dvangennip

Since all mods would be placed in the /mods/ folder, I think there should be a way (as in a GUI) to enable and disable mods (and maybe arrange load order). I don't know if it requires a reload of the game's info after changing such stuff, but if that is technically possible, there should be no obstruction to have this in game. Alternatively, the game could just restart itself with the right parameters. I suppose it can be an interesting project for a contributor to implement this. As for browsing, downloading, and installing a collection of mods, that is something different. It would require a central repository of mods, including some moderation scheme (not everyone can just add nefarious stuff). There are possibly many examples, but I know that the open source package manager Preware for webOS does this quite well. Essentially it uses feeds/channels which the app subscribes to. For each feed it downloades a packages file, which is essentially a simple text file with info on all the packages that can installed via this feed (alternatively a JSON file would fit this job just great). All feeds are parsed and the app presents it. Per installable package the information resembles a Debian CONTROL file. See the spoiler for an example: When each mod would be required to have a mod.json file in its root folder, this mod.json file could have several required fields (as in the CONTROL file example). Things like name, version, description, and dependencies should be included. With dependencies I mean this: the current public mod has no dependencies, it is a complete mod that needs no other mods to function. A mod that wants to add a civilisation depends on the 0 A.D. public mod, so 0 A.D. public needs to be present as well for that mod to function. Similarly, a mod that adds to another mod (for example, adds another Korean civ to the Rise of the East mod) depends on that mod. Installing the mod thus also means installing the dependency mod. A total conversion mod, like the Rogue Republic mod (if they opt for pyrogenesis, that is) would also be a fully functional mod, without the need any dependencies. Loading both 0 A.D. public and Rogue Republic should not be done. If the team agrees with my idea (oh well, not really unique in the Linux world), I could expand on this a little and perhaps create a ticket on trac, so someone can choose to work on it. The most valuable thing would be to have some standards for how mods represent their information, so it can be parsed in a uniform way.

It is an interesting idea and shouldn't be too hard to implement, either. I remember it has been proposed before, some weeks or months ago. Unfortunately I cannot remember the response back then.

For just a civ there is no need to code any logic, nope. It's mostly adding/editing XML files, meshes, textures and that kind of stuff. If you use the SVN version of the game, it's easy to look up how to do things with the currently available units and copy and adjust that in your files. You can even just refer to the original files, if that suffices (e.g., no need to copy anything if you just want to use a default sword for a new unit). The way it works is that pyrogenesis loads the public mod, then adds any other mods you asked for. It builds a list of files and references. If no file is found within a mod, it will look for the file within the base public mod. So unless you provide your own, the default is used. That limits the amount of work to be done is you heavily use default game assets (as I did with the amazones). If your mod/civ needs to have capabilities that are not present in the main game (or public mod, as it's technically called) there is some need to code. That will be mostly javascript.

I'm fairly sure your graphics card is more than capable of running 0 A.D. My measly 6 year old, 128 Mb mobile GPU can do it Are you using non-standard drivers on a Linux system? Or do you use Windows? If you need help, you could report the errors you get.

I made a simple mod for fun, just to see how it could be done. I tried my hand at the Amazones, just using the default textures and meshes available in 0 A.D. It's available online on GitHub. Perhaps it provides a nice example of how to do stuff. The most important thing is the civ.json file, which defines the name and the starting units. The starting units determine what else you could construct, and so on It involves a lot of XML file editing, which can be tedious. But it's not that hard really once you get the hang of it. Ok, your own structures, meshes and such make it a lot harder I once had the idea of generating a demo mod, to show off different types of units and structures as an example for modders. Things like how to make a mage with fireball staff and such (the mage exists somewhere on my hard drive). It could be nice as a separate repo for 0 A.D. with all kinds of ideas and examples.

Do you have a Macbook with a Retina display? Those can give trouble, or so I have read. Or would this be a different problem. I've noticed that mouse event registration for the upper-left menu is very sloppy (sometimes requires 10x trying), but not any other problem. This all on a not really high end Macbook Pro with a regular (non-retina) 1440x900 display. So maybe trying several times might help if it is a similar issue? I believe retina display macs can remedy the problem by running the game in windowed mode, with a fixed resolution (unless that bug is fixed by now, the resolution switching caused trouble).

