Nescio

As you may have noticed, there is a new stable release of 0 A.D., a lot of things have been changed since 2018, and most mods designed for a23 will no longer work. I've started writing a new version of my 0abc mod from scratch and included some of the basic things (silver resource, thrust damage, removed resource loot from units, cavalry requires 2 population and can't gather meat, disabled team bonuses, tweaked civ bonuses etc.): https://github.com/0abc/0abc-a24 Currently I'm unhappy with the session interface again, there is simply not enough room in the top panel for five resources and the player view control dropdown or build label:

No, there isn't, the gui scale scales the entire interface. As for why the icons are smaller than they used to be, this was necessary because some civs have more structures than could be displayed with the old 3×8=24 icons in the right selection panel (and it also improves mod support). People manage to find play0ad.com and download the game from there, so if they encounter problems, that would be a place to start looking. Actually there is a patch for that: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3037 However, for other questions a FAQ is still useful, e.g.: Why is 0 A.D. still an alpha? When will be the next release? Where do the screenshots go? Yes, proper font rendering (e.g. with pango) would be great to have. It would also remove the need to bundle Chinese etc. in separate mods.

It depends on your operating system, see https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GameDataPaths (There should really be a FAQ section on play0ad.com to deal with such questions.)

By the way, don't forget some technologies have specific names too: [technologies]$ grep spart * agoge.json: { "civ": "spart" } attack_soldiers_will.json: "spart": "Dynamis" grep: civbonuses: Is a directory gather_mining_serfs.json: "spart": "Heilōtes" gather_mining_servants.json: "spart": "Douloi" gather_mining_slaves.json: "spart": "Andrapoda" heal_range.json: "spart": "Olympic Pantheon" heal_rate_2.json: "spart": "Hippocratic Oath" heal_rate.json: "spart": "Sphagia" phase_city_generic.json: "spart": "Megalopolis" phase_town_generic.json: "spart": "Kōmopolis" pop_house_01.json: "spart": "Peristylon" soldier_attack_melee_01.json: "spart": "Xiphos" soldier_resistance_hack_01.json: "spart": "Spolas" soldier_resistance_hack_02.json: "spart": "Linothōrax" tower_watch.json: "spart": "Nyktophylakes" unlock_champion_cavalry.json: { "notciv": "spart" } unlock_champion_infantry.json: { "notciv": "spart" } unlock_females_house.json: "spart": "Thesmophoria" wonder_population_cap.json: "spart": "Peristasis"

Actually I'm not entirely sure how helpful that pronunciation is to people from different parts of the world. Maybe omit it from the introduction or keep it but add IPA (see name subsection) there too?

The link doesn't work, nor does it in https://play0ad.com/new-release-0-a-d-alpha-24-xsayarsa/#more-4707

That would work for the current situation, though if at some point mercenaries are made civilization-independent, we'll re-encounter that headache. Anyway, something to worry about then and there. It's not just the different sound changes I'm worried about, that part is fairly certain (at least for Doric), however, there is also vocabulary, e.g. Doric has κέστερ, Attic νεανίας ‘young man’. A dialect is more than just a respelling. Likewise, when converting British English to American English, changing centre and colour to center and color is the easy part, but maize vs corn is harder to spot. And English variants are very similar to each other, much less so e.g. Luxembourgish or Swiss German vs Standard High German, or Tsakonian vs Modern Greek. Yes, Linux makes a lot of things much easier. Nevertheless, surely Windows must have an option to choose a different keyboard? If switching from English to Spanish is possible, or from QWERTY to DVORAK, then it should be possible to use a layout with AltGr?

Could you provide the (polytonic) Greek too? Some people can read it and it makes it easier to spot tiny mistakes. And also list the entity template names (e.g. house), it'll help when writing a mod or patch. As for using Doric Greek in 0 A.D., I'm not necessarily against, however, I have some concerns: It may make players wonder the specific name of a Spartan entity is occassionally spelled differently than its Athenian equivalent, though that's not necessarily a bad thing. Furthermore, consistency matters. Doric was also spoken on e.g. Crete; in 0 A.D. the Athenians can recruit Cretan mercenaries; should their specific name be in Doric or Attic then? And should Aeolic/Boeotian be used for Theban units? The bulk of the Greek corpus is in Attic; having other dialects necessitates using reconstructed rather than attested forms. It depends on the keyboard setting you're using. The default US English has only two levels (without and with Shift), but switching to e.g. international adds two more, with AltGr (the key to the right of the Space bar). On my end (Gnome) I can type the macron with: AltGr+Shift+3 on the “English (intl., with AltGr dead keys)” keyboard AltGr+Shift+[ on the “Greek” keyboard They might have different locations (and keyboard names) on your operating system. Great! Vowel length is important.

