Sundiata

@wowgetoffyourcellphone I'm in love with your (retextured Ptolemaic?) Kushite cult statues in DE I didn't notice them before... Thank you!

@plumo, I'm assuming you're talking about Aristeia. Zophim recently posted this message:

Napata, the second capital of Kush High quality 3D models of the central temple district This post is dedicated to Napata, and features the highest quality 3D renders of the many Napatan and Meroitic period temples at the site available to date. Napata was an ancient site centred around Jebel Barkal, a steep, flat-topped "mountain" that spoke heavily to the imagination of Kushites and Egyptians alike. During the 18th dynasty, the Egyptians conquered the site, and proclaimed it the Southern Home of Amun of Karnak, and even promoted the idea that it was older than Karnak itself. The Egyptians called the mountain Dju-Wa’ab: “Pure Mountain”, and Nesut-Tawy: “Thrones of the Two Lands", and it was the source of Amun's epithet "Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands". It was the source of Kingship itself. The mountain's spiralling peak was variously interpreted as the phallus of the Creator, a rearing cobra, or the white crown of Upper-Egypt. This is the site of the creation of the world! According to Egyptians and Kushites.... The earliest Egyptian text from the site, Thutmose III's Barkal Stele, 1432 BC, describes the god of the mountain as “the great god of the first time, the primeval one." After the Egyptian withdrawal from Kush, the site became the seat of local rulers (descended from intermarried Kushite and Egyptian royals), who, eventually, with support from the priests of Amun reunited all of Egypt and Kush. Even after the loss of Egypt, Kushite Kings still considered themselves the true, and only heirs of the ancient kings of the Nile. Even in later Meroitic times, the rulers of Kush considered their own Kingship, granted by Amun of Jebel Barkal, to be older than that of Egypt, and had descended directly to them from the Sun God at the moment of creation! This is echoed in Diodorus Siculus' "Bibliotheca Historica" (Book III), in which he states, among other things, that the "Ethiopians" were the first of all men, that heaven is most pleased by the "Ethiopian" sacrifices, that they were never ruled by foreign invaders, and that Egyptians were actually colonists from "Ethiopia": "Now the Ethiopians, as historians relate, were the first of all men and the proofs of this statement, they say, are manifest. For that they did not come into their land as immigrants from abroad but were natives of it and so justly bear the name of "autochthones" is, they maintain, conceded by practically all men; furthermore, that those who dwell beneath the noon-day sun were, in all likelihood, the first to be generated by the earth, is clear to all" "and it is generally held that the sacrifices practised among the Ethiopians are those which are the most pleasing to heaven", which has a strange parallel in the bible: "Are not you Israelites the same to me as the Cushites?" Amos 9:7, indicating a shared status of chosen or holy people. "And they state that, by reason of their piety towards the deity, they manifestly enjoy the favour of the gods, inasmuch as they have never experienced the rule of an invader from abroad [...] Cambyses, for instance, they say, who made war upon them with a great force, both lost all his army and was himself exposed to the greatest peril; Semiramis [an Assyrian Queen] also, who through the magnitude of her undertakings and achievements has become renowned, after advancing a short distance into Ethiopia gave up her campaign against the whole nation; and Heracles and Dionysus, although they visited all the inhabited earth, failed to subdue the Ethiopians alone who dwell above Egypt, both because of the piety of these men and because of the insurmountable difficulties involved in the attempt." They say also that the Egyptians are colonists sent out by the Ethiopians, Osiris having been the leader of the colony. It is clear that Kush and the Kushites were regarded with great esteem in the ancient world, and the seat of their great spiritual authority was Napata, the second capital of Kush. Napata, with at least 13 temples and 4 palaces was a great metropolis, that stretched for miles along the banks of the Nile. Today, only the central temple district has seen extensive archaeological investigation, but surveys of the area indicate a major ancient settlement. Without any further ado, Napata, the second capital of Kush: My main source for the models, essentially a 130 page academic tour-guide for archaeologists studying Jebel Barkal: http://www.jebelbarkal.org/frames/VisGuide.pdf

I had my cousin play it on his laptop and it looked pretty bad compared to how it run on mine, and we had the same graphic settings which was kind of weird. I play it on a macbook and it looks gorgeous. Maybe for some reason macbooks run the game more smoothly, which is weird cause they have a reputation for being horrible for gaming. I've wondered about this for a long time..

