Nescio

From binaries/data/config/default.cfg: [hotkey.selection] add = Shift ; Add units to selection militaryonly = Alt ; Add only military units to the selection nonmilitaryonly = "Alt+Y" ; Add only non-military units to the selection idleonly = "I" ; Select only idle units woundedonly = "O" ; Select only wounded units remove = Ctrl ; Remove units from selection cancel = Esc ; Un-select all units and cancel building placement idleworker = Period ; Select next idle worker idlewarrior = ForwardSlash ; Select next idle warrior idleunit = BackSlash ; Select next idle unit offscreen = Alt ; Include offscreen units in selection The names are slightly misleading (see session.js); what is actually checked are these entity classes: idleworker: "FemaleCitizen", "Trader", "FishingBoat", "Citizen" idlewarrior: "Unit+Melee", "Unit+Ranged" idleunit: "Unit+!Domestic" Good point! That's easy to fix, though: hotkey.selection.idleworker = Period, NumPoint hotkey.selection.idlewarrior = ForwardSlash, NumDivide hotkey.selection.idleunit = BackSlash [EDIT] https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3029

Hello and welcome! This project could use experienced artists. Before any contributions can be accepted, you have to sign https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/16802-legal-waiver-please-read-this-before-contributing/ 0 A.D. has very limited biodiversity, so more animals will certainly be appreciated! There are lists at https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/23840-gaia-animals and https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/22944-fauna-requests , but other animals can be accepted to, if they're correct and complete. And there are many other things that could be done (ask @Stan`); basically it's up to you to decide what you want to work on, and when. Have you tried installing the development version ( https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/BuildInstructions )?

Actually Σπαρτιάτης Spartiātēs ‘Spartan’ is a singular; it's declined like πολίτης politēs ‘citizen’, so the plural is Σπαρτιᾶται Spartiātai ‘Spartans’. The female equivalent is Σπαρτιᾶτις Spartiātis ‘Spartan woman’, which is declined like παῖς pais ‘child’, so the plural is Σπαρτιάτιδες Spartiātides ‘Spartan women’. For other things, the adjective of Σπάρτη Spartē ‘Sparta’ is Σπαρτιᾱτικός Spartiātikos ‘Spartan’ (plural -οί -oi).

If I understand correctly, what your mod is doing is add a “units trained minus units lost” graph? In that case the values are strictly incorrect (starting units are not trained, therefore the graph starts at 0). Moreover, units you delete yourself don't count towards “units lost”.

Domestic animals are units and can be trained (and killed), but do not count towards population. What does your mod do with them?

Does that matter? The important thing is people see there is activity. Not too many, I suppose, however, it is the official page of the game, and when people visit it, they see the start of the last three posts, in this case June 4, 2020; April 30, 2020; September 12, 2019; which doesn't look very promising. Besides, the same message could be posted on various social media, of course.

August 2020: This month there have been 96 commits, or 78 without autobuild. Wildfire Games thanks everyone who has contributed to 0 A.D., directly or indirectly. Interested in participating? Visit our forums or join our irc chat. That should be enough. Boring perhaps, though better than silence.

Well, I've said it before and I say it again: it would be great to have monthly posts on the official site and elsewhere, even if they're only one or two sentences. The September to May development report was nice and all, but long texts are less likely to be read in full, and more important than summarizing everything that's been done, is to remind the public regularly that 0 A.D. is very much alive and active. A24 is far from finished, but the upside is that the longer it takes, the more other things are done too; A24 already has more commits than A23, which was already significantly larger than any previous release.

Do meshes that are not used affect perfomance? E.g. are kush assets loaded into a mace vs pers match? Also, surely it matters how often something is drawn? E.g. swordsmen have swords most of the time, whereas knives appear only when gathering meat? Anyway, more important than the number of variants is that the fact the dagger is replaced by a knife, and even that's only a minor detail visible when zooming in and paying attention (yet still an improvement, hence this thread).

For comparison, the falcata.xml uses 5 variant meshes, gladus.xml 6, xiphos.xml 5, and kush_nubian_mace.xml 15, and I daresay their shapes are more similar than the 5 knives in @MrLux's screenshot. Besides, those other weapons are used by only a few actors, whereas the knife is used by the slaughter attack animation of all infantry and female citizens. I don't know how much it affects performance, though I wonder whether it's significant in this case.

