FeXoR

What does "defeat" mean? Isn't this screen about to describe exactly what the victory/defeat conditions are? So it's more like "Destroy all enemy structures/civic centres/units" or something. Or am I missing something?

If I remember correctly we argeed in a team meeting that we want to focus on convinience for "sane" players (e.g. not those leaving a game to not be made aware of they lost that game ... or whatever) rather than competitive gaming. I brought up that because having all kinds of settings (e.g. fog of war/undiscovered map, pausing game/polls/votes/kicking, etc.) that might be convinient also conflict with competitive gaming (and IMO actually "teaches" people to act unpleasent for the opther players). So I wonder why we still have ranked games in the first place. I will bring this up at a meeting to be discussed again.

@elexis IMO there are (at least) two concepts to focus on when generationg random maps: "Balanced", granting all players access to the same ammount of recourses (for each type) as well as space and distance to other players. "Realistic", focussing on presenting real world style to the player. IMO both of them have their own value, maybe in different situation. However, in some aspects they conflict with each other. To communicate to the player what a specific map focusses on should be in the map description the player can read before actually loading the map. That's IMO what a map description is for. The flavour text might be optional but neither the short description nore the warning is IMO. An alternative method would be to categorize maps further but than categorization might be a problem so I'd just stick to the map description Somehow you say that yourself in your 2nd, 3rd and last point. Please make use of ways to communicate with the player! I will try to address all other issues. Especially player placement (though fair resource access will not always be possible, see above. I'll still try to "soften" that issue, yes.).

Might be. That's not really an excuse though. Ambiente settings should have a similar result independent of the settings - which is likely not at all easy in some cases I admit

Hm, what about some flavour text like: Fertile lands sourrounded by harsh terrain. (Short description) Remeins of recent snowfalls still haunt the forests and torrential rivers from the snowmelt barely died away. (Flavour text) Focussing on realistic terrain this map might not always be fair. (Warning) Name, hm. Scottish Meadows, Alpine Meadown, Scandinavian Meadows... not sure. Rough Meadows, Hilly Meadows...no idea what to chose. Still to test: - To many goats? - Resource spot types not diestibuted equaly enough for all players to have each resource type as expansion? (On propper map sizes that is!) Playtesting and code suggestions welcome!

Some more changes after suggestions from elexis: scandinavian_meadows2016_6_30b.zip - Outposts in some groves - Kennels replaced with farmsteads - More random resources at start locations - Some oaks - Less berry bushes - Some code cleanup @niektb Yes, scotland or some parts of the brittish coast look quite similar. We have some alpine maps and english channel though so I'll stick with scandinavian EDIT: On the other hand: I also can't find a scottish map

IMO this map is now ready for playtesting it. Please help me with this since I can barely play 0 A.D. with my hardware! scandinavian_meadows2016_6_30.zip Some screenshots of some resource spots: Food: Sheep in fences with kennel Wood: Beech groves. Stone and metal: Some decorative stone and plant actors:

I worked a bit on it and the current version is: alpine_meadows2016-6-29.zip I'm fine now with the overall design. ToDo: - Spots with fences and domesticated animals - Enhance the expansion mines (small resource entities, bush actors, stone actors) - Check over all steepness (enough flat ground for buildings?, most trees reachable?, ...) - Check paths (Can an army walk on them when e.g. a narrow canion forms? Does they never fall below the water surface? ...) - Check resource distribution (To many animals/bushes/fish? Are players in some maps nearly without access to wood? Low forests have no food, is that OK?) - Add other fitting actors for beautification - Chose final name and description Any input very welcome!

I will try to make this map playable enough to be added for Alpha 21 and am now in search of a name. At the moment I'll go with Alpine Meadows. Elexis thinks it looks more like scandinavia. Any name suggestion welcome! EDIT: It's about the random map untill now called Realistic Terrain Demo and that can be downloaded from the post above.

Water color is back! Horray

Enabling refraction ingame, starting atlas leeds to an error:

On my system the water is nearly invisible now on r18445. Belgian Uplands: system_info.txt local.cfg user.cfg Screenshots at Belgian Uplands with Murkiness 0.9

Thanks klod! Comments like this also help the project keep going by spending motivation. So thanks a lot and have a nice time playing 0 A.D. and exploring the forum

I can't see why "going half way" is bad. Yes, the total numbers of entities per player possible somehow depends on e.g. if formations/battalions are used - for e.g. pathfinder performance reasons. But having a non-formation behavior optionally doesn't mean that the entire games breaks or something... Yes, only having "cosmetic" formations would mean (if formations are optional) that formations would have no use. That's why I am against formations only for cosmetic reasons. Giving units in formations that makes sense and doesn't make single units basically useless could still make formations usefull - at least in some cases. And IMO that's not bad but adds to the possibilities the game offers. However, those bonuses should not feel arbitrary but beleavable. There are many concepts that would allow to make formations usefull and strong like stamina/moral (and cycle e.g. exausted units - that could e.g. deal less damage - at the edge of the formation with new ones). Shielded units could also make ranged units safer within a formation adding armor bonus. AFAIK there is a strong opinion in the team for formations. I, personally dont like some concepts of formations. And I don't like enforcing them on the player. However, if the team decides otherwise I will accept that of cause! I'm not sure where formations will go in the long run and on the way we might come by cosmetic formations. Untill we have that working well it will be hard to add more complex formation systems anyways. However, I can't see any good reason why also having a "non-formation" formation would not be a good thing: It's good for testing, good to see how bad just cosmetic formations perform compared to seperate units and allows the players to use what they like. So That is all I ask for: Untill we have well working formation system with beleavable boni also keep a non-formation formation as an option.

