feneur

Sounds promising at the very least

Splendid, will this (help with) supporting Xcode on the Mac in any way? Would be nice to make things easier for people using that platform both for the sake of Mac programmers and other developers using Mac, so if that's the case you can rest assured your work will be even more appreciated

I don't have much to add, but I promised to say something after I'd read the document so I'd better do that To some extent, now that I'v seen your proposal, and read the other comments, I'm almost leaning towards having some kind of titles/ranks merely for their own sake rather than having experience effect unlockables. It seems having won games (perhaps in a sequence, i.e. win map one, then two etc, you can't choose at random) unlock new content is better, and grinding to get titles is more up to the player whether or not they want to spend their time on. That way they don't "have to grind", they just have to win a map (or more) to move on to unlock more content. Using experience/ranks to help users find good opponents to play with might be a good thing, but being good at accumulating experience points, or even winning games against the AI might not be a good indicator of multiplayer skill. I could be wrong, but I'm guessing having a special set of ranks (might be a bit confusing, unless it's very clear that they're different, perhaps even being referred to as something other than "ranks") or simply displaying number of won/lost matches (probably not too accurate either since you might have won a 100 matches against unskilled people, and might in either case push people towards playing against people of a lower skill than themselves and thus risk scaring away new people as everyone would just think about winning over them as much as possible to boost their stats). In general I'm not sure we should limit the way users experience the game by locking things at first, but both since it helps with getting them accustomed to the features one or a few at a time (and thus have an easier time learning them), and since it can help make people more likely to play multiplayer games, I think it might be worth it. I think calculating experience based on things like: number of enemy units killed - own units lost / time spent playing, could help with lowering the risk of players killing of enemy units, then waiting for the enemy to gain more units and continue until the timer runs out. Having more complex ways to count experience points will be more difficult to explain to the player. On the other hand, simple statistics are already viewable via the end game summary screen, so rewarding players for playing the game the way we want them to rather than for accomplishing things we spell out might be a good thing in any case. It would perhaps need quite a bit of testing to make sure we're measuring the correct things/using the correct numbers. Perhaps the above equation would favor rushers, so the "own units lost" might have to be multiplied with some number to make it more worthwhile with a more cautious playstyle etc. Not sure exactly what we should measure to encourage people to do fun things rather than to grind just to get as much points as possible, but I think we need to look into more complex things than just number of units trained or enemy units killed.

Only on a very amateurish level

That's not dropped, just not implemented yet.

Found this interesting article + video etc via the BlenderNation blog: http://www.blendernation.com/2011/01/06/he...istic-blending/ In short it's a reconstruction of the akropolis at Pergamon, done in Blender, and since there are people on this site who are interested in both ancient history and Blender (and in some cases both) I thought I'd post the link here so you have a chance to take a look at it. I really cannot say I know much about Pergamon, but seeing the rendered video from the reconstruction surely has made me interested to know more, it seems like it was a really interesting place. At least architecturally.

I don't have time to read it just yet, but wanted to post a few general comments (which of course may or may not be at all relevant, so only take them seriously if they're relevant, otherwise move on and forget about them ) In general I think rewards systems can be "an easy way out", when the game itself isn't interesting enough it's easy to throw on some arbitrary rewards, like: get a ribbon if you win 25 games, another if you win 25 with a certain civilization or a third if you win a game only using citizen soldiers. While that can be nice to have as a minor addition, it should never be put in as a major feature/instead of something else. I think having more game modes is more relevant and better. From things like nomadic, herocide, etc through (custom) scenarios and random maps to things like the proposed idea of having a "conquer the world" mode where you have to conquer several maps in sequence to win the overall game. Any kind of rewards system is probably more funny/useful if it's in some way "social" (i.e. either multiplayer or submitted scores/statistics from singleplayer games), not necessarily in the way of comparing yourself to others in an unhealthy way, but more like giving people a small badge they can show in their forum profile if they've achieved a certain goal etc. So it's at least a bit more than just having a title light up in an in-game dialog or so. I don't think we should do things like having special content that only players who have achieved a certain goal can access/can access before others. That would go against the idea of 0 A.D. in my humble opinion. So, now I'll go cook and eat and other things and hopefully I have some time to read through the document and enter some more related comments later (Otherwise I'll do it tomorrow, so please remind me if I haven't posted by Saturday )

Not so sneaky anymore =)

Hiram, thanks for your review of the movie.

Ok, now I see it as well =) I was using the Alpha 3 version, didn't think there had been any changes that would affect it since then (At least it proves that it's something that happened after Alpha 3.)

Which version of the game are you using? (Didn't get any errors with the latest version, so it's likely that you either are using an old version or, perhaps more likely, that you have made local changes on your copy of the game.)

Agreed, my point is just that if you have to choose between two tasks and one is at least in some obscure way related to the AI I think you should choose the later. But finishing things definitely comes first, so don't take it as me saying everyone should drop everything they're working on Only that I think we should get the AI system as solid as possible from the start

(I'm afraid the latter is only useful as a quick overview, for a more detailed view this link is probably more relevant: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/#TechnicalDesignDocumentation )

I can't say much about the technical implications, and overall it seems like a good plan. I want to ask something though: Am I right in thinking a lot of the code useful for the AI system can be useful for human players as well? I'm thinking things like the "actually-determining-which-units-are-idle" part of "finding the idle units", and collecting all of this data for the AI should help with collecting it for saving the game? A related thought: preferably this release should focus on getting the AI system done, and programmers not working on that directly should help indirectly by mostly doing things that both the AI and the human player can benefit from. I leave it to you and the other programmers to decide/determine to what extent that is possible, but I really encourage you to find the possibilities.

That's not implemented yet, so no need to be concerned

That would be copyright infringement, so no (that doesn't say that a Cerberus necessarily is a bad idea, only that it's not a good idea to use a copyrighted model ).

Welcome to the Wildfire Games forums! Hope you'll enjoy your stay here, and that you'll find it interesting following the game improve towards a finished state

I think the place Alexander suggested would be a good place

Why don't move this info to Trac, and edit this topic to be a place to ask questions? Could have a link to the appropriate place on the Trac wiki as well.

If you've registered an account and is logged in you should be able to, otherwise just tell me your username and I'll make sure you have the needed permissions

Great guide, pinned (Though perhaps it should go in the Game Modification subforum rather than this, not sure, anyone else has got any good arguments for either place?)

Well, no. The idea with 0 A.D. has never been to make something for only a select few/for payment. When we decide that the content is good enough to be made publicly available we will make it available for everyone.

You need to use the function to import COLLADA (.dae) files rather than just opening them, if you're doing that already I hope someone else has got an idea how to fix your problem.

0 A.D. uses JavaScript, but perhaps there's someone with Java knowledge among the forumers

I guess it can be a good idea to make a new post here: http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showforum=17 specifically to discuss new ideas, to avoid them getting lost in the general release discussion here