Palantius

I just realized that the 4 points I posted on how to implement the fundamentals of this idea aren't really correct. Point 1 (to remove possibility to recruit units) isn't true. Instead another approach is needed. Here is a new plan (that might be easier to implement) on how to make this work, and it takes another approach: (points 1-3 are new) Create population limit for each unit-type. Allow structures to raise population-limits for special unit-types (just like normal houses do). Allow to make structures deploy units when built or upgraded. Possibility to upgrade buildings. The structures model should also be changeable by each upgrade. The size and shape of the building would maybe grow by each upgrade, but the building must reserve some space so that you can't upgrade a building because there is no space for the building to upgrade. Something that helps the player to know which buildings aren't used to their fullest capacity. However this is not really that important at this stage. Also, is there any way to remove the shroud of darkness by changing some scripts? I've been looking around for a while and I cant figure it out, I've managed to set "reveal map" to true by default, but then the fog of war is then turned of too, which is not what I'm trying to do. Any ideas? Below is my take on what the game should look like. I'll try to explain/figure it out by defining it in as general terms as possible first, and then go into details. Please note that this is work in progress. STRATEGY Every action a player takes must be a strategic or tactical decision. If an action (or an element in the game) is not based on strategy or tactics, it should not exist. Hunting is a example of a action that is not strategical or tactical (enough). Each strategic or tactical decision must be important. The player shouldn't have to care about a decision that easily can be "regretted" (example: researching "servants" can easily be "regretted" by adding 25% more workers on metal gathering instead of stone gathering) or if the decision is insignificant (example: having women work with gathering food and men with gathering wood and stone). THE GAME Length of a game: A normal game between two players should take around 30 minutes (20 - 40 minutes). A game can be divided into three major phases, the early game, the middle game and the endgame. The early game (phase 1) is when both players make their first expansions but no real battles emerges yet. In the middle game (phase 2) battles are fought and the players continue to expand. In the endgame expanding isn't a central objective anymore and many resources start to deplete. In the endgame the battles are large and central in the gameplay. No shroud of darkness. Doesn't look that good and it is actually quite annoying. The early game should be like the opening in chess - the moves you do are crucial and must take your opponents moves into account (and also the terrain). Otherwise there would be no real "opening" because you don't have sufficient information to base your decisions on. The "opening" you would play would then only be based on simple factors as if you prefer to play defensively or offensively. Instead with no shroud of darkness the player could base his "opening" on the terrain. Also by doing so that you always can see your opponents centres, you would have to take that into account when choosing which "opening" you should play. This would then be a much more interesting and advanced decision, which is necessary considering that there otherwise isn't much to do in the early game. RESOURCES The only units that should be able to gather resources are "workers". Citizen soldiers makes the game to chaotic and doesn't really work that well with the basic idea of units being "deployed" instead of "trained". By having worker only units the game would be much clearer. Food as a resource doesn't have any strategic of tactical importance since units aren't trained. It just isn't needed. Gathering food has also always been complicated and requires some micro-management. Metal should be a very scarce resource and the players should really have to fight to get their hands on it. There could be different types of metal with different values, these are copper, silver and gold. Only in the middle game should you start gathering metal. If your opponent has far more metal than you, you must try to win quickly as metal allows for some better units in the endgame. No mills. The goal is that wood should be a resource that gets harder and harder to get by, especially if you don't expand quickly enough. This is because trees disappear and for each tree the distance and time to gather wood increases. Stone is a resource that has a relatively linear gathering-speed. However, in the endgame it is unsually the first resource to be depleted. Worker limit around 5 for stone and metal. The GUI should however suggest the optimal number of workers considering the limit and distance from closest dropsite. EXPANDING AND CENTRES Each centre deploys a number of workers. Each upgrade costs as much and deploys as many workers as a new centre. To build a new centre you need a minumum of 5 workers. This does so that you can't "sneak-build" a centre. It also adds more dynamics to the game. In the early game the player will have a choice of either upgrading his first centre, or building a new centre. The reason you wan't to expand early on is because you don't want all the resources around your most central centre, that is the most secure centre, to deplete. It should be possible to build structures at any territory. However when building on own territory it get built by itself as if one worker works on it. On neutral territory the structure must be built with workers. Structures on enemy territory decays. WARFARE ... ...

