feneur

Great to see you around I see you registered quite a while back And yeah, we're still here, it's sometimes frustrating that we haven't got it done yet, but it'd be foolish to give up now

Well, I think Michael said something about this at another place in these forums, but as that was some time ago I might say something here The first thing to remember is that there's a difference between many good screenshots and many not-as-good screenshots, and that is that the former takes more time. Another things to remember is that, as you said, it takes time away from actual development. Since we do want to keep people interested, both to have a community so we're not entirely disconnected from the rest of the world so to speak and also so people can get interested enough in the game to become a part of the team. It's also matter of keeping some things "hidden", not that we are a company and need to keep things hidden from our competitors in that way, but so we can have some "new" things to reveal later on when we want some more attention.

We are proud to present our official screenshot for September, 2008! It's a sunset scene featuring Celts and Iberians and some units we haven't shown you before. Click the thumbnail view below to experience our latest work:

Patience is a virtue they say, that's got to mean that it's hard right? Looking back at the last months it seems that day 4 of a month is the last, and that we didn't post a screenshot in May I'm afraid We did however forget to post a news post about it on the front page for August We'll try to improve in that area (Don't forget that we're posting a history article each month though, am actually impressed at how Joshua (Shogun_144) manages to get one written each month despite all the other things he's got to do).

He's hinting at: http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=11970

I didn't mean it as "don't see fighting at all", but rather as "since gathering they will not necessarily be in the center of the hardest fighting" The difference from villagers is partly that they will be more resistant to rushers, but I'd also say that it will give you more flexibility as you can use your citizen soldiers to gather when you're "between battles" so to speak. And one thing that's easy to forget: as some of your soldiers (the citizen soldiers but not the super units) will be able to repair things you will have more flexibility there too. In a game like Age of Kings a villagers isn't exactly very useful on the battlefield except when repairing and hopefully you don't have the need for repairs all the time. Also please remember that the exact rates will have to be decided upon after testing, there's gotta be a balance between fighting skill increase/gather rate decrease after all And just to be clear I want to add another thing, it will not be a continuous decrease but only when the unit gets enough experience (from fighting) to upgrade to the next level. I think it will depend a lot on how much you want to micromanage your units. If you have a unit that's upgraded you can of course still let that unit gather, but there's more use in having that unit "go to the front" and create a new unit to gather as they are more effective that way.

Indeed we've got one though obviously we forgot to add a news post pointing to it

Well, there's already a division between military and economy in that the super units don't gather at all. And I'd not say that a player needs to keep some soldiers from fighting as it's just to create new units when the old ones upgrade if you want to keep the most efficient units gathering. Also I doubt that the units you use mostly to gather aren't the ones who'll see the most fighting in the first place. Especially since the units get better at fighting when they upgrade and thus are more useful for that (The biggest reason why we want to have it this way though is for balance reasons )

If we would have had civilians in that sense that could have been a possibility, but since we're using the concept of citizen soldiers that's not the case. In a way it's the opposite: as soldiers gain experience and advance in level they get better at fighting but they get less good with the economic tasks. The exact amount this goes down will have to be determined by playtesting as I'm sure it can make a difference. Keeping track of exactly what a unit does and letting that influence his fighting abilities seems a bit overdone to me personally but in any case I think it would be too much work for little gain. It would however add an RPG element to the game which some might like.

Indeed, but those situations are what you've got cavalry for

Ok Well, I don't know who created it as that was before my time here, but would you please enlighten us to what elements you're interested in. That will make it a lot easier for us to help you

You mean the main page as in: http://wildfiregames.com/ or as in http://wildfiregames.com/0ad/?

Perhaps you can see what the road looks like, but you cannot see whether someone is running out of gas or intending to stop driving and block your road etc Plus I have yet to see a metaphorical radar

If you will get tshirts? Do you think we're made of money? =) Seriously though, I cannot promise that we will offer tshirts and other things, though it's very much possible.

True, but those are just a question of whether or not the game can continue being developed. It's generally not as if the development is going to go a lot faster if we can buy a fancy server or something. A bit smoother perhaps, but not really faster. I believe that the main reason why we don't do something like this is because we don't want to sell merchandise for a game that's not yet finished. It can be a totally different thing once it's released though.

Please point us to where we've said that. Programming is the big bottleneck for the moment, mostly because the game is so large at this stage that it takes a lot of time to learn the code. Thus it's really only the old coders who still continue to write since a lot of people who join the team to program don't seem to have understood how large this project is and how much time it takes to get done. A reason why programming is one of the hardest areas to get done quickly is just that it gets harder the larger the project is. I mean, it's not more difficult to create a model for a game that has 200 units than for a game that has 20, it just takes more time or more people. Writing code for a large game is more difficult however, there are so many things that needs to work together and work in the first place so that adding more people isn't always the answer as it often can take a lot of time to get people up to speed in working with the game - and then they realize how difficult it is or how much of their time it will take and they leave, thus making the time spent on teaching them wasted.

Just how would more money speed up things when we work for free?

Well, though I know where we're heading I don't know what will happen to us along the road

True, just don't forget that they aren't just villagers so you'll have to use a slightly larger force to actually make that much damage

True, but on the other hand, if he/she can defend from the rush he/she can get a confidence boost instead (And yeah, I'm almost arguing for the sake of arguing, so you don't have to take it too seriously )

Well, remember that your units could be gathering that time too (Plus of course that your units will have to travel to reach your enemy.) So, it's not as simple as it may seem

I agree. It's not very nice when you have to actually tell them to heal each time. I remember having trouble with that in the Empire Earth series, it's like if you'd have to tell the soldiers to attack an enemy =)

We don't have any formations implemented yet, the units in the screenshots are placed by hand.

Don't think it's your browser, either I must have forgot to add it or there must have been some error somewhere And I didn't think it was an insult, so don't worry about that.

Please see this thread for an answer to your question about the role women play in the game. And I don't want to be rude, but I think almost every question about a release date has been answered. The answer has not been what they've been looking for, but that's another thing Not sure what you mean by VOD, but we do have some plans for the autumn which possibly will make it more clear at what stage the game is, I won't say more than that right now though, just don't get your expectations too high.