No. As @Freagarach already pointed out, the only occurrence is in the `simulation/ai/petra/config.js` file, and you probably want to edit that file anyway (it's for adding non-standard structures). You could also consider keeping the `pers.json` file but setting "SelectableInGameSetup" to false. The map files could be fix with: find maps/ \( -name '*.js' -o -name '*.json' -o -name '*.xml' \) -print0 | xargs -0 sed -i 's,pers/,acha/,g' ‘Sasanian’ is the preferred spelling nowadays. Just Achaemenids would be sufficient. We don't have Mauryan Indians, Ptolemaic Egyptians, or Seleucid Syrians either. If you go down that route, though, you might want to consider replacing the Macedonians with the Argead and Antigonid dynasties.

Yes, I certainly do like consistency! However, the generic names in the simulation/templates/units/* files tend to reflect the specific name in the same file; hence why e.g. a spearman is called “Athenian Hoplite” and a javelineer “Thracian Peltast”.

It's intentional, yes, see https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2782 for the relevant discussion. I was actually in favour of preventing rams from attacking any unit, limiting them to structures only, but that was deemed too large a change; what was done is restricting attacks vs organic units, while still allowing rams to attack ships and siege engines.

Where to start? Standing armies were rare and standardized, mass-produced equipment was the exception rather than the rule. People were expected to bring their own arms. Citizens were typically not paid either, so people needed to be wealthy enough to be able to afford being away from land and family for weeks or months. The poor were therefore not expected to fight (and had limited political influence as a consequence). Nor were foreigners, freedmen, slaves. Cavalry was supplied by the rich, because horses were only useful for warfare and quite expensive to keep, so a lot of land is needed. While it's true archers, javelineers, and slingers may have the same function on the battlefield (psiloi, light infantry), they hailed from very different backgrounds. Archery is a skill that takes years to hone, hence something for the leisure class of families wealthy enough to have others work their land. Moreover, composite bows were delicate objects requiring great skill to make and great care to keep in good shape, they weren't cheap. Slinging requires even longer to master than archery, however, slings were basically strips of cloth or leather and picking up stones is free too, hence why they had very low social status; slingers typically came from poor, rural areas where boys herded the flocks (not necessarily their own) and used slings to keep the animals together, chase away wolves, and generally kill the time. Javelins, spears, swords, daggers, and (in ancient China and mediaeval Europe) handheld crossbows required little to no skill in comparison and could be used by basically anyone. Child mortality was very high in the premodern world, therefore people had many children in order to have a son survive into adulthood to continue the bloodline and take care of his parents in their old age. If multiple sons survived into adulthood and would all start a family of their own and divide their parents' property amongst them, then all would live in poverty; therefore it was not unusual for extra sons to try their luck abroad. Mercenaries were professional soldiers, unlike citizen soldiers, which were basically untrained militia. Even the Spartans were only superior in comparison: their famous agōgē programme included singing, dancing, chasing hares into traps and clubbing them to death, but not any really that much weapon training; it was more about fostering social cohesion and an esprit de corps (not entirely unlike the British public schools (i.e. private boarding schools)). As for marching and drilling, this too was more of an exception than a rule. Macedon indeed drilled its troops and practiced forced marches, which allowed their armies to move more quickly than their enemies expected, a not unimportant aspect, facilitating their military successes. Rome, too, had troops more disciplined than others, as well as much more flexible formations on the battlefield and chainmail. Most importantly, though, (and unlike Greek city-states) was the gradual extension of citizenship, which meant Rome had a much larger pool to draw troops from, allowing them to absorb losses and raise new armies. Anyway, the discussion is definitely going off-topic right now .

