Kimball

Tactical withdrawals don't really work in other RTS games. Most opponents will always chase you down.

This is because not all soldiers have harvesting animations yet. We've set the animation to be the same as the attack animation until we get one done. This has been a problem in every single RTS that I've ever come across thus far. Because the game has no way of detecting whether the unit is trapped, there's really no easy solution for this. My recommendation? Keep your units away from buildings that are in progress, unless of course they're helping build it. As for your other bugs and feature requests, some are known and others are new to us. Thanks for the report!

Welcome to the team, Goblor! You might not see much of me around, but feel free to message me on MSN if you ever feel lonely.

I agree that players hate random events to a certain degree, likely due to the fact that when it occurs, you have nothing to blame it on but the game. In AoM, if an earthquake is invoked and it takes out your entire city, you can be angry at the other player and seek revenge. If a game randomly decides that today is not your day, you have nothing to be mad at but the game itself, leading you to put it on the shelf to collect cobwebs. If a random event suddenly spoils the hours of work you've put into attaining a certain level of achievement, the random event has instantly turned your interest away from the game. Let's say you're playing a game in which you develop a massive empire. If a volcano erupts and wipes out your entire civilization, leaving you only to start over, that would be a terrible random event. You would probably stop playing the game, because who knows what else is going to thwart your hard work? Another example of a bad random event is one that gives you too much. Let's say I'm playing a game where money is involved, and I randomly find a suitcase with $100,000,000 inside. Well, now the game just became 15x easier because I can buy my way to the credits. Not fun. There are good kinds of random events though. Random events that do work well are things that only affect a small aspect of the game. For example, in GTA, you'll occasionally find your favorite super car. That's a great random event. Or in SimCity, a UFO takes out your power plant and you have to build a new one. While it's not quite as favorable, it's not extreme enough to force you to quit. You'll cut your losses and move on. Random maps, on the other hand, I don't think classify as random events. That's basically a method perpetuating the game by creating a new environment for the player while maintaining the same parameters for play. It ensures that no two games are the same, and that's exactly what players seek. People are always looking for new maps to play in FPS games, and the RMS of our strategy world fills that deficiency pretty well. I don't think the RTS genre will ever drop build orders. There will always be a way to get ahead in the game by following an order of operations. We can make up for this with the placement of resources or inconvenient terrain layouts that force the player to think differently. One area that most RTS games tend to skip is actual combat tactics. Economic micromanagement is great and all, but when will flanking an enemy actually benefit you in an RTS? It seems like battle tactics have been, for the most part, ignored in the modern RTS. It's all about knowing what units your enemy has and what units of yours will counter them. It's more data-driven than tactical. Perhaps we should rename the genre to real-time statistics?

Agreed.

Personally, I'd recommend doing a Photoshop mockup before you go messing with the code. Once you've got what you want, you'll find everything you need in: /binaries/data/mods/public/art/textures/ui /binaries/data/mods/public/gui Good luck!

I find this amusing.

I may be a little late in this discussion, but I was wondering if this is still feasible. It'd make GUI development overall much easier from my perspective, and as you said, you wouldn't have to worry about rewriting everything 3 times. Also, as kaiserfro pointed out, we'd be able to test the UI without actually running the game.

Although we really appreciate your enthusiasm, it's not our job to figure out what you're good at. I would recommend checking out the Application Form to see what positions are available and if you are eligible for one of them.

These are better classified as guidelines than maximums, but I wouldn't recommend you go too far over them if you don't want your game to lag.

Hi Scion! Welcome to WFG! If you're interested in contributing to 0 A.D. as a member, you're welcome to fill out an application form. If you just want to contribute a few models, catch me on MSN and we can find a task for you. MSN: [[Edited out to prevent spam mail]] Edit: Excuse my ignorance, I wasn't aware that you had already filled out an application form. Feel free to contact me.

Arizona has some of the best sunsets I've ever seen/photographed.

Let's go with, D. All of the above.

Although this may sound like a typical trip of a recently graduated high school student, my friend and I are planning to visit Europe this summer. We'll start in Spain for the running of the bulls, then to Rome, Sicily, fly up to London, Eurostar to Trier and then of course, Amsterdam. After that our itinerary is sort of open-ended to whatever we see fit to finish off the rest of the trip. I'd estimate ~2-3 weeks.

Thanks for posting this.

If you are interested in contributing to 0 A.D., we only ask that you fill out an application form and post it in a new topic. Copy the code above and fill out the form here.

Congrats on getting the game working! As far as technical issues like slow animations and pathfinding functionality, we're quite aware. This "release" of sorts is intended for developers, and is still VERY much incomplete. As far as help, we could use a few more experienced programmers that are familiar with C++. The engine's learning curve often detracts a potential contributor's interest in joining.

Guest votes only count in the event of a tie, which is quite rare.

The 2009 Mod of the Year Awards are upon us! This year, ModDB has granted us a new award category: the Indie Game of the Year! In previous years, many full-game titles were recognized, but not quite to the extent that they will be next month. We humbly ask for support from the loyal fans that have stuck with us through thick and thin for 8+ years now. Here's how you can help: 1. Register for an account with ModDB. Not only does this benefit us, but grants you access to one of the most active indie development communities on the internets. Remember: Your vote doesn't count unless you have an account! 2. Visit the 0 A.D. Profile and scroll down to the giant "VOTE FOR GAME" button. If you have a heart, you'll know what to do. This is Stage 1/3 of the awards process. You'll have to vote twice if you actually care about us. Stages are as follows: But, why? If we win, not only do we receive a ton of attention and some cool prizes, but the projects that win these awards have proven to receive an increase in contributor applications. That means more developers working to finish the game you can't wait for, which means you get to play the game sooner! So for the hyper-selfish among you, this is for you. We made it to the Top 100 (in the top 8 of our category) last year, let's shoot for the top 3 in 2009! Thanks for voting, and Merry Christmas on behalf of WFG. We thank you for your continued support.

The current state of the game may not be of much entertainment value in its present state to a non-developer. Personally I would advise waiting until the game is released publicly, else you may not find what you're looking for.

Here's a WIP outline that I started a couple years ago in hopes of converting 0 A.D. into the dream AoM-remake. Here's a few mythical beasts that fit the current profile. Couldn't find any Iberians or Carthaginians though.

Nice find, Erik. Great site. All they need to do now is to connect it to an online degree system that allows you to take the tests and earn the degree just like you were taking the class. That and add some more courses, of course.

That's the great thing about 0 A.D.; modding is open ended. Instead of limiting the community by controlling what content can be modified, we intend to allow the community to forge nearly anything in our custom-built design environment that is not only beginner-friendly, but allows experienced modders to let their creativity flourish.

This is good news though. Because we didn't win, we now remain eligible for the following year.