feneur

Cool, the map is instantly more alive. I guess they shouldn't be quite as scared as that though, it's impossible to catch them (I'm guessing that would not be a problem once killing the animal and then gathering from it is implemented, so the AI part probably won't have to be edited for this to work well. At least not in great detail.) I doubt healers should flee, after all they're useful (could even be vital) in a battle situation. It would be nice if they automatically tried to be at a distance from the enemy to stay safe, but it's not necessary for now at least. Automatically healing injured units is definitely needed though, not having that makes healers so much less useful in many games

That's our intention yes It's not very hard to edit XML files using a text editor, but we plan to include stat editing in Atlas (our Scenario Editor).

The menu commands and civilization selections aren't working because they're not yet implemented. The other things should work though, so thanks for reporting this issue.

Fancy graphics is indeed our last worry, for now gameplay will have priority until we have the features we need, and as much as possible we aim to make it possible to turn the extra effects off so that as many people as possible will be able to run the game.

I assume there will be quite some time before you can make any commits, so in that regard you might want to start with some other task, but as long as your patient enough to keep working until you have things working (and prepared to keep working until all formations are implemented, would probably not be too easy for someone else to have to pick up where you left, not that I think you'd do it strange, but I just mean that it's probably easier for you to finish it). I've added some info to the task, especially since some of the links go to staff only threads on the forums. Hopefully that should be enough to keep you going until Philip gets back from his vacation and can give some more detailed/technical input. As Jason said, please don't hesitate to ask any questions you might have, either in this forum, in the Trac ticket itself, or in the IRC channel (we're not always there, but Philips computer is always logged in, and as long as he's not away (as he is right now, he's on a vacation) he usually replies the same day if not just a few minutes later). On Saturdays 16:30 GMT there is a programmers meeting, so if you are able to attend that you'll be almost certain to find someone who can help you (there is a clock on the http://wildfiregames.com/0ad/ site which tells you what the time currently is in GMT, so you can either use that to figure out what time GMT is in your local time, or use one of the numerous internet services).

You may be taken more serious if you say things in a nicer way. You could have said "Here are some things I think you should improve", rather than saying these are some things we seriously should change. Just a hint. The scrolling should work as you describe, it can be a bit tricky if you play the game in windowed mode, but should be no problem when you play the game in full-screen. We might still need to tweak it a little, so thanks for your input. Not sure if they'll help with your issue, but there have been improvements to the window handling (resizable window when windowed and the possibility to toggle full-screen by pressing Alt+Enter) which will be included in the next release. Or you can check out from SVN if you can't wait (In that case you'll have to build it yourself unless you're on Windows and it's more likely to include major bugs than an official release.) The animations for the females (and other units as well) will be reworked, there are a lot of them though so I can't promise we'll have them all done by the Alpha release. When it comes to graphical enhancements: We'll probably refine those things when we get closer to a finished game, but since it's just "icing on the cake" it's not our priority now. I mean it's not all that important whether everything looks perfect if the game isn't funny to play. The camera will be edited a bit, probably already for the alpha, but most likely tweaked in later releases based on feedback from players. All in all thanks for your concerns about making the game the best it can be, it's our interest as well. Just be aware it's still a work in progress so you don't judge it as you would a final game just yet.

Thanks for your good intentions, we are however working on a new website (which won't be using Flash for its design/navigation) and the site in general works fine even without flash (all content is still accessible, and it only looks slightly less attractive), so I doubt it's worth spending the time to make sure it works. But thanks anyways.

I prefer if stray units like that will not be included in such a victory condition than having an auto explore option. That's only to say that I won't urge anyone on to program it, nor will I want to include it among the default options if it's implemented. If someone wants to implement it though it would be great to have it as an option you could choose when setting up a game

A question: is there a reason to have to explore the map if you just set a unit to auto? I mean can't you just choose to have the map explored when you start to play in that case?

I'm not too fond of the notion of "ethnicity", but I can't see how you get the above to be "every ethnicity on the planet". Sure, you've got some Asians and Africans, but there's several continents you haven't even mentioned. Sure, they would not have fought each other, but if that's your argument then your selection is just as arbitrary as our. There are other civilizations which could have been part of the game, but as it is now they aren't, so it's not really worth arguing about. You are however free to create them yourself, nothing is stopping you. I'll leave it to other people who are more qualified to say something about whether these things are true or not, but even if they are, what's wrong about learning from others? Does it make an idea less useful if someone else has had it before? Sometimes the greatness comes from the way these ideas are combined to a greater effect than before.

