feneur

Having both extended foundations and flattening sounds like the best option to me, that way neither has to be too extreme

Ok, it might not work anymore/not work with random maps/perhaps I just don't remember correctly

Iirc there's something on Windows that hinders hotloading the way it is implemented now, as far as I've been told it works on e.g. Linux though :-/

I would assume that's a seed of its own. Especially since '0' often seems to equal "one" in programming (Maybe that's more in lists and the like, but anyways =) ) But Ben would know for sure

Aha Good that you've updated the manual now

Weren't you the one working on this? from: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Atlas_Manual_Map_Tab Or did someone provide me with incorrect information? =)

Philip is only being paid after the work is done. After one week of work has been completed (regardless of whether the five work days that make up said week are in an actual week or spread out over a longer amount of time) the payment for that week of work is paid out. It would of course in many ways be great if the work would be done one day after another, but reality isn't always what one hopes for (especially since we're not a corporation who can fire Philip or anything). Partly it's Philip prioritizing other things over game development, perhaps he doesn't need the money enough or what do I know. Perhaps we should try and be more strict about it, but on the other hand what would be the alternative? At least currently no one else with anywhere near the same knowledge of the code has got the time to work on the game full time (regardless of how you define that), so if we'd "forbid" Philip then no full time work would be done at all for who knows how long time. Partly however it's also Philip finding that the latest part of his paid work, pathfinding, is taking more time to research, and think about, and plan, than he anticipated and he doesn't want to be paid for working full time when it's that kind of work which is hard to put a number of hours to. It is good that you care though, and I hope seeing your comments will encourage Philip to prioritize working on the game. As I said though, Philip is only getting paid after work has been done, so it's not like he's gotten money for a full month already and just hasn't done all the work yet. If against all odds Philip will not be able to work all the days we have gotten donations for we will find someone else of the programmers who are able to do the same, so even though in the worst case it might take some time the money will go to developing the game and nothing else. With the caveat mentioned on the Pledgie page: However, we should definitely update the Pledgie page to highlight the fact that the month of full time work means 20 days of eight hours of work each, and not necessarily a calendar month. We had originally hoped, and I'm sure Philip had as well, that it would more or less completely correspond to a calendar month which meant we didn't think it was necessary to mention. As things are we should definitely be more clear about it.

Hello and welcome Bogdan! Seems like you at the very least have a very good start on the programming, especially since a lot of the gameplay programming is done with javascript

You'll have to wait for the programmers to give you any direct answers to your questions, but just as a general information here is the link to the related page in the Trac wiki in case you haven't seen it already: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Random_Map_Generator

Thanks Michael for working on this guide, and thanks everyone who's working on the random map scripts, really nice to see how we might actually be able to get to the number of maps originally envisioned

Aha That shows how much I know about these things =) Ah well, I'm grateful I don't have to know it all but have a lot of other people on the team to know all the details

Hmm, looking at the background and the small piece of the minimap you can see that looks like you are playing on an islands map? The AI cannot currently use island maps. I'm not sure whether that is the problem in this case as I'm not the AI programmer, but thought I should mention it in any case so you (and anyone else reading this) is aware of it for the future if nothing else. Also, it is easier to see the errors if we get them in a text format rather than from an image like that. To easiest do that you can To expand on Ben's possibly cryptic answer: we use Collada (.dae) files to create the models and animations, but then the game engine automatically converts the Collada files to a custom format. For release versions this is done while the release is being packaged, but if you're using the SVN version it is being done on-the-fly while running the game. In both cases the files are then cached, so the process only needs to be run once per model. (And something similar is done for the texture files, many are created as PNG files, but converted to .dds files either when first encountered in a map/Atlas if you use the SVN version, or when packaging for the release versions.)

Maybe. It does sound like it could cause some unnecessary confusion without bringing all that much benefit. I mean if you have a siege ram of your own that you intend to put some units in and then when you try to put them there you can't be cause it's already full (because your ally has dedcided to garrison his units in your ram), that's going to be confusing. And then when you ungarrison the units you cannot control them. But it would quickly be obvious that it is your ally's units, so that's not a big issue on its own. I think it's more of a problem in that your ally might suddenly have his units somewhere he didn't want to (if you are able to ungarrison his units, and if you are not your ally would be able to partly remove control of your units so that's not a good option imho), instead of right in the middle of the fight they might be somewhere on the way or in your base and your ally would have to find them and give them a new move order (and who knows, might decide that since they already are in your city he could just as well send some more troops there and attack you instead ) etc. It might not be a big issue, but I'm just not convinced the benefits outweigh the negative sides Also, hopefully we'll have a proper co-op mode where two or more people share control of the same "player" (in the in-game/game code sense, i.e. the units/buildings belong to one in-game player and share the same unit color, LOS etc, but one or more people, or AIs for that matter, would share control over it). I'm not saying that it would completely substitute what you are asking for, my point is more that it would allow for closer cooperation and working together. Which in turn would mean that the players (human players) who want a gameplay where they share responsibilities and truly work together would get their share of that. And that would in its turn mean that while the use of the feature you suggest would not be removed the need would to some degree (I'm longwinded as usual, but if nothing else the first word summarizes the rest of the post )

