FeXoR
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Posts posted by FeXoR
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Which gameplay reasons?
"Exploitable" in which way?
"Gaps" are the absence of, well, entities mainly. How can gaps be buggy? Maybe the pathfinder can be buggy or formation movement.
I'm sorry if sound like a broken record, forgive me ^^.
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Does this approach really solve more issues than it brings with it?
If so please state which ones.
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If specific questions about random maps pop up I'll happily answer them
Concerning the distance of trees in a forest I agree with sanderd17. Let us see how the new pathfinder handles them.
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The Undying Nephalim: I enjoyed your posts very much and hope you come back later
All the best to your other projects!
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Or we could just entirely make forrests impassable and give that buff to them iberians we've always been talking about.
Would make for fun gameplay.
probably easy to achieve, too.
their occlusion (is that the word?) could "glue" itself to close by trees, so you don't have to make them all bigger, thus making individual trees... er.. bigger than they look.
I didn't say it was easy to code.
There is no special concept "forest" in the game, there are only trees. In real life as in the game a "forest" is a collection of trees (that might be so tightly packed you actually don't want to go through or be easily passed by one person but still avoided by cars/siege engines). So the density of trees make the difference if a forest can be passed or not.
What's the point in replacing a realistic and working (besides eventually formations that are still not satisfactory as is anyways IMO) approach with a less realistic concept?
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Formations and stances have been unsatisfactory since several years now.
So whatever behavior turns out to be best in the end I strongly suggest that the default behavior is changed to no formation (every unit acts individually) and a stance behavior that suffices most of the time:
- In general stay at the point if the last given command or return to it later (to avoid the units spreading across the map)
- If attacked (or a unit in "view range" is) attack back
- If enemies retreat (to roughly twice the maximum attack range of all unit in the game) return to the point of the last order
- Prefer attacking over chasing/moving
- Prefer attacking units that can attack over units that can't
- Prefer attacking mobile targets over stationary ones
- Prefer attacking units that are vulnerable to this units attacks over heavily resistant ones
- If a unit has to move to attack (mainly for melee units) prefer a slower and closer targets
...in that order (This is not perfect for sure but it should suffice most situations).
That enables us to compare the use of formations and stances to a behavior much less prone to cause bugs/glitches/unexpected or unwanted behavior.
This goes for "move formations" as well, since while one of the original idea of formations seamed to be that all units in a formation reach the target destination/enemy units in a short time frame the actual move formation lead to the opposite in many situations. Units distance to target vary more than if they just would try to go there separately (when of the same type or the distance is relatively small) and it takes longer for them to actually attack since they first go from the move formation into the battle formation before even considering to attack while the enemy happily hits them.
So before we dive into this again we should really clarify what's the aim of using formations and stances we'd like to achieve and how it's justified to give certain bonuses to them.
"Looking nice", "formations where widely used" or "The long range pathfinder only needs to calculate one path" are all valid arguments but do on their own not justify the extensive/default use of formations/stances over a "do what I want".approach that of cause will never be perfect but causes much less hassle for programming, lag (besides the long range pathfinder) and mainly for the player (For me only the attack move order enables me to give at least one command I'd like to give to my units while move orders barely achieve what I have in mind) IMO.
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I agree with sanderd17
As forests are handled now is the way actual forests would influence units:
- Dense forests are unpassable
- Light forests can be passed but in general units can't walk in a straight line
Formations might have trouble to find their way through but we should test that with the new path finder first to think about a fix (that might actually be not needed in the first place).
In my opinion IF there still are problems with formations in light woods it's a problem of formations, not the way trees are handled. And I don't think it's good to change something else to make the "broken" part work better while staying "broken".
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I'm not working on this ATM so just for safety, niektb and as a reminder my latest version with extracted hightmap manipulation library.
NOTE: This will likely not work without small changes to schwarzwald!
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There is no good way to have a pause, Period. Every way you think of can and will be exploited.
[...]
I agree with this.
From several years of multiplayer experience I more or less learned this:
- If things can be exploited, they will be exploited.
- A vote of any kind will lead to debate, frustration, taunting and hatred. The original idea of a voting system never works out.
- If a player can avoid being rated and the game doesn't run the way that player likes it, that player will often avoid being rated rather than trying to win the game.
That's sad IMO but it is my experience
I'd love to be proven wrong though
IMO there is only one, simple and sane way to go here:
Entering a game means that player silently agrees to play it.
If you don't play the game, you lose it, no matter what happened.
(I for myself think that is quite obvious but it seams it isn't since PPL tend to blame everything else before actually taking responsibility)
No matter what here includes (but is not limited to):
- You don't pay attention (e.g. phone call, eating, watching TV, cat's on fire, whatever. Take care of such things are handled if needed by someone else or accept the loss due to your priorities chose. Stuff happens and will always. That's life.)
- You have an unstable connection making you drop from the game (Reconnecting is OK but only if all other players agree to that IMO. Why am I so rigorous here? Because players can, and will, disconnect on purpose.)
The only possible way to get around this is to have moderators, but I'm not so found of that either since moderators have power that will then be exploited (No offense, leper, but that's how I saw things happen, even in nice communities with enough sane PPL in it)
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I'd like this for trees though, seriously.
