sanderd17

Nice. Is that palace in svn now? I can't find it (unless I search on the wrong names).

Looks really good I think those things should be a dropdown list instead of some x's with cryptic letters on top. Although I don't know if Pureo has the ability to do this, or if some programmer should get it done.

Ah darn, in that case, a new logo is needed indeed. Lion had a beginning with Wikipedia sources, but it's not finished yet. So if someone can finish it, or make a new one, that'd be great.

Where did you see that? It's a logo Michael Lion brought up. http://www.wildfireg...showtopic=16960

The team is short on animators. Most units use the same animations, so that's not difficult, but new ones are needed for the elephants, that's why they still aren't animated. There are people working on it though. Note that there are still a lot of animals missing animations.

They do have an icon, I don't know if it's available in all needed formats yet, but it would be something for the one with the original files I guess. http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Civ%3A_Ptolemies

They look really nice in game. One point of criticism, I don't know if I'm nitpicking too much, but the anvil texture looks a bit 'flat'. A used anvil is shiny on the top and point, but a bit rusty on other places (because a blacksmith only uses the top to flatten things, or the point to curve things). I mainly noticed it on the greek blacksmith because that one has a smaller sword blade on it. Here's an example of what I mean: Btw, thanks for using the 'floating prop' system. It looks really nice.

You have something against diffs?

I've just started programming for 0AD too, and it's organised a bit archaic. You just pick a task you'd like to do, work on it and ask for review. The tasks can all be found on trac: trac.wildfiregames.com/report/1 with some easy ones in this list: trac.wildfiregames.com/report/15 To get to know the code, I propose to also check out the wiki: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki (it also mentions the process for patch submission and reviewing) And when you have questions, irc://irc.quakenet.org/0ad-dev is a better choice to be as a developer. Also, if you want to change gameplay, you have to play the game. Just to avoid introducing oddities in the gameplay.

It looks like you don't need Windows anyway to get that in, with the next autobuild, you'll have it: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/changeset/13568 (thanks to wraitii for committing it).

Not to break down your work, the logo looks good to me, but replacing it will be a pain. The current logo is spread around everywhere (in the game, on websites, social media, fan sites, youtube videos ...) so it will only ever get replaced if almost the entire team decides it's worth replacing. Anyway, it doesn't happen often that branding changes come from outside the team. I am curious in what you can do with the UI though. Pureon has also been working a bit on the GUI, although that work is paused for now, as some other work is more urgent.

I was surprised too, but it seems there's no such template.

The bench was just an example, if you want it destroyable, it's a regular entity (like the bench currently in the game), this was just an example. And partial obstructions are possible, just look at the gate code: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/browser/ps/trunk/binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/templates/template_structure_defense_wall_gate.xml#L40 The gate has 3 obstruction parts, of which the door one is enabled and disabled through code. But you can just define any form by combining obstruction rectangles. The names are irrelevant (they can be used in software to enable and disable them), but you just need to take care of the x-z coordinate (which is the centre point of the obstruction rectangle) and the width-depth which defines the size of the rectangle. This system does require you to calculate some coordinates on beforehand.

I just found how to make your eyecandy unpassable (so soldiers can't walk through) in a decent way (without putting other entities in it). Basically, you make a template template_eyecandy.xml with the following code: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Entity parent="template_entity_quasi"> <Obstruction> <Active>true</Active> <BlockMovement>true</BlockMovement> <BlockPathfinding>true</BlockPathfinding> <BlockFoundation>true</BlockFoundation> <BlockConstruction>true</BlockConstruction> <DisableBlockMovement>false</DisableBlockMovement> <DisableBlockPathfinding>false</DisableBlockPathfinding> </Obstruction> <OverlayRenderer/> <Selectable> <Overlay> <Outline> <LineTexture>outline_border.png</LineTexture> <LineTextureMask>outline_border_mask.png</LineTextureMask> <LineThickness>0.4</LineThickness> </Outline> </Overlay> </Selectable> <VisualActor> <SilhouetteDisplay>false</SilhouetteDisplay> <SilhouetteOccluder>true</SilhouetteOccluder> <VisibleInAtlasOnly>false</VisibleInAtlasOnly> </VisualActor> </Entity> After that, you can put the eyecandy actor in a template like this <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Entity parent="template_eyecandy"> <Footprint> <Square width="1.5" depth="4.25"/> <Height>4.0</Height> </Footprint> <Identity> <Civ>gaia</Civ> <GenericName>Bench</GenericName> <SpecificName>Wooden Bench</SpecificName> <History>A short wooden bench.</History> <Icon>gaia/special_fence.png</Icon> </Identity> <Obstruction> <Static width="1.0" depth="4.0"/> </Obstruction> <VisualActor> <Actor>props/special/eyecandy/bench_1.xml</Actor> </VisualActor> </Entity> Of course, you need to edit the obstruction form according to the size of your object. The identity isn't needed, but I think, once a better search arrives in Atlas, it could be useful to search on those keywords in the identity information. This results in an object you can only select in Atlas via ALT+CLICK, it can't be selected in game, but you can't walk through it in game. There is also no possibility of destroying it and whatnot. You can also add other tags (s.a. the Anchor tag to rotate it to terrain form). With this, they also arrive in the "Entities" section of Atlas, and not in the "Actors" section.

