feneur

The exact decisions will have to be made once we get further on, but in general I'd say the process will be something like follows: Alpha releases until we have all the gameplay features we'd like. Beta releases while we fix bugs and improve performance and test the game in all kinds of ways (depending on what time the available programmers have they might also include things like LOD fog, graphical enhancements, minor additions in other ways etc, also I don't think we will hold off calling it a beta if the multiplayer lobby server and related features aren't finished so that might be developed/finished during the beta phase as well) 1.0 release once everything works as far as we can tell and have tested. No new things should be added between the last beta and the final release, only final bug fixes and other polish (though who knows, perhaps some minor easter eggs might be added as well, but that's down to the ones who would create the same). After 1.0 is released we will have to make some major decisions about where to go from there. Some team members might want to leave the team once we reach that milestone, some new are likely to arrive. We will also have to make decisions about what to include in the future and exactly how we will proceed. I see two likely paths (roughly approximated): 1. a. After 0 A.D. part one is released we basically do what we've done for part one and starts with alpha releases, then move on to beta etc. 1. b. During the time we periodically release bug fix patches to the original version 1.0 for major bugs. 2. Rather than add everything to one big 2.0 we might instead have a more direct path forward where we continually add new things. Something like: A couple of new gameplay features: 1.1, A new civ and some gameplay features: 1.2, One major new gameplay feature and a host of bug fixes and other improvements: 1.3, Some new gameplay fetaures: 1.4. And so on until we have all the features we want to call it 2.0. It might still be relevant to do lesser snapshots of development releases during the progress from 1.0 to 1.1 etc. Say we would on average make a new 1.something once or twice a year we might release an in-development version or two in-between (whether we'd call them alphas or betas or whatever ). I'd say something like option number two seems most likely, otherwise we'd have to in essence keep developing two versions of the game at the same time (0 A.D. part 1 and what will be 0 A.D. part 2), and also that would mean that new features would be added sooner. Perhaps we would do something in between, mostly like option two, but if enough people still use 1.0 we might fix any bugs which are too serious. To answer your original question more directly though: Once 0 A.D. part two will be finished there will be no need for part one as everything from part one will be included. Though improved of course, so the civs that has been included from part 1 will make use of new features added and so on. This question should be answered above as well, but in essence no new gameplay features as betas are reserved for fixing/testing/improving, and the final release simply will be once we feel the game is done and everything works well

Good to hear it worked out. I would guess (though I could be completely wrong) that it is the download manager plugin that's to blame, sometimes they're really useful, sometimes they cause more problems than they solve (and some sites don't allow you to use them either).

Especially since it's still relevant to discuss the eventual in-game tutorial. Just that it will be a while before it will be created doesn't mean it isn't relevant to discuss what it should be like once it's created

A pretty recent game: (if I recall correctly it's recorded by Michael aka Mythos_Ruler, who probably is the best 0 A.D. player at the moment, mostly because he knows the game like no one else ). It's not a 100% standard game as there are some additional buildings at the start of the game, but overall it should be the same, also it's sped up a bit to work as a promotional video, but it's at least better than nothing while you wait for others to record their games

I will add two things: First, adding an in-game tutorial before we've got all features implemented doesn't make much sense, so that's another reason it isn't added yet. Second, while a full basic "move the mouse towards the left edge of the screen to move the camera to the left" kind of tutorial might be beyond the scope of 0 A.D. part one I definitely think we should be able to get something in. If nothing else we might have a special setting for the AI that enables helpful tips. "I see you haven't yet built any houses, you will have to soon if you want to continue expanding your empire" or "Maybe you should train some female citizens to increase your food gathering" etc (Maybe requires a special AI that can see what the player sees, and I don't mean just in terms of what's going on on the map, that's easy to share and for now the AIs can see the entire map by default. I also mean the player resources etc )

You're welcome (Though we're definitely not finished yet, so save part of the thank you ) I don't think it's as easy as one is better than the other, we definitely hope that Pyrogenesis (the 0 A.D. engine) will be better than AOMs, and in some ways I'm sure it is already. The AOM engine is likely to always be better than Pyrogenesis in some ways, and there are many things which probably can't be compared as the games/engines aren't doing the same things. For now I think there definitely are some areas left where the AOM engine is better than our (performance wise if nothing else ).

Thanks for the report Any indication as to why 0 A.D. is included at this moment and not either sooner or once we reach 1.0?

Cool. That building works at that size as well (can't say I'm a fan of the sky texture there though, but that's not the point of the image =) ). Thanks for sharing

Splendid. And good luck with your writing

Cool, thanks

For inspiration it's definitely fine, if you'd want to use the actual models/textures you'd have to follow the CC-BY-SA Creative Commons license, but not just to be inspired If you distribute the images anywhere it's appreciated if you would link to us/let people know where you were inspired though For where to find images, well, the easiest way is probably to download the game and look at the buildings in Atlas (the scenario/map editor), but we have posted images of the buildings for different civs when a new civ is released at e.g. http://www.moddb.com/games/0-ad/images/roman-building-set-for-alpha-9#imagebox etc if you don't want to/can do that

Welcome and thanks for the report, it's cool to hear about 0 A.D. being useful to someone else even though it's not finished yet if nothing else I assume(/hope) you're using the SVN version to stay on top of new development? Just so you take advantage of any new improvements (Though if you're short on time it might be better to be using a static version so you don't have to keep up with any changes =) )