I think those designs look great! However, there are a few minor things that got my attention. First, the type for the window title: I feel that is a little out-of-era, more 19th century or gothic than classical. I do not have an alternative ready, although it would probably a non-italic roman font (Oh, I see now you tried that first, compared to the earlier designs this does look more stylish). Second, when looking at the Diplomacy window, I'm not sure the 'Player 4' text in white would be readable on the yellow background on all kinds of display since the darker outline has been omitted (or at the least is very faint). A third thing, on the same Diplomacy window, I do not really like the fade/shadow behind the small checkmarks. Personally, I think it would be clearer and look sharper with larger X's and a reduced glow. It's definitely an improvement over the older design, so keep going

I think it is a good suggestion to make GLSL the default for the next release, as Fabio says. Perhaps many people have not enabled it manually (as there is no settings panel to do it). Would it be possible to look at recent player/computer profile data to see how many people would be affected by dropping ARB, which means going GLSL-only? I suppose for most people in the "GLSL is troublesome" category it would be a slight performance drop if ARB is no longer available. It would be best to see who will be affected, and to what extent. Some quantitative questions to answer that will help the decision: * What percentage of recent players can use GLSL 2.0? * What percentage of recent players can use GLSL 3.0? * What percentage of recent players actually have GLSL enabled? * What would be the performance bonus of dropping the preprocessor wrapper(s)? Maybe it's good to focus on getting enough fresh data from the next Alpha 14 release to answer some of the questions. Can the current profiling data answer this? See also this post with some links to data. Also, this trac page on GraphicsCompatibility lists 14% of users not being able to handle GLSL (data from 2011, so numbers may be lower now). I think it would be good to redo this analysis and make a decision.

The problem is that people using Steam or similar services expect complete, functional games. 0 A.D. is not complete, nor completely functional and requires quite a bit of polish (look at all the discussion about performance issues). So bringing 0 A.D. in this alpha state to Steam would generate a lot of complaints and perhaps cast a negative picture of both this game and Steam (as a portal to good, carefree gaming). I would advice against it until the game is better able to deliver on its promise (please don't take this the wrong way, I like the game, it just needs some time). For now, it seems wiser to invest time and resources in the game itself or attracting developers, rather then growing the number of players.

I think movable walls is not very realistic. Technically I suppose nomadic tribes could do it, but since everything can be moved it's easier to flee from danger than to count on walls for protection. It seems someone could look into the history of this. Practically, I suggest using palisades but no walls. This gives a need for different tactics with nomadic civs (although I don't know how often walls are used in multiplayer, so maybe it isn't much of a change).

I actually tried to implement a packable civ center (and it works I will put a patch in trac soon when I iron out some details). However, a civ center should not be able to unpack everywhere, at the very least not close to another owned civ center and absolutely not on enemy territory. It would be too easy to capture large tracts of the map or severely limit another player (e.g., imagine building your civ close to the enemy's civ center, hereby rendering this player unable to expand). Another problem would be defense. Being on the move makes it hard to defend yourself against raids, making nomadic civs an easy target late in the game. Being nomadic means no fortified walls or other heavy defenses, so that requires a solution.

I think that once such a population number distinction is made with the reasoning that dogs are not human, it would be a slippery slope for the current interpretation of the population metric. That is, unless it is very clear that (for example) elephant and warship units take up population numbers because humans have to man these animals/machines. Dogs are independent, so they may have their own population number. This could be helpful for a tooltip or explanation for using kennels as a way to increase the dog population If this kennel/dog population is used, I think there should be a maximum as well, like 1/5th of the usual population number. For a normal max of 300 it means max 60 dogs. However, this seems unfair because Celts can now field 360 units. So for balance, their human population maximum should be reduced, let's say to 270. That boils down to value a dog at 0.5 human, so one could as well simplify the whole thing by putting dogs at 0.5 cost of the regular population number. So to conclude my thinking/writing aloud post: For diversifying the Gauls with the Britons, doing something extra with dogs could help, but I'm not sure using an extra population number would really help. Adding a dog population number should reduce the human pop maximum, which in turn means dogs should be used in late game tactics because the numbers require it (hence less tactical freedom?).

Perhaps you can have a look at the profiler during a game and look at the timings. The profiler can be brought up with F11 (and framerate with alt+F ). It shows how many milliseconds were spent on each separate step, info that help determine where your computer has a bottleneck. I have attached an example of the profiler, at the start of the Mauryan Punjab demo with 1 Aegis AI bot: The sim parts (simulation, pathfinding, AI and such) and the render parts (drawing the models to screen) are the most important (the rest should be fairly quick, plus there isn't that much that can be done about those). In my example you can see that the sim steps take up about 26 ms per frame, whereas rendering takes 81 milliseconds. No surprise the framerate is just 7fps. If you would open the Settings dialog from the top right corner menu, you can turn on and off different things and see it reflected in the render time. For example, turning off particles and shadows each reduces the render time by about 10 ms/frame for me. None of it is going to help me much, because my computer won't ever come close to a bearable framerate (anything 20+ fps) on a dense map like Punjab. Even on the lowest settings quite empty maps like Oases give me only 25 fps. But such stark differences show that for my computer the graphics are the main bottleneck. In my case I could switch from OS X to Windows on the same machine to improve the performance by quite a bit (30 fps should be possible with low AI action going on). So, profiling can help you determine what causes a low framerate. In my case I could switch to a lower resolution (1920x1080 is clearly too much) to improve performance. On the other hand, even if rendering took no time at all, the framerate would still be just 40 fps.