Yeah, the Carthaginians are strong in almost all regards, but as you say, things will be expensive for them (somewhat outweighed with the good sea trade I guess ). Hopefully that and smaller tweaks to the stats (i.e. fewer hitpoints or lower attack or similar) will be enough to balance things, but otherwise we'll have to do something more drastic. For now the design stays as is on that front though, there's no reason to change things on this level before we have had any testing to prove this or that point of view.

You are free to try and get it working yourself if you want to though

No, there will be no such effect. If we find during playtesting that people really can't tell heroes from other units we might have to include something like that, but hopefully it will be easy enough without it.

In this case the word "aura" refers to an area around the hero where a certain effect will take place, for example all infantry units within this area could be 10% stronger or similar.

Animals are to be unique (though a slight overlap may of course happen if the same animal is found in different areas), but not to a specific civilization but rather to a "biome" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biome for an explanation of the word biome in case you're not familiar with it).

Those are indeed some of the behaviors we intend to implement.

There is a limit to the number of allowed quotes, and you had too many. I've increased the limit to 20 now though, so now it works (for some reason I had to press the edit button for your quotes to work, but now they do [didn't do anything but press edit and then submit]). Hopefully no one will need to make more quotes than that in a single post

Thanks for fixing this so quickly Philip

Got an email a couple of hours ago and another game has been added to the bundle, i.e. more reason to check it out if you haven't already, and something to not forget if you've already bought it Two days left before the deal is over, and to me it looks like it's a success already.

Really nice to see your success in modding the game

Well, "basic" editor functions are already implemented That is, place objects, paint textures, deform ground. That kind of things are already implemented, and I think I remember Philip saying something about basic scripting capabilities for scenarios being included already (very basic, manual writing of JavaScript scripts, no triggers, risk that things will change making old scripts unable to run/not run exactly the same, but still ). In other words, it depends on how much work you're prepared to put in Our goal is to be able to release new updates fairly regularly in the future though, so hopefully some basic triggers shouldn't be too far of (you might always try to find some good coder and convince him/her to join the team and work on it if you want to see it sooner ).

I'm sorry if I sound harsh, I might have made some bad choices for words etc. My intent was merely to try and give a realistic view of what to expect from 0 A.D. but I can see how it can be interpreted otherwise.

If you want to play another game, then ok sorry to see you go, but feel free to lose your enthusiasm. But if you want to play this game, then I suggest you think about this a bit more. (For a good in-depth discussion of why 0 A.D. is 3D and not 2D, and thus is one reason why it requires a slightly better computer than what might have been the norm in 2001, please read this article on the website: http://www.wildfiregames.com/0ad/page.php?p=6911 ) My comment about "if you want to play this game" might seem rude, but all I really mean is this: 0 A.D. is not just its game-play, or its "setting", or its history, it's also its graphics. While it could perhaps be an interesting game even if it would have simpler graphics, it would not be the same game. Also, while the idea was first conceived in 2001 (it was actually a mod for AoK back then), the actual development of the game wasn't started until 2003, so ambitions had time to change =) We do still intend to try and keep the game running on as many computers as possible, but in the end the requirements might be a bit higher than they are today (though the opposite could also be true, while we most likely won't downgrade the games graphics to the point that it can be run on a graphics card that only supports OpenGL 1.3 we 'll definitely try to optimize things as much as possible). Truth be told though, we can't know for sure what computers can run the final game until we have the final game, everything up until then is merely speculation. Finally, while I don't know your financial situation I would be surprised if you wouldn't be able to afford a new graphics card by the time 0 A.D. is finished. I mean even if things would be working optimally I don't see the game being finished in 2 years (probably more like 3-4 years minimum unless things really work perfect, things have started to improve with Philip's simulation system rewrite though, so in case the right people find the project/join we could have the game finished sooner than I fear ). If you divide $40 with 24 you get ca $1.7/month, and to me that sounds like something most people could spare (at least if you can afford a computer + electricity + internet connection in the first place). Perhaps I'm wrong and you can't, and in that case I can see why you're frustrated, but then I repeat what I said in the beginning: Maybe this isn't the game for you, and in that case I'm suggesting you spend your time/energy doing something which is for you. Would be sad to see you go as you seem to be a good and passionate person, but for your own sake I guess it's better if you indeed "find out now, not later". If you do lose your enthusiasm and decide not to follow the project any more, please don't forget about us in case you get a better graphics card

One small thought on the "buildings too close to each other" issue, would it be possible to simply limit buildings to only be built far enough from each other that units always will be able to pass between them? With the exclusion of walls (and perhaps towers ) of course =)

Judging by and it doesn't seem it's very useful in this case.