Congratulations! It's really nice to hear that you would like to give it a try. I, who have no experience with 0ad code, started to look at the scripts in the mods folder, and I didn't find anything that could allow for this. But if it has to be done through changing the engine, maybe it should be done so that it's an option that can be activated through scripting by doing so that you just add the needed possibilities without actually changing anything. To get the basics of this idea working here is my plan how this could be done: Remove possibility to recruit units. But this could be done through simple scripting. Deploy units once a building is built or upgraded (maybe also add a small delay of some few seconds). Possibility to upgrade buildings. This might be the hardest part to implement. The structures model should also be changeable by each upgrade. The size and shape of the building would maybe grow by each upgrade, but the building must reserve some space so that you can't upgrade a building because there is no space for the building to upgrade. Possibility to recruit new units once the old ones dies. Something that helps the player to know which buildings aren't used to their fullest capacity. However this is not really that important at this stage. If you decide to help, I will make sure that your efforts won't go to waste by finishing and perfecting this "mod" and do my best to get 0ad implement the changes.

What differs chess from 0 a.d. (currently) is that in chess, there are so many different moves that works reasonably well and which all have very different effects on the game. In 0ad each game is relatively alike (especially if you consider that there is only one "civilization" in chess). Chess is like a giant tree - billions of chess games has been played throughout history but almost every game have probably been unique - whereas 0ad is more like a road that you must walk on (almost "balance" on), because as soon as you wander of slightly, you've lost the required "balance" and you loose (and that specific "balance" takes much experience to find). This is what frustrates me with the strategical aspect of 0ad. I believe that my idea would turn the "road" into a tree, because the decision of which structure to build would have far greater consequences and would thus lead the game in a certain direction. This effect is reached most efficiently by doing so that a decisions benefits would grow exponentially if it was the right decision (but not just "grow", but it should be possible to exploit the right decision to get the reward). In chess this is most visible when it comes to pawn-structure - you can sacrifice a nice pawn-structure for advantages in the early game (or you could just blunder it away), but if you keep it nice and clean, it is a great advantage in the late game. When it comes to my idea I have thought it through carefully and I believe in it. As a chess-player I have been forced to seek a deeper understanding in what strategy and tactics really are, and I want to share that knowledge because I want to contribute to this project. If my idea isn't popular enough, maybe I will make a mod with it to try to convince people about the idea (however, I wouldn't make a mod just for the mods sake, I want to contribute to 0ad). However if I am to make such a mod I would first need to know: Is it possible to achieve this effect only through scripting? Is anyone interested in helping with scripting/programming? I could learn to script 0ad, after all, I know a little programming, however I believe my time is best spent on making art and not learning to script to then doing the actual scripting. Do you have any feedback on the idea?

Well, is it really just a population limit? As I think of it, it has nothing to do with population restriction - you build a structure and get some units at the same time. But if you insist on seeing it as a restriction, I can agree on that it's a restriction on free recruiting of units, but not a population limit. Therefor, houses can't replace the positive effects of this idea. The main problem with a single population limit is that the player has to know exactly which worker/fighter ratio is the best - and I still have no clue after a month of playing this game. But the greatest positive effect of this idea is that it makes the decision of "recruiting" units more strategic as the decision would have far greater consequences than it currently has. As with the population boom, I think it is important in the end game to make sure that the most advanced player can win by quickly outgrowing his opponent. However, what bugs me with how it is now, is that it's more of a economy boom, and not a population boom. This is because if you get more resources you also have to use these to expand your economy, but in the end game you want to fight with large armies, not keep track of all your workers, which is quite a tedious and annoying task. You could always build 10 barracks and have 300 infantry units if you would want to. I personally believe that this game should generally be at a larger scale with larger armies and larger maps. Why not? In my opinion flexibility kills strategy. If there are only small consequences to the decisions, they aren't really any strategic decision. It takes the S out of RTS. The choice of what to build should be able to haunt you a long time, and if you know what decision your opponent did, you should be able to exploit that. Strategy comes from decisions, and decisions are decisions because they have consequences! I can't come up with any other way to restrict some units (even if that actually isn't the main point) that is as simple. I don't believe that those advanced ideas (abilities, campaign, support, special units...) really fits into the game. Those kills the realism and add in a lot of micro-management at the cost of strategic gameplay. Also, http://www.wildfireg...showtopic=14516 (with which I agree) suggests that the game would be less like AoE and starcraft and concepts from those games would really not fit in if something like the proposed battle system would be implemented.

