Mythos_Ruler

This pose looks great. I used the AutoContrast in Photoshop and it looks much better.

You're edging back toward too dark.

1. To be honest, formations are meant to remove micro. 2. Armor values are in flux. And usually, ranged units were meant to be used to soften up the enemy formation before the melee. 3. If attacking on the flank, it is probable that not all the enemy troops in the target formation will be in range, meaning the attacking archers will be targeting a smaller number of enemy troops based on the exposed flank. 999. Oh ye of little faith. We will have to test these things, obviously.

When tasked to attack an enemy formation or battalion, the ranged units would randomly choose a soldier within range inside the formation to target.

1: I agree. 2: And how can the column formation be avoided by the player (without needing more attention)? This has to be an option! 3.: I somehow agree. But this should be done by cycling troops at the front rather than just distributing the damage (with another artificial rule). Fully distributed damage would make a formation with ranged units about 2 times stronger compared to the same amount of the same ranged units not in a formation. I see no reason for granting such bonus (but for just wanting formations). I think the units at the edges of a formations should be replaced with fresh troops so only they are attackable from melee units. Injured units could be brought inside the formation and, if healers are present, could there be healed. I'm strongly against granting formations any pure arbitrary bonus. Maybe some stats could be changed e.g. 25% speed reduction but 25% less damage (compared to the same unit outside a formation). Any strict bonus (without penalty) should arise naturally from the units behavior inside the formation, not just be given arbitrarily. 4.: If the units are "watching" (not attacking or moving themselves) that would be OK. However, just granting units more XP while they are inside a formation is exactly that kind of arbitrary bonus I would like to avoid... 5.: Automatically forming a formation could be an optional setting inside production buildings. I don't like the GUI to eat up more space. It already covers more than needed IMO. So making the buttons bigger would not fit to my taste. 6.: Sounds good. 7.: I like that. Say units get 1/2 damage from the front, normal damage from the sides and 2x the damage from the rear. Shielded units could than "inherit" the damage reduction from the front to their sides as well. (The extreme values are just examples and are not to be taken to serious). 2. I really don't see why the player should want his units to stay in a slow phalanx when he's just tasked them to move all the way across the map. They should just form up into a column for a speed bonus (and armor debonus), then reform into a phalanx some distance from the final destination. 3. The damage would not be spread across all the units. Individual units would still receive damage, it's just that the attacker cannot focus his fire onto one soldier within the enemy formation. The attacker's (e.g.) skirmishers would choose random targets within the enemy formation. 4. Well, all right. I disagree, but hey. 5. I would like to reduce buttons and make behaviors consistent.

Building walls comes with unlimited number of towers. Just a thought.

Looks pretty good. One thing I would suggest to help speed things up for you would be to draw in a smaller resolution. Most of the details you have, like the strands of facial hair, will be completely lost when resized to 128x128. I'd draw in 512x512 or smaller, maybe even 256x256.

Never had problem with the gold myself, because it is usually just around the periphery. It's mostly there because we haven't come up with anything else more interesting. It would be great if in a couple weeks Pureon could prototype some layouts with different styles for us. After a short, intense discussion, where the layouts are altered due to input, then move on to prototyping each new menu screen with the style we choose. Each menu screen can have its own thread with information about what we expect that page to do and what we need from a new layout.

The reason we gave the unit the promotion animation was because it looked odd when the unit just switched to the new actor (new clothes, new armor, new helmet) like it was no big deal. I just think the promotion time needs reduced to one second so that the fist pump is quicker. All civs' units do this, so it's not like it favors one civ over another.EDIT: But perhaps the unit should just gain extra armor while performing this 1 sec animation, something like -50% damage all types. EDIT2; I think ideally though, all units that survive the battle should gain the promotion together when the battle is won. Though, how this would work in practice is dubious since in my experience after about the 10 minute mark a multiplayer match is just one long battle.

Yeah, I was just spit balling. I think the overall screen and menu UI needs a complete rework for aesthetics. Font rendering. Font colors. Font sizes. Button styles. Scroll bar styles. Layout. Colors. Etc.But back to the topic. I'd love to try out the lobby. Is it functioning correctly yet? Also, what is the possibility of going the server route, where folks can host different 0 A.D. servers and we just host a master server that provides a list? Kind of like old-school Call of Duty. Maybe this patch is essentially what that is, except the "server" is the host's computer, which is not ideal in my mind since if the host leaves the game the game crashes.

Eh, not really. Not every single screen in the game has to have the exact same color scheme, as long as there is a unified look to things. We desperately need a graphic designer to go through and redesign the way our menus and screens look. Just leaving it up to programmers to make things look pretty without guidance from the art dept is leading to some very ugly stuff. That's one of the major problems we have: not much thought is going into aesthetics and there's no guiding force on the graphic design side of things. Now that things are starting to be functional, it's time we start making function meet form.

The immunity thing is intentional because the unit could die when playing its promotion animation and that would just be irritating. In fact, we added the immunity after playtesting showed this happening a lot and being very bad. The immunity was the lesser of two evils. It plays an animation instead of a "flash of light" or something like that because it's more immersive and less artificial. I agree that it should be shorter (maybe 1 second) and that enemy units should stop targeting it when it plays (unless tasked to do so by the player).

Love the pose and direction. I think the helmet could look a little shinier. Maybe some more highlights and such. The helm looks very "flat."As for the Gallic Swordsman, I like the 2nd pic.

The problem with this is that the snowball effect is very very strong. There would essentially be no way to make a comeback in a fight (all other things being equal) because from the very beginning, whoever has the most minuscule of advantages will, in the end, win HUGE almost every time.

There are not 100 different units to balance. A skirmisher from one civ generally has the same stats (and importantly, same bonuses and weaknesses) as a skirmisher from another civ. Our civs are much closer to AOK-style civs (similar units) than Starcraft.

Ehhh, disagree. I think it quite frankly looks ugly. lol. But we'll just have to see what we spend time on fixing and what we don't. Yeah, things like that are icky.

What if we kept the same general 'look' to everything (the gold, the tiles, etc.), but inverted the color scheme (white-ish tiles, black text)?

Can't use CGTextures, except for the CGTextures already in the game. We had to secure a custom license in order to use CGTextures materials and the license only includes CGTextures materials already in-game. So, perhaps try to grab some textures from the terrains or building textures folders.

I'm all in favor of different game modes, as long as we focus on the making the "default" gameplay first. I could envision a "builder" mode that adjusts train times and build times and costs in order to encourage a more deliberate pacing, in a more "city-builder" kind of way. It's just a matter of getting everything else done first and balanced before we can add more game modes.For now, I think we want/plan: Default ("Supremacy"?) Death Match No-Rush (with a variable attrition time limit set by the host) Herocide Everything else beyond that is "extra" in my mind.

Not without modding. Or you can place a bunch of towers in Atlas (more than 25) and play on that map.

^I can see territory border issues in the above video. Hmm. I think a blob of territory without a building in it should probably not exist (see red's territory blobbing beyond blue's walls and flashing because the blobs are separated from red's territory). I know why it's happening, so it's not a bug per se, but it's probably something we should look at changing.

I suspect an equilibrium will more or less be reached, with things swinging back and forth of course (no system is completely static). But the the future has room far all kinds of software and technological development, from top-down to bottom-up. That's exciting to me, as opposed to one model "triumphing" over another model.

Formations and Pathfinding please. Back on-topic.