Mythos_Ruler

I've started experimenting with making blood issue forth when a unit dies. I've committed a map for testing, and I committed changes to the Marian Legionarius and the Persian Anusiya so that they show a blood decal when they die. Both use different prop points, however, for testing purposes. The Marian Legion's blood prop point is his chest prop point. The Persian's blood prop point is the root prop point. Both options present a few problems. The chest prop point puts the blood in a good place, but then stretches it strangely and the blood decal wobbles all over the ground as the unit's death animation plays. The root prop point places the blood in spots that don't look right (usually at the unit's feet). Neither option randomizes the blood actor's texture as it should. Play the Blood Demo map to see this in action.

I'd say you have to manually task units to attack it. The only units that would auto-attack the enemy Spy would be dogs.

The idea has always been to allow units to walk through forests, while larger units like siege engines have to go around.

I've noticed too that the AI constructs buildings at a 45 degree angle.

One idea I had was that mercs would cost no Gold upfront, but would deduct X Gold from your treasury for every kill they made or for every 30 seconds they lived.

Actually, I'd put the Mediterranean Fan Palms along the coast. Also, with the "mountains" there can be some hills here and there, but the map is supposed to have its mountains and cliffs in a range like a "spine" that runs North and South that divides the map into two halves. The mountain range will then have defensible paths through it. I think generally the forests on all these maps can be a bit thinner. I have a fairly new rig and for some reason I get a huge framerate hit when I pan over the forests. This does not happen on my hand-made maps, so I think the forests on the random maps are too thick. If forests are too thick, then units will get stuck trying to pathfind through them.

Bump it up to 60, let's test it out, and then adjust.

The smaller mines look horrible (bad UV mapping), so we will need someone to make new ones.

Yes, the same for walls, (open) towers, and ships. Not sure if we'll do this in the actor/mesh with attachment points or in the entity with coordinates. We seem to be having weird issues with prop points on collada meshes (not to mentioned we'd have to re-export every single propped building and ship to make it work), and Actor Editor would need updating in order to hotload attach points from the meshes. On the other hand I could see a coordinate system being used within a building's entity template (or even within an actor) to "create" new attach points. Something like this might already be necessary for building projectiles.

A good thing would be to just look at some of the custom maps I've made and try to emulate those. But you can also be creative on your own (you don't have to be shackled to my design sensibility). But I think the closer we can get the random map scripts to looking like hand-sculpted scenarios, the better.

Right. If we ever implemented a Spy unit for Part II, it wouldn't cause riots or anything like that, even though that would be amusing. lol. Although, when I think about it, a "riot" could be something as easy as a button in the Spy's UI. Click that, it costs 500 Gold or something (you have to pay the agent provocateurs, right?), and citizen units within the Spy's vision start to run around in panic and are uncontrollable by the player for X seconds (30 seconds?). Maybe the "rioting" units attack the player's buildings and unrioting units too. lol. I think using this feature then kills the Spy (he's a casualty in the riot). It's kind of an amusing idea, but I could see it being abused somehow, unless you make Spies cost a lot of money or limit the player to 1 spy alive at one time. Here are other ideas on how the spy would work: - The Spy looks like a random citizen-soldier unit to the enemy player, but to the owning player it looks like a dude (or dudette) in a black hooded cloak. - Spies have a narrow vision range when in motion, but vision increases as they stand idle (like "Oracles" in Age of Mythology:The Titans). There would be a maximum vision of course. - A spy can garrison into any enemy building, allowing the owning player to click on the building and see the enemy player's queue. - Spies cost a lot of money and you can only have 1 alive at any given time. - The Spy is recruited at the Civ Centre, available at Town Phase. - Spies can assassinate one unit at a time, but it takes time to recharge and reveals the identity of the Spy for a short time. A Spy cannot assassinate a Hero. - A Spy can enter and exit through enemy gates at-will. How to counter a Spy: - If an enemy Spy is within vision range of one of your scout towers, then its identity can be revealed if you click on the Spy. - Celts get a bonus by allowing War Dogs to do the same thing as scout towers. If the Spy is within vision range of 1 or more War Dogs, then clicking on the Spy and revealing its identity immediately causes the War Dogs to maul the Spy (teeheeheehee). - A Spy can be unmasked by another Spy. - Another way to tell if an enemy Spy is in your midst is if you try to task a unit to do something and it refuses to do so. This is a very good indication that this unit is not a team player.

That is a very interesting notion. Initially I thought that fire projectiles would just be a simple technological upgrade, but I like your idea as well. Since we don't have morale, a "morale decrease" could be simulated with a reduced attack, as you suggest. The icon to toggle attack type could look like a flame. Another idea would be to make fire projectiles bonused vs. buildings and mechanical units (ships, siege). That way you could have ranged soldiers able to attack buildings. Attack rate would decrease though and be less accurate if you were shooting at other soldiers. Regardless if we ever run with either idea, I would like the ability to alter a unit's 'accuracy' stat. Specifically I would make a ranged unit "more accurate" as it levels up. This seems more realistic than simply making an Elite soldier's arrow a heavier attack than a Basic soldier's arrow, even though an arrow is an arrow. Making accuracy increase as the unit levels up would be more realistic, yet effectively give the higher unit an "increased" average attack. At any rate, the fire projectiles are currently only implemented to show off our new particle system and to look cool.

Right, now that I think about it, it was a UI issue. But now we group icons together, so the issue seems to have gone away, yet the 40 unit cap is still there.

Archers on walls is planned. A 'spy' unit would be cool. Though, I think something like that will be decided after we ship 0 A.D. Part 1 (the game design for Part 1 is pretty much "locked" except for some minor things here and there).

The 40 units thing I think was done for pathfinding. Other than pathfinding I'm not sure there is a rational argument for any specific number. I mean, if you're gonna have an epic phalanx battle you're gonna want more than 40 units in your phalanx. That can be adjusted later though, and I think 40 was chosen as some kind of happy medium in past discussions. As far as auto-attack, yeah, we still haven't implemented Stances yet. Plus there are some other things that should be done with the low-level unit AI that should prevent the current weird behaviors (of which there are many).

It's pretty easy to adjust the dust a bit. The flaming projectiles persist for about a minute before disappearing. TBH, they should probably disappear about 25% sooner.

Of course. It's very nice.

Adding social strife and civil wars could conceivably be done in an RTS, but it's something you have to design into the game from the ground up. If you just tack it onto the game design as just another "feature" of the game then it would seriously hamper the overall gameplay. I could conceive of such a feature, but it would have to be integrated very carefully. It would be hard, but doable. It's too late for any major game design changes though at this stage though, and initially I think the trend in our game design was toward simplicity rather than complexity.

The assets used in the random maps are somewhat outdated. But if I deleted the old assets then the random maps would error. I think it's much simpler to use one large mine in place of many small ones. It's difficult to show because it is an animated effect. I'll see what I can do. Does anyone know how to make animated GIFs from raw video footage? EDIT: I made this after many many tries of getting a decent shot:

Alright. This is very very helpful. Perhaps we will have an updated Celt "temple" for Alpha V. We've always had trouble with the Celt temple. Initially we were going to make it a stand of trees (which is kind of silly to "construct"), then we made it a stone henge, which is 2000 years out of date.

This will happen if the game host chooses the "Closed Borders" setting for the match. It's basically a "no rush" option.

Would either of these buildings make a good basis for a Celt "temple" in the game?

My comments in bold.

It's actually rather simple to do in Photoshop.

Would you recommend going ahead and committing the other 3 buttons as well? Should I make "mouseover" versions or will we do the same thing as we do with the other UI buttons (apply that slightly white tint)?