I was lazy to report this, but yeah, the walls leave a gap between the towers when stretched, and the gates don't align properly to the wall. I was gonna mention it in a future post though

Yes, threads on this forum tend to do that It frustrates some people, but I think it's important to get regular feedback from people who aren't super intensively playing, or developing this game every day, to get a fresh idea of what the current first impressions are, as well as "documenting" recurring requests and pointing out obvious stumbling points. The current role of citizen soldiers vs dedicated eco workers, for example has come up so many times I can't even count. So has capture vs destroy. These concepts really don't need to be mutually exclusive. They can be beautiful complements to each other. The other thing is that we really need more proficient coders to work on this project, and when looking at the original design documents, they're pretty good. A lot of stuff is actually planned, but need work. That's another reason why I think this constant feedback is important. So that the devs can see what the community desires the most, for future releases. Anyway, having resources "stored" at specific sites, like a "storage-yard", and having a maximum resource-cap on these storage-yards seems super interesting, and could add crazy dynamics to the game.. Destroying or capturing enemy resources by taking their storageyards... Yes please Currently, you could have 1 woman, left, but still have access to thousands of units of every resource, and technically restart your civilisation from these "banked" resources. But where are these resources banked?? Is that single woman carrying around thousands of logs, and hundreds of tonnes of stone, and "metal", plus a few thousand baskets of food (that's surely rotten by now )?? This is one of the things that actually unnecessarily lengthens the game. If your resources go down with your town, you'll be easily defeated. But if you magically transport those "floating" resources across the map and restart your civilisation from scratch, except you have a ton of resources now, the game could theoretically last forever. We could even have transport-carts, like traders, to shuttle resources from dropsite to storage-yard, or storage yard to storage yard. You could even let it be done semi-automatically. All you have to do is recruit transport-carts and they automatically transport resources from the dropsites to the nearest storage-yard. Now the game starts looking like it has an actual economy/supply chain. If any of the devs are reading this, please forgive me, I know I'm crazy, but 0AD potentially has so much to offer. I see it more like a platform than a standalone game. It can really go any direction it wants to. There's millions of people out there who would die to play a game similar to banished, with actual battle mechanics and good historicity, and 0AD totally has the potential to deliver this kind of hybrid. Pure RTS with a veneer of city building and economy management. The trick is to keep it intuitive/not too complicated. It's basically what everybody (yes, the whole world) is waiting for. More than world peace, this is what people want... Has anybody ever played The Settlers III? An old-school classic RTS game, with a full economic supply chain, and real time battle mechanics, and it's not too complicated for kids to figure out either. Was a super fun game. Every single resource (and there's a lot) are visibly produced and transported around the map by the workers. The level of logic, detail and immersion in the economy is just sumptuous. 0AD can offer a lot of the immersive elements of a game like that without braking the core gameplay (although more resources will probably mess with the current play-style), the Settlers III was played in much the same (macro) way 0AD is now. Build a base, set up an economy, train an army and conquer your enemy. It just has a much more mature economy/resource management aspect. eco units are automatically controlled by the AI, you just say what and where to build and your workers start building. You have direct control over military units though, like 0AD. Don't be put off by the 90's graphics, this game was delicious. Please pay close attention to the explanation. How the economy in this game works is simply amazing! And this for a game from 1998

It's not well advertised and I still don't really know how to do this (never done it before). If one person sets it up in his menu, does it apply to all players in MP games, or only the person that set it up like that?

Yes, yes, yes... This would make units behave much more logically/naturally. Right now they are all indeed berserkers, lol! This Berserker attitude often messes up my stealthy tactics, and "non-agression policy" in my early game. "But just put your units in defensive/passive/ stand ground": no thanks, those stances are 1 way ticket to getting slaughtered. I like my soldiers to defend each other no matter what, not be picked of one by one or be kited to death... But that doesn't mean they should chase uncatchable enemies across the map when I leave them alone for half a minute.. "If you don't like fighting in early game, use ceasefire": no thanks, it's very gratifying to see your enemies slaughter each-other while you try to maintain peace. Peace should be earned Yes please... A total disregard for town aesthetics is currently the way to go if you want to win a MP match. Building a town with a logical/natural layout is totally penalised right now.. In fact, experienced online players ridicule noobs for their "sim-cities".. When a logical town layout invites ridicule, that should be a red light. yes please, I'm trying to make a map according to these considerations. I like a lot of those mechanics from DE. They're much more logical/immersive. I was thinking that the CC could be programmed to only be able to store a nominal amount of each resource, like max 200 of every resource. Then the CC can still be used in very early game, or emergencies or when setting up a new territory, but the moment you want to train 5 units at a time, or build barracks, you're going to have set up storehouse and farm to store more resources. When CC is full, you'd get a message like: "CC stores are full, build a storehouse to store more resources or a farmstead to store more food" Would be so nice. We really need this, I think. Having 100% of dedicated eco units being women makes me cringe. "But, but, what about citizen soldiers?" people watch too many movies, I think... 300 was a really terrible movie people... Absolutely terrible... Really bad... Even propagandistic... Read about Helots, and realise every single civ in the game had a similar civilian plebeian population. Warrior cultures where all the men are fighters don't exist outside of hunter gatherer communities... It's a Western romanticism that doesn't have any place in a historical game, imo... Even Celts had a huge non-combatent civilian population... Uhu..