Hard to tell without knowing the exact log messages. If you are on Windows you can find the interestinglog.html file in %appdata%\0ad\logs\ (paste that in the Explorer address bar), as long as you haven't played another game since the errors should still be there, and you'll just have to copy and paste them here. Otherwise you can try to play the map again to see if you encounter them again and they should show up in that file afterwards. Also, what version of the game are you playing? The Alpha 8 version of qBot (if you're indeed playing against qBot) is known to have some Javascript errors which aren't really affecting things. And of course since the AI is in development as well the risk is great that you've just encountered a bug. Either way posting the error messages here will be helpful

It's time for the third part in the series where we take a closer look at some of the people working on creating 0 A.D. This time the honor goes to two people who have distinguished themselves by doing great work, in part in November, but as with the first month it's just as much their overall contribution that we want to highlight. The Member of the Month is Omri Lahav (OmriLahav at the forums), who has been and continues to be, composing the stellar music that will make the game so much more enjoyable. OS Contributor of the Month is Rico Tzschichholz (ricotz in the IRC channels), who is maintaining the 0 A.D. PPAs for Ubuntu, both the release and the development one. It's thanks to his work that Ubuntu users are able to enjoy not only an easy way to install the release version of the game, but also have an easy way to follow the development via the development versions he makes available regularly. Omri Tell us the basics about yourself Well, I'm 26, I live in Israel and work as a composer. Mostly for theater, but recently I've been getting into film and video game music, which has always been my true passion. I play in several bands and generally spend most of my day making music, one way or another! What do you find motivating about contributing to 0 A.D.? Quite a few things, but above all I have to say, the players' responses and comments on the score. It's extremely satisfying to know that the players (and team members!) are enjoying the music, and as a gamer myself, it's a unique experience to play a game with my own music. Other then being plain fun - it allows me to put down the mantle of "composer" and evaluate my own work as a listener. When did you join the team? Not so long ago actually - I think it was around March 2011. What made you interested in joining the team? Obviously the game itself, it looks and feels much better then many other independent games I've seen, and I am an RTS fan, so I was instantly sold when I saw it! Also, in the brief discussions before I came on board, I came to see that the team is made up of great, like-minded people, so much so that I found myself reading and posting on the forums for hours on end. What has contributing to 0 A.D. meant for you? Musically, it has driven me to explore certain types of music I've never experienced before. Indeed, there have been challenges (and I suspect there are more of those yet), but overall it's been a complete delight. The team was very good at creating a supportive and open-minded working environment, in which it was possible for me to experiment and receive valuable, constructive criticism. It's been a great learning experience for me as a composer, plus the "fun factor" of working on a game... what more could I ask for? What do you find best about being a part of the team? Well, just that - being a part of the team. Being a composer is one of the most isolated jobs on the planet, it's a very nice change to have teammates who are involved and interested, and offer usable feedback. On a side note (if I may), I'd like to thank the musicians who participated in the recordings, they truly bring the music to life, and elevate it to heights that would otherwise be unimaginable. Marta Mc'Cave, Yotam Ronen, Bar Guzi and Dror Parker. Rico What do you find motivating about contributing to 0 A.D.? As I am very familiar with generating packages for Debian/Ubuntu maintaining the PPA for several Ubuntu versions gave me the chance to give people an easy way to test and play with 0 A.D. which is the spirit of open source. So while adding the PPA to their system and install it is quite easy! What has contributing to 0 A.D. meant for you? This is quite fun to see such a project evolving over several year. It is nice to see new ideas and additions to the game. I am also quite aware of the technologies behind the scene it is really interesting. So it is nice helping you guys distributing this great software!

Why not just call him "Lead Programmer"? That makes him stand out without us having to make up some weird title. (I think there might have been one or two of the previous programmers who had that title, but that was before my time, so I'm not sure.) He did make a win and a loss tune, the former is currently being used. So he should be mentioned although it doesn't seem likely any of his music will appear in the final game.

The hero units will indeed be limited, and balancing will come (mostly in the Beta phase, currently we're focusing on adding new features). But thanks for your thoughts Even saying things which are planned can be useful as we know we're not the only ones with the same ideas

(Just for the record I wasn't too serious either )

It's still ok to be inspired from them though, so I hope no one is discouraged from suggesting something just because it or something similar has appeared in another game before (One may of course disagree with that as well, I just don't want anyone to think that the official view is that anything from an already existing game is out of the picture. At least when it comes to things like game modes )

He's not "in the game" And I don't believe you've shown him, so it's hard for anyone else to have an opinion on him

It should definitely be improved in the future, quite a bit already by the next Alpha hopefully as Philip is working on the pathfinding (how the units gets from one place to another without either getting stuck or going right through stuff), which is one of the major issues. Hopefully there will be improvements to the AI system as well which should speed things up, we'll see if those get in Alpha 9 or 10 though.

For now you can press the F10 key as Zeta1127 said, eventually it would be nice to be able to use the Escape key to at least close and dialogs, and enter to confirm, as long as it's possible to have that at the same time we could definitely have Escape access the menu while there is no dialog open

Great Just wanted to have that out of the way to avoid any future trouble

Cool Those seems really nice. I'm sure the artists will find them useful. Just as a formality, you are ok with WFG releasing the resulting textures under the CC-BY-SA license? ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ )

As much as possible information should be near what it's related to imho