wowgetoffyourcellphone

I've always wanted 0 A.D. to have a dedicated server to host games.The benefits seem overwhelming to me. To see a WFG programmer say the same is definitely gratifying, even though I realize the rewrite would be immense. I have no doubt WFG could "afford" such a server. It's all about the time and effort it takes to do it.

2nd error is something that won't occur with the rebundle. I will remove the Xion and Scyth assets completely. But they will be in the Git repository. Please ignore all Xion or Scyth errors while playing the git version. The 1st error about the Roman scorpion is the one that I can't reproduce.

Gathering a team means more people to complain about things and second guess (and third guess) every gameplay decision. And then people end up hating you and then you burn out hard after @#$%king up a fundraiser. Perhaps I am being oddly specific.

The 2nd one won't happen with the rebundle. The first one with the bolt shooter I cannot recreate. Can you sync git and see if it still happens?

Yes, hard counters ensure every unit is useful. Yeah, uh, some elite archers in EA have something like a 0.6 second firing rate. Whaaaaaaat? Not every archer in antiquity was Lars Whatshisname or Legolas. The whole diplo screen needs redesigned. I can design something nice, but I have no skills to implement it. Absolutely. Let's do this. Do you know any programmers? lol Yeah, I was watching a Battle for Middle Earth 2 campaign walkthrough the other day and I miss those cool battalions. Was playing Rome 2:Total War last night and missed the battalions. I proposed to allow certain civs, such as the Celtic and Iberian civs, the ability to allow their battalions to "garrison" into forest groves for an ambush effect. 1 or 2 battalions per grove. Forest Groves, such as those in DE, solve many issues and open up the possibility for interesting gameplay additions.

Night/Day cycles never really made sense, since game time actually represents years and years of settlement growth. So, then the day/night cycle would rotate every 2 seconds. But it is a game after all, so concessions can be made in the name of coolness. Season changes make way more sense, and with them can come different lighting conditions definitely (and flooding on Nile and Tropic maps would be cool). But again, as you mention, it takes a programmer to come along who's interested in implementing that kind of stuff. I'm about to make a thread regarding my sound effect ideas, but I know, again, that it needs an inspired programmer to make it happen. Crazier things have happened.

Adding hatches and doors everywhere is not really necessary but sure knock yourselves out. The biggest and probably most pertinent thing mentioned though is the design of the Roman barracks. It's a lot bigger than other barracks for some reason and retains the old pre alpha layout. I like the back 2 story section but the front half could use redesigned. The Greek CC tiles could use filled in a bit and leave a few missing ones along the edge.

I made them require Town Phase. So, it's still good to capture the merc camps in Village Phase (there's a pop bonus for each merc camp, and it's probably good to keep your opponent from capturing them too), but you can't train the mercs until Town.

So, I have no idea how to fix the siege unit packing error that throws all kinds of text all over the screen, but things work just fine as-is. I may go ahead and bundle within the next day or two. We'll just have to endure the inevitable barrage of "bug reports." lol

Yeah, uh, the 0 A.D. mod selector screen is suuuuuper anal about some things, version numbering being one of them. What's the official mod's rebundle going to be versioned? 0.0.231? Can't have 0.0.23.1 like it probably should be, because you're limited to only 2 periods. Another is the "name" of a mod not allowing spaces and capital letters and other things. Why can't I title my mod "Delenda Est", which is its name/title? Why must it be "delenda_est"? I guess 0.0.231 will be DE's rebundle.

It already works in DE with the Empire Phase auto-researching when the Wonder it built. The only thing that doesn't work is the chat notification and the sound effect, otherwise the auto-tech works as expected. I don't mean simple tech pairs. I mean when you click the phase icon (or whatever tech it is), then a dialogue box opens with choices, like this: Hyrule:Conquest, as far as I know, uses a modded UI to achieve something like this. I can imagine plenty of mods using this feature.

I like that little camera in the bottom right. Looks like different views can be saved to 1-6. It would be interesting if the little camera would snap to the location of the last major event.

Right. If battalions were implemented, I could see a situation where we change this to a thing where the player manually promotes a battalion if enough XP or Glory or whatever was gained. Or... if battle detection was honed like what we're talking about, the 3-5 seconds of cheering after a battle could be when the units are automatically promoted in rank.

I don't know. How does the engine determine a "battle" is in progress in order to fire the battle music?

"Local superiority" was a term I was using to differentiate from game victory. What I mean is, the player's units have defeated all enemy units within vision range after a "battle" has been detected by the game. Then they cheer for 3-5 seconds. The cheering in this instance isn't invulnerable; if they are attacked then they respond. They wouldn't be cheering at all if they could be attacked though, as that would mean there are still enemy units within range. I am not 100% sure about all edge cases, but it seems to work out just fine in Age of Empires III without any issues.

I would really suggest that you guys fill out the square footprint for the CCs of each civ. Byza's got it right, while the others are meh. I understand muh realizm, but you don't have to fill out the front with structure, you can fill it out with a fence or rails or props or a well or all of the above to help them look similar to the other CCs in the game (I know not all CCs look alike, but even those that don't fit the layout still fill up a the whole footprint. Just a suggestion to help the civs integrate better with the look of the game. Plus, a CC that fills out a whole square footprint looks more substantial and important.