Yeah, but dude, there's going to be a direct correlation between how many coders know about this game and how many people are aware of this game in the first place. Literally everyone I know that knows about this game and has played it, knows about it through me... If we're depending on word of mouth publicity we're not going to go far... So someone on the team needs to contact Resonance22, explain the situation in a short description, and explicitly invite him here to make an account and discuss what he could do, and what we need, and how we could help... There's no shame in asking for what we need. "A video marketing a free and open source RTS game in development, in need of coders".

Actually, I think what we need most is somebody to be able to inspire people to work on this. The workload is too high for the current team, even though they're doing an amazing job, we need new recruits in almost every department... Popular youtube video's and any other kind of publicity can go a long way... Please, don't take any criticisms personally though, and use them as a resource, rather than a source of frustration.

I understand the potential for bad reviews, but someone else would argue that any publicity is good publicity. Fresh voices might help emphasise the main issues with the game right now. I get the idea that some people working on the project are so intimately involved with it that they don't see the forest for the trees anymore, and obvious things are overlooked or ignored. We need more coders, and that means we need more coders to be aware of this game. I don't see how we're going to raise awareness, without publicity..

Hmm, I'm very ignorant about everything code related But I imagine animations being a major component of actually animating stuff...

Yes, Alexander's animations have the potential to really bring 0AD alive, like training animations at the barracks/stables when training units, or a blacksmith hamering away at an anvil, when researching techs, for example.. Or women walking around the farm while plowing/seeding/weeding/harvesting, instead of just perpetually standing there at the edge of the field scraping at the same patch of dirt throughout the game.

I think @vrork is right. More than anything, 0AD needs publicity to grow. It's a game in development, yes, so that needs to be emphasised in any video, but having a well known youtuber doing an occasional development video on 0AD is potentially gold. Maybe vrork could convince him to make an account on this forum so we can publicly discuss what he wants to do, and how we could help him with that? And clarify that he doesn't need permission to do a video on an opensource project.

I've been wanting to bring this up for a while, but there are so many little details that could be changed, that I want discus them in a single post/list. Anyway, for now: It's really awkward that you're able to start construction on a building within range of enemy units/buildings. It's kind of an immersion breaker, and borderline cheating, in my book. Tower-creeping is so, ugh.. Basically taking advantage of a less than ideal game mechanic, I think. Both, building a tower/fortress on your enemies' border within range of your enemies' buildings/units as well as starting construction on new structures when you're base is already overrun is just, ugh... Like sending 30 guys to rebuild a destroyed CC when the enemy army is still in your base??? Ugh... Sorry for all the ughs There are many of these "micro-cheats" that take advantage of less than ideal game-mechanics and pathfinder issues, like using 1 soldier to lure an entire army in to a kill box. Or pressing the halt button every couple of seconds while in combat, so that all the soldiers are reassigned to the most nearby target (this should happen automatically). It looks horrendous to see an entire army cut to pieces because they obsessively chased a single unit, passing an entire army that's systematically cutting them down. There's a lot of this weird advantage taking. For example: Supposedly pro-players don't use walls. Nonsense! All these so called pro-players are building "house"walls" instead. What in the actual "explicative". Why would a row of houses stop an army? You just go through the backdoor, and exit through the front. Or crawl through the windows. O just kick through the wattle and daub or mudbrick house walls. But it's a little ridiculous that civilian housing provides an effective wall. Just use the actual walls... You know... Plus house walls look really ugly... Ugly like building farms around the CC (an illogical AoE convention), for easy garrisonability of women and skimping out on wood by not building a farmstead (which really should be a pre-requisite for building farms, or even gathering food in general. Why is the CC used as a storage yard, when a storehouse is one of the earliest structures you need to build anyway??)... I derive no pleasure from defeating an enemy like this, and "pro-players" destroy "noobs", because the noobs don't know about these "faulty" mechanics. How is that fun? A lot of the "pro-players" depend on the ignorance of their opponents to win... This is supposed to be a strategy game, not a take-advantage-of-mechanics-that-new-players-can't-possibly-know-about game, because this stuff is not clearly written down anywhere. That's cheating, i.m.o... At least, their should be a strategy and tactical guide that explains the mechanics that should be looked out for, like: diminishing farm returns, embedding women with your workers, and the effect of experience on gather rates, garrisoning ships with siege and units so they actually become effective, never using formation when fighting, the effectiveness of kiting, the amazing efficiency with which women can take out battering rams... Those kind of things... Ideally, you should have easy access to this info in game, like a question mark button with each unit/building that brings up a pop-up message explaining all the specifics about that unit/building.

