feneur

The ship garrisoning shouldn't really be seen as implemented yet, currently they're just using the same system as the buildings. Eventually there should be a system where the unit/units and the boat/boats go to the place that's closest to them both and there the units are unloaded. And similarly with the unloading, you should be able to click on a place on the shore and the ship should go as close to that point as possible and then unload the units (as long as it can get close enough). It may be a while though as focus is on other things, we mainly just gave them the garrisoning system of the buildings so you can play on island maps.

Hello L, and welcome to the forums. Glad you enjoy the game so far. We're looking forward to the requests, we can't promise we'll implement everything, and some things might already be thought of, but it's always good to hear what actual players think

I might be missing something obvious here, but what does UDLR mean? a. Though there are also variations of each unit type (as in variations in how they look to avoid making the game monotonous) the alternative versions you describe are because citizen soldiers will later have the ability to "level up" as they get more experience fighting, going from the basic units which are ok fighters and good workers to elite units which are good fighters, but less adept at working.b. They are displayed in overlays, hitpoints when you hover your mouse over the health bar, attack stats when you hover over the sword-and-shield icon etc. Unless I misunderstand what you mean by gather points they are already implemented. Just right-click with one or more buildings selected and units created/ungarrisoned from that building will move to where the flag is set. (It isn't mentioned in the documentation though, just added it to the hotkeys page.)

I'm not 100% sure as I'm not one of the programmers, but it sounds likely that aken64 not loading might be at least a part of the problem yeah.

Sweet

That would not be accurate if you got more resources while moving the mouse to a place where you wanted to build etc, so I think there are more reasons to do things the way we currently do than to change it. You can also see how much a building will cost when hovering over the icon, so there's no need to click on the button just to see if you have enough. Greying out stuff should imho be for things you cannot yet do, due to having to research a technology or similar long term issues, not having enough resources is much more temporary. They can hunt chicken, so I guess your point is more "I want all units to hunt chicken in the same way"? There's of course some value in that opinion, but I think it's a good thing that they hunt animals a bit differently. That way there's room for some strategy/micromanagement, but without being something that really puts you at a huge disadvantage if you don't do things in the most optimal way. In Alpha 4 Hellenes and Celts are the only civilizations included, and all maps are scenarios, in scenarios you'll most likely never be able to change from one civilization to another as the look/story/etc of the scenario might be dependent on the civilization. After random maps are implemented you'll be able to change civilization before starting a game however. If you just want to quit directly you can use Alt+F4 For many of the others: A lot of these are things we are aware of, but in some cases we have not been able to do anything about them at the moment (due to not having an animator for example) or we have prioritized other things. All-in-all it's good to get people's opinion, and to know what things are noticed, and some times it's things we haven't noticed/thought about, so don't hesitate posting them. Thanks, and welcome to the forums. The only things which are guaranteed to come in Alpha 5 are the Iberian faction and hopefully some better AI (as well as decals since those are already implemented), one or more of the other things may come, but none of them are guaranteed. Just something to be aware of so no one gets disappointed if their favourite feature isn't implemented in the next release

That sounds like a start at convincing me something like this might be a good idea =) I think it can use some more discussion before we decide anything though

Welcome to the forums! Here's a document which outlines some of the best first steps to starting programming for the game: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GettingStartedProgrammers

The current plan is something like: trade between a player's own markets give a basic amount of resource (when territories are implemented you'll only be able to build one market per territory, so this will be another reason making players expand ), trade between a player's market and another player's market gives a bigger amount of resources.

What role do you envision healing/healers to play if we use Lifepoints rather than Hitpoints? Also, in general one unit is meant to represent more than one unit, which makes hitpoints more realistic, I guess most people don't see them as anything but one unit though, so that's just a pretty minor point in favour of the old system in that respect. One case where I think something like the lifepoints would be really nice would be for rams attacking gates as that's something that could potentially take just a few hits, but where slowly tearing through hitpoints doesn't seem all that realistic. Speaking of being realistic, a problem I see with this kind of system is that as far as I know "one shot kills" were extremely rare, but that could be averted by giving all units at least a few Lifepoints and by the maths, so that's probably not a problem

Sounds good, I'll make those changes, and write some more text to make it harder for you to read through it all =) (That's not my motivation of course, but if nothing else it's easier to comment on something that exists/easier to improve on something that's there )

If nothing else you might take that as a reason to win quicker Seriously though, where would new resources be placed? In the middle of your city? That would not be too good, having trees appearing where your units are supposed to walk or your next building should go. Far away from your city? Wouldn't there already be resources there as you haven't expanded there yet, if not you'll most likely at least have a Mill there, and how would the "tree placing algorithm" know the difference? Where it's only one building? That might be a scout tower overlooking a good access route to your enemy which might then be blocked if more trees are added. If only around mills, then you might get trees where you don't want them. If only near mills which are far away from other buildings it may be a mill you built to gather metal or stone which could risk getting blocked by trees. The only resource I realistically see being renewable would be animals, but I don't think it's worth spending the time implementing renewable resources just for food which is something you should be able to get from farms by that time in any case.

