feneur

Don't worry, it's not even ten days old Expensive and weak? Well, that sounds like there's something really wrong with them imho =) I just don't see how that would happen, if nothing else if they aren't useful no one is going to use them and thus they'd not show up in the stats anyway. (Or they'd be used by inexperienced players, but since they'd most likely lose quite early and for that reason not get very many points in total I doubt their use of a few expensive but weak units would matter overall.)

Why don't you focus on gameplay innovations? I'm not asking that to be silly or anything, but to highlight the fact that different people have different skills. In other words: it's not a choice between adding one type of feature or another in a given release, but rather between adding what features the currently active developers are able to (and since we're volunteers: want) work on for the next release or not at all. And that means that given the currently active developers we've seen more development in terms of graphics than gameplay features lately. To be fair we have added gameplay features in the last couple of releases as well though So it's not all graphics even at this point (since we do have active developers who are skilled in that area as well).

Found another one: http://dxtory.com/v2-home-en.html Seems like it costs a bit more than Fraps, but also has more features, and might be less resource heavy, at least according to: Just another option to check out for anyone who's interested in creating gameplay videos

In this game mode or what? They already are integrated in walls in the main game if that is what you are asking (Though there are free-standing "Defense Towers" as well.)

See: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/201#comment:2 Is there any reason not to move this topic to the open forum?

It's a known issue: http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=15796 and have several explanations. We hope to improve performance a lot before a final release, but for now it's recommended to not play on too large maps, not play with more than one or two AIs (and definitely don't play with AIs on island maps as AIs don't yet support them, or use docks etc for that matter, so it would be very boring), and also not play with too many players at the same time in general.

Well, if we take what both you and I have been saying into account you should probably either speak up louder now or wait a couple of years I'm not really against adding triggers now per se, but to me it seems better to add them when they are the most useful (together with the more story-based parts of gameplay) and together with the other things story-based campaigns brings with them they would take a long time to implement. And not to think of creating the actual content. To me it seems better to add it all at the same time

I cannot say much about the specific programmatic reasons for why to do things one way or another, but I do think that regardless of whether or not the bulk of the engine will need to be rewritten in part 2 for triggers it will probably need to be rewritten more or less completely anyway to make it possible to make use of more than one CPU. Which kind of invalidates the "but you will have to rewrite everything" argument as the rewrite will be needed anyway, and that might actually be another reason to postpone the addition of triggers, better to add both things that require a rewrite at the same time as there's the need for two rewrites otherwise. There might still be other reasons that would make it worth adding triggers at this point, but I think that unless we decide to do something as major as that (at least if it's as major as you describe it with more or less a complete rewrite of parts of the engine) we're getting really close to the finished game. Not as in "we could release part one within a couple of months", but as in " we should decide now if we want to have a release out within one or two years or within four to five years". Each individual piece we add might not increase the development time immensely, but I think it's time to start evaluating things more strictly to see if they're worth increasing development time for. Otherwise we'll keep working forever on the "perfect game" and never reach it, it's better to be able to release a good game soon and then keep improving on it in subsequent releases.

I think the thing is that terrain flattening should be smooth and affect the area around it and not just below the building. I think there are three parts to good building placement: restrictions (if the ground is too uneven it won't work well even if the ground is flattened underneath the building - the difference to the surrounding area would be too large and cause "pits" etc where the building is), foundations for the buildings to make them possible to place even on slightly uneven terrain, and smooth terrain flattening to make it work on slightly uneven terrain

What version of the game was this in? (Alpha 10? Alpha 11? SVN?)

You are amazing Omri Really cool! I think this might work nice for e.g. a trailer or something as well. While playing it's probably best not to disturb the player with lyrics (at least not that the player can understand =) and at least not too much), but for the credits screen, trailers and so on this would work perfect. Personally I like it as simple and bare as it is now But maybe others will prefer it with a lot of orchestration etc. I hope you will do what you find the best though as I'm sure that will be the most impressive

We might be getting that soon: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/21 (But maybe that was what you were alluding to? )

Have you tried changing the file-type to be .dae (just "rename" it to be exactly the same but with lowercase .dae instead of uppercase .DAE). I have a feeling I've heard that causing issues before, so it's definitely worth trying.

Sounds good to me Simple while still reasonably accurate.

Why? The second release will contain all the things from the first (only better ), so there should really not be any point in playing the first release once the second is out (There's of course always the risk that you will not like some of the changes in the second release, in which case you might want to keep playing the first. We'll probably make it possible to turn at least some of the features though, so generally there shouldn't be any reason at all to use the old release once the next is out ).

Seasons and units on walls have been cut from the first release of 0 A.D. They are complicated to implement, and at least seasons aren't adding as much to the gameplay as they cost in development time. Units on walls would take a lot of work to get good, so while it might be possible to implement a lesser version we'd rather wait and implement something that works great.

