wowgetoffyourcellphone

Chronicles: Battle for Greece is kind of like how I envisioned the entirety of the 0 A.D. franchise. 0 A.D. Empires Ascendant (500-ish B.C. to 1 B.C.) then 0 A.D. Empires Besieged (AD 1 to AD 500-ish) then 0 A.D. Kingdoms Reign (AD 600-ish to AD 1200-ish) then we go back 0 A.D. Golden Age (1500 B.C. to 600-ish B.C.)

The current treasure gathering restriction for boats limiting it to only Merchant Ships is a legacy from time before the inclusion of the trading feature. It basically gave them a function in-game while trading was being developed. There's no "logical" reason other ships can't gather treasures other than this.

That's a challenge, for sure, but not insurmountable.

In AOM, there's a special death sound Arkantos makes @0:14 Then a V.O. says to everyone:

https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/issues/7103

We need a better tooltip for the Obstructors. Something like, "<Building> cannot be placed on this terrain."

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Hippeis#Early_formation

They essentially did that with Return of Rome DLC

I can't believe that they didn't take some inspiration from Delenda Est...

I didn't write the historical epitaph. lol

I meant, do we want one long narrative campaign, or do we want to go with the newer ideas presented in that video of lessons that are self-guided.

Colossus of Rhodes What think? EDIT: Fixed typos.

It's true that we don't need fancy new UI code to start on the scenarios. But, it must be decided first what form these tutorials will take.

Yep, this is what we should do, in concert with a more traditional guided tutorial campaign/series of scenarios based on skill level.

I wonder if you'd want to figure out a way to use the construction obstructors in your map script. These objects prevent construction of buildings, but allow passage of units.

We can have "Game Tutorials" and "Practice Matches." The Game Tutorials teach you things via guided learning. They are grouped by difficulty or advancement. You can play them sequentially or you can jump between Basic, Advanced, and Elite levels. These tutorials largely teach you mechanics, but in the Elite group of matches you learn strategies too. Practice Matches are grouped into groups based on type, such as Economic, Combat, Booming, etc. They are more freeform and unguided, but the only way to win is by completing the main Objective(s) of the match. In these matches, you are pushed and harried by AI opponents, who keep pressure on you while to try to complete the Objective(s). You can set the difficulty of these matches like you would any singleplayer Skirmish, and you are rewarded (somehow) by completing the Matches at higher difficulties.

Oooooooo. This is very nice, especially at the 6:00 timestamp: So, what we could do is, don't have a "tutorial campaign" per se. Instead, have various missions that teach you new things that players can play at their leisure. You could play them sequentially, but it's not necessary to do so; you could just jump to "Advanced Map Control" for your 2nd tutorial lesson if you wanted to, or if you tried playing online and were utterly demolished, you could go offline and play a relevant tutorial mission to help teach you what you lacked online.

A checkbox option: "Play Sequentially?" that locks them in order.

It depends if there is some kind of narrative through-line. If the campaigns are relatively self-contained, then there's no reason to lock them in order. But if there's some kind of progression designed into an overall storyline, then locking them in order makes sense.

Such a grande planne™ is fine and all, but would take 20 years to complete. I got time (I hope), but just understand how much work this is. Starting with a tutorial campaign as you mention there is key to such a plan. It proves it can be done and with quality. Personally, I don't want something just thrown together. We are long past putting low quality content in the game. While this stipulation slows things down, it at least keeps the game consistent. So, let's develop a tutorial campaign first. Block it all out, scenario by scenario. Decide what the goals for each scenario are first. Here are some random thoughts: It would be a cool "behind the scenes" thing to name each scenario after a piece of music in the game (and then have that piece of music by the first song you hear). Each scenario can be a different faction, so the player can passively get comfortable with the varied factions, at least comfortable with the aesthetics and names of everything. Each scenario must have a goal in mind and revolve around that goal. "What are we teaching the player in this scenario and what are the steps to do it?" The goals for each scenario should have a natural progression and escalation. Start with basics and work up to higher level things. We can't teach every single UI feature, hotkey, gameplay feature, or strategy in one tutorial campaign, so choices must be made on what to teach and what to let the player discover on their own. We will need UI code to allow us to highlight things in the UI. Flashing icons. Circle overlays, etc. And the trigger scripts for these things. So, if the narrator tells the player to click the Hoplite button in the UI 5 times, then that button should flash and we have some kind of overlay to highlight it (a circle over it, an animated arrow, sparkles, something). Not only does this help move things along, player will expect this kind of user experience polish.

I like seeing it like this, in graphical form which creates immersion, rather than just a list of scenarios as in more modern games. The reason it's no longer done like this is less about and aesthetics than about the fact that it takes time, energy, etc. ($$) away from development elsewhere. Since we don't have a budget per se, the money consideration is taken away and all we need is someone to come along and want to create the assets to make this work, then have a programmer who wants to slap it together. Once the framework is in place, then creating the 2D assets for the maps and icons to click for the next scenario is pretty simple. Creating the campaign(s) and scenarios themselves doesn't have to wait for some great UI like in those images in order to commence design and construction. The game already has the "simple list" UI for basic campaigns.

The UI, the aesthetics, everything looks incredible. I love the leader (hero) selection graphics, Hell, all the graphics. Everything looks very very well put together. Color grading. Graphical cohesion. This is a benchmark for UI and in-game aesthetics moving forward.