feneur

First, I'm not saying you shouldn't feel free to suggest improvements, and as Pureon said, please provide suggestions. Also note that to make a balanced and fun game things needs to be simplified to a level where it makes sense (we can't give some civs seven siege weapon types and some one for example). Second, just as a general comment it's quite interesting to see how different reactions things can get: it wasn't long ago that someone thought our units looked too different from other units of the same kind, and now you think we need more variety (I'm not saying it's 100% comparable as that was the infantry units and this is the siege units, my point is just that no matter what we do we can never please everyone ).

Ah, daydreaming is fine

If one is on Ubuntu one can try the development snapshot PPA: https://launchpad.net/~wfg/+archive/0ad.dev It's not updated every day, but far more often than the alpha release PPA

You are aware that that would add ten times as much work for each and every building, right?

Cool, and yeah, it would be really interesting if such cutting edge research would find its way into 0 A.D.

Oh, wow That's pretty serious Then it's no surprise you seem to have found a way that works for you Personally I'm mostly writing as I go along (though I do have a pretty good idea about where things will end up, just not how I will get there =) ), perhaps things would go smoother if I did at least some basic outlining =) That's amazing how things can develop into something that you didn't expect it to I'm thinking along those lines myself. Mostly because I want the experience of actually laying out an entire book etc. (But at least to a tiny degree because I would prefer to have at least parts done of the story that comes after the one I'm getting close to being finished with before I try to find a publisher. We'll see what happens, I have/will have a few people reading through it, and it depends on what they say a lot after all, if no one else enjoys reading it then there's no point in trying to make them ) Hopefully the story itself is interesting, but the process of its conception etc is pretty interesting as well if I may say so myself The first embryos of the main story (for which the story I'm writing now is a prequel, but more on that in a moment) came to me when I was walking in a forest close to where I lived when I was younger, and then through a couple of years of different tries (some of which ended up not having much to do with what I have now, and certainly not being finished, but all have left some traces ) I ended up with the beginnings of a couple of chapters from different parts of the story (got ideas which I then thought "this will fit into the story about here"), but not much in terms of actual words written. Most chapters were just a page or a few. Since I realized it would take a lot to finish that part of the overall story (already the chapters I had written parts of hinted at a comparatively long story, perhaps complex, but at least long =) ), and that it would probably be helpful to have fully written something before truly putting time into something that big, I decided to write a story about one of the characters in the big story. And now about eight or so years later here I am, with about 74-75 000 words (my intention was always to try and write a shorter story, so about 75 000 words is pretty ok for a shorter story =) ). During these years I've had ideas for a final book/story that will tie the two together (and I have actually written what I aim for the end to be like =) ), so I like to think about it in this way: first comes a story that can be read on its own (in one book), then comes another story that can be read on its own (I will have to see how long it actually ends up being, but I've always seen it as a trilogy =) ), and then comes a final story (I see it as one book) that ties the two together, and where one is certainly encouraged to have read the two different parts before reading it We will have to see what comes of it, but I at least have ideas =) I just need to actually spend the time required to get them onto paper (or into the computer, but I mostly start on paper). In fact I've probably written more regularly the last two years than during the entire period before, during the summers I've worked in a city that lies just above an hours bus trip away from home (depends on how long the waiting time is between buses) and on the bus and during the lunch break at work has been great opportunities to write. Last year I still had some chapters I wrote as first drafts (I thought the story lacked a bit in the middle so I added a bunch of chapters, altogether the story went from about 40 000 words earlier and to the ca 74 000 I have now ), and this year I have been editing The good thing about writing on the bus is that it's a good mix between not being able to do much else, and having some distraction so as to not keep you too bored I know it's probably not something for everyone, but for me it's been great Not sure all that is interesting to anyone but me, but anyway, I'm not going to delete it once I've written all this =)

Oh, I thought the GHz were per core, but I guess that would be weird (People can't be expected to add up the numbers themselves, can they )

Imagination is something you need to exercise to get full use of, start writing something, take notes on ideas you get and work from there. Maybe it won't be something worth pursuing, but it may spark ideas for something else. Also, I've found that things like walking/biking/working with your hands are good to get your brain going. To let the body do the work and the mind run free I think part of the problem today is that we always have music/internet/SMS/etc around us, and while each of those things can provide inspiration in some way, all of them will limit your ability to let your brain process the things you have seen and heard.

Sounds great Hope no bugs will be found (or rather that if there are any bugs they will be found now and not once this is released ), and thanks for your work so far. This will be a welcome change for a lot of people. Don't take that as pressure to do anything than your best, but take it as confirmation that what you are doing is useful/wanted and encouragement to keep going

Don't worry, you seem to be doing really well. I started writing my book almost ten years ago, and only now am getting close to where I want to be (Have been editing for the last year or so, and before that I spent quite some time changing from first person to third person, but still, it shows the importance of persistence on the one hand, but perhaps even more to actually spend time on it There have been weeks and months when I haven't done anything at all Especially at the time when I changed from first to third person, wasn't the funniest/most interesting part if I say so =) )

The game can be run on a 1Ghz processor? I know you mean technically run, but still, that sounds like it would give like 1 FPS or something at max =) Maybe not. I think there might have been talk about it at least, to send a report a few seconds after a map has loaded Either way it should be possible to add if it isn't there already (Though it would probably be better to set it to send say 15 minutes into playing or something )

That already exists, though you need to press the Ctrl button first (Maybe you do know about it and just want to make sure it's not removed? ) And yeah, at the very least a garrison all female citizens button will exist It's the citizen soldiers that present the biggest issue, since you may or may not want to garrison them.

