Nescio
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Posts posted by Nescio
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Hello and welcome!
0 A.D. is a project that has been (and still is) in development for years; what we have right now is the result of numerous volunteers contributing in their free time, which is great. People come and go, though, and not everyone has the same standards or is fully aware of what has been done before; as a consequence the game is full of inconsistencies (the game is still in alpha stage and is not perfect); e.g. at least three different transcriptions of Greek are currently used, e.g. η is sometimes written as e, sometimes ē, sometimes i.
15 hours ago, Anaxandridas ho Skandiates said:Pronounciation:
A proposal is to use classical Greek ~350BC as astandard, since the ruling class and nobility always mastered it, and it remained the language of government in Greek civilization, and actually it was the language of Roman nobility as well. You will remember that Cicero studied at a Greek academy, and Caesar did not say "Alea iacta est" but quoted Menandros in Greek. All Romans of education spoke Greek.
This is proposed because it would be super complicated to create separate Greek voice-recordings for ALL Greek civs here (Ptolemaic accent, Seleucid accent, etc.)
It would technically be reasonable to use Demotic Egyptian for the Ptolemaic peasants, Attic dialect for Athenian peasants etc. etc., but would it not overcomplicate matters?
I believe the idea is to have two sets of Greek: Attic for the Classical factions and Koine for the Hellenistic states. However, Greek text strings currently in game appear a mixture of Modern, Hellenistic, and Classical, and voice recordings are very much a work in progress.
Anyway, if you're interested in actively contributing to the development version of 0 A.D., you probably should register at https://code.wildfiregames.com/ and https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ as well.
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6 hours ago, Samulis said:
This list is a good idea, but I do not know how practical it is.
Not all behave the same. Where there is one phrase in English, there might be dozens in another language, each for a specific situation. Just one example: English and most modern European languages have "yes" and "no"; Latin, Greek, and other ancient languages don't.
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3 hours ago, fatherbushido said:
git shortlog -sn --since='2017-01-01' --until='2017-12-31'
Interesting, thanks for sharing. In other words:
- elexis: 37.9%
- fatherbushido + leper + mimo: 26.6%
- everyone else: 20.3%
- autobuild: 15.2%
A project that depends mostly on one person is actually quite vulnerable.
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At the very least I hope your fork will have corrected Mauryans [sic] into Mauryas and stone mine into stone quarry (one mines minerals, ore, gems, diamonds, and coal, but one quarries stone and one drills for oil).
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On 12/14/2018 at 8:31 AM, Lion.Kanzen said:
But the problem they start without art department...
Not necessarily a problem, there is nothing preventing artists from contributing to both 0 A.D. and Fork AD, or to other projects or different mods. Besides, the licences under which most (all?) of the content is released allow them to take whatever they like from the main distribution.
Having two or more active branches/forks/related projects allows for trying out different things independently from each other. And if something turns out to work in one, others can incorporate it as well. That's what's so great about free and open source. The more, the merrier
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Finally some good news!
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It's now December. How are things going?
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19 hours ago, Imarok said:
Yes, monthly progress reports would be nice, but then we'd need someone that writes them. And if that would be one of our developers, we'd less development power.
It doesn't have to be as complete or as elaborate as the January progress report. One or two sentences would suffice.
For the team as a whole it's probably more time efficient to have a short official statement rather than half a dozen team members replying to different forum threads because people keep asking questions.
If you don't inform the public, you're less likely to receive additional help.
17 hours ago, stanislas69 said:That's something I'd like to have as well. Unfortunately while Imarok is right and it takes Dev time the main issue we have is internal communication. We have members going AWOL, people working like madmen on their own but not advertising what they do and people that simply don't talk
We are working on our AFK skills but it's a long way to the top if you want to rock'n'roll
Surely at least someone knows what's going on? If not, that's quite worrisome. You're supposed to be a team.
Of course, it's completely up to you to decide what to do. I'm merely an uninformed person who's worried by how things look from the outside.
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First of all, there is no need to apologize. We all know you're volunteers who devote your free time to 0 A.D. and we're grateful for that. Also, it's human that things tend to take more time than one expects beforehand.
Although more frequent, smaller releases with fewer changes would be nice to remind everyone development is continuing, it is not really important whether the time between alphas is three months, six, or twelve. What discourages me more is that there has been a feature freeze in place for about seven months now.
Something I really appreciated was the “0 A.D. Development Report – January 2018” posted on the play0ad.com homepage on February 2. However, that appears to be a one-time update. Only two more official posts have appeared since: “New Release: 0 A.D. Alpha 23 Ken Wood” on May 17 and “0 A.D. Financial Report, September 2018” on September 8.
A bit more official communication would be nice. I was under the impression the reason for the re-release and its delay were difficulties with the GDPR. Only on November 3, thanks to elexis' posts in this thread, I learned that the current issue is the lack of Apple Mac OS users in the team.
