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Palaxin

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Posts posted by Palaxin

  1. 9 minutes ago, maroder said:

    either that, or a specific one for each civ.

    You mean something like über hoplites for Sparta, über elephants for Mauryans etc.? I fear that would be a bit too special. I want to make room for 2-3 choices so you can act according to your current circumstances. However I could imagine there are 5 endgame technologies and each civ can choose 2 or 3 out of them...

  2. 8 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

    I like these. What if by building a Wonder you unlock a 4th phase ("Empire" Phase, possibly), which unlocks these kinds of über technologies? Maybe each structure can have at least one 4th phase über tech, which is unlocked by building the Wonder.

    if you ask me 0 A.D. should just incorporate Delenda Est totally :D

    • Thanks 1
    • Haha 1
  3. What about instead of the population bonus, wonders allow you to research one of three (cf. heroes) possible endgame technologies that are designed to end a close match:

    • economic boost: 1500 food, 1000 metal, 500 wood
      for women: +50% carry capacity and gather rate, +25% construction/repair/walking speed
      for citizen soldiers: +25% carry capacity and gather rate
    • defensive boost: 1500 stone, 1000 wood, 500 metal
      for buildings: +25% HP, capture points and capture regen rate, +5 HP/s regeneration
      for units: +25% HP, +1 HP/s regeneration
    • offensive boost: 1500 metal, 1000 food, 500 wood
      for units (including siege engines, ships): +30% attack and +15% speed
    • Like 3
    • Thanks 1
  4. 1 hour ago, nani said:

    Very interesting, could you link to where that decision was made?

    probably this one:

    On 02/12/2014 at 12:51 PM, niektb said:

    In fact hard counters were removed in Alpha 17 after it was deciced (with a good discussion) that a soft counter system is easier to balance (dunno which topic)

    The idea was to implement counters purely by gameplay mechanics such as charging for cavalry, directional attacks, formations, camouflage etc. Many of these things would consume "stamina", that would regenerate slowly...

    Basically to implement counters by making combat more realistic...

    Many of these features are still in the official list of planned features, but honestly I do not see progress in that direction (may be also due to some programmers not active anymore that were willing to implement these features)...

     

    1 hour ago, borg- said:

    The problem is that you are able to maintain historical realism.
    Javelins for example were effective against heavy infantry and not long-range units, but either way it can be adjusted and I like how you think.

    Yeah you are right... I prefer historic realism as well, my point was more to establish are clear counter scheme (that is clear/stable enough to not change overall strategies because of minor balance changes)

    1 hour ago, ChronA said:

    borg ninja-ed me. For most people, what is intuitive is based on how Age of Empires 2 did things. But that is often a far cry from historical reality.

    true... I have to remind myself more often of that!

    1 hour ago, thankforpieOfficial said:

    BRING BACK A23 BCUZ I CANT PLAY OTHER CIV THAN OP GAULS

    bold of you to assume that 0ad players care about history

    I do not think there are "0ad players" in general... some care more about competition and gameplay, some more about history, some about city-building, ...

    The game will always attract different players but I think it should stick with its roots

  5. 20 hours ago, a 0ad player said:

    I think the current unit vs unit balance and various types of units are good. I think new to a24 is the hard counter of archers vs. infantry spearmen/ slinger. In a23 the direction of the counter was reversed as long as there were not a large number of archers (affected 2-3 civilizations).

    At the moment I see the counterattack units as follows:
    Bow: hard counterattack against infantry spearmen / slinger
    Spear: counters bow
    Melee cavalry: very hard counterattack archers
    Infantry spearmen: counters spear
    Slinger: counters spear and building

    AFAIK many years ago there was an official decision to only use soft counters in 0 A.D. (no fixed attack bonuses). That already has changed. However, it's not always that intuitive. Intuitive, for me, would mean about (+ soft counter ++ hard counter):

    • ranged infantry
      • archer: + heavy infantry ++ light infantry - spear cavalry -- sword cavalry
      • slinger: + light infantry ++ heavy infantry - spear cavalry -- sword cavalry
      • javelin: ++ ranged - spear cavalry -- sword cavalry
    • melee infantry
      • spear: + cavalry - ranged
      • pike: ++ cavalry - ranged - infantry
      • sword: + spear infantry ++ pike infantry + siege -- ranged
    • ranged cavalry
      • archer: + heavy infantry ++ light infantry - spear infantry -- pike infantry -- spear cavalry
      • javelin: ++ ranged - spear infantry -- pike infantry -- spear cavalry
    • melee cavalry
      • spear: ++ cavalry + ranged - spear infantry -- pike infantry
      • sword: ++ ranged + siege - spear infantry -- pike infantry -- spear cavalry
    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1
  6. 35 minutes ago, PhyZik said:

    People are different and some are toxic like PhyZic. It's ok.