Such a simulator would be impossible to play and not fun at all. Conventions are not set in stone. Moreover, they depend on what you're used to. People who've never played Age of Empires will point to different things than people who've only played that game. That's exactly my point: other games shouldn't dictate what 0 A.D. does. Such claims are impossible to verify and therefore essentially meaningless. (No offence.) Not at all actually. We could have a poll, here on the forums and even social media, although a poll result isn't always the best measure for deciding on gameplay features. just saying that we could in fact, quite easily find out roughly what percentage would be in favor (and I'm sure it will be high). I shared one of the archery ranges on the social media accounts and there were no negative responses to the archery range at all. And it was actually quite a popular post. People will be wondering what happened to the archery ranges... What I meant is that the number of people who give feedback via the forums or other channels is really tiny compared to the number of people who've installed the game. Invoking the “silent majority” is always questionable. (As for polls, the way you phrase the question can determine the outcome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA )

Why me? Anyway, I've now standardized the German translation of “Javelineer” to Speerwerfer (instead of Speerkämpfer). Actually, healer and infantry heroes now have 1000 health, cavalry 1200, elephants 1500. Elephant heroes inflict more damage too (in A23 their damage per second was much lower than that of champion elephants). What has been standardized is that all heroes now have a training time of 50 s and cost 0 population. More important than health is their aura(s), which vary greatly in effectiveness. Heroes weren't balanced in previous alphas at all, however, in A24 heroes can be trained only once each, thus unbalanced heroes are now much less of a problem. Thank you, that's nice to know.

This discussion is going rather off-topic, perhaps someone should move it elsewhere. They're a necessary evil, without them the AI performs simply too poorly. I'd love to see free-standing tower disabled, but that's something for the distant future. Right now the AI can't even build walls. Yes and no. It really depends what and where you're looking at. An example from the The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare: Be careful with terms such as ‘peltast’ or ‘thyreophoros’, they can have quite different meanings. In Age of Mythology only Greeks had archery ranges and Cossacks and Rise of Nations didn't have ranges at all, to name just three (great) real-time strategy games. Aesthetics is not a convincing argument for gameplay balancing. And they're already in game (just not buildable by default) and can be used by maps. I dislike the idea of making ranges buildable, am unconvinced it would make 0 A.D. a better game, and won't be writing a patch for it; of course, others may. Something I would like to see is docks being split into economic docks and military shipyards. That would require a lot of new art, though, so I doubt it'll happen for A25. Separate chariot stables would be nice too. Such claims are impossible to verify and therefore essentially meaningless. (No offence.) Is it? Exactly! While we may look at other games for inspiration, we should do what makes sense for 0 A.D. Yes, me too. I've actually proposed a patch to remove cavalry from centres years ago ( https://code.wildfiregames.com/D896 ), but the communis opinio was against. Another idea I like is postponing the barracks to the town phase and making it train advanced instead of basic infantry.

Yes, this is intentional too: limiting warships to the super dock only is effectively a penalty. Moreover, Carthaginians were already able to construct quinquerenes at captured Roman or Ptolemaic docks. In A24 quinqueremes and fireships can be constructed at any dock, so if e.g. the Romans capture an Athenian dock, they can built Roman quinqueremes there too. Likewise, Mauryas can also train worker elephants and elephant archers at elephant stables of other civs and e.g. Macedonians can construct siege towers at arsenals captured from Romans or Gauls, to name a few examples. I'm not sure what you're referring to.

In A24 gates are actually garrisonable.

Yes, practice ranges exist for all civilizations in game and yes, they're unused. This is intentional. One reason is functional. In A24, the barracks is for infantry, the stable for cavalry, the elephant stable for elephants, the arsenal for siege engines, the dock for ships, the temple for healing, and the fortress for defending territory. We don't treat e.g. ranged cavalry differently from melee cavalry, so why should we have a separate structure for ranged infantry? The other reason is that we care about historical accuracy. While (semi-)permanent practice ranges are well-attested for mediaeval England, early modern Europe, or the present-day United States, there is no evidence whatsoever for their existence in antiquity. (Please prove me wrong if you happen to know of any.) Moreover, dedicated heavy troops (i.e. melee infantry) often had one or two javelins and dedicated light troops (i.e. ranged infantry) often had a sword as a sidearm. Just because Age of Empires has them doesn't mean 0 A.D. should do the same.