Well, as I said, it's only possible for the celtic walls this far, other walls would require major design changes before it can work, so I don't think the artists will be able to do it (they're already very busy with the blacksmiths, the Ptolemaic buildings and units, and those extra animals, so re-designing walls is no priority).

greenknight32, not noticable this far. For entities without floating props, there should be almost no performance impact (only a check to see if it has no such props), and for every prop that can have an offset, the terrain height is queried (just like for all regular actors) and applied with only minor extra calculations. There is a small performance impact (as always), but when trying to calculate, the overhead of the performance calculation will make it impossible to do.

When units are tasked to a resource, they should be assigned immediately I think, so the player can keep count. So I'm not really in favour of the range system. I do agree, to avoid it being gameable, it should be a limit per player. Btw, I thought displaying number of gatherers is already in: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/changeset/13541

There seem to be some parts outdated: Michael is still listed as art dept head, while it should be Enrique. I think Erik should be in the retired dept head section. RedFox cannot be found on the list, while he's a retired contributor that got active again (if I'm right) And for when someone updates the list with trac info, my name is Sander Deryckere.

Great maps, they aren't very AI friendly (like for Brabantia, the celts start to suicide them because the nearest trees take them accross the terrain, and the other helenes follow the celts in their suicide mission). But great for multiplayer.

I think brushes should certainly have a different implementation, you can't have it all in one actor, as you can't change the shape of an actor. So no matter what you choose, you'll always have parts that shouldn't be covered with grass, or parts that are covered twice (which is visible with highly transparent things like grass). I also did some tests with walls using this system. Celtic walls are very well suited, as they have vertical wood parts that cover the seams perfectly. I use a short wall segment as unit segment (because I can't model, and thus had to use the shortest one available) and used it to make long wall segments (using it as a prop left and right). Here are some screenshots with the results. I don't know if it's any good though, I would first like to inspect myconid's work on adapting meshes to the terrain.

I agree it wan't meant for this purpose, so there are probably better ways of doing it. Do you have a link to myconid's work?

I don't have a Windows installation in my home, and as the Actor editor is broken on Linux, I can't help with that. Someone else could probably do it. And for the fields, if you have lots of props on different places, you can indeed have terrain adjusting wheat.

Leper got it in the game, and Historic Bruno fixed a Windows problem. So the horses in the Persian stables will adjust to the terrain height, and new buildings can also use this. Btw, there are many possibilities. When a building exists out of two parts (like the L shaped blacksmiths), you can have one part added as a prop, so they move a bit relative to the terrain. But I'll leave it to you artists to see what's nice.

@Pureon or Enrique, if you say you're creating the new buildings to be compatible to the system, can you send me one (or commit it to the repo)? I'd like to make sure we're not talking next to each other (and have something better to test than that silly carthagian palm thing I used).

I've tried to make a patch for it (http://trac.wilfiregames.com/ticket/2033), it works pretty well, but before I clean it up, I'd like some more input. I've used a maxheight and minheight attribute, those define the relative maximum and minumum height a prop can differ from the main mesh. When not set, they default to 0 (so the prop can't move). You can use it f.e. so that a prop can never rise over the original position, but when the ground is dropped, it can be placed lower so it won't dangle. I'd like to hear if this is a good interface, or if anyone wants other control over the props, or better names for the attributes.