WhiteTreePaladin

What I really want is lots of little formations that are easily mass created (either at unit creation or later). That's somewhat out of the scope of this thread I guess since it's supposed to be about the balance branch.

[edit] As for using melee infantry to protect ranged units, I think that would work much better if we implemented some form of battalions, otherwise it might be too much effort to manage effectively. Generally I don't see anything that radical in those changes. I thought that was how it was already supposed to work based on previous discussions (unless I'm missing something)?

Yeah, would have been nice to have a summary of changes on the forums. It's a bit rough trying to check the diff on SVN for all the units. Actually, it's still not too late for that.

We discontinued the "Official" Last Alliance game/mod because we felt it wouldn't be wise for us to make one as an organization. There are LOTR mods all over the internet. I don't think it would be too big of an issue for a community mod. It could cause issues if it got too large and attracted a lot of attention, but I don't think that is likely. Worst case scenario, is to change all the iconic figures and structures to not look exactly like the movies and give everything generic names. Even that would be fun to play though and individual map makers could always add the names back in.

I think the flat roofs would look a lot better if they weren't tiled, but made out of a similar material to the walls. Seems that would be more accurate too based on other structures (unless this is a really weird building...).

I don't see an issue with it. I see it as another combination to try. If we end up liking the balance branch better than the recent changes, it won't be a big deal to add it to SVN.

Ah, someone fixed the title already. Thanks whoever it was. That Radagast is pretty good. You version goes beyond just actor changes though. It's more along the lines of those nice Helm's Deep walls someone made recently. Would be nice to make an "unofficial" LOTR mod sometime.

I wasn't planning on making them all, but just a few. Feel free to post units though. I'd never complain about that.

I recreated some well-known figures from the Lord of the Rings series by using only actor files to recombine existing models and textures. Just thought I'd post for fun. Here's some screenshots:

The smoke certainly can affect performance. Try the giant version of the random volcano map. The smoke there instantly causes my graphics card fan to rev up to max speed. It slows back to normal immediately when I move the camera off of the smoke. In general, most performance issues we have are pathfinder related, but don't underestimate the effect of excessive particles, etc. on the graphics performance.

As far as I know, our minimum supported resolution is 1024x768. Of course, if you are only planning on changing the GUI for youself, then it doesn't really matter.

I agree with all of that.

I think I define "balance" much more broadly than hardcore players. I tried to explain that in my post, but it seems that most here only view changes that affect fairness as balancing. I was trying to explain that having a "balanced" game isn't all about super serious competition but also casual play. Perhaps there is a better word I can use to avoid confusion, but I can't think of one at the moment. Here's another example: Casual players want an AI to use hero units. If we limit hero units only to higher difficulties, then they get left out. That's not a fair tradoff in my opinion. Now I know that's AI and not the civ balancing that you are referring to, but it gives you an idea. Casual players still want to be able to enjoy this game. Keep the experience balanced between doing what you need to do to make the game fair, but don't pursue fairness at all costs and make the game boring. AoK civs were mostly the same and were still hard to balance for fairness. I'm not saying that I've seen that as an issue at this point at all, but we are embarking on some potentially serious gameplay changes. I fear that there is a possiblility that it can happen during this balancing process, so I'm making the point now rather than after the fact. I just want the full spectrum of players to be taken into account.

I would disagree, although the focus changes to what makes the game fun, rather than what is fair. It is more like balancing colors in a painting rather than weights on a scale. Having some imbalances wouldn't affect a casual player's strategy all that much, but could absolutely ruin a match for experienced players who aim to take advantage of every possible opportunity. Unfortunately, I've seen fun features in other games completely removed or "nerfed" to the point of extinction simply because experience players "abused" them. Here is a fictional scenario just provided as an example: Say siege towers are used by casual players to drop their units on the other sides of walls, while experienced players only use them as arrow towers on a battle field. It's determined that siege towers in the hands of experience players are just too powerful, so their defense is weakened so that they are easier to destroy. This is done very carefully with testing and the result pleases the experience players who feel that they are neither too powerful nor too weak. However, an unintended side effect of this change is that the siege towers are generally not strong enough to survive all the way through a battlefield and make it to an enemy's walls... I just wanted to make a point that we should take every effort to make sure that the final game is actually fun and not lose that during the process of balancing for experienced players. I'm not at all implying that anyone would intentionally want to make the game less fun, just that it can happen by accident.

The issue with balancing that I've noticed is that what experienced players consider balanced is often not really that fun for casual players, and what casual players like is often the exact opposite of what experienced players want. It's hard enough to balance for one group, but balancing for both at the same time is very difficult.

Just as a way to distance it from SVN. Personally, I don't think a mod would be necessary, but some didn't want a video at all, so it was a sort of compromise.

Yeah, still having issues too.

[edit] Wait, I thought this was the water graphics thread. I haven't confirmed this yet. I would guess that it has been fixed though.

I think we could load the game with a mod to load the startup video. This could be included for the main releases, and not SVN. If any on the main release didn't want to see the video, all they would have to do would be remove the -mod=introvideo or something. This would also allow anyone to have a custom intro for their mod.

I think the animated logo of Wildfire games would be pretty nice. It would give the game a more professional feel. I don't like the 0AD one quite as much. As far as the game loading fast, we could easily provide a shortcut to skip the intro logo, etc. I think AoK had a "no startup" option that would skip intro videos.

That is really nice work.

Looks a lot like helm's deep. I think that wall grate might have been inspiring.

No need to shout. lol

Yeah, that's from the ticket I put in. Did you have the same issue? I was thinking it might be driver dependent. http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/2692

Revision: 15574 WARNING: unknown type in garrisonManager undefined http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/2691