Trees will spray seeds around them slowly growing to new trees that spray there seeds...
Still the priority for the main game isn't high enough to get in I guess ^^
But I'd like a mod focusing on "living world simulation"!
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I support trying to be accurate on this rather than encourage a misconception.
I'm not entirely sure about the wording though.
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How hard capturing is dependent on the building and/or garrisoned units in it
This is just the first stage. It has to be tested in-game and balanced.
EDIT: For now garrisoned units "recapture" the buildings and thus slowing the capturing process.
One reason more to put it in now rather than a weak before the next alpha
So you are very welcome to comment on your experience and opinion about capturing here.
(Have in mind to keep it simple though
)Choose between capturing and attacking
For now all non-siege weapons (AFAIK) will try to capture, not attack buildings.
An alternative attack order has been discussed and will likely get in.
Using the same key combination as for attack move would be an option.
(And if a GUI button is added for it one will be enough for those both IMO)
Capturing animation
Yes we are aware of capturing needs a clear feedback.
(Likely an animation, a specific sound would also be nice IMO)
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sanderd17: Though this wouldn't allow units passing over each other on different heights (It would be cool but I wouldn't givi it high priority) That sounds like the best way to to it by now.
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I agree. Howeve, that dosn't make it easier to implement.
Bridges could be placed like walls for their length - while checking for placability like e.g. docks at their ends (and ground passability as well). To be even the bridge parts has to be adjusted in height over ground though (other things snap to the ground).
And still the "entities walking on entities" thing needs to be done. (I don't really like the curent implementation of units on walls. If units would actually be able to walk on walls we had the same needs for walls as for bridges)
Even the current default entity/actor placement is not very clever. It simply adjust the height by snapping the ancor - likely the center - to the ground. IMO the average height of the area covered by a entity/actor should actually be used to snap its height to. (and still there will be visual issues becuse not all buildings - and especially actors like stones - are not reaching deep enough into the ground - that's an art task though)
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I like them too. I just think that farms should'ne be exactly rectangular but have rounded corners (maybe even iregular not symmetrical in all corners).
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I definitely agree on this. Factor 8 sounds good.
Related post (and topc in general): http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17809#entry278244
(Not sure the wording is appropriate as well as the numbers)
While we're at it:
- It would be nice to remove all hardcoded unit parameters from RMGEN and have the engine give those parameters to RMGEN at start - namely:
CELL_SIZE (4, size of a terrain tile in meters)
HEIGHT_UNITS_PER_METRE (732, How many height units fit into a meter)
MAX_HEIGHT_RANGE (0xFFFF / HEIGHT_UNITS_PER_METRE ~= 90, maximum heigt values in meters - used in RMGEN - supported by the engine - using the range 0 to 0xFFFF). Better just to take the 0xFFFF IMO.
All to be found in binaries/data/mods/public/maps/random/rmgen/library.js
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When "generate" is clicked in the random map tab, the player settings send to rmgen should enforce "specific civ" for all players (Else all players with unscpecified civs will fall back to the same civ) while the settings in Atlas should stay unchanged.
An menu item "enforce specific civs on random maps" to toggle this would likely be best - default should be checked.
It's not a big deal but the automated unchecking when reducing player numbers is annoying for random map testing (e.g. checking for Iberian civ bonus wall issues)
I agree on chosing the base terrain in "new map". However, I also support a "floodfill" functionality (for terrain texture as well as for entity/actor placement - likely after entity/actor brushes are implemented)
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As far as Archers vs Skirmishers go, I propose that Archers have longer range and higher pierce armour, while Skirmishers have weak armour (pierce and hack), shorter range, but higher damage.
Hopefully as a result of that skirmishers will be used for 'skirmishing', and archers for long range support and/or defence.
Why should archers have high piercing armor? Skirmishers have a shield, so they should have high piercing armor IMO.
Maybe I'm missing the hole point, but I'd go from the realistic point of view and do balancing afterwards.
So:
- Units with a shield have higher armor in general
- Javelin range < sling range < bow range < (most) ranged siege engine range
- Damage is hard to argue on because usually one hit can kill, so use this for balancing
- Melee units should have higher armor and/or life in general to enable them to reach ranged units when massed (This is quite hard to argue for but at least shield bearing melee units - while not attacking - can use all their perception to defend themselves against projectiles - up to a certain size)
In general I'm not sure if a "balancing discussion" will get us really far in the end.
Statistically based anonymous multi-player unit usage would get us much further IMO, at least for the fine-tuning.
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A problem with this approach is that the "strength" depend on various factors and most of them are not raising linear at all.
E.g. the number of units (simplifying things to "each side has only one type of unit" and also the same number of units (production costs are the same), one side melee, the other side ranged):
- Let's say one of the melee units wins against the ranged unit BUT...
- At a certain amount of units on both sides a "phase transition" will happen ... when no melee unit is fast enough to reach the ranged units at all.
(This only happens if the size of units is small enough to fit enough ranged units within an area of their range so that they deal more damage per time than the melee units can "carry" health towards them)
So even this (rather simple) example already depend on: Units range, size, speed, damage per time and health...and is non-linear.
