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Kimball

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Posts posted by Kimball

  3. Experience Level System

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Interesting idea. For the three, I wouldn't see anyone choosing the expeditionary force over direct reinforcements. You'd be best off having two packages of different units to cater to your needs (ie. one group of infantry/cavalry or a group of siege+hero).

    I don't like the thought of integrating AoE3's trading post system. I much preferred AoM's method of trade: sending caravans from one market to another, given that the market on the receiving end is owned by you or an ally. Instead of sending actual units though, perhaps just creating a trade line between two markets would automatically send your merchants on their way unless you specifically pull them away from it. This system would also better support your "looting" idea.

  4. Idea for a mod: Fall of Man

    in Game Modification

    Posted

    Being that there would be no means of international communication, as Blade pointed out, this post-apocalyptic union would be vastly limited to the immediate region. In most cases, there would be no desire to venture off into a land where you could potentially need to kill another "tribe" because it wouldn't take long to recognize that the entire world had been @#$%ed on this one. Keep in mind, the average modern day citizen knows very little about the wilderness and survival apart from the hours spent in front of the Discovery Channel. Perhaps a few centuries down the line, if we somehow manage to overcome the radiation, we may eventually be civilized to contact other people, find a reason to kill them and follow through with war.

  5. Idea for a mod: Fall of Man

    in Game Modification

    Posted

    Although your concept sounds cool, there seems to be one minor issue with your idea. I honestly don't see us waging international war in a post-apocalyptic situation. Those that survived would be far too devastated by the experience going from the information age to the bronze age to have any desire to kill people. I'd envision the world somehow banding together over a matter of years and attempting to restart civilization.

    But seriously, I would play this mod.

  9. Ready to help test.

    in Game Development & Technical Discussion

    Posted

    Hey Mark! Welcome to the community!

    Unfortunately, there is no official team spot for testing the game out. We may employ a small group of private beta testers in the future to help us polish the game before we make an official beta release, but that may not be for as much as a year from now.

    One of our goals of releasing the game as open source was to make the game and code available to the public. This enables the community to help us test for bugs and errors. As such, we wholeheartedly welcome you to the community and encourage you to submit any errors you find in the game. You have the option of Trac or right here in the forum.

    I must warn you that the game will likely be a hassle on Windows 7 in the current revision. We haven't had an opportunity to debug the game on 7 yet, but we will. All in due time.

    So for now, feel free to browse the forum, hang out with the community and find the little things that we may have missed!

  10. Pre-Alpha

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    If you find you're unable to directly contribute to the game, you're always more than welcome to help us promote the game. More interest in the game means more contributors and the possibility of an earlier release date!

    I'd encourage you to visit our Get Involved page and scroll down to the giant bold header that reads, "I'd like to help, but I don't know how to develop games!" There, we provide you with the information you'll need to help us market the game. You could also print out flyers to hand out, or simply tell your friends about the game. Any way that you can get the word out about our game is helpful. (y)

  12. Issues

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    2. Soldiers are trying to attack trees. They should either be able to really chop them or don't do anything at all (maybe just walking there)

    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.

    4. Buildings can be built in a way that citizen are trapped

    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! (y)

  14. Are "Old School RTS games" a dying breed?

    in Announcements / News

    Posted

    People say players hate random events. I say a certain degree of randomization is essential in order to keep the game and genre fresh for players.

    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 also wish somehow RTSs could move away from build orders and strat-@#$%dom. I wish RTSs would be more dynamic and adaptive. Dynamic doesn't mean more 'splosions and cooler particle effects. In these new Starcraft 2 pro 1v1 videos I see on YouTube, two guys who their strat and build orders before the game even begins and play out those strats to their logical conclusions. I see no innovation on-the-fly.

    What happens in competitive RTS gaming is one guy comes up with a new strat or build order, then everyone else copies it and adds it to their repertoire. Part of the problem also is that most RTS games do not use random map scripting. Random maps, IMHO, force a certain degree of adaptation and innovation that pre-made maps do not.

    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?

  21. Models

    in Game Development & Technical Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Kimball

    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. :)

    Steam for the rest of us?

    in Gaming Discussion & Match-making

    Posted

    It is undergoing private beta with selected teams, but no word of exactly when it will be available to the public has been announced. For your project to be eligible for featuring on the preliminary runs of the site, your project must be featured on ModDB and released. Betas will be considered if they are high quality. Half-assed work won't be considered.

  25. If you could ... where would it be?

    in Introductions & Off-Topic Discussion

    Posted

    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.

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