The Undying Nephalim

Hmmm, I added prop-bones. One of them worked, though two of them are not working when I load the model up. bone_head is working, but not bone_Lhand and bone_Rhand. Maybe I did something wrong: hyl_townguard.dae Does something have to be done in the skeleton.xml file, perhaps?

So I'm probably going to have to redo all my animations with new bones?

Some more animation confusion. I can't seem to get prop attach-points to work. Looking at the tutorial it says the bone needs "prop-" in it's name, yet I'm looking at 0AD skeletons and none of the bones have prop-

Most of my animations seem to working in the engine, however occasionally sometimes my models seem to blink out of existence for a frame, like so: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vs18kk1itgscncz/AnimBlink1.mp4?dl=0 It's not consistent either, sometimes the same animation plays with no blinking, sometimes it does. Any idea why this might be happening? That's pretty handy, less to worry about.

I'm running into some confusion about animations again, specifically skeletons. How exactly does an Actor.xml look up and know what skeleton.xml to use?

EDIT: Nevermind, figured out the question I asked.

Sentry towers ended up being the example I needed, looks up building upgrades work flawlessly. Here's another sort of related question, is it possible for a tech to replace props that are attached to specific units? For example a tech that replaces all the Shields on a unit with a new and better looking shield prop?

A question, how can you make a building upgrade itself into another building? I figured the Civic Centre was an example but its upgrades seem to be techs as opposed to the building changing into a new one.

Thank you so much, this is pretty detailed and helpful. Even spotted the Prepare Time problem I ran into mentioned there.

Comparing my template files to the new ones in 0.22, it seems this new line might have been the problem: <PrepareTime>1000</PrepareTime> This seems to have been absent from the template files in 0.21, and needed in 0.22 template files. Adding it into my template files seems to have fixed most of my units. My buildings are still messed up, but I'm guessing there's probably similar additions to building template files that I need to add in my files. Is there some sort of changelog with a list of things that changed between 0.21 and 0.22? It might be able to help me narrow down some things. I apologize if it seems like I exploded, I just got a bit irked when I had finished a civ only to have the whole thing explode in my face because of a version change.

Well I've still had no luck at all fixing anything. The new update seems to have literally broken everything for my new civ. Units are no longer showing up as trainable in buildings, my worker units wont even spawn and their icons are blank. Everything was working fine and now nothing. I guess I'll start with this: <p class="error">ERROR: RelaxNGValidator: Validation error: units/hylian/hylian_town_guard_b:1: Element Attack failed to validate content</p> <p class="error">ERROR: RelaxNGValidator: Validation error: units/hylian/hylian_town_guard_b:1: Expecting an element Entity, got nothing</p> <p class="error">ERROR: RelaxNGValidator: Validation error: units/hylian/hylian_town_guard_b:1: Invalid sequence in interleave</p> <p class="error">ERROR: RelaxNGValidator: Validation error: units/hylian/hylian_town_guard_b:1: Element Promotion failed to validate content</p> <p class="error">ERROR: RelaxNGValidator: Validation failed for '(null)'</p> <p class="error">ERROR: Failed to validate entity template 'units/hylian/hylian_town_guard_b'</p> <p class="error">ERROR: RelaxNGValidator: Validation error: (null):0: Extra element Melee in interleave</p> Any idea what's going on here? It seems to be tied to the template I'm using. When I change it from a spearman to an archer they magically work and show up as a training option in my barracks.

I downloaded SVN Tortoise, the newest pyrogenesis exe, and I'm installing visual studio (taking an insane amount of time to install) I'll attach the mainlog here: mainlog.html EDIT: Would I be able to redistribute the pyrogensis.exe with new releases of my game? I realized a problem with using the dev build is I would have to base all my mod's releases on when 0AD releases a public version. I have a really frequent release schedule for updates and I don't know that I want to tie my releases around 0AD's public stable builds.

Well some bad news, I downloaded the new version of 0AD and it pretty much broke all the work I've done. My main menu is frozen with tons of errors. I'm also locked out and cant disable the mod or exit the game, I have to end the process: I had gotten a new faction to work and everything, but it looks like the new version of 0AD has really messed around with some templates:

Another question I had asked but didn't get an answer to, is it possible to scale the size of a model and animation in an xml file?Say I have two units that use a Biped skeleton, but one is three times larger. Can I just simply scale up the skeleton in an xml, or will I have to import animations that have been scaled up in blender? Thanks I might look into that. For now I might stick with stables builds.