Haha, well, yeah. lol Didn't want the list to get too long. lol. Also, didn't want the list to turn into a "Make EA into DE" thread. Sockets are definitely desired. Reducing number of stances and formations is already possible without new code. Honestly, the forum seems kind of dead lately, so I posted this thread to liven the place up. I think the "drama" things might be pretty easy, for instance, snapping the camera view to the victory trigger at the end (can turn this off in options if you want to, but honestly it makes sense to keep it on so you can be sure of what actually caused the victory or where that last darn villager was hiding), throwing an inspirational quote onto the screen when you win should be easy, though it would be nice to have font support so we can have nice big well-rendered text (the audio can come later: Would be awesome to hear Alexander's voice in Koine Greek extol the virtues of valor). The engine already has "battle detection" for the music, and it already even detects when the battle "ends" to stop the music. Is it hard to extend it to detect which player's units have command of that area when the battle has been detected as ended, and then trigger the (5 second) cheering state for those units? I don't know. Another suggestion is that the "core game" should start to be getting referred to as Empires Ascendant more often. I'd even change the /public/ mod folder to /empires_ascendant/. Who knows how many "official" mods WFG could release for pyrogenesis in the future and they can't all be called "public" or "core game" or whatever. But maybe that's a change for the future if/when any other official mods are released. Wouldn't hurt to future proof it now though. @fatherbushido Nahh. Maybe watering wells can be capturable map objects that boost health of your units by 5% or something. No need for new buildable buildings though, especially not for the purpose of building farms on farmlands, which can already be accomplished with existing structures. Except for a couple of new civ-specific special buildings (Yakhchals for Persians @LordGood), I think the Barracks-split buildings should probably be the last new buildings, unless y'all add Cult Statues or something interesting like that.

First off, we're not members of WFG, so whatever they do is up to them and that's cool. But we do have a list of awesome things we'd like to see in the game, either in Empires Ascendant or possible with the engine for mods! My 17 year old son, Wow Jr. who plays Empires Ascendant and Delenda Est a lot (he also plays Age of Mythology, Age of Empires III, Rome 2: Total War, and Battle for Middle Earth II a lot too), has helped me with the list. In no particular order: When you achieve victory, the camera should snap to the location of the event that triggers the victory, so that you are not confused as to what occurred. Battle for Middle Earth II When achieving victory or achieving local superiority, your soldiers stand around and cheer. Battle for Middle Earth II (end-match at victory), Age of Empires III (when achieving local superiority) When achieving victory in general it needs to be more exciting or dramatic. Right now it's kind of dull. Maybe an inspirational audio quote from a civ or culture specific icon like Alexander the Great or Hannibal. Likewise, defeat should feel more dramatic too. Battle for Middle Earth II, Rome 2: Total War Soldiers in battalions. Battle for Middle Earth II, Rome 2: Total War Choices when phasing up or at the beginning of the match. Age of Mythology, Age of Empires III, Hyrule: Conquest Automatic phasing based on city size (population or number of buildings or both, don't matter). Clicking the "tech" which costs resources to phase up the city seems weird, when you could conceivably build 100 buildings in "Village" phase and have max pop and nothing happens. Building snapping to each other, making neat clumps and general neatness. Good for houses and farm fields especially. Age of Mythology, Age of Empires III Note, we don't mean a grid. The snapping alone is good enough in these games without a grid. Farmlands Delenda Est, but not as hacky as DE's implementation. Naval Battles need some love. They move weird. We understand they can't have 100% realistic movement like in Rome 2, but something a little better than now would be nice. Battle for Middle Earth II's ship movement was nice and fluid. Age of Empires III's ship movement wasn't horrrrrrible. Ships should probably just be shrunk in size and forget about the whole "garrison troops and siege weapons on the decks" idea unless you're really going to put a lot of effort into making that work. If you shrink them, then make them customizable to approximate the original intent of garrisoning archers and siege weapons and stuff. Ramming. Just a simple double-click charge attack. Speaking of which: Charging. Would be cool for melee units to have a charging ability, especially if the game has battalions. A simple double-right-click could initiate the charge. Can make it act like a rechargeable special ability and/or base its effect on distance. Add a "mass" stat that can determine the effect of the charge and how hard it pushes the target units around, if trampling effect occurs, etc. Rome 2: Total War, Battle for Middle Earth II Goat conversion. Age of Empires series Animal Fattening Age of Empires series Jr. especially misses this one for some reason. Fear and Morale Not like in Total War where your units become uncontrollable and run away, more like in Battle for Middle Earth II where units are afraid to attack certain targets or are slow to follow orders. I'd imagine sending a battalion of basic-ranked spear dudes to attack a bunch of squadrons of Armored War Elephants would instill a bit of trepidation. lol Run Amok for some units, like War Elephants and Chariots. They go Gaia and attack everyone around them, including once-allied troops. Gain +100% attack and speed, but start to lose health. Can be converted back to your side with Priests. Rome 2: Total War Priest Conversion ability. "Wololo." Age of Empires series. Jr. didn't know what "Wololo" was. lol Mercenary Camps and Villages like in Delenda Est. Just in general, things to make the map come alive more, or make map control more interesting. Merc. Camps are a good way to do this and are easily implemented. What do you guys think? We think all of these suggestions fit together just fine. Not too random. Jr. also thinks this UI is "beast."

Works. They build Cult Statues now. Their placement is a little weird, placed like towers on the periphery, but I can't complain for now. Added to repository, will be in 23b. Thanks @mimo!

I forgot about this. Would this patch be compatible with A23?

Yes, please. Don't automatically nerf graphics options just because not everyone can see them (yet). I remember a time when the team poo pooed the idea of normal maps or even self-shadowing (!). Another thing we need is lighting conditions to affect particles correctly, such as smoke and dust.

So, if we get glow maps implemented we can have light sabers. Nice.

Wow. Glow maps/spec map rendering go wacko?

Just a random thought. I like the current Gaul building set because it is nicely visually consistent. Any updates to the models should strive for the same level of visual consistency in the end. Hold yourselves to a high standard.