peacefully?

    I've gone ahead and split this off into the Game Development & Technical Discussion subforum, which is a good place for this :) You could also use IRC as niektb suggested if you're impatient for answers (Philip could go into quite a bit of detail on this subject), but more people participate on the forum and it's better organized.

  6. Engine Questions

    in Help & Feedback

    Posted

    To be clear, 0 A.D. the game is the combination of an engine (Pyrogenesis) and one or more mods. Many of the things you are asking about could actually be handled by modifying existing scripts or writing new ones, with a simple text editor if you know or learn JavaScript (distinct from modifying the engine which is written in C++, although they are rather closely coupled at this point) Loose guideline is that things like rendering and gameplay components where performance is critical are implemented in the engine; the rest of the gameplay logic is scripted in the mod(s). GUI engine is in C++, the GUI pages you see are defined in scripts/XML.

    Here's where I have to point those who are curious about modding 0 A.D. for the first time 0 A.D. Modding Guide :) It can lead you to answers for a lot of other questions.

    - Is is possible to slow the turn rate on units such as chariots and siege weapons? I'm not really a fan of such high turn speeds, and seeing as my game will involve more vehicles I'd like to change that. I notice birds taking their time to turn and bank smooth and slowly, so I imaging it's at least possible in this engine.

    I would say yes, with caveats. Most units in game rotate instantly, appearing to turn is only a graphical interpolation (it has no effect on gameplay) and they really just point toward their target all the time. We do have a special unit motion for flying things, I suppose could be adapted to ground units as well, but it has no pathfinding per se. It's implemented as a mod script, overriding the default movement. However, I would really like these parameters to become part of the basic low-level unit motion. As you say, things like siege weapons, ships, and even charging cavalry can't instantly turn or stop. All things to consider in the pathfinder design.

    - Are projectile weapons such as flamethrowers or a steady beam possible? I image workarounds by just having an extremely fast rate of fire, though I imagine the issue of the firing unit cycling through its fire animation very quickly coming up as a result.

    This is definitely possible, with the right modifications to UnitAI and the Attack component. It should be possible to have units that enter the Attacking state and remain there until ordered to stop or e.g. fuel runs out. Damage could be determined by having a range that is the length of the beam, find entities that enter that range, then filter them out if they're not in the actual path of the beam - no idea how severe an impact this would have on performance though. If there are a bunch of these proposed units, then you might want engine modifications to handle it more efficiently.

    Control might be tricky, there is no way to just point a unit in some direction without ordering them, unless we add some kind of "turn" control, this all depends on how you envision it behaving.

    Visually, I think the particle system may already be adequate for this, especially for flamethrowers (the flame would be a prop, selected by the attack state in UnitAI, nothing to do with existing ranged attacks that function quite differently), I'm not as sure about e.g. laser beams.

    - Is it possible to build structures in different ways other then a civilian? For instance, I select a building and it has an option to add another building adjacent to it?

    That sounds like mostly a GUI change, though building without workers would require some script modding (if you do require workers, it's easier, just need to search for some to assign the task). Nothing special needed from the engine though, AFAIK.

    - Is it possible for a building to change the texture of the ground around itself within a certain radius when it is built?

    They already do, notice the dirt, mud, or stone that appears where buildings are placed? :) You would have to be more precise about what you want, it will always be "possible", but maybe not easily or efficiently without some other changes.

    I'm not entirely sure how to actually implement something like that, but I guess something like placing adjacent buildings could work. (Maybe automating that to search for some free space, but that might end up with those entities blocking each other due to bad placement)

    agentx's work on AI building placement could be relevant there, see Urban Development

    • Like 1

  7. why does multiplayer lag?

    in Game Development & Technical Discussion

    Posted

    While we're at it

    why does multiplayer lag? as in command lag. When you issue an order, the unit moves 200-500 ms afterwards. that's quite a lot.

    i heard it might have had something to do with multiplayer turns or something.

    Yeah, turn lengths are hard coded right now, 500ms in multiplayer games and 200ms in single player games. The reason for the longer multiplayer time is simple, network latency :) It's not a correct solution though, because latency will typically be much less than 500ms and sometimes more, so the game should adjust to the actual conditions (this feature request is buried here)

    Also, please start a new topic next time, this isn't a general discussion topic but a specific (invalid) bug report.