Hello, I have an idea. If implemented it would have a huge impact on the gameplay. But I didn't come up with it in the first place because I thought it would be just cool or something, but I was thinking about how the economy in the game works and how a exponential growth in the players economy can get too overwhelming for players (especially new ones). So I came up with this idea that would solve this problem (and some more problems), that can make strategy in the game more important and clear, and that can give more control to developers to balance the strengths of each civilization in the game. The idea My idea is to make so that each structure deploys a number of units when built (and upgraded, more on that later), and normal unit recruiting should not be possible unless any units dies and leaves an empty "slot". Example: (note that I also suggest some new buildings and other changes) 1. You build a "range" (where you can train archers and skirmishers). Before construction you have to choose between three different types: "only skirmishers", "only archers" or "combined" ("combined" deploys slightly less units in total, but choosing one of the "only"-upgrade can be risky). It could also add more strategic deepness into the game if one of the unit type counters the other while the second unit type counters other units (more clear when it comes to barracks that deploys swordsmen and spearmen; spearmen counters cavalry while swordsmen counter spearmen). 2. When a building is built it (directly or after a short delay?) deploys a number of units (without extra cost). When some of these units die, you can recruit new ones to take their place (replacing dead units costs resources). It should be easy to see which buildings aren't used to their fullest capacity. 3. After a while you can upgrade the "range"-building so that it can output a larger amount of units. Upgrading should be more profitable than building a new building. Note how this allows for many strategic decisions for the player. The player has to choose which unit the building should produce (or a less profitable "combination"), which is an important decision. The player can also build two buildings that each focuses on one unit. This construction would only be profitable when both buildings are at maximum level, but if a player has chosen to do this the reward must be noticeable if this construction is to be considered by the player. The centre works just the same but deploys workers instead. One advantage this offers compared to how it works now, is that it gets much clearer when you need to expand through building new civ centres. Other relevant ideas I also have many other ideas that is somewhat relevant to the main idea, and I'm going to post them here so that you can understand how I see the gameplay in its entirety. However, please bear in mind that these are not as well thought through as the main idea. General ideas Worker-units and fighting civilians (maybe only for self protection). The main reason is because the player should be able to take the strategic decision to either focus on warfare or economy. Also, an army should be stationed somewhere in neat squares, and not as a mess. Somewhat larger scale. With larger maps and larger armies the game would not only be more epic, but also increase the importance of placing your armies wisely to cover the map better. No shroud of darkness. It doesn't look good, to remove it by "scouting" isn't that fun, and, most importantly, the player must be able to plan how to expand already from the very start. More exaggerated terrain features. Details in the terrain are in most cases annoying. It can also be hard to quickly see what importance a location has if it's to detailed and unexaggerated. Being able to build all structures over the entire map (not restricted to a certain area). Sometimes it can be very technical to be restriced to a area [*]Resources Is food as a resource really necessary when the amount of units you can recruit is fixed based on the number of your structures? It's also takes to much effort to gather food. Shouldn't population as a resource also be removed by the same reason? It makes little sense to keep it and it would add unnecessary complexity. However, there must be some sort of houses simply because it looks better with them. Metal should be harder to come by and be a bit more "special". Metal resources should be placed at crucial locations. When "starving" your enemy metal is the first resource to be depleted. Better "numbers". The cost of structures should be reduced to make it easier for the player to count the resources and ultimately keep track of the economy. Instead of costing 100 wood, it could just as well cost 10 wood, which is easier to count with. No mills. Centres should be the only dropsites. Units should however be able to carry more resources and walk faster while carrying them to compensate. [*]No towers. Towers can be abused, and instead almost all structures should be able to fire arrows (this is only to ensure that a real army can destroy a city). [*]Buildings should be "raidable". Melee infantry units should be able to raid buildings which makes them much more inefficient. repairing buildings, and especially raided structures, should cost resources. Implementation These numbers are just a rough approximation mainly to give an example of how it might be implemented: Civic centre Lvl 1: 10 workers Lvl 2: 20 workers Lvl 3: 30 workers Lvl 4: 30 workers + 1 hero [*]Barracks Spear-only Lvl 1: 10 spearmen Lvl 2: 20 spearmen Lvl 3: 30 spearmen [*]Sword-only Lvl 1: 10 swordsmen Lvl 2: 20 swordsmen Lvl 3: 30 swordsmen [*]Mix Lvl 1: 4 spearmen + 4 swordsmen Lvl 2: 8 spearmen + 8 swordsmen Lvl 3: 13 spearmen + 13 swordsmen [*]Range Skirmishers-only Lvl 1: 10 skirmishers Lvl 2: 20 skirmishers Lvl 3: 30 skirmishers [*]Archers-only Lvl 1: 10 archers Lvl 2: 20 archers Lvl 3: 30 archers [*]Mix Lvl 1: 4 skirmishers + 4 archers Lvl 2: 8 skirmishers + 8 archers Lvl 3: 13 skirmishers + 13 archers [*]Stables ... [*]Siege-workshop ... [*]Fortress ... [*]Dock ... [*]... I personally believe that this would make the gameplay much more crisp. Building a structure would be a big decision with a clear consequence and would therefore be and important strategic decision. But if you build a structure and then are able to recruit an optional number of different units the decision to build that structure is just a trivial one. It would also be easier to balance the game when all these extra parameters are added. I'm aware of that this proposal is colossal and not easy to implement, but I believe in it and at least I just want to put it out there so that some inspiration might be drawn from it. So what do you think?