Ok, I was uncertain which you meant since you said "unit" rather than "units" But yeah, for groups it can be a bit sketchy at the moment (not sure if it works at all I'm afraid), hopefully it should not be too hard to fix, but I guess it's at least not trivial, because then it would have been fixed already

Cool. It's definitely a skill in its own right to be able to create objects that look good at that scale, so great work I say (And welcome back )

I'll let the programmers answer the programming related questions, but I'll give my opinion on the "what should it do" questions I'd say for non-network game Esc should bring up the menu and pause the game, for network games just bring up the menu (unless perhaps it's the host, but it's probably not worth complicating things like that). Now for some arguments: I do think we should keep F10 as just bringing up the menu, but it's definitely a good thing to have Esc available as well since it's common in many games. In my opinion Esc is a bit more "brutal" =) so it's not a bad thing to have it pause the game as well, especially if we still keep F10 for the non-pausing menu if you just want to bring up an in-game settings menu to change the settings that can be changed while the game is running or something, so you have that choice. A multiplayer game should probably never be possible to pause (unless you mean a "hard pause" where you save the game, shut it down and then restart later), I guess it might be nice to have the ability in some cases, but it's probably just as well to leave that for the general pause key in that case. In either case pausing a multiplayer game should only be possible for the host if possible, imho.

Don't worry If everyone accepts the way things are they never will improve Sometimes the way you do things has to be questioned, many times there is a reason for why things are done a certain way and no reason to change them, but some times there is, and it would be sad to miss those opportunities just because people are afraid to ask questions RMS/AI is probably as you say one of the areas where this is the most apparent, if nothing else because they are both relatively new areas so even apart from the cases where duplication might be necessary it's probably one of the areas which can use the most simplification etc

Ah I (or someone else can feel free too) need to update that Atlas manual to cover all the new select/rotate stuff in Atlas (That said, I'd be happy if someone else would do so as the hard drive on my desktop seems to have broken down and I can't run the game on my laptop, so it's probably easier for someone else to update it. If no one has done it once the issues are resolved I'll take care of it eventually, but I'm not sorry if I don't have to )

It should work for a single unit, but there are troubles with order queues and groups of units at the moment if that is what you're trying to do rather than with a single unit?

I'll let the programmers say anything more specific, but a few general comments. Triggers (as in an easy way to create scenarios where things happen based on set conditions) are indeed postponed and unless things change dramatically will not be included in 0 A.D. part 1. (It should still be possible to create story based/event based scenarios with scripts though, and the reason why it's been decided that we will wait with including it is that overall scenarios/campaigns/triggers/cinematics will take so much time to both implement and then actually create the scenarios/campaigns. It's not too unlikely that 0 A.D. will have triggers etc quicker if we focus on having a released "finished" version rather than having every feature we might want from the start. A release version will ensure a lot more visibility, and will allow for 0 A.D. to be added to official repositories etc, which should increase the amount of possible contributors.) A big reason why some things seems to be duplicated is because of security, it's been fairly limited what different javascript scripts can do with other parts of the code. I'll let Philip or someone explain, but I'm assuming this is part of where you see duplication. Another reason is probably that 0 A.D. has been worked on by so many people over the years, and things have been redone over and over, so there are probably a lot of things that can be improved/unified/simplified still.

You should be able to delete actors the same way you delete entities (select with the move/rotate tool and press the delete key, see http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Atlas_Manual_Starting#Deletingobjects ), otherwise I'd say it's a bug. There has been some work on selecting in Atlas not too long ago so perhaps that broke something.

Campaigns aren't created yet, so enabling the button wouldn't mean anything. Since there are no campaigns it wouldn't happen much when you clicked it. I guess we could add a note saying "campaigns aren't implemented yet", but I guess we're hoping that the disabled state of the button would say the same, especially since the game is still in development.

I haven't found that to be much of an issue in practice, but if nothing else it shouldn't be too hard to e.g. add the ability to limit results of pressing the , and . keys by adding the Alt key. I.e. press , to select any fighting unit, Alt+, to select only units with fighting ability, press . to select any working unit, press Alt+. to select only units with just working abilities (female citizens, trade units, fishing ships, maybe healers, though as they are more likely to be used in a more offensive way perhaps they should be selected by the , key).

Gates aren't fully implemented yet, so they "aren't supposed to work". The wall system as a whole is being worked on though, so they will be working soon. If I recall correctly that should be fixed in SVN, so it will work in the next Alpha release.

Just register and click on "New ticket" and start creating Please search through the existing tickets though as there are tickets for many issues already

Seasons have been postponed until part 2, but that doesn't mean that it's forbidden to work on such things, only that it's better/recommended to work on other things so we can have part one done as soon as possible (Also, for team members it does to some extent mean that it's, if not forbidden, at least highly discouraged to work on such features =) That said, it's better that people work on non-needed features for a while than get bored with 0 A.D. development entirely and leave the project, so it's not set in stone in that sense. Just that I and a lot of other people will be a lot happier if other things are done first ) Afaik there are no new shadow effects done, the specularity work that has been done is as far as I know just implemented in code (and possible to add to entire objects), but will be added as a texture mapped effect as time goes on.