Mythos_Ruler

Hello, Dany. Your work looks nice. I like the little devil guy on your portfolio site. Would you be willing to try a small test project? Just to see how well you work with the art team, how well you take instruction and criticism, and how well your artistic style fits with the game. If so, what would your primary interest lie? We have need for props, nature objects, buildings, and new unit meshes and animations (we're looking to replace all of our current unit meshes with new ones).

I like this approach. I am wondering if you'd consider being a possible "portrait director" for 0 A.D.I'm serious.

You keep ignoring our points and fall back to your supposed experience in the industry. I'm not calling you a liar, but when you worked at Gas Powered, did you march into design meetings and demand balance and design changes like this during alpha phase of development? I highly highly doubt it. I'm not saying we don't think about balance during alpha phase. In fact, we talk about it all the time. But so far you have not given us anything of substance to actually discuss except that you feel like we have too many civs and that war elephants are overpowered in death match (and that we are children). We've addressed these points, but you ignore them.Again, for the cheap seats: War Elephants (and many other units) are currently not balanced because we are on the cusp of a major change regarding unit stats (namely, how armor is calculated). It would be pointless to balance War Elephant stats to the currently implemented armor calculation. These unbalances happen, especially in alpha phase when new features or changes drastically affect gameplay. You would know this, having worked in the industry. Also, when we do balance them, we will not balance them to Death Match game rules first. Why haven't you played the game in default mode yet? We politely ask you to try multiplayer or default single player mode (not death match) before coming back with further balancing criticisms. We also ask you to stop insulting us and our contributors.

Nice. I think the "war" one should be gladii or xiphoi, instead of what appears to be medieval swords.

Hey, took a look at the additions you made and it looks pretty comprehensive.BTW -- "Duplicarius" is a forum title (based on number of posts), not his name.

Awesome! We'll have plenty of time to work out the kinks for it then before A14 goes live, whether we opt for a short or long release cycle, which begs the question. Alternate attacks are interesting and add a lot to the game, and would make 0 A.D. more tactical and unique for an RTS of its type (Total War games have alternate attacks, but those games aren't exactly in the same genre).If you'd like, please open a [Discussion] design thread regarding alternate attacks. I'll give more thoughts in the thread (mainly that there should be a few different kinds of alternate attacks). Quantumstate was starting to look into before he disappeared, so I am not sure what to do there. Wait for him to show back up or tell you to look into it? Running and Charging needs its own thread as well. I think it would be related to running&charging. No trample effect unless the cavalry unit is running and/or charging. Elephants would have it regardless of their motion. So, then, perhaps two states or kinds of trample. Again, I think Quantumstate was starting to look into it. I think he was actually thinking of implementing some kind of faux-physics action where the trampled units would be tossed around or pushed.

Maybe icons for the generic Hellenes?

Great, I'll add music to the list.

That is very awesome. I really support you continuing this if you wish.

Why use formations? I think there should be multiple reasons the player should want to use formations and to make formations worth using. These reasons include unit behaviors, stats bonuses, and tactical usefulness (micro/macro). An example of "unit behaviors" could be that for ranged units (in this example: skirmishers), their minimum range attribute is turned off when in formation, so that they will stand and fight when attacked at close range by an enemy melee unit. They would draw their knives or short swords and fight back against melee aggressors instead of run away. This would be a 'defensive' secondary attack. Only when the formation 1. breaks due to attrition (too many units are killed to maintain formation) or 2. is disbanded by the player himself, would the skirmishers run away due to the minimum range attribute. Another reason to use formations would be to neutralize focus-fire. An enemy cannot focus all their missile fire onto one individual soldier, but rather must target the entire formation. This is especially useful for heroes, as forming heroes up into a formation of soldiers helps protect the hero from focus-fire. Just a few examples of how this can work and be useful.

Probably not for Alpha 14, but maybe Alpha 15, and definitely by Alpha 16, I think we should decide how formations should work once and for all, because I know we all agree that the current implementation is mostly useless for gameplay. A new revamp should focus on making formations more tactical, intuitive, and useful. First, let's decide if we should have intensive formations at all. By that, I mean, should formations be anything more than cosmetic? The answer to that question determines the rest of the discussion. If we decide upon purely cosmetic formations, then the number of them should probably be reduced, and the way they look should be fixed. And probably reduce the number possible within a formation to perhaps 60 to make them more tactical and to help pathfinding. If we decide upon intensive, important formations, then... First, I would like to cull the list of formations a bit, down to the most useful formations, plus the formations unique to different civs. Second, we should settle on some (initial) bonuses for each formation. The final bonuses can be decided through testing, but should decent initial stats and bonuses can be decided. Third, we should decide the behaviors inherent to each formation. How they react to other formations and how individual soldiers within formation move and behave. Fourth, how do formations behave in conjunction with other formations? E.g., a formation of spearmen is tasked to move along with a formation of cavalry and a some loose siege weapons. Last, but not least, how to create formations (should be easy and intuitive) and present them to the player (how can a player see which units are in formation or not). Discussion at http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17241

Should I move this to the open development forum?

Yep, Age of Mythology did this. It was somewhat effective and would look good until... Yep, I was thinking more soundgroups, like "impact_arrow" and "impact_stone" and "impact_ram" etc. Taking the impact sound call from the shooting entity (archer, catapult) and putting the call into the entity being impacted. A catapult stone hitting a wooden building (like a Mauryan mill) would sound different than it hitting a stone fortress or stone wall.

I love the Italian Allied Swordsman pose. It's very "active." Just needs to get rid of the shield background and do the halo magic.

That is one idea.

I don't think you've explored the game very far. Elephants die to swordsmen and skirmishers (every civ has at least one of these counter units; it's a lot easier to mass skirmishers than to mass elephants), and folks in multiplayer rarely make Sacred Bands. The units from 3 out of the 4 Carthaginian barracks cost tons of Metal. We balance the game for default play first, death match second (or third). I am quite sure that is how Ensemble did it. Stay tuned though, as we are completely changing the attack vs. armor calculation, so there will be a huge re-balance coming very soon.

I amended the "Bug Fixes" section to "Performance and Bug Fixes."

Spanish speakers translate this gentleman's opinions for us? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9aei2lZ27I

They should still be relevant. Though, I can't seem to find a ticket for the minimap buttons. I thought there was one.

"Axemen" would not be historically accurate to the period, unless you're talking about palace guards, and even then I wouldn't make them citizen-soldiers. There were up to 6,000 Gauls (Galatians) and Thracians fighting for Egypt at the Battle of Raphia, which is basically the time period the Ptolemy forces are being modeled off of. No where on the battlefield were there Egyptian Marines or Egyptian Axemen.

The sound effect upon collision is implemented already (see: archers). Just throwing that out there. IMHO, this could be a little more robust, i.e, instead of the collision sound being set in the shooter (the archer) it should be set in the target. So, a building's template would say something like <collision_arrow> and <collision_rock>, etc. Wooden structures can have different collision sounds than stone structures this way. And heavily armored soldiers different arrow collision sounds than dudes wearing a t-shirt.

Definitely getting there! Now, perhaps feather the halo out a touch more and reduce its opacity slightly?

Right. Corrals are not currently functioning anything like how they're supposed to.

That definitely looks better.