- Target priority is quite an issue in many RTS games and I don't think there's an easy way to handle it. IMO the default behavior should be good in most situations but maybe not always the best (I wrote a priority order that would IMO work quite well but I can't find it ATM). In the situation with buildings and units that are attacking your units it is not so easy to determine what's best to do (e.g. chasing faster units with longer range with an unit AI withdrawing those units - or the units attacking your units are behind an obstruction like a wall - ignoring buildings will make your units do no damage at all instead of not that much damage to enemy buildings - which is still better) is not really to ignore buildings but only attack those if no enemy - unit or building - is in range to attack that unit of yours. - AFAIK sanderd17 is about to rewrite/work on formations. That may take a while and involve some work on the pathfinder as well. I don't like that army movement colums as well. For me it is an absolutely fundamental necessity that units can be given an order, all at once but as given to each unit seperately - somehow a non-formation formation (Both for testing the pathfinder as well as testing if the usage of formations is actually of any use at all - gameplay wise - which I doubt to be honest). - Every now and then units should check for better targets. Actually they could do that every time they are about to attack. Distance to the target is only one point in priority that could be used to chose the "best" target. - Maybe all units should add to the attack of a building independent of the unit type. That would at least fix the strange thing not to garrison females. Otherwise: Yea, basically common RTS sense (mass matters - more than linear).

To be a real marcov chain it would need to have entities and actors in the (square) matrix IMO. The advantage would be that objects could then be placed continously over any size of area without entities to start with (or only one entity to start with). The disadvantage would be that also placing entities means less controll of the map designer about resource distribution and ammount So maybe let's just sick with only placing actors and maybe do a full map generation script with real marcov chains (best if also including terrain texture) later.

Ah, no. Those are placed by the map script. Only actors are placed by that beautification function AFAIK.

I added the terrain objects to be beautified and woila: Only the trees are placed by the map script itself, the rest is beautification! beautifier2016-6-4.zip

Works fine, well done! The main thing missing are the "terrain objects" (see map.js line 292 ++). Most trees are terrain objects as huntable/domesticated animals on many maps. Distribution is not circular but will do as a start. I think both the analysis and placement distances should be increased to at least 3 tiles (12m) though the analysis might take quite long with higher distances. Many actors are placed "under" the entity because of the low distance. Using the squareroot (beautifier.js line 18: randFloat(-1,1) -> Math.pow(randFloat(-1,1), 0.5) ) will reduce such cases. I didn't print a screenshot because I didn't find a good before/after example, sry. EDIT: This will definitely become a feature used by most maps!

I'd go with "Advanced with Scripting" I guess

@Palaxin Very nice! I added a link in the Heightmap Import section of the Atlas Manual. If you want you can extend that section yourself if you feel some informations are missing there EDIT: I wonder though if anyone could make a living with that "Pro" hints ... for that's what "professional" means AFAIK ^^

I am sorry if I sound rude ;/ I appreaciate your efford and thinking but... Please read my comments and think about it carefully: ...referring to... ...while I stated before... ...meaning: I think this will have a very bad impact on gameplay: - Units arround a structure will tend to attack the unit on top of the building. - Only ranged units will be able to attack that unit on top of the building in the first place. - If the unit on top is a siege weapon ranged units will cause negible damage so the default behavour will be utterly inefficient. (or the attacking units are siege engines - then they should attack the structure directly) - If the unit on top is a normal unit there will likely be a lot of replacements for that unit garrisoned meaning even than it won't make much sense to attack the unit on top. Yes, many of that stuff is related more to the clumbsy unit AI than your idea. Still at this point in developement it is a bad idea to add this. Other things: - Only allowing specific units to be placed on top of a building is an unneeded restriction more than an advantage IMO. Preferring units would be OK (but there are all the other issues left to solve) - This all seams more like a style thingy to me than an actual gameplay feature. Maybe it's just me but I don't like such things at all if they interfere with gameplay. @rezisable actors: It would be great if that would be possible and IMO a fundamental ability of the engine. For example variety in size would make the game look much more real.

For random maps a very simple form of wind erosion can be applied with globalSmoothHeightmap giving it an asymmetric smoothMap: erosion_demo_simple_wind.zip More complex forms of erosion are planned

Just an updated version to be compatible to SVN. Only the map (so no libs) are needed now. realistic_terrain_demo2016-5-20.zip

The correct mathematic term would be subtrahend... I'd still go with malus. A penalty would only happen to people introduced by people (as I see it that is). (And "buff" seams to basically means many things and nothing specific, more like a slang word)