It's a good idea, if there also is some room for the WFG team to add a bit of text with reasoning on why certain highly desired features are not (yet) in the game. An idea like 'MOAR CIVZ' might be popular, but not so feasible To avoid future comments like 'you are totally ignoring the fanbase, see the charts' some likelihood estimate could be included for popular ideas.

That is indeed a problem, see the screenshot below: (yellow tint: Village phase, blue tint: Town phase, red tint: City phase) The Carthaginians have many structures, most of them become available at the Town phase. So my idea to put each phase on a different row would not fit here. I'll give it some thought, maybe there is another way to do it.

I've seen this question more often, so perhaps it is not clear enough, which got me thinking. Would it be possible to list the village structures on the top row, town structures on the middle row, and city structures on the bottom row of the screen area that lists the options for a unit? I am not sure of the technical complications, but anyway, here's a Photoshopped impression: This way, it would clear to anyone which structure belongs to which phase. Combined with the tooltip it should be easier to see how one can be eligible for the phase upgrade, provided one finds that II or III button first. Maybe the system could send a message (similar to a chat message) as soon as the conditions are good for an upgrade? The text could say something like "You are ready to upgrade to Town phase. Go to a Civil Centre and choose the upgrade phase button."

I think the situation idanwin describes for Belgium is the same for the Netherlands. Nearly all young people have to learn Dutch, English, and German and/or French (higher levels of education require both German and French, although not at a very high level). This is for historical reasons: most money is made trading with Germany I've had English literature classes in secondary school, including the Canterbury tales and some World War I poetry. I think we spent more time on it than we did on contemporary literature. Latin and ancient Greek are optional, I did those for four years (but forgot most of it by now). As idanwin explains, not knowing English in smaller countries is really an issue. Not just because half the internet is written in English, but many products and manuals tend to be as well, not to mention advertising. Apparently products advertised in English are considered more sophisticated, with one exception: washing powder commercials must be dubbed, preferably badly out-of-sync Even job titles like operations manager, account manager, or process operator are kept in English. It turns out people may feel better about their jobs and are more willing to accept these jobs, even if you'd pay slightly less

Making a new faction is simple. Either make a new mod folder or use the public folder (in data/mods/public). In the civs folder there you'll find JSON files for each civ in the game. Copy one and adjust the data inside. Now you've got a new faction added Set the starting units and building to your desired units and building, and it should work.

Since I've also done some contributions to the game, uploaded via Trac patches (I think the following statement should be interpreted to extend to trac as well as the forum): I am the copyright holder of original works I post in the Wildfire Games 0 A.D. Art Development forum. I hereby release all original works I uploaded to this forum in the past, and those I will upload in the future, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Thanks for incorporating this, I hope it helps in the future

I would advice to put your changes in a mod folder, separate from the public mod. Just start 0 A.D. from the command line with: pyrogenesis.exe -mod=<name of my mod folder> (or ./pyrogenesis -mod=<my mod> on UNIX-like systems) This way your changes remain separate from the regular stuff and won't be affected by changes to it. In principle, if the engine encounters a duplicate file it uses the one in the mod (if I am not mistaken). That is easier than overwriting stuff. Second benefit of SVN is that it is easy to look in the original files for guidance on how to do stuff. Downside of using SVN: more work to get it going at first, plus (at least on OS X) way more disk space is taken.

You are correct, this formation feature needs work. Currently there are no bonuses assigned either, as is planned. For example, a Macedonian phalanx should get a armor bonus from the front side, but less so from the rear. The only help currently available is to wait or work on the code yourself

Perhaps it can be repurposed to be some kind of embassy building? It might be useful for scenario purposes to train a select group of Mauryan units.

I believe destroying some buildings already gives loot, thus a set amount of resources. This is at least the case for units. Based on the book "Collapse" by Jared Diamond, which deals with the collapse of societies from an environmental perspective, I'd say hardly any society did that. Some were better at establishing limits for themselves, so forests would stay intact (i.e., not chop everything now). The Japanese did start active forest management hundreds of years ago, thanks to a relatively centralised government (which is why Japan still has a large percentage of land as forest, despite the huge population). I cannot remember any remarks in that book about earlier civs doing so, but then again, it focused on those civs that fared worst

I guess that is simply not realistic. For one, the game requires a lot of data (350+ Mb) which reduces the "instant play" by quite a bit But if a multiplayer lobby and/or central ranking system is in place, this data could be used to set up matches and/or challenge friends on those platforms via a social webapp. So a web interface could be a portal to the game (which should of course be installed separately).