If we don't know how something looked like, then artistic licence is perfectly fine (e.g. Colossus of Rhodes). However, when a site is excavated and studied and when there are reliable sources, ground plans, photographs, reconstructions etc. available, then the structure in 0 A.D. should be based on that. The current apadana certainly isn't. Reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate in the Pergamon Museum Berlin: Ishtar Gate in 0 A.D.:

@Stan`, over a year ago you redid the foundation actors ( https://trac.wildfiregames.com/changeset/22239/ ), so now many more are available (thanks again!): 1x1, 1x2, 1x3 2x1, 2x2, 2x3, 2x4, 2x5, 2x6, 2x7, 2x8, 9x9 3x1, 3x2, 3x3, 3x4, 3x5, 3x6, 3x7, 3x8, 9x9 4x2, 4x3, 4x4, 4x5, 4x6, 4x7, 4x8, 9x9 5x2, 5x3, 5x4, 5x5, 5x6, 5x7, 5x8, 9x9 6x2, 6x3, 6x4, 6x5, 6x6, 6x7, 6x8, 9x9 7x2, 7x3, 7x4, 7x5, 7x6, 7x7, 7x8, 9x9 8x2, 8x3, 8x4, 8x5, 8x6, 8x7, 8x8, 9x9 9x2, 9x3, 9x4, 9x5, 9x6, 9x7, 9x8, 9x9 A 10x12 was added later, for the Mausōleion ( https://trac.wildfiregames.com/changeset/23577/ ); other wonders don't have matching foundations, though that's not really important, I suppose, since they're not built that often. However, palisades, low stone walls, and fences are much narrower than city walls, therefore it would be great if you could add the following sizes: 1x4, 1x5, 1x6, 1x7, 1x8, 1x9 4x1, 5x1, 6x1, 7x1, 8x1, 9x1 which would be quite useful for mods, especially if and when longer palisades are added ( https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/28064-request-longer-palisades/ ).

There is also https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/parsehpersepolis-3c0b8c6410cc486a98841f6685784e0b , which isn't perfect, but allows one to rotate and view the Persepolis terrace from different angles. No. Various Persian structure actors (apadana, civil_centre, gardens_struct, hall, palace, pers_ishtar_gate) are rather problematic and ought to be redesigned at some point, ideally. However, that's a lot of work.

Thank you, they look nice! What you can do is put your meshes (e.g. knife_01.dae) in the correct location (art/meshes/props/weapons/), insert them as variants in the (existing) art/actors/prop/units/weapons/knife.xml file (cf. xiphos.xml), open Atlas, select a female citizen or infantry, switch to the actor viewer (bottom left), select the attack_slaughter animation, and click “Slow”. By the way, in the future, could you upload files as a .zip? .rar is a proprietary format and not available on all operating systems. Also, how do you want to be credited (see gui/credits/texts/art.json)?

https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3018 While I can propose patches, make suggestions, and raise concerns (anyone could), I don't decide what makes it in and what not. https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2815 would give all civs rams (kush would reuse the pers (i.e. Assyrian) ram actor), and multiple people are in favour; however, others have pointed out it would make civs more similar to each other, so I don't know what'll happen eventually. Actually something has to exist before it can be enabled, i.e. art has to be created first, unused assets are fine; a gameplay patch can follow later.

A poor choice of words, I apologize, I should have written e.g. which analysed Meroitic iron artefacts from the 3rd C BC onwards. Again, I'm not trying to disprove Kushite iron. This I fully agree with, hence https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2815 Thanks for the clarification. The fact the different calibrated dates of a single sample don't overlap surprised me. Anyway, I'm confident the authors know what they're doing. Nonetheless, it's important to carefully read what the article really says, and look at the actual data before jumping to conclusions, hence why I pointed the appendix.

Nothing. All I did was post what Herodotes wrote on Ethiopian troops. The fact they used stone-tipped arrows struck me, and reminded me of an article I read last time we discussed Kushite iron, which I gave. That's all. I'm not trying to prove Kushites didn't have iron. Nor do I really care when or where they first started producing it. Though it would be nice to know if and when the rank-and-file adopted iron-tipped arrows. (Likewise, the existence of lead bullets didn't mean sling stones were no longer used in the Greek world.) Ethiopia is everything south of Egypt (or India). And they were armed men, not captives (i.e. slaves): they came from entities that deemed it opportune to send auxiliaries to the Persian ruler, for whatever reason. So yes, it's unclear where exactly they came from, though it must have been from within the wider Persian sphere of influence. Yes, a lot has happened since then, however, that does not mean the article is outdated. The Abdu and Gordon 2004 and Humphris and Scheibner 2017 analysed different things from different areas using different techniques; the latter does not supersede the former. Articles complement each other; the more research and scholarship is done and published, the better our understanding of the past becomes. Oops, my mistake. That's a bit misleading: of the 97 samples analysed, only one is from the 8th C BC, the MIS-4-2-13/N/4052 – Outlier, C-14 dated to 2590±42 BP and calibrated to 749±77 BC (carbon isn't constant, it fluctuates (climate change etc.), hence the need to calibrate absolute datings). Fig. 4 Current radiocarbon chronology for maximum time range of iron production at Meroe and Hamadab. The modelled potential maximum calBC/AD start and end dates of the slag mounds are illustrated according to the 95.4% ranges of the probability distributions of the respective earliest and latest date. i.e. the timeframe within it can be safely dated (95.4% = 2σ).

