Mythos_Ruler

I think nice borders are a must have no matter if we have static or dynamic territories--just my opinion. I'm willing to make whatever art assets are required to make it happen. I'm a layman, so I didn't really understand all of Philip's post, but would it be possible to have a bunch of pre-rendered textures for all known tile shapes, like we do with terrain blending?

Nice work man! Let's try not to use that "temp highlands" terrain until I update it with a better texture. Right now it looks like ground beef and oregano.

Maybe some gravel under the mines to make them stand out? I may make a decal for that express purpose.

Sorry, those are the colors. Update SVN.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/1k1d4h2y3qiclk5/Migration-SMST.zip There ya go m8!

Try to use temperate biome assets (for instance, no palm trees or walruses).

Yeah, I think AOEIII had little pixel art gold mines on its minimap. AOM had little house pixel art icons for settlements. Etc.

Gaia can be white. I like your new color suggestions.

That's looking kind of cool. I like the 3 groupings of buildings. For this mockup, a multiple units selection, I think the selection medallion (the shield with the number on it) should go up into the area above it with the unit portrait(s). Also, there will be a few more "action" buttons for units (kill, repair, garrison, etc.) than we have currently, so I would move the status bars (health, stamina, loyalty, experience) up into the portrait area, freeing up space for more action buttons below (stop, patrol, heal, scout). That's why we have vertical status bars in the current UI. Also, I would like to see a single unit selection version and a building selection version of this demo, along with what you would do with the ribbon at the top (treasury, menu button, tribute/diplomacy, objectives, etc.). Some extra things: Buildings will have Health (green) and Loyalty (yellow-orange). Units will have Health, Stamina (blue), and Experience (white). We need at least these 4 minimap buttons. These we have planned for the current UI: - Flare - Idle Unit - Minimap Zoom - Player Scores Toggle With possibly this many more: - Toggle territories - Military/Civilian mask - Resource only mask - Friend/Foe mask For reference, here's my old mockup I made a year ago: (the "building" icons in this example are supposed to represent technology pairs... there's a whole concept in the DD where you choose 1 tech from a pair of related techs, making the other tech in the pair unresearchable)

I started work on a "Migration" map, where players start on a small island in the ocean, and must migrate to the nearby landmass or they'll run out of resources. I've already roughed out the map, now it's your turn to fill it up! Below is a shot of the map, with colored "territories." I will assign territories to whoever wants to take part. All you have to do to sign up, is say you want to right here in this thread, and what color territory you would like (I've assigned the islands to myself). The only rules are please be mindful of good design practices and try to use temperate biome assets (for instance, no palm trees or walruses). You must also have access to the SVN version of the game so we are all updated with the latest game files. When the grids are all assigned, I will send the map to the first designer. He/she gets 2 days to fill in their territory, then send it back to me. Then I will send the map to the next designer and so on. If you don't send it back to me in 2 days, I'll just fill in your territory myself and send it to the next one on the list! So, who's game?! The finished map will ship with Alpha 7 with all of the designers being given credit in the map description.

The main problem with splitting the UI is that you are (necessarily) splitting up functions that belong together. For instance... Why would formations and stances be so far removed from the unit panel? These functions are for units, so why aren't they grouped with the unit panel? If you do that, then what you are doing is just shoving the whole UI into the right corner, with a separate minimap on the left.

Yeah man, that looks super nice. Glad you could get rid of the stairsteps effect!

In-game screenshot = F2. Also, Shift+D opens the dev console so then you are able to turn off the Fog of War for your screenshots. 'G' toggles the GUI. Hope that helps!

Hmm, why not have stone walls for curtain walls, then palisades for freely placed walls? It's not really feature creep, since all it would be is swapping in new actors and meshes (and the consensus seems to be we want both types of wall placement anyway). I can whip up palisade objects easily, or use Pureon's palisades as a basis.

Hmm, I think this actually supports the curtain wall idea, because then you can have a certain radius from the Civ Centre, if walls are built, that stop the expansion of the enemy. With freely placed walls you could have walls crisscrossing borders and don't make sense. We'll prolly have to playtest this. I do like Amish's idea that walls should be a barrier to the enemy's expansion. I don't think they should have an their own expansion effect though--we should keep them strictly defensive in nature, while the Romans can use their Siege Walls anywhere (and have absolutely no effect on territory, defensive or otherwise). I think the dynamic borders scenario requires us to remove most of our build limits, because those build limits were settlement/territory based. So, a Civ Centre radius is only a minor restriction considering we remove the build limits on most of our buildings (or increase build limits substantially; i.e. 8 max fortresses, and 25 max Scout Towers, instead of the old way which was 1 Fortress per territory, etc.). Look at the Civ Centre radius thing as an acknowledgement that the old settlement idea's main gameplay function was to force territorial expansion. The radius idea has this function, but still frees up the player to determine where he/she places the building.

That's a fair view, but there are other design decisions that must be taken into account, like how we want to deal with city walls and other things. And modest restrictions force innovations in strategy. If we took your view to its conclusion, then the game would just be a sandbox without direction.

It would be better maybe to put this into the in-game Dev Console. Normal Speed -> x1.2 -> x1.5. This would end up being a game option anyway. I personally have no problem with the current speeds, because AGAIN you guys don't think about the larger picture and where the game is heading or read the Design Document. Charging & Running will be in the game, making units move faster. Technologies to speed up gathering rates, research rates, training rates, movement rates and all that stuff will be in the game. Please be patient. Philip has designed a nice animation system that will speed up animations when stats increase.

I only proposed it as a temporary behavior until we get Loyalty and Capturing. The slowly draining Loyalty makes sense though, right?

Try turning the rocks 45 degrees until the blue lines align with the red blocks.

Charging and Running are already in the design.

You would do better to attempt to shift the borders back to your favor. One concept I had in mind was Farmstead settlements. You can only build Farmsteads (and subsequently Farm Fields around them) on suitable sites. But let's not get too complicated. We'll give Philip a heart attack.

We have yet to know whether "Civ Centre spawning" will be that big of any issue (or an issue at all).

I see no micromanagement involved. The "drainage" of Loyalty or Health would be largely automatic. Your idea is interesting, but really just a lateral move as far as management goes.

Or we can try it with the idea that gives the most freedom first, then take freedom away if it's a problem.

The legions are quicker, so maybe that's it. Plus they rank-up, so there's that few seconds where they are invulnerable.