zoot

Does he randomly become victorious at around 12:25 without even having scouted the enemy base? Or is it some cheat I don't know about

Thanks, but where are the proper names for those methods defined? For example, the technology manager seems to broadcast a "MT_TechnologyModification" message when a techology is researched (and civilization phases are apparently just techs). How would a script sign up to receive this message? Should it implement a message handling method named "OnTechnologyModification"? (If so, why - where is that name defined?)

Can someone please tell me what scripts do to subscribe to messages?

The engine has a message passing system described here that I could probably hook into. (Only, I'm not sure what would be the best way to do that in data-driven way, since the message passing system probably works on pointers while the actor XML works with strings...)

There is some form of arrangement with CGTextures, according to the file fcxSanya linked to:

That isn't the worst case at all. The worst case is that the game goes gold, becomes a huge success and is downloaded in 10 million copies - and then one or more copyright holders sue for the lost income which they happen to value at tens of millions of dollars. That's how lawyers work, sadly.

This is what I would like to do (as a refinement of the above): The <group> element should take an 'control' attribute, which in turn would take some kind of expression to be evaluated. The <variant> element should take a 'case' attribute, which would take a literal value. When the evaluated value of the expression in the 'control' attribute changes, it will be matched against the 'case' attributes of the <variant> child elements of the <group> element. When a match is found, that variant will be the one used by the engine. An alternative, probably more efficient approach, would be to let the 'control' attribute specify a class of events (e.g. "civilization phases") and let the 'case' attribute specify a particular event in that class (e.g. "town phase" or "city phase"). Any suggestions for what stuff in the engine that could be drawn upon to do any of the above? I thought about using the 'actor variables' that historic_bruno pointed to, but these seem local to the individual actor - i.e. if the civilization phase changes, you would need to update a variable on all actors, which seems inefficient. Is there a global variable or event scope that would make sense to use? (Sorry if such a thing is already documented somewhere, I weren't able to track it down on the wiki.)

I honestly think the project would stand a chance if it allied itself with SFLC, EFF and the like. Those orgs get a kick out of trouncing the corporate bully

"Good enough to pass off" won't impress a judge when push comes to shove. It's quite like developing software - you are expected to do everything you can to make sure everything works alright or you'll be put down as acting in bad faith. IMO, the best approach would be to contact an organization like Software Freedom Law Center and ask if they can offer any advice. Since 0 A.D. is fairly high-profile as far as free software games go, there's a good chance they will help.

Good to hear. Problem is that you probably aren't the one who will be held liable. What if Wijitmaker (who is listed as owner of wildfiregames.com) or someone else who can be construed as a distributor of 0 A.D. is hauled into court? Will the judge accept a commit message or a forum post from you as evidence? I personally doubt it. IMO, legal issues is never something that should be treated lightly - especially when you have modmakers and the like who also depend on the content.

Thanks. I can't identify the exact image used, but judging from his other wolf pictures, they do not seem freely licensed at all:

Thanks, that did actually help, though mostly on super-oblique areas like the roof: (First image is without anisotropic filtering, second image is with anisotropic filtering x8)

I don't think Intel has one for Linux Perhaps I could use GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic to do it from the engine...?

Textures seem to blur out a lot when seen from a distance, to the point where normal and parallax mapping almost completely drowns: What can be done about this?

Thanks for the tip! Do you or anyone else know where the source picture(s) is and it came about to be used? I can't seem to find any in his galery that look similar...

I agree. (Perhaps the first line should be tweaked by adding something like "unless otherwise stated"?) Have someone kept track of the exact ownership of all textures currently distributed with the game, though? Are they all custom made or from CGTextures up until this point?

What exact weirdness are you referring to?

I wonder if there are any options (short of displacement mapping) for making the outline of an object appear rougher, so e.g. these merlons don't look completely rectangular: Maybe some way to paint parts of the outline transparent and others not? I realize it's a minor issue at standard zoom, but still curious if anything could be done...

Have much care been taken with regards to tracking the copyrights of textures and the like? I mean, it would be sad to see the game industry succeed in shutting down 0 A.D. over some legal technicality, wouldn't it? (I could totally see EA or Activision Blizzard trying something like that.) In this thread, azayrahmad has used some images from Wikipedia, which I applaud him for, because they look great. But this means, to respect the terms of Wikipedia's license, the author of the image has to be properly credited somewhere in the game. To my knowledge, no such "somewhere" currently exists (there's contributors.txt, but that seems to be for people who have contributed personally on this site).

Yes, that should be possible with tools like xNormal (and possibly the GIMP plugin, I don't know). Of course, it won't be as high quality as if done from a high poly model, but it's better than nothing.

Yeah! Looks much crisper. Now imagine a whole city like that...

The link says: I can't see any description of such a plan in the pages you linked to. Is there something else in the topic, perhaps further down in the comments?

I think the best solution will be to do something like "sub-variants", i.e. once the engine has picked one variant, there can be more levels of variants under that variant that will be activated on the basis of some kind of conditional.

Yup.

You'll want to "check out" (download) a full copy of the SVN files as described in the guide to be sure you don't miss anything. It is a bit intricate at first, but once you have things set up, its very easy to keep to date.