(It doesn't include any units inside though, and most likely will not. If modders will want to add something like that they can feel free to, but for the main game it's too much micromanagement for little or no gain.)

Mostly for "historical" reasons (historical as in "it's been used in other games before" mostly, but also due to it's historical meaning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_(mythology) ). That it includes not only the animals/nature, but also the neutral units, is probably a result of them being seen as "belonging to nature" since they don't belong to any of the actual players. And probably also a matter of convenience since there is no need to add an additional "neutral player" for them to belong to (These latter thoughts are more about the general concepts, the reason why we use the name Gaia for the nature/neutral player is most the first of it being used in other games before 0 A.D. )

I'm pretty sure that (well not the form, but the statistics gathering function that is connected to it) already detects most (if not all) of these things, so it's more a matter of digesting the information (I don't recall if it does any performance testing though, I seem to remember it might, but I'm not sure, someone else with more knowledge on what it actually does will have to fill in with more information ) Afaik it's pretty much impossible to get these perfect though, especially before the game is done. So I don't think we should stress out too much about getting it perfect. Also things like the OS matters a lot too, iirc Win7 requires 2 GB of RAM just on its own for example (or it's recommended you have 2 GB of RAM or something, either way the main point is that different OSs have different requirements/resource usage ), so running the game on Win7 as opposed to WinXP or a light-weight Linux OS might give very different performance results on the same machine.

I just don't see how that would make the game any more fun or interesting? Adding another step to unit production (or three in your case as you first have to make sure you build enough different houses, and second make sure you have enough citizens to both keep gathering and fighting, and third make sure there weren't any necessary workers taken as soldiers) without adding some benefit to doing it this way is certainly not making the game better. Also, remember that 0 A.D. is a war/economy game (in that order of importance, though of course you need to get a good economy going first in terms of when you do things), so we can't make one side too complicated without making the other suffer (or reduce the complexity of that part to compensate). It's another thing in a game like Stronghold since the emphasis there is more on constructing the stronghold and managing the economy (at least in the ones I've played, haven't played the latest one), and if anything defending against the enemy, and less on attacking.

For general gameplay I think that is a really bad idea. It should always be clear what objects are gaia. For scenarios it's one thing, there it might make sense to e.g. have Gaia share the color of one of the civs if you want to do something like have the player destroy buildings that belong to a certain civ, but without alerting the player/AI. So I suggest we add a "Gaia" player to the Player settings tab in Atlas. Should be useful for the future as well if we want to make it possible for Gaia to tribute resources to the player as part of a scenario or something (that specific thing is probably left for part two with triggers, but there might be other player related settings which can be relevant to set for Gaia as well, perhaps there are some specific Gaia settings we could add here etc).

Agreed, for now the most important thing is to get sound working for as many people as possible (hopefully everyone ). If we can't have exactly all the features of the current implementation (was rolloff even part of it? Not that I'm too sure about what that is, and yeah I could google it, so don't worry about explaining it, I just mean that as long as the basic functionality is there for this release I'll be more than happy ).

You should most definitely be able to run the game in windowed mode, see http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Manual_Settings for how to set it up, the bug should just be that it's not possible to change it while running the game.

Provided we have animated textures it sounds like it should be relatively easy to implement, just create a sky that includes auroras (or perhaps even on a special extra "layer").

I think there is, maybe not a huge document with every planned feature of course, but at least a basic document outlining the vision and idea behind it I mean it's hard for someone to come along and implement what you want if they don't know what you want Ah, no that part isn't planned (nor was the inventory part in Rise and Fall, to be honest it was more Action than RPG, though you could select new skills for the hero as you got more experience). And I don't think adding that would benefit the main game, at least not for part one. It's definitely something to think about for part two though as that will generally be more about the story-telling aspects (triggers/cinematics have been postponed for part two, and things like attrition and possibly morale etc which gives a greater emphasis on the individual units and maintaining/caring for them are things many have wanted and which may be included then).

Myconid explained the Alt+Enter issue, as for Alt dragging, perhaps the OS is using that keyboard combination? (I think at least some Linux window managers use that combination for moving the window or something, so it's at least a possibility) If that's the case you can always set the keyboard combination to something else, but if it's not it sounds like an actual bug which should be solved.

The power of game design documents is that they help focus development, and make sure that the idea is well established. The second part is probably the most important imho, the exact features that goes into a game may change (and probably should, some when you implement them and realize they are no fun, some when you realize they take too much work and would halt the development too much), but if the idea changes too much it's going to be a problem (developers may leave because the game is no longer what they joined for, you may alienate fans who had started following the development because of the original idea, and you may have trouble attracting new fans/players if you get a reputation for being shifty etc =) ). Not sure what you mean by a hero system? I mean that could range from what we already have (albeit in a limited form so far as we don't have any "powers"), to Rise and Fall style, to something even more RPGy.

Splendid