You should play the development version and familiarize yourself with the repository (see https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Finding_Your_Way_Around for more details). The core engine (pyrogenesis) is written in C++ and located under source/ Whenever something is changed there the game needs to be recompiled. Nearly all user-facing stuff is located under binaries/data/mods/public/ and mostly written in JavaScript, JSON, or XML. It's designed to be easily modifiable, all you need to do is restart the game for changes to take effect. You can also experiment with things in separate mods. When making differentials to upload at https://code.wildfiregames.com/ , always generate them from the root (i.e. where binaries/, libraries/, and source/ are located).

The new template would have five children, though it's not inconceivable more will be added in the future (e.g. camels). More importantly, it makes `template_unit.xml` and its other children cleaner, thereby also improving mod support: if someone would want to introduce templates for hot air balloons, zeppelins, tanks, helicopters, spacecraft, dragons, etc., then fewer lines would have to be disabled or replaced. I'll write a patch to better show you what I mean (and yes, I'll provide a sed script). Generally I prefer having fewer files and shorter file names. In the past I've written patches for deprecating `template_entity_full.xml`, `template_entity_quasi.xml`, and `template_unit_mechanical.xml`. I also think `template_structure_civic.xml`, `template_structure_defensive.xml`, etc. are not very useful and that the about two dozen `template_unit_fauna_*` templates should be reduced to two or three at most ( https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2953 ). However, in this particular case, I think the benefits of having a soldier template level outweigh the drawbacks, especially in the long run. No. Dogs are not soldiers and its contents are actually quite similar to dogs inheriting from `template_unit_fauna.xml`; the most important difference is the UnitAI. I actually contemplated a `template_unit_human.xml` instead of soldier, which could then also serve as a parent for support units too, but I think that's unnecessary and a soldier template is cleaner.

For those of you interested in Proto-Indo-European (PIE) or comparative linguistics in general, I can highly recommend: R. S. P. Beekes Comparative Indo-European Linguistics / An Introduction / Second edition [revised and corrected by Michiel de Vaan] (Amsterdam / Philadelphia 2011) It's a book that's both accessable and informative. Moreover, its well-structured bibliography provides a decent starting starting point in more specific subjects. Personally I also appreciate the simple maps and black-and-white illustrations in the appendices, which can already give anyone a taste of the great variety of early writing systems used in the past.

Thanks. Although I haven't read the book myself, I daresay it's worth a read. Anything published by Brill is generally high-quality. Moreover, books such as this, where various experts each contribute a chapter on a specific subject, tend to reflect recent scholarship and can greatly further one's understanding of a topic, as well as make one think about something from a different way than one would otherwise. That said, they're not introductions written for a general audience. (I don't know if that's the purpose of this thread.) This title is actually part of a larger series ( https://brill.com/view/serial/IMEM ), of which some volumes are open access.

Currently I'm contemplating inserting a new `template_unit_soldier.xml`, which would serve as a shared parent for infantry, cavalry, elephants, champions, and heroes; e.g.: The resulting template tree would be: The advantage is that it would allow for cleaner templates with less duplicate lines. The disadvantage is that as a consequence, dozens of generic templates have to be renamed and parents adjusted in dozens specific units/* files, though that could be done by script. Thoughts?

Hello and welcome! First of all, you don't have to be a team member to be able to contribute, in principle anyone could; a formal application is not necessary, though it is a nice way of introducing yourself. Indeed, there are many things that could and should be improved. 0 A.D. has been in development for about two decades and numerous people have contributed, not always with the same standards. As a consequence there are numerous things that are of inferior quality, inconsistent, or incorrect. More help is certainly welcome! When writing user-facing texts, please consult the https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/EnglishStyleGuide This is exactly how things (ought to) work in 0 A.D.! Don't limit yourself to only tasks with open tickets. It's very much a bottom-up project, people work on whatever they like whenever they like, with the aim of improving the game. Both construct and destruct are proper words, as is deconstruct. I'd love to see the Armenians included in 0 A.D. at some point, though that's something for the distant future. Some additional questions: What operating system are you on? Are you familiar with svn or git? Have you tried installing and running the development version (see https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/BuildInstructions )?

What I thought we were talking about is having frequent (e.g. weekly) unstable snapshots in addition to stable releases (e.g. every five months).