@Alexandermb, I didn't realise how easy it was to check out your models and anims with your mod. I just checked them out and they look fantastic! I think both the models and the animations are really a major improvement over the current horses! Amazing job! As far as I'm concerned:

Very nice indeed...

Stanislas69, please forgive me, I have one last nit to pick: The animation seems to comprise of 2 parts: "part 1": hind legs are flat against it's sides. "part 2": hind legs are "manoeuvring", When a crocodile is in free swim going straight, it uses it's tail only, with it legs flat against the sides, like "part 1". When stopping, or moving left or right, it's hind legs "manoeuvre" like "part 2". To make the anim more natural looking, I suggest that it comprises of two times "part 1", and 1 time "part 2". So there's twice as much time spent free swimming, as there is manoeuvring: current animation: "part 1", "part 2", "part 1", "part 2", "part 1", "part 2"... My suggestion: "part 1", "part 1", "part 2", "part 1", "part 1", "part 2"... I think this will look far more natural.

@stanislas69, it looks pretty good to me, though I'm not as familiar with crocodiles as I am with horses Only thing I can think of is that the tail movement could be a little smoother, much like the way a snake moves. Check out this video of a crocodile swimming, with a pig in it's mouth...

Come on people, VOTE!!! 17 hours left!!! We can do a lot better than rank 101!

Yes, much better!

@Alexandermb, ok, better now, but the last remark is that the hind leg shouldn't stretch so far behind the horse when bent. They should be bent underneath the body. A rounder butt would also help define the leg. (don't hate me please )

@Alexandermb, like phalanx said, sorry for the nitpicking, but the chest went missing again. The upper front leg bones are positioned too much to the front, or too high, or something causing the leg to flex weirdly. The leg should stay the same size throughout the animation, and the chest remains prominently visible (and unchanged) throughout every step of the sequence. Ideally, the last bone on the hind legs (the hoof) needs to be a little bit shorter (so the hoof can bend more sharply). Another useful image (download and zoom):

@Alexandermb, I actually think what makes the back legs still look a bit bizarre are the fact that in the animation, when the hind legs are at their highest point underneath the horse, the bottom of the horse's hoofs are pointing downwards at an angle of 180°, while the bottom of the hoofs are supposed to point outwards at an angle of about 135°. Basically it needs to bend a little more (it's a little detail, but it could make the anim more natural). Another small suggestion is to add another bone to the back half of the tail, so that the tip of the tail can whip up and down more convincingly. @Phalanx Nice vid, but the horse's gait in that vid is canter, while the horse in Alexander's anim is galloping (faster/intenser). It makes the comparison at bit difficult, though I agree that the lower half of the back leg doesn't need to come up as high it does in the anim (it should indeed still angle a little downwards at it's highest). ps: wasn't wowgetoffyourcellphone referring to this guy's wrist: Also, maybe: You're almost there!

@wackyserious I love them, especially that Kausia cap is really cool (you'll use it for some of the Macedonian and Seleucid units as well?). One awkward question though: Those double stripes on the tunics, what's the reference? A quick google search only turned up one similar example (with thinner stripes) from a secondary source. I'm not sure, but I think those are closely associated with Roman tunics, not Hellenistic ones... Maybe a slightly different variant is in order, to distinguish them, like only one stripe on the left or right side, or something. I don't know. ok, scrap that, I found a Hellenistic reference, from Sidon, Lebanon, but it does show much thinner stripes, different from the Roman looking example in your texture. Maybe just narrow the stripes a little.