It ended up being default_support_female_citizen, but yup it works! That's actually a pretty nice workaround for spawning faction specific units without having to place them on skirmish maps in Atlas.

I'm guessing this is the section in the civ json file? "SkirmishReplacements": { "units/hylian/hylian_citizen" : "units/hylian/hylian_citizen", "skirmish/units/default_cavalry" : "units/rome_cavalry_spearman_b", "skirmish/units/default_infantry_melee_b": "units/rome_infantry_swordsman_b", "skirmish/structures/default_house_10" : "structures/{civ}_house" }, Does Count work here like in other areas of the json file? Or if I wanted more of the same unit I'd just make copies like so: "SkirmishReplacements": { "units/hylian/hylian_citizen" : "units/hylian/hylian_citizen", "skirmish/units/default_cavalry" : "units/rome_cavalry_spearman_b", "skirmish/units/default_infantry_melee_b": "units/rome_infantry_swordsman_b", "skirmish/units/default_infantry_melee_b": "units/rome_infantry_swordsman_b", "skirmish/units/default_infantry_melee_b": "units/rome_infantry_swordsman_b", "skirmish/structures/default_house_10" : "structures/{civ}_house" },

It seems in skirmish mode that game tries to replace the starting units I have defined with pre-set ones (4 workers, 4 soldiers, etc) Is there any way to disable this? I want my factions to start with specific units that I define in their json files, and not be forced to use civ_support_female_citizen naming conventions. My factions are going to have radically different styles of workers, so being forced to use the civ_support_female_citizen convention will not do. All my stuff shows up just fine in Atlas, just seems like Skirmish mode force-replaces the stuff I want factions to start with.

Well I figure out how to get the main menu animations to work, check it out: https://www.dropbox.com/s/n4b4r6wggoxg4u7/HyruleConquestMenu2.mp4?dl=0 Here's the the static image:

Another question, how does one change the background images on the main menu? This is the closest I got to figuring it out, "sprite": "background-hellenes1-1" in a json file. So it would be possible for units to gain resources from attacking buildings, but only when the building is destroyed?

Thank you for some more answers! Seems like almost everything I want is possible in some way. To specify one bit: I mean showing up in the UI at the top left. Say I want faction A to have a Gold resource but faction B to not have any Gold, I don't want the Gold icon or numbers to show up in the top left. Is this at all possible in the engine?

That's pretty awesome that a majority of these seem possible. Another question, is it possible to scale the size of a model and animation in an xml file? Say I have two units that use a Biped skeleton, but on is three times larger. Can I just simply scale up the skeleton in an xml, or will I have to import animations that have been scaled up in blender? So what you are saying is Unit A switches to Unit B, which has a different attack, and then is forced to somehow switch back to unit A? Maybe a hidden ability that causes the unit to switch back when a timer goes off? I'm not familiar enough with abilities to know if things like auto count down timers work or not.

Very awesome, I'm liking this engine more and more. It seems so much more modder friendly than Medieval 2. I have a string of questions I'd like to ask, just so I can gauge what is and what isn't possible in the engine before I start porting over rosters of units from the TW version of the mod. Any answers are greatly appreciated:

EDIT: I Reinstalled Blender, and the skeleton imported properly now. Must have been a setting I tweaked when I used blender awhile back. Point is, it works! Thank you so much for your help and this tutorial. I think I'm convinced to port to 0AD, now that I can bring in my animations without much hassle. A small question though, since 0AD uses props that you can attach to models and I plan on tweaking me weapons to be attachments: Do the weapons have to be skinned to the joints they shown up on, or are they just placed at 0,0,0 and locked on the joint defined the xml file? Can props have their own skeletons? For example if I wanted a flowing cape, would the unit have to have a skeleton with the cape or could the cape have it's own separate skeleton?

Here you go, I also included my finished Blender file: HTW_biped_idle1.dae hyl_knight_idle.blend

I tried following the instructions with a different animation. I got it to actually import into the engine with no errors! However I must have missed a step or done something wrong, as the animation is all messed up: Maybe you can figure out what step went wrong from the dae I exported from Blender: Htest_idle1.dae