wowgetoffyourcellphone

If you play the Git DE, you get to preview a lot of cool stuff that official dev version hasn't yet implemented. I like to take all the new stuff added to the game and immediately play with it and iterate and try to get as much out of it as I can to showcase all the hard work of these guys as best as possible. Plus, perhaps my experimentation can be added to the core game or at least inform the team members on how the cool features and assets they've put in their game can be used, and then they decide. You can try out stone quarries right now on the Saharan Oases 2 and 4 skirmish maps. You can also gather food, berry-style, from these gorgeous fruiting Date Palms by @LordGood:

Hey thanks. I should probably update it................. Whenever it does get updated though it's going to be so much better. Luckily those with the dev version of the game can play updated DE now from Github: https://github.com/JustusAvramenko/delenda_est

Won't using 1 giant texture necessitate a model for each texture, since the UV would need to change? So, what you'd be doing is trading many textures for many shield models. Cost-benefit analysis for this? And would this make modding more difficult?

As an aside, I think it would be super sweet if Iberian houses would "snap" to walls when being placed and look like this. Standalone houses would look like they do now, but if you "snap" them to walls they'd line up into row houses. Ima dreamer.

It's probably good for someone to go through and standardize the texture sizes. 512x512 for a unit texture, for example, would be excessive. And then comparatively, it wouldn't make sense for a boar texture to be larger than a unit texture. No need for helmet textures at 512 if an entire unit is 256. Got to look at comparably sized items in the game world. A small vase should be 128. Etc. Judgments need made, but it would be good if artists made those judgments before they committed them. It's been better lately, but I am sure some stuff has fallen through the cracks.

Someone asked me recently how I manage to make the game look so good in my screenshots. One of the major reasons is I refuse to use half of the assets in the game. If I think some tree models are ugly, I don't use them. If I don't think some terrains are up to snuff, I don't use them. I don't care about visual variety, I care about visual coherence. Just a thought. It's one of the reasons I am so excited about @LordGood new assets here. They're a much-needed update! I'd like to see some of the older/uglier gaia assets updated, definitely! If you would update some of the existing trees , bushes, and rocks that maps already use, then you can automatically make maps look better without touching a single line of map code. Some older stuff that can use updates: flora_tree_tamarix flora_tree_fig flora_tree_olive flora_tree_aleppo_pine (I like the funky and distinct trunk shapes, shame about the texture/canopy geometry) flora_tree_pine (a mix of "generic" pine trees) props/flora/bush (dire geometry) props/flora/bush_desert_dry_a (I use this one a lot on my maps, specifically desert and snow maps, but the geometry of the mesh leaves a weird "hole" in the middle) a lot of the "bush" actors in general. Only the small ones are good as-is (like props/flora/bush_medit_sm and _dry, I use those a lot) A lot of the decorative "stone" actors too. I use geology/stone_{biome}_med a looooot for general spiciness. I hardly ever use the larger stone actors because most of them just don't look any good, lol. If some of these can just be updated, then boom, a lot of the maps that use them automatically look a ton better. Same goes for the existing terrain textures.

I am very much in favor of streamlining the maps in the game. There are currently 90 random maps in the game, of extremely varying quality. Many of them don't really follow any kind of theme, some are generic, some are specific, some are "novelty" maps. I'd rather a game have 10 supremely high quality random maps, than 90 random maps that are "all over the map" in quality and theme, lol. That's not to say that the game should only have 10, but 10 amazing maps would be better than 1000 mediocre maps. Ideally, each map should represent the game at its best. New players booting up a map that looks and plays bad would not bode well for the rest of the map set as far as setting expectations. Part of the problem is that the maps can only (understandably) use the assets that the game provides and the assets themselves vary in quality too. It would be great to go back and either (preferably) update or (unfortunately) eliminate some older legacy assets which are just not up to snuff, then adjust the map scripts accordingly. Some kind of overhaul is needed, definitely. Discussion can be had about how to organize the maps too. Novelty maps, like Snowflake Searocks I think should be organized separately from maps which are highly focused on the game's themes like Jebel Barkal. Just to name a quibble. Sorry, went on a tangent. Hopefully I didn't annoy anybody like @elexis

I like some of the UI elements, like the gold icons.

These are going to look super nice. So, are any of the old Celtic shield assets going to be retained?

Thems cliffs are the hotness.

This is a great idea, actually, so I don't have to make multiple versions of the same map with different numbers of players.

While not ideal, DE makes this work with the 'Upgrade' feature. You can switch the Maiden Guard from Sword to Bow to Flaming Arrows and back.

I've been rolling around in my head simply removing named heroes from skirmish mode entirely (but keeping them for scenarios, campaigns, and Herocide of course) and splitting off their uses to other units, such as Officers, Bannermen, etc. I could foresee an option to "upgrade" one of your Officer units to a General (or some other culturally specific designation), which is now your civ's "Leader" with extra bonuses and benefits. For certain Naval-centric civs, perhaps one of your Triremes could be upgraded to Flagship, with aura and other bonuses, or one of your Officers upgraded to Admiral.

@Sundiata's latest work

I reduced max gatherers to 4. Since you have to overlap the quarried objects, the pathing can really only allow about 4 units to gather from the individual blocks without lots of bad bumping into each other and shuttling glitches. These are starting to look really nice. For cliff ones, I wish they were taller/extended further downward.

I believe max and min distance can only apply to objects already under the player's control, not gaia-controlled objects. Instead, could have neutral generic mining camp dropsites on the map next to the quarries that players can capture.

I'm starting to think that the stone quarries should look exactly like this from the start. But yeah, a quarry "diminishing" as it's being consumed is something I've wanted for a while. It could be an extension of the "damage" feature maybe, which is already in-game. I could imagine a "claimed" quarry would have ladders, scaffolding, etc. show up.

3. Should all factions have a battering ram? Yes, even if just 2 or 4 dudes carrying a log. In fact, you could have the "dudes+log" be the default battering ram in Town Phase, and then there be a "Covered Battering Ram" upgrade come in City Phase.

So, the "weathered" variations of cubic look nice m8. I put the sharp cubic ones under the large quarry objects so that it'll look carved up when they are depleted. Not perfect yet, but still nice. The quarries themselves aren't great for this purpose and there could be some nice custom jagged "quarry" objects underneath instead, but the concept is there.

Another vote for SSAO.

The coolest @#$% ever. Mongolian Hard Rock.

lol okay, then what's the consensus? Is this something that should just be fixed in core game?

I see what you mean, but honestly, if the game acquired a model that looked like this, I wouldn't be angry in the slightest: One of the things I like about this sculpt is her facial expression (you may disagree). To me, she kind of looks otherworldly or even psychotic in a way, with her bulgy eyes staring straight through you. Kind of like how I'd imagine a supernatural goddess of war to look. Like she could snap her fingers and murder you without giving it a 2nd thought. We are insects to her, or unfortunate collateral damage at best. She only really cares about any one individual human being when that unfortunate person pisses her off. Just an interesting interpretation of her visage.

Surely the kennel is a gameplay convention similar to the fact that all civs have a "barracks" even if the concept of a barracks is an anachronism. I agree about the cost though. I've said before that costs in this game are super weird.

What's so wrong about the Nashville reproduction? The pose and general details seem accurate.