    There will be less people agreeing with you on that than what you think there are people supporting A24. You may spread toxicity but the result is that you alienate people around you even if some may agree with your arguments. 0 A.D. has been declared (near) dead several times in the past and right now it rather seems the opposite. Development has increased and that won't change because someone feels the need to be disrespectful. It is obvious that not everyone can be happy with all changes, but everyone can participate in a respectful manner.

    • Like 2
    • Thanks 1
  7. On 15/11/2015 at 12:53 PM, Lion.Kanzen said:

    RTS UI is hard. Improvements for the hardcore are almost always in opposition to improvements for the casual.

    I just had an idea: what about supporting two ingame UIs natively, i.e. a "casual UI" and a "competitive UI" (+ maybe an "observer UI")? Apart from the extra work for the developers, wouldn't that solve the problem of different player types?

    Maybe @borg-@ValihrAnt ("competitive") and @Nescio@Sundiata ("casual") could say something about their preferences...?

    • Like 3
  8. On 05/03/2021 at 4:26 PM, ChronA said:

    1. A complete RTS tutorial system should be split into 3 separate and stand-alone segments:

    i. A primer on RTS controls and concept for completely new players.
    ii. A gameplay tutorial that teaches the specific skills needed to play the campaign and skirmish matches.
    iii. A multiplayer introduction that teaches fundamental skills and strategies players will need to know to be competitive in multiplayer.

    2. We should be able to skip any of these segments or complete them in any order.

    I like the way Age of Mythology did it. Basically a simple story for i. and ii. that let you get to know the main character. There was a smooth transition to the main campaign, however, you didn't miss anything essential when you skipped the learning campaign.

    I would advocate a continuity between i., ii. and the main campaign, however, each part should be playable on its own right from the beginning.

    • Like 1
  9. Not sure if that already applies to the tutorial campaign, but definitely for further campaigns:

    Make 3-4 distinct difficulty levels so you can increase the challenge and replayability. Difficulty should not simply affect AI and their gather rate, but also

    • number of starting units
    • trainable unit types
    • number of starting buildings
    • buildable building types
    • starting resources
    • collectable resources and treasures
    • (already) researched technologies
    • researchable technologies
    • type, frequency and impact of trigger events
    • ...
  10. 5 hours ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

    The A.D. B.C./C.E. B.C.E. system for chronology has been eliminated.

    I think there is no truly "neutral" and universal language for that... Even if you would go strictly scientific and define years by a universal constant as the speed of light c, that would confuse most people and would still presume our scientific view of the world as mandatory (when you look at all cultures in history and even present, many have different views and explanations of the world as a whole)...

    So years are usually counted relative to an event important to a culture... which for the Western World for many centuries has been the roots of Christianity.

    For 0 A.D.'s civs that is somewhat arbitrary since

    1) our timeframe is before Christ

    2) many civs probably had their independent naming scheme

    As with Christianity, Roman and Greek culture has been important as well for the Western World, so I could follow your proposal. However, Rome was still small when Persians, Macedonians, Mauryans reached their peak so you could as well pick their system...

    1 hour ago, hyperion said:

    Miles, pounds, gallons have been eliminated, what does it mean for the US?

    barrels, feet, inches, °F (not that °C is that much better), mmHg and whatever... Same reason as above, but at least make one system for the "Western" world (better for all the world)

    • Thanks 1
  11. 4 minutes ago, vladislavbelov said:

    For gamers - yes, for our audience - I doubt. A lot of people are far behind modern technologies. Sometimes I've been asked what do we do to support toasters. I'd love to switch to Vulkan and more modern techniques. But it's impossible at the moment to target mainly for 4K.

    I understand we want to provide a game also for limited hardware. And I am happy as well when my 7 years old ultrabook with 4GB RAM, i5-4200U and integrated HD 4400 can run games that are less than 15 years old :)

    But then I don't understand why models and textures get heavier with every update - at least there should be some kind of option.

