FeXoR

IMO they deserve it

Hui, Tremulous (I don't know Dretchstorm, have to check it out ^^) and Flare are really cool games! Welcome to the 0 A.D. community

Well, guess it's a majority/team decision then. I only wanted to add my point of view to the discussion (I'm not very determined in this topic). Good luck and AFAICS good job so far.

You whant to do it for single entities? That are at least 3 clicks (focus view on that entity, select it, press the "alarm" button). IMO the "alarm" should be as fast to reach as possible and should not work for only one entity but globally. So for me the minimap area would be the favorite place for an "alarm" icon. Sorry that I didn't follow the "town bell" discussion thoroughly.

Maybe this helps: http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17542 (Import/Export Models Tutorial) http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Modding_Guide http://play0ad.com/community/participate/ (Section "For Artists"). http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/ArtDesignDocument (Art Design Document) http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showforum=409 (Art Development Forum) http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17192 (Another Modeling Question Topic with helpful links - I hope)

Isn't there enough space in the minimap area to place the button (like find idle workers)?

I don't know the format of the output of world machine. - to import it to Atlas it should be a grayscale .png. To increase the hight range/strength it should be enough to increase the contrast of the image (e.g. with IrfanView, it's small, fast, powerful and free of charge). Automated texture painting on cliffs by steepness would be nice to have in Atlas, yes.

A Sandbox difficulty game with an overwhelming AI (for some players) seams quite strange to me. I'd say just remove the "max(0.5, ...)" bracket from 0ad/binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/helpers/InitGame.js line 22 cmpPlayer.SetGatherRateMultiplier(+Math.max(0.5,(+settings.PlayerData[i].AIDiff+1)/3.0)); // Sandbox: 50%, easy: 66%, Medium: 100%, hard: 133%, very hard: 166%so it only has 33% in Sandbox difficulty (at least, and the code is shorter anyway ^^).

I don't think garrisoning females only is of any use. The reason is that: - 1st case: Defending player is dominant: Then he doesn't need to garrison anyone. - 2nd case: Defending player is outnumbered: If garrisoning females the defending player would first loose the citizen soldiers (and they are about twice the price of females). In this case it would be better to garrison as many citizen soldiers as possible (and after that females) at buildings with an attack (to maximize damage without much risk) and micromanage the females around those structures (even if you loose some females that would be much more cost efficient). So I think there should only be one "alarm" following the "Garrison every unit to the closest building it can be garrisoned to" rule (not every unit can be garrisoned in every building that has garrisons). Everything else would be up to the micromanagement of the player. It would be nice if a sound would be played then (e.g. a horn for Celts etc.).

Concerning the RMS API change (includes discussions about this): http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/1834 I don't like the idea to make RMS scripts that are not time critical with a fixed map preview (as is) time critical just for the map preview. I don't object to add an generated map preview optionally (with the ability to pick the seed) but I'd keep the static map preview by default. If players really want to handpick the seed that would be possible (or with just the ability of picking a seed by choosing it in Atlas). Making RMS time critical would reduce the possible complexity of RMS (or if changed to C++ the simplicity of RMS modding). Both would result in less variety which would be sad IMO.

Hi pbhj I think you are right that the game should have an AI that is in fact easy, meaning: - Not attacking at all - Only occupying mapArea/numberOfPlayers/2 of the map ...so every newcomer could win a game (though it still may need some time because the first attacks might be repelled by the AI). That way players can test their tactics and learn to play against an opponent (in opposite to a sandbox game). I don't have trouble beating the AIs but it would be a shame to frustrate and loose players because the game is to hard. (And I'm sure your not the only one having trouble to beat the AIs, pbhj) That is not meant as a criticism of the AIs in general - strong AIs are as vital for strong players so the game doesn't become boring. (And from the code perspective much harder to realize) Note, however, that the game is in Alpha stage. At this stage developing as strong as possible non-cheating AIs should be the main goal IMO. Making AIs easier later (and stronger by cheating) is simple then.

And that's exactly the problem: Well working formations are not trivial to implement. Indeed I've never seen a good implementation (for me).

That was just a suggestion of another approach. Moral is another valid one for me, yes (though moral should effect all units not only those in a formation).

Depth/width concept sounds ok... What about needing an quite tough (like 10 times the HP of an standard unit) "general" unit to be able to gather other troops in a formation instead of granting an attack. He could be about 25% less fast than an average food soldier and the formations move speed would be limited to that (still the units in the formation would keep their regular speed to be able (without hacking) to follow the formations contortion). On the other hand the general could give all the units in the formation a bonus of 50% of something like armor (level) or attack damage (or level if it also is changed to exponential increase) or any distribution of both depending on the chosen formation type. The general could cost about 10 times as much as an average food solder to justify this bonus. If the general dies the formation breaks. Still ranged units in a formation with 50% offensive bonus might be a bit uber. Whatever is done to make formations work don't force the player to use them by making them overpowered or not granting an option at all (as is now AFAIK).

OK, still there is an unnatural 80% bonus for the first line. So my concerns remain.

Thanks everyone for the input! I guess I'll go for handpicked textures then. Some more questions: Is anyone working on shared library support? Is it wanted? If so, how? Is it planned to add customizable texture fading to RMGEN? Is it wanted at all? If so, how?