    • Like 1

  8. [FIXED] Mac - Right click not working

    in Bug reports

    Posted

    Committed a fix for this in r16380. To enable SDL's right-click emulation on Macs, add this line to your local.cfg file:

    macmouse = true
    Then you will need to reassign other hotkeys that use Ctrl+Click, I would suggest using the Command key (Super):

    [hotkey.selection]remove = Super[hotkey.session]attackmove = Supergarrison = Superautorallypoint = Superdeselectgroup = Super
    But of course, you can use whatever you prefer.
    • Like 1

  9. Show range area effect.

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I think ranges should be shown in several cases, but not at all times to prevent clutter:

    * When placing buildings: ranges that affect building placement e.g. minimum/maximum distance constraints

    Here's an example from Rise of Nations, farms have to be placed near a city (thin red circle shows the range):

    post-10080-0-51255700-1424586057_thumb.j

    * Units with auras: always visible for heroes by default, for other units with hotkey or when selected

    * Buildings with auras: visible with hotkey or when selected

    * Other: attack range, healer range with hotkey

    I also like the idea of highlighting entities currently being affected by auras (not simply when they're in range, as effects could be timed or have other limits).

    • Like 8

  10. several bugs / Necessary improvements

    in Bug reports

    Posted

    Ok, maybe some of this is reported before.

    I play with Alpha XVII: Quercus (build 5 oct. 2014)

    Bug 1:

    All text is gone. The menu's are totally black, I cannot see information about food etc. And also information about buildings (when you move your mousebutton over it) isn't visible

    When does it occur:

    - Most when I play with self build scenario's

    - When I move my screen to an unexplored area of the map

    - Or when I send an unit to an unexplored area

    - Sometimes I really don't know what I did "wrong"

    This if fixed in r16372.

  15. Let 0 A.D one RTS game that takes those of African descent seriously.

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    These civs have been proposed before and so have many others, that's the easy part, in fact a lot of people want to see their region/ancestry represented. It's up to someone putting in the work to research and design them, and most importantly take the lead and follow through with the project long-term :) I guess what I can add from an 'inside' perspective: we're not looking for new civs to implement, it will be more than enough work to finish what we have already (some have been of the opinion we have too many civs - when I joined the project, we were only planning 6 civs for part 1! Former designer/lead decided to bump that number over time, but we're not in the position to continue that trend now)

    Adding a civ is definitely a lot of work, not like a week long project but months/years. That shouldn't dissuade anyone but rather challenge them if it's something they want, but it does need a leader. Check out all the work that went into making the Mauryan crowd-sourced civ a success.

    One thing is the topics seem to be forgotten, maybe someone should organize proposed civs with links to the topics, for reference and to prevent them being forgotten if they aren't bumped for a few weeks?

    • Like 5

  20. Slow internet support

    in Introductions & Off-Topic Discussion

    Posted

    A lot of places still have slow internet, whether rural areas in countries like the US or developing nations, and in some places bandwidth is still relatively expensive. Even if 95% of our users (an example, I have no idea what the actual stat is) have faster than 56k bandwidth, it's no excuse to not consider network efficiency of the game. After all, if it's playable on slow connections, it should be even better on high speed broadband, while minimally impacting other things like streaming and file downloads. It's just like there's no excuse for memory leaks even if many users have 64-bit OSes and memory to spare, or badly inefficient code even if it's not as noticeable on the latest CPUs.

    I haven't seen evidence that bandwidth is a cause of lag in 0 A.D. mmultiplayer games (there was a report of building walls causing a disconnect in one case), but our multiplayer implementation could certainly be improved, by adapting to the players' actual network latency for a more responsive and less jerky feel. That has been discussed, but it's not trivial, and as Nicolas says, it's not the most critical issue right now.

    • Like 1

  22. Web Developer - Pierre

    in Applications and Contributions

    Posted

    We already have a game manual that anyone can modify, on Trac :)http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/0adManual It may not be the prettiest site, but wikis do seem to work fairly well for community generated documents (we could certainly adjust the theme to make it more aesthetically pleasing).

    The other ideas seem related to the lobby, I think an account management site for that would be very convenient. Right now, only mods/admins have access to that, as far as I know. There's no password change or recovery interface for users. Profile pages would also be useful, you should talk with the lobby devs and bounce some of the ideas off of them, to see what's feasible or not with the current system.

    • Like 2
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