Sundiata

Thanks for taking the time to explain, I appreciate it! I understand very little about the technical aspects of this all, but as a 0AD player, I definitely feel the absence of these things, which are now considered standard in the gaming world, especially anti aliasing. All of my screenshots have noticeable aliasing, and when you zoom in just a little, it's impossible not to see. This also means that even a modest crop of the screen amplifies the effect noticeably. I didn't even know what anisotropic filtering was, but I definitely noticed that sort of blurring fuzzy effect on textures at strong angles. I'm not expecting anything to be done about it ASAP or anything, I know everyone is overworked. Just adding my voice to the group of people who think it's definitely worth it, as I think that some people don't consider it important. But it's basically something that makes everything look twice as sharp...

What does that mean exactly? All the work is done, but it won't be added to the game, because no one can go through it all? Sorry for my typical off-topicness, I'll stop now. @LordGood That looks so nice...

I just learnt a new word Anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing would do absolute wonders! Whatever happened to the anti-aliasing solution Siramods came up with? It looked amazing! Currently the vast majority of screenshots have terrible aliasing, including some of the official promo screens that float around the internet...

So much to learn, I have...

I was going for the denser types of ferns, like the ones I'm used to from the forests in Belgium (especially in the Ardennes), kind of like these: But yeah, as you see, I'm having trouble keeping even simple stuff low poly... I hate it when something only looks good from a specific angle. Without the doubled geometry to counteract backface culling it would be 50 tris. Still too high?

Does 0AD have ferns? Probably yes... Thought I'd practice on something a little more simple. Anyway, 100 tris exactly: DAE file: Fern 1.dae Original texture source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fern-leaf-oliv.jpg

lol... I think we should actively avoid those things... It's not like it adds anything desirable to the gameplay...

But why do they have free houses to begin with? It should be removed in my opinion (also in vanilla, especially in vanilla). Cheap houses, sure, no problem... But free houses doesn't make any sense...

I'd personally prefer "assembly", or "assembly of princes". The term "theater" might be confusing to players, as they might thinks it's like a Greek theatre...

Nope, I did not. I know virtually nothing about how the team operates or makes decisions... I see Borg is doing a lot of work with his balance mod, which has so far received a ton of positive feedback, so I assumed the team was looking at that, and deciding which parts to add to vanilla...

And one extra, a little mythology: Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons, by Alan Lee. Both riders wearing Thracian equipment. Achilles kills the Queen

Thracian art references:

Not when they're upgraded and experienced... This isn't a fantasy game. Of course there are plenty of abstractions, but 20 dudes cutting down a 100 upgraded veterans like a hot knife through butter sounds like something that belongs in mythology, not history. It sounds like you just lost a match because someone spammed harder than you. Making champions more powerful isn't going to change that. It just changes which units get spammed. I'm not saying that champions couldn't use a little buff, but nothing like the way you present it. 100 experienced veterans vs 20 pretty boy champions? Those pretty boys should loose... Also, the difference between citizen soldiers and peasants is not semantics...

Dude... There are no peasants in the game. Those citizen soldiers usually represent the upper sections of society and formed the backbone of many ancient armies. They're not peasants. Many of them owned peasants. I for one would LOVE to have generic peasants for each civ, but it's not a thing right now.

What peasants?? These guys own peasants! Well, at least some of them...

I think mostly the historians in conjunction with the artists should be deciding civ specific building rosters. Same for units... It's up to the balance guys make it work. Of course if something breaks the game, it's a no no, but having accurate and relevant structures and units is not something that should ever be able to break the game... We should be able to make the most of what made a civilization or a culture unique. Otherwise the factions are going to feel like generic re-skins of each other. The theatron looks really great by the way!

Those aren't peasants tho... Experienced Citizen soldiers should be able to stand their ground...

There's a couple of pretty memorable quotes in there, like: "Tadaaa, there it is, now you can go home" "I don't know what the hell I'm doing, but if you wing it hard enough, you can do anything" "This is truly an awful program" "Yo, this is where we get whack!" "Is that detailed enough for ya Stan?" "I've got to piss like a Russian race horse" "If you wanted a tutorial, you should have asked for a tutorial. Please don't ask for a tutorial..." That last one killed me, because I did actually ask for a tutorial, and you definitely delivered a tutorial... Of sorts... Thanks man! Anyway, I'm trying... Not quite succeeding, but trying nonetheless... Acacia attempt 3... In Dutch, we would say: "Schoon van ver, maar verre van schoon", which roughly translates into "pretty from afar, but far from pretty"... I have two main problems I see, which is that the geometry of the branches sucks from up close. They're just bent plains (2 bends). And the tris count is getting too high 700 tris, and none of the faces have been doubled with flipped normals to counteract the backface culling, which would increase the tris count to 1200... By the way, why can't backface culling be disabled for trees? Because doubling the branches/leaves to counteract it, essentially doubles the geometry for trees, doesn't it? Is rendering two faces of a single polygon really more "expensive" than rendering 2 separate one sided polygons? Anyway, close up of the ugly: One thing I did like about my attempt, is the detail in the acacia specific texture (512x512). Which is why I decided to post anyway: I'll probably get back to my flora modeling attempts at some time in the future, but for now, if anyone more skilled than me feels compelled to give the acacia a go, here's the CC0 texture I made using wikimedia CC0 images. It was pretty tedious to manually separate the leaves, but with a few adjustments, it would look pretty good, I think... And here's a previous version: Used for this attampt:

The temple was built from sandstone and fired brick, which was then plastered with white lime plaster. In the 6th image of the references you can still clearly see the patchy remains of the 2000 year old plaster. So yes, this temple, like most, if not all Kushite temples, palaces and elite residences in other royal cities like Naqa, Basa, Muweis and others would have been gleaming white under the Sudanese sun (or broken white because of all the sand). Some of the Egyptian pyramids looked white because of the polished limestone they used (limestone is very rare in Nubia). Hahaha, lol... Why do I get this ominous feeling? Like this, right? https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Basic3DImplementation

What about useless stuff? I'm pretty good at useless stuff

lol! I keep getting carried away with things that aren't priority... But I learn so much in the process... Yes! I thought about it and then forgot about it...

Meroë, Temple M 250, the so-called Sun Temple Art by Sundiata (Malcolm Quartey) The 1st century BC Meroitic period temple on the outskirts of the capital. It is still uncertain which god(s) it was dedicated to. Making use of the Kushite textures (by LordGood and Wowgetoffyourcellphone, if I'm not mistaken). I've suggested this structure as the Kushite wonder before, and thought I'd just give it a go myself. The model isn't finished yet (texturing). It's less than 10.000 tris (and I don't expect to add any more geometry), so I sincerely hope it can replace the current wonder (which looks great and can still be used in Atlas). (Those acacia trees were just a free asset I found somewhere. Using an HDRI to light the scene for the first time.) References:

Practice makes perfect... If you knew how many test renders I do when I'm making something you'll laugh....

@stanislas69 Thank you soooo much! Excellent narration by the way!

@LordGood Mmmmm... Nice! All of it... Any chance we could get a quick tutorial on how you make flora? Min/max requirements etc..