Ideally there would be one official announcement on the official homepage each month, to inform the general public what's currently going on. It doesn't have to be long nor complete. E.g. “October 2018: still working on making 0AD GDPR compliant.” or “November 2018: currently we're experiencing difficulty with checking the Apple Mac OS release because none of the active team members has one.”
6 hours ago, elexis said:Secondly the capable motivated and available developers went down.
This is what worries me most. Unfortunately, I don't have a solution.
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On 11/13/2018 at 11:29 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:
It's been so long since the last Alpha, you might as well call this Alpha 24.
Yes, I agree, it's been half a year. From A1 (August 2010) to A20 (March 2016) the average time between releases was 3 to 4 months. Not every release has to change as much as A23 did.
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2 hours ago, (-_-) said:
Ranged units in almost every RTS game suffers from runaway Lanchester’s law. I have seen an AoE2 game where someone massed skirmishers and beat a sizable heavy cav army (cavaliers).
Yes, I remember doing that too (skirmishers didn't cost any gold) years ago, as well as massacring paladins with my longbowmen (very high range) and destroying rams and trebuchets with my Mongol horse archers (high fire rate). AoK had a fixed population limit of 75, but TC allowed a population limits from 25 to 200 (most people preferred playing 200), which basically destroyed balance. Cavalry defeats ranged units 1 vs 1, but when it's 40 vs 40 or 120 vs 120 a skillful player could use ranged units to destroy cavalry with minimal losses.
However, I don't consider it an "abuse of ranged units." People who elect to favour such tactics have to sacrifice other things. Besides, massed ranged units are great at defeating human soldiers, yes, but rather poor at attacking fortifications. And would a pure archer force always defeat a mixed force of light troops, heavy infantry, and ballistas?
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As far as I know (please correct me if I'm mistaken, @mimo), basically the only difference between difficulty levels is the resource gain rate (Very Hard gets 160% of the resources they gather, Medium 100%, Very Easy 40%). More difficult AIs can develop quicker because of this, not because they are any smarter.
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When trying to figure out suitable upkeep (negative resource trickle) rates in my mod, I decided that one second represents a day, so 30 seconds would be a month, 6 minutes about a year, and 1 hour a decade. I don't pretend it's a perfect approximation, but given that wars in Antiquity could last for a single season but also continue on and off for decades, it works acceptably for me.
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29 minutes ago, (-_-) said:
mod.io?
Nope, still github: https://github.com/0abc/0abc-a23.git
mod.io is nice in some respects, but it also adds extra work for modders (uploading to github via the command-line takes a few seconds; last time I tried mod.io it cost me over an hour) and the team (who have to check and give permission); for me it's not worth it. Besides, my mod is work in progress, I constantly make changes, and having to ask for a verification every time I change something is highly inefficient.
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And a screenshot to show off some of the new range visiluation markers used:
Attack range (javelinist): narrow line. Economic aura (woman): zigzag. Regeneration aura (temple): chain of crosses. Healing range (healer): crosses with regular distances in between.
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0abc has been largely updated to A23. Changes include, but are not limited to:
- introduced a new resource: silver
- pierce damage is split into pierce (arrows) and thrust (spears)
- units and some structures steadily consume small amounts of resources (upkeep)
- increased unit training and technology research times
- a greater variety of aura range visualization markers
- merged Athenians and Spartans into a single faction, the Greeks
- disabled unit promotion, champions, heroes, team bonuses; they might be reintroduced at a later stage
- all civilization bonuses and penalties are replaced with new ones
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structures:
- economic structures can be constructed in neutral territory
- dropsites are just that: dropsites; all economic technologies are moved to the market, which is now available in the village phase
- town phase requires a market, city phase a temple
- centres can be part of trade routes
- walls are stronger but also more expensive and slower to construct; all factions have palisades (village), siege walls (town), and city walls (city)
- fortresses have a territory root, are purely defensive structures, have somewhat more health, but no longer train any units
- all factions have cavalry stables (village) and siege workshops (town); most have separate economic docks (village) and military shipyards (town); many have elephant stables (city)
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units:
- all units are bribable (vision sharing), except for fauna
- fauna is no longer visible in fog
- female citizens renamed to women; they can no longer build or repair
- cavalry can no longer gather resources
- camelry, chariotry, and elephantry are no longer considered cavalry
- chariotry can no longer attack ships, siege, or structures
- siege engines are no longer capturable
- battering rams can no longer attack organic units
- all factions can construct rams (town)
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changed population costs:
- dogs and ships: 0
- support and infantry: 1
- camelry and cavalry: 2
- biga chariots and siege engines: 4
- quadriga chariots, war elephants, and siege towers: 6
- numerous minor tweaks and balances, most of which will probably go unnoticed
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1 minute ago, stanislas69 said:
I think it was not in the filename but in the map description not sure. Because Atlas handles chars differently.
I always wondered if we could one day make it completely part of the game.
Well, I don't know. Atlas has no difficulty in handling templates from my mod that include Greek specific name strings.