(Not even considering armor/damage type, bonus vs., Stance/formation bonuses, stamina, ...)
So IMO in the end so many parameters have to be considered that calculating an exponential (or polynomial) fit for each unit type vs. each other in a "balancing test map" (capped at a sane limit) would be simpler (could then be stored in a matrix and used by the AI).
(This could then also be used for balancing though I'd find "balancing by usage statistics" from actual multiplayer games would suit that purpose better)
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Hi and welcome to the forum
I'm not sure to what extend campaigns (other than a tutorial) is planned for the first part of the game (500BC-1BC, a second part is panned after release in the timeframe from 1AD-500AD).
However, having a campaign (or at least multiple maps that play like a campaign) is very welcome.
If it will be part of the official release in the end depends on many things but that shouldn't discourage you
EDIT: I think you need some reputation (minimum number of like 5 posts I think) to upload files but you can always add links to the files here in the forum.
You have to "Use Full Editor" to get an upload option.
Have a nice stay.
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The .json files are just text files. Notepad++ works perfectly for me. Maybe you just used a wrong syntax?
Not sure if which text encoding 0 A.D. supports. I'm using ANSI and that works fine (just to mention another potentially reason things break I could think of).
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What about an additional single color alpha blending for units effected by an aura (different colors for different aurae)?
Hotkeys for the max range rings should toggle IMO.
I think stamina would indeed be of much value for the game (e.g. for melee charging and/or stamina share as a realistic bonus for formations).
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.The "deathmatch feeling" comes from several things IMO:
- Civil Soldiers can gather (even gather some resources best, especially wood). So building an economic basis and training an army is the same at the early age.
Possible solution: Make woman better and citizen soldiers worse at gathering wood. That would also make woman better (ATM I only use them for farming/foraging)
- There is no real possibility for defense early on other than soldiers.
Possible solution: Add defensive structures to the starting age (AFAIK palisades can be build now right away). This also should include weaker, low range high view range towers (I never used the scout tower so not sure if it works for defensive purpose early on).
- Games are often decided before City Age is reached by all players. This is not bad in general but means that e.g. champion units are much less used in average.
Possible solution: Make Champion units stronger (already as is AFAIK) and make sure siege weapons in the last age can out-range defenses or take quite some punch
I agree that late techs can be expensive (especially military/trade/intelligence techs). Also they could have quite some impact but shouldn't entirely break the balance between civs (I'd still like a late expensive tech that uncovers the entire map).
I also like a more complex tech tree (or "techweb"). It shouldn't be to complex though to allow new players not find themselves completely lost (Afaik thats also planned anyways).
IMO we are going in the right direction over all. Lets see what extensive play testing will bring.
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That mindset expressed by iNcog comes from StarCraft, at least that is where I first noticed it, and I have never understood it.
Resources (like today money) have no direct value on their own. The values are defined in each individuals mind. Resources have an indirect value in a society in which most individuals share about the same set of values (especially resources/money) so one can give things that have a direct value an indirect value (e.g the price).
In a game of warfare like 0 A.D. the highest direct value is the capability to fight. Resources don't grant that but can be used to get it.
So it's like: Gather resources (generate indirect value), train/build/research (convert indirect to direct value specifically the strength to fight).
Resources are mainly that successful in human history because many direct value items are not likely to last long (especially food). So it does only make sense to generate overproduction to a limited extent. After that (to generate further safety of supply) other longer lasting items have to be considered (that's where resources for later production and money come into play).
In short:
Having many resources in a real-time strategy is bad because they don't have any direct value on their own - it's only a potential one.
So using your resources in the most efficient way and ASAP is the winning "strategy" - not saving them.
And I have to strongly disagree that this mindset comes from Starcraft.
IMO it's very sad and the other way around in the present days:
- PPL have widely lost their self-confidence/sense for own values and fuse into society with the given "values"
- "Value" and "price" got nearly indistinguishable by that
- That way "value" can be generated by simply adding new "values" to the mindset - without the originally needed individual and direct value
- The "health" of an economy is now (more or less) defined by it's over all net worth and it's rate of growth (though actually no real value has to be produced for that "growth")
(That doesn't mean that no actual "values" can be added to an economy these days - but it's not needed to increase the net worth of an economy - and that's quite sad, misleading and can be - and IMO is - misused)
- On the other hand things that are actually valued alot by many PPL (like e.g. the access to knowledge like in Wikipedia) add very little (if anything at all) to the net worth of an economy (and so is vastly underestimated by economically oriented PPL)
In Short:
In realtime strategy games the relationship between resources (prize) and strength to fight (value) is roughly conserved (though in a very simplified way).
It's our everyday life in an economically oriented society that obfuscates the relation.
It's like changing an inequation to an equation: The outcome is simply wrong
Edit.: And by the way, I agree with your repeat production queue idea!
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finished custom map! (first try)
in Scenario Design/Map making
Posted
Welcome to the 0 A.D. Forum
The maps looks nice to me.
The second one seams to grant little space for buildings (but I guess that's intended).