Thx. Some questions: And this biome system is: 1.) A planned feature for part 1 (and the team agrees on that)? 2.) Used by Atlas and random maps (and maybe others)? In this case we'd need something like this (or if not please let me know your plans). @ biome transitions by texture priority That's easy to do with the current code of this map. That would even be possible for the textures based on height. I'm not quite sure what is meant by "texture blending" though. Does it mean textures fade into others at the border of tiles or that one tile can have multiple textures that are fade together or if something else what is it and is it implemented and is it usable/setable for random maps? Questions and more questions ^^

If it is balanced I don't really have a problem with optional formations. But I can't see why the first line should get 230% damage just because they're in a formation?! That seams totally unrealistic for me. And realism is what 0 A.D. is said to focus on (if possible to implement ofc). Not implementing such strange formation buffs would be both: More realistic and easier to implement. As I said before I got no problems with making formations work by implementing the reason why they worked in real life back than (I think it's mostly "feel of (false) safety" and could be fused with "believe" and "stamina" to "moral" maybe).

Concerning the textures not fitting well: I'd just take different textures and always more than one for each "height level". That way it would work. Is there any reason why not well matching textures are tied together in the random biome system in one variable? It would be easiest if we could change it there. Otherwise I have no problems with going through all biomes and pick the textures for this map by hand. Another thing is that the random biome variables are at least not very descriptive (even if taking into account the documentation): Code wise it's hard to guess what "rbt12" means. The documentation says: "Other miscellaneous terrain textures" here which is not much better. For the code I'd be much easier to read if it was something like biome.texture.grass or something. I don't know what the original idea was so I'm not sure if it'd be better to change the random biome system or just handpick the textures/actors to use for this map.

Thanks for this! However, I tested it and and this game has many flaws: - Totally imbalanced (for example Persians build one random unit type for free at hero lvl 4). - Economy only matters at early stage of the game since later on with only 1/10th of your population limit used for workers/builders is enough to have resources to build everything including a constant flow of armies. - Due to formations most units aren't able to attack in fights. Still the 3 to 5 units capable of fighting deal more damage than 50 units would do on their own. This is totally unrealistic and unacceptable for me. Additionally if a formation breaks not all units will be selected when you handle them with control groups. Moving formations across the map is a pain: Sometimes the formation will not move to the target location at all and sometimes single units break away from the battalion. - Attack move does not really work: Sometimes units don't stop and attack even if attackable enemies are in range. Siege units with an attack-move order don't attack walls even if they are capable of attacking them. - Heroes are MUCH to strong in hero mode. A single hero can kill an entire army and has still full fife afterwards (when you exit hero mode). I like the naval battles (ramming/boarding) but ships are totally overpowered because they are siege units, towers and barracks in one unit and cost less than each of these. Over all I'd consider this game a nice looking battle game worth a weekend of playing (and maybe more if you play the campaigns though the triggers are terribly chosen). But in no way it has the close to everlasting replayability of AoE II - AoK/AoC and I'd not even consider it a realtime strategy game due to the lack of serious economy, the impossibility of rushes, the extremely short build up/economic growth phase and the extreme powerful egoshooter like hero mode. As can be seen the biggest problem is the balancing (especially the heroes) and formations. I hope 0 A.D. does not make the same mistakes.

To be on the same page I'm adding my current version (though not much changed: Less extreme start position smoothing, lower fish density): RealisticTerrainDemo2013-10-8.zip @ Fish/tree density To change that just change the last value in lines 482-393 (the probability of the actor to be placed). Code: textueByHeight.push({"height": heightRange.min + 1/3 * (waterHeightAdjusted - heightRange.min), "texture": rbt15, "actor": [rbe9, 0.1]}); However, I don't see problems with dense wood if paths are added to connect players. @ Hight based terrain texture placement That's part of the idea of this map. What's the problem with that?

I noticed that in many games the attack notifications are wrong in terms of it's content for example if units attack they might say "We are under attacked!" or even if dominant in the ongoing battle say "We cannot hold!". Audio attack notifications should only occur if units are indeed attacked. A more desperate notification might be given when a fight is turning out bad for the given player. The detection of that might be hard though so I think it should be first thought through thoroughly before added (if at all). On the minimap enemy military units/defensive structures might also blink if they are inside the territory borders or in visual range (Not so sure about this).

Oh, sorry, that was misleading. I meant the paths will be at a specific height (above the water) but might break the coastlines and may sometimes be unrealisticaly long. Not that much of a better explanation but I hope you get it ^^ @ Bridges: Yes, at the very end I might think of that ^^. Indeed I plan to add entity placement by functions (given to the placement function) to the wall builder lib. If that is finished it'd be quite easy to place bridges on paths through water if the paths shapes are given by a function.

Thanks for testing and your comments sanderd17. Paths Yes, I plan to do this (I'll try paths as used in Deep forest first - with some changes). The height will be set to a certain, fixed level at the center of the path and softly merge into the original height at the sides (similar to how start locations are smoothed ATM). A little concern of mine is that sometimes the paths will go through water as well and that might look ugly (but we'll see). Expansion mines I plan to give a different decoration to them (as well as start locations). That's somehow breaking the concept of textures/actors mainly by height (and only change the probability of placement in some conditions though ATM it's not used because it works well without and is quite slow - even with the faster distance check - because it's checked for every tile). I might try to change the placed texture dependent on the distance to an expansion mine (which would also need distance checks but would at least need only one texture placement for each tile). I might change the height they are placed closer to the forest/water. I agree on that in general but I'll first try how it looks with further decoration first.

Maybe you have the version I posted once to the IRC channel (if so the peaks should be lower in the center of the map - test of the terrain smooth function)? This should be listed as "Base Terrain Diamond Square Test" in Atlas AFAIK. The 2 latest versions should be listed as "Realistic Terrain Demo" and should add start locations.