More examples of knives: Great Britain: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1958-0704-2 https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1975-0701-2 France: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_ML-1348 https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_ML-1595 https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_ML-2514 Italy: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/247082 https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1982-0617-63 Greece: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1919-1119-47 https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1920-1122-2 https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1975-0730-20 Syria: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1913-1108-32 Iran: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/32572

The passage in question is what Herodotus believes to have been the situation during the war c. 480 BC. It's unlikely the Persians had conquered Kush proper, so the “Ethiopians above Egypt” presumably came from the vicinity of Egypt, i.e. Lower Nubia, hence me pointing out Abdu and Gordon 2004. (Interestingly, Herodotus' description broadly matches the Nuba mercenaries in 0 A.D.) It's well sourced, peer reviewed, and also referenced in Humphris and Scheibner 2017. You can try a Sci-Hub mirror, e.g. https://sci-hub.st/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2003.12.011 The article analysed objects from an earlier archaeological expedition to Lower Nubia, grouped in the following periods: And points out significant differences (chemical composition, metallic structure, quality) between various periods. Moreover, Meroitic ironmaking is clearly distinct from both the Mediterranean and Egypt, and sub-Saharan Africa, indicating a different origin. That's not what the article says. Figure 4 indicates error bars; for more details, see the tables in Appendix A. It's possible ironworking there was ironworking at Meroë in the 8th C BC, but that's not the same as “well established”. More important than when the first iron objects are dated (e.g. ‘Kushites were capable of making iron arrow points’), is when they become common (e.g. ‘Kushite arrow points were iron’). As for the Near East and Mediterranean, iron objects were already made in the Bronze Age and bronze continued to be used in the Iron Age; nevertheless those periodizations are still useful, since luxury goods and common items are not the same. Meroitic metallurgy evidently evolved over time; it's plausible Kushites opposing Cambyses' expedition in the 6th C BC were equipped differently from those opposing Nero's expedition in the 1st C AD. You see the same elsewhere: Greek and Persian warfare during the expidition of the Ten Thousand (401–399 BC) was already somewhat different from that during the Second Greco–Persian War (480–478 BC). How to represent that in the anachronistic fantasy 0 A.D. is, is quite another problem.

Variants as in slighly different shapes (meshes) for the same weapon (prop). For instance, xiphos.xml has five variants, kush_nubian_mace.xml 5×3=15. It doesn't have to be that many; one is enough, three would be nice, five is great. It's a minor detail, meant to avoid repetitiveness in game. Besides, mass production did not really exist in antiquity, every knife would be slightly different. The knives in the stelae of the opening post and the pottery @Genava55 posted all follow the same design, but are not exactly identical. You don't have to do research or reproduce them exactly, some artistic licence is fine. Basically a few variants of the one you made would be nice. It's up to you.

@MrLux, whilst one is strictly enough, more are welcome, so if you fancy a bit of extra work, feel free to model a few variants, e.g. with varying curves, lengths, thicknesses. @Stan`, maybe rename the existing prop? https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3015

Herodotus on the “Ethiopians” in Xerxes' army at the Hellespont in 480 BC: Now it is unclear how far Persian influence extended and Herodotus is not always known as the most reliable author, nonetheless, the suggestion that the “Ethiopians above Egypt” didn't have iron weapons at the time (5th C BC) is fascinating, and consistent with the finds from an article discussed earlier: Brook Abdu, Robert Gordon “Iron artifacts from the land of Kush” Journal of Archaeological Science 31 (2004) 979–998 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2003.12.011 which dates “Early Meroitic” iron artefacts to 3rd C BC onwards.

As you know I'd love to add citizen infantry axemen and champion chariot archers for the Kushites, as well as various Libyan chariots for Carthage and Persia, however, appropiate actors have to be created first before their templates can be enabled.

Those ancient knives are not unlike (modern) machetes:

“All” is too strong a word. However, domestic mammals were generally killed in much the same way as is still done under Jewish and Islamic law today: say a few words, slit the throat in a single move, and let the animal bleed to death. Regardless, daggers are weapons for stabbing people, not tools for killing animals.