Intended, they're meant to represent professional soldiers. Not implemented yet. The current AI is more of a test AI than anything else, expect better AIs to come in Alpha 5 and future releases. There will be a system of priorities, as well as unit stances (aggressive, defensive etc), that will help solve this and similar situations. Most units are/will be only either melee or ranged. To make the units garrison inside a building when you right-click, press and hold the Ctrl key before right-clicking. I'm guessing you mean that civic centres should have the ability to garrison units? They can, they do not fire at enemies at the moment though.

About the factions/time period: The game is overall meant to encompass the period between 500 B.C. and 500 A.D. The name 0 A.D. is chosen partly because it's in the middle of those two. Renewable resources are very unlikely, it's one of those things that sounds great in theory, but isn't all that great in practice. With trade you should never be in a situation where you cannot get more resources anyway.

It's not yet implemented, so currently it's not possible to save a game.

This thread will be a place to discuss the writing of the wiki manual here: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/0adManual , which in the long run will affect the in-game manual. Things like what words to use etc should be discussed here.

More info will come in the release announcement for Alpha 4 which should come any day now

Splendid, nice for eyecandy and "end-of-the-road" scenarios Great work

Ah, doing other things while you wait That's a good reason, and makes sense. Even if we go the route of having an in-game lobby you can always have the game window windowed while waiting for other players to join and make it fullscreen when actually playing (Alt+Enter toggles fullscreen/windowed).

Please add your input to the discussion of the future of the combat system here: http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=14516

Hmm, just to clarify things, can you explain why you both say that alt-tabbing is a mess on Linux and wants the lobby to be external to the game? It just seems counter-intuitive to me

It's an interesting idea, and it might help to differentiate 0 A.D. compared to other games, but I think we have to consider carefully whether this is adding complexity for its own sake or if it improves the game, most importantly if it makes it more fun. A couple of questions: Does the game currently support units having a direction? Does it support attacks coming from a direction? If directions aren't supported, how hard would it be to implement them? One of the reasons for the current design is so that things wouldn't be too random, therefore I'm curious as to what benefits this method would have in gameplay terms? Apart from perhaps being more realistic, does it make the game better/funnier? Adding randomness might make the game realistic, but what would you say is the benefit to the player? A combination of those questions: to me it seems a bit tedious for the player to do something about it, I mean it makes sense for a player to micromanage a formation so that it faces a certain direction, but individual units? Are you saying we should do away with hitpoints altogether? I.e. most attacks will not actually do any damage, but it only takes 1-5 successful hits to take out a unit? Also, if we change to your system, how do you suggest we do with siege weapons? All-in-all, an interesting idea, but I want more info before I can make up my mind about what I think about it

The things I personally think are the most important of those listed are (in order of importance, all of course imho): 1. Display obscured units: will improve gameplay, so definitely should be a high priority. 2. Particles: will add a lot to the feel of the game I believe, might be a steep learning curve to work with them, but things like fire, smoke etc will make the game world seem much more alive. Will probably be one of the more difficult things to implement as it requires so many different things, at least compared to something like Bloom which as far as I know is added "above" everything. Particles need to be able to do so many different things, and should preferably be both easy to use and complex. By easy to use I mean: one should be able to quickly add a predefined fire/smoke to a prop point or fire as an actor (or at least as a part of one) in a scenario. By complex I mean: it should support adding your own particles and how they interact/when they're triggered. The ticket talks about things like footsteps, but there might be other examples. (Weather is probably likely to make good use of particles as well.) Most of what I've mentioned is probably straight-forward or at least expected, but I guess most of it simply is to try and make the point about particles being one of the more complex things (other things might be more complex in terms of the actual functions/math required though ). 3. Decals: will definitely help in a lot of cases as you say. Automatically smoothen the terrain within reasonable limits (+ limits for how steep a slope a building can be built on) should preferably be implemented at roughly the same time. About billboards: would it be hard to have them always face the camera, even when you rotate? I believe this is often done in animations for e.g. architectural renderings of buildings etc when you just have a simple image of trees/people etc to give a quick idea of how things will look like. That should probably be a setting though, some billboards might benefit from it, some may not. For example, tufts of grass, or distant trees or similar would probably benefit from it, but if you had a billboard of an entire distant "vista"/view that would probably not work as well. Especially if the billboard would be big and in that case would intersect with trees/terrain/buildings

Fortress/siege: Well, I don't think it's going to be a problem, but ultimately this and a lot of other things will have to be finally decided in Beta, i.e. after a lot of playtesting.

Aviv is in charge of PR, so imho he's the highest power needed to sign-off this