  12. Thanks for the explanations. Yes exactly, I meant pixel perfect UI. I think that in several years 1080p will be minimum and 4K quite common, so we should aim to provide 4K displays with full detail. I mean it is kind of a waste if you scale up to 4K with low-res textures (so several pixels are essentially used for the same color reducing the effective resolution).

    So the UI elements you are talking about are just abstract elements (with the same relative proportions independent of resolution) which are filled with a texture that is chosen according to resolution. In theory we could have

    2n x 2n textures for 720p
    3n x 3n textures for 1080p
    4n x 4n textures for 1440p
    6n x 6n textures for 2160p

    where n is any natural number. Right?

    EDIT: if we want more different resolutions then

    4n x 4n for 720p
    5n x 5n for 900p
    6n x 6n for 1080p
    8n x 8n for 1440p
    12n x 12n for 2160p

  13. yeah you're right, my words are misleading

    I know about the automatic window scaling in some cases and gui.scale (but I never used it since I have a standard 1080p screen).

    9 minutes ago, vladislavbelov said:

    You mean resolution or ratio?

    I mean the UI should horizontally stretch over a 3840x2160 display natively (without any scaling / reduced quality)

  14. 14 minutes ago, vladislavbelov said:

    Vector is good, but it's good for flat and simple design. Pretty usual for AAA shooters and actions.

    I have seen quite pretty vector graphics with a considerable amount of detail but I guess it takes time and practice...

    14 minutes ago, vladislavbelov said:

    Not all elements should be 4K, I'd say only big pictures, like the helmet. There is another way to save memory: 4K masks with lower-res textures. Low-res texture for colors and 4K mask (in 3D it's called detail texture) to make it more sharp on edges or add some tiny details.

    Sorry for the confusion, I didn't mean that each element should be 4K. I meant that the GUI as a whole should be designed for 4K displays, but the individual elements could have a much smaller resolution depending on their proportions... 4K masks sound interesting :)

    8 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

    The helmet seems to me exaggeratedly large and disproportionate.

    I wanted to include something that is decorative and breaks the straight lines - but I may come up with something that consumes less area...

    8 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

    Its interface reminds me a lot of Rise of Nations and Age of Mythology 

    AoM was one of the games I have played most, so I am biased probably...

    • Like 1
  15. 57 minutes ago, vladislavbelov said:

    Is it going to be scalable? Because it might be hard to move these nicely and tightly packed elements for a different display ratio.

    Actually that is a question that I had in mind for quite long - because if we redesign the GUI we should take every opportunity to make it scalable...

    vector images - major design decision
    + ideal for infinite scaling
    + memory saving (I guess)
    - a lot of work (to use it consistently)
    - I don't know much about their usage in RTS and if their technical implementation is feasible

    huge bitmap images (full details on >=4K displays)
    + basically the same approach as we use now
    + not all GUI elements need to be redesigned (but may still be better)
    - takes a lot of memory (even more if we do not scale them down dynamically but use a set of different resolutions)

    no scaling / what we use now
    + least amount of work
    - GUI would shrink extremely for huge displays (limited to the central part)
    - no future-proof solution

    I think I would go for high resolution bitmaps for this part (500 B.C. - 0 A.D.) of the game and for something fancy - ideally vector graphics - for the second part (0 A.D. - 500 A.D.) in the far future...

    EDIT: My personal skills don't allow me to fully flesh out these ideas as e.g. @LordGood would be able to do - I am probably limited to deliver ideas drawn by hand...

  16. Thanks for the feedback, @Dragonoar

    To be honest, I had most of your concerns in mind, but I was mostly focusing on the overall layout, proportions and impression. I wanted to give an example for a "framework" around individual buttons/icons/words...

    • hoplite helmet (something else for other civs) could only be added/visible for higher resolution where it would not negatively affect the functional UI
    • not sure about the shields... if functional (e.g. for stances and formations) at least 5 would be needed - otherwise agree
    • yeah vase probably overkill... - could replace the big hoplite helmet e.g. for Athens
    • player name could be put in the central roof triangle (forgot the actual name for that element in greek architecture)
    • agree healthbar is better (was just quickly/randomly putting some symbols in there to fill the space :P)
    • I would associate laurels also especially with romans, however I couldn't think of a better replacement to decorate the minimap
    • regarding pop cap - as I said I didn't go for the details
    • the +/- was intended to indicate units this unit is strong/weak against (as a shorter way for listing classes, damage multipliers etc.)
      of course this doesn't mean that other useful information could be shown as well
    • yeah need to think again if formations go somewhere to the shields or (probably) into another field
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