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1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:
Right, but I think if someone is loading a saved game or replay the order of the mods should be recorded in the file and the mods ordered and loaded properly by the engine upon launching the replay or saved game. Don't know how difficult this is however.
And what if a save game uses a mod or version not installed on this machine? Games can be shared easily on the forums and elsewhere, and not all mods are published.
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25 minutes ago, (-_-) said:
But Atlas might have some issues. It didn’t like the "ë" in fields of mëroe.
Meroë. File names ought to consist only of lowercase a to z and underscores, of course. Atlas does not use or display specific names or other internal strings.
28 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:I believe the reason it's written in the incorrect alphabet is that it wasn't implemented at the beginning.
Or maybe it's because not everyone knows the Greek alphabet.
Besides, if Greek is written in Greek, should we also write Punic in Phoenician abjad, Persian in cuneiform, and Meroitic in hieroglyphs? And what to do with languages that didn't have their own script?
Although I consider writing Greek in Greek an improvement and happily use it in my mod, I'm not sure it's the most desireable option for 0 A.D.'s main distribution.
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1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:
Thanks for the insight @Nescio. I was struggling to understand what "Epiphanes" meant. Megas and Nicator are quite simple to translate.
The root is φαίνω (phainô) 'bring to light, cause to appear'. Apparently Antiochus was considered to be the manifestation of some god (nothing unusual in Antiquity). Because "Antiochus the Manifestation" might sound weird to modern ears, Epiphanes is occassionally translated as "the Illustrious".
Epiphany actually entered the English language. E.g. January 6, the second most important feast of Yule (the 'Christmas vacation'), when the magi (the 'Three Kings') are said to have visited and recognized the infant Jesus (the manifestation of God on Earth); Epiphany Eve (the evening before) is also known as Twelfth Night (nowadays best know for a play by Shakespeare), because it's the twelfth night after Christmas (premodern counting is inclusive).
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3 hours ago, stanislas69 said:
Could you submit a patch for those that I could commit for A24 ? Unless someone has really big concerns it should be a transparent change.
Yes, I do intend to propose some sets of corrections on phabricator, after feature and string freezes are lifted. Right now such patches seem to have difficulty getting committed, e.g. D1342.
Also, it is important to decide on a single style to transcribe Greek (and other ancient languages) in 0 A.D.; in the `SpecificName` strings at least three different transcriptions are currently being used; η is rendered as e, ē, or i and υ as y, u, or i; accents and vowel lengths are indicated iconsistently as well. In my private mod I simply write Greek in Greek, much clearer, and the game has no difficulty in displaying it.
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38 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:
- Seleucus Nikator
- Antiochos the great
- Antiochos the righteous
The transcription is quite inconsistent; either transcribe κ with c and ος with us (Latin style, most common in English and most modern European languages) or κ with k and ος with os (Greek style, uncommon), but do it consistently.
Also, it is quite interesting that in the case of Seleucus I his epithet is left untranslated (Nicator means "Victor"), whereas in the case of Antiochus III it is properly translated (Megas means "the Great"), and in the case of Antiochus IV it is replaced with something completely different (Epiphanes means "manifest" (of gods), "coming suddenly into view", "illustruous", or something similar, but not "Righteous").
Of course I know it's not your fault; there are many inconsistencies in 0 A.D., the result of different people with different ideas committing different things at different times.
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If you make a certain claim (e.g. "the proportion of ranged to melee units is historically inaccurate") you should be able to back it up with reliable sources.
2 hours ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:The archer estimate was interestingly enough not cited
If you can't verify something, then don't quote it.
2 hours ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:modern sources such as Delbrück.
Secondary literature has to base itself directly or indirectly on primary sources. If they somehow give a different number, then read it carefully to figure out their argumentation for their interpretation.
Also, Hans Delbrück died in 1921; his views might be outdated. There is nothing intrinsically wrong in using 19th or 20th C sources, however, if you do, always back them up with more recent publications.
2 hours ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:Whether the statistics support my presuppositions or another's is hard to say.
If neither can be proven, then don't suppose anything.
In the battle of Lechaeum, as descibed in Xenophon Hellenica 4.5.11-18, an Athenian peltast force defeated a Spartan hoplite regiment, killing about 250 out of 600 with their javelins.
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2020 Art Wishlist
in Art Development
Posted
Happy New Year! (MMDCCLXXII AVC)
There are many things I'd like to see: military shipyards for all factions, quadriremes, chariots, proper pikemen (a pike is not a short stick; it's a two-handed weapon; you can't swing it around), a new architecture set for the Romans, etc.
However, if I had to choose, I'd prefer more fauna above anything else. People really underestimate how much of history depends on which crops and animals people had access to. Ordinary cattle, arguably one of the most important species, is not even present in 0 A.D.; nor are mules, donkeys, and onagers; or ducks and geese, which were a lot more common than chicken. I've made a list somewhere, there are a lot of other species I hope will eventually be included in the game.
Flora and fauna really help making the game coming to life, and they are not just useful for Empires Ascendant, but actually for any timeframe.