Pureon, you are really talented! I've been working on some 2d art for 0 ad for quite some time now, and it isn't even close to this! I don't want to be annoying, but as the GUI is present both pre-game and in-game, shouldn't the "0ad-factor" be more present? The problem I imagine with the mockups is that it's to defined in a historical context - it just looks very roman to me. What if you play Gauls vs Persians, then the roman style would be strange. I found this stone texture which I think has very much of the right feel in it: http://enframed.devi...exture-19249532 It's raw and has these "layers" that makes it look even more raw, like a material that the stuff in the "0ad-place" is made up of. The dota 2 logo also have something about it that makes it prehistorical: http://imagesci.com/...-wallpapers.jpg Combining this raw stone with those really nice gold flourishes (with maybe a bit more gold-ish colors? gold is quite neutral when it comes to early civilizations) could maybe look good and add the "0ad-factor". One idea would be to use the stone texture instead of the red (on which the title of the window is displayed), make the flourishes more gold and have a dark version of the stone texture as background on which the text is to be displayed. How to achieve simplicity and clearness with these elements can however be hard. As with the A N E, my idea would be to have a breadcrumbs-button with icons. Ally could be represented as two shields (witch a blue background/theme), neutral as a laurel crown (green) and enemy as two crossed swords (red). Also, is the "Theirs" really necessary? Shouldn't marking a player as enemy mean declaring war, marking ally to propose ally (it's a treaty that both parties must accept) and marking neutral would be to propose a peace treaty or cancelling an alliance. Before the other player has accepted a proposed change the proposed button could have a colored outline. If the list would be rotated so that each player has a "column" instead of a row, then you could fit the players civilizations emblem, which would be cool. Edit: a little picture attached: Edit 2: fixed the picture a little

How do you mean? It looks different than your references, but that's because I used one that came up in the Ptolemic thread, and that one didn't have distinct feathers. I do think however that I should change the head a little to be more like the one in your first picture. Forgot to thank you earlier, but thanks for the encouragement!

I know I havn't posted in a while, but I havn't stoped working on the logo and other 0ad projects I have taken up. Among those things is an emblem for the ptolemies. It's not finished but I'm doubtful whether it's a good idea to have the ptolemies' emblem to be a coin/shield, because then how do you fit in any egyptian elements? As with the logo I can't seem to find the right feeling, maybe it's to dramatic? The project files for the images can be found in the attached zip-file, feel free to play with them! Edit: first time I saw the new logo on a white background, doesn't look good... The only thing I like with it is how the "A.D." look an a dark background. Maybe what I'll try next is to just apply a nice texture on the logo and have very ambient lightning. projectfiles.zip

Ok, so there's a long way to go, but that's alright with me! I think that I'll leave this project (logo and icons) for a few days (or minutes) so that I can get a new perspective on it when I come back to it. I did however make a quick experiment by just changing the colors. Still far from unfinished, but I think the silver colors are better.

Thanks for the help and feedback Micket and Frenchiveruti! I signed the legal waiver and tomorrow I'll fix the border issue, make a zip with the project files and convert the .pngs to .ico Totally agree hehehe

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.

Hello, I find this project really interesting so I spent some time to be a part of it, and so I made a new icon for the game. Hope you like it! I also made a new logo, not sure if it's 100% ready. Apreciate any feedback! (too dark? it looks different on darker backgrounds...) I have also started on a logo-animation, but it's far from finished and I don't even know to what it would be used, so I think I will wait with finishing it. I can't upload the project files (.blend). Any ideas? I see this contribution just as the beginning, next thing i'm interested in is the UI, and that in a broader sense, not only in terms of GUI but also how you select units, give orders and so on. I also have some ideas for gameplay changes, but they are so extensive that I would probably have to make a seperate mod to implement them in (and that might be too much work). I got experience with 3d editing, video editing, some 2d graphics, music and even some programming (very little). Looking forward to the future of this project!