Ok, so let's break that down in smaller pieces I can understand (Food + Wood + 2*(Metal + Stone))/12 Ok, the first part (food, wood, metal, stone) I get and can see the value of, stone and metal are generally more rare (though since you can get any of the resources via trade the differences diminish). What I don't see is why it's divided by 12? I guess that depends on what the answer is to my next question though: "number of units" + 2 * "number of buildings" + "number of units killed" + 2 * "number of buildings destroyed" What do you mean by "number of ..."? Do you mean the actual "number of..." as in player x has Y number of units? I guess that's easier than to calculate a cost for each unit/building, but it does not really tell very much about the actual strength of a player as in this calculation 100 female citizens would be "worth" as much as 100 elephants, though the latter not only cost the player more but would also be more useful in a fight. 20 * "number of techs researched" Again, what's the significance of the number 20? And also, it might be useful in some ways to treat all the techs the same, but different techs are more or less worth compared to each other. On the other hand that might even out over the course of the game as early techs which might be cheap can be worth a lot in the long run etc, so I guess it's less of an issue for techs. Either way is fine with me, though having subtractive elements does keep the scores down =) Yep, most definitely I guess that was implied, but thanks for making it clear so there's no confusion about it

In AoK I think (though I could definitely be wrong) that the sounds were tied to the buildings. Iirc e.g. the sea sounds were played over the docks. Either way, would it be much harder to do sounds which can only be attached to either terrain or objects or which can be attached to both? If it's not much more difficult I'd say go for make it possible to attach ambient sounds to just about anything and we have the options to do whichever works best in the different cases Speaking about ambient sounds from a more general/sound engine point of view: it would probably be nice to have the engine automatically just play one (or at most at few) of the possible ambient sounds which can be played depending on the different emitters on screen. And at around maximum zoom just play a generic wind sound or something.

That sounds like it should be possible yeah The things which are important to remember imho when it comes to ambient sounds in whichever way they're implemented are 1) that their volume can be set independently of other sounds (and is relatively low in comparison to the other sounds by default) and 2) that they are implemented in such a way that they only play every now and then (possibly randomly, and perhaps in such a way that you can set an optional "silent time", or a "silent time range", i.e. that the sound isn't played for say 15-30 seconds or something).

I think our buildings generally look to random as it is. I.e. it is not always immediately clear from the silhouette/general layout that a building belongs to a specific category. As long as it's reasonably clear from e.g. props and how it looks compared to that civs other buildings I think it's fine though as it makes the civs different from each other (though at least some common elements between civs are of course making it easier for players to know which building is which and thus imho a good thing), but I really don't think having variations is a good thing. It depends on what you mean by variations though. It's one thing if you e.g. have different props (though of the same category) and perhaps say a chimney in one place in one and in another in another variation. It's a completely different thing if the entire layout of the building is different though for example.In either case, as long as we don't have one variation for each building for each civilization I don't think we should add more variations to one building (and again, props is one thing, and houses is also another thing since you don't need to interact with them very often + you have such a large number of them (+they're usually unique enough compared to other buildings that it's easy to tell them apart anyway)).

Is that with or without the new graphical effects enabled? Is it on all maps? Even with a small number of AIs? Even on a small map?

So, for starters, does anyone know exactly how the AoE series calculated its points? I think it was something like 1 point per 1 of each resource you had, and then the cost of a unit/building was removed from the total, but you got the double back when it was trained/built. Then when you killed/destroyed an enemy unit/building you got some percentage (50%?) of its cost as points(which was permanent unlike the points for resources/units/buildings). And I think you lost all the points a certain unit/building had contributed to when it was killed/destroyed. Do we want something like that or something different? Also, for in-game display, where do we want it? I would say the bottom right, top right could also be an alternative, but I think it's best to let the tech queue stay there

I can do it later since we might want to discuss how to calculate the points first. I'll move this topic to the technical discussions forum...

It should definitely be possible to add the total points (though we need to define exactly how to calculate them), and to make it possible to view the current stats in-game as in the Age of Empires games etc. We should probably add a small crown or wreath or something next to the winning players to make them stand out, even if/when total points are added as in for example team games a player might have less points than most other players, but still be on the winning team.

Hmm, maybe we could have "a generic other player unit selection sound" and "a generic other player building selection sound"? Not a big deal either way, but it just seems a bit weird if it would be "clink" I guess my main point is that I would want the unit/building sound to be different from the UI sound I do agree that it's probably a good idea to have some audio confirmation that you've selected something, even if it is your enemy's, and I think it's best to reserve the building-specific sound to player-owned buildings. And I think your chart makes sense. For ambient: what about have the global as an "automatic" ambient sound and then make it possible for scenario designers/map makers to place ambient emitter object in Atlas/RMS scripts? (If it's not too much work it could of course be nice to have some more general desert/ocean/forest/corrals/etc ambient sounds, but I think the priority should be: global-->placeable-->"automatic" )