feneur

Not sure how you play the game/when this is an issue, but it's something I personally have trouble seeing how someone could have time to think about in the middle to late game at least (I feel like I'm always tending to this that and the other, making sure I have new resources coming in, maintaining one or more attacks, perhaps defending somewhere, expanding), and in the beginning if you have time to sit and study the units move around I'd say you could probably scout more . I don't mean this as a criticism of you, and there are certainly things we'll do to reduce some unnecessary micromanagement, so there's probably plenty of room for adjusting things. It's more that I'm surprised as to someone feeling it this way as I have not experienced it to be a problem myself At least not in multiplayer, against an AI there might be time to sit and ponder for a while, but against another human being - not so much (And partly that I don't think we should speed things up too much until the game is more finished and we know how things play in more detail, especially in the end-game as you then can have up to 300 different units to manage. In practice it's never going to be that many as cavalry and ships take up more than one pop space and units might be killed, and there are formations and control groups, but just something to remember so the decision isn't just based on how a unit looks in a video or on it's own. )

Well, the trouble last time was that we couldn't be sure that Philip would be able to do the work, so it was more because of us not having any clear answers than anything else. We are aware that it could seem a bit weird though, so we're grateful people dared to donate anyway About more transparency now: Do you have any specific questions/suggestions for how to improve it?

I'll see if I can get Ryan and perhaps Omri and Paul to offer some more suggestions (Hopefully not too many, so you never will be able to choose due to the number of choices =) , but at least they might give you some advice on what to look for and what to avoid )

Well, if you don't want any restrictions there should really just be one civ and one building from which you could build all units (if there are more than one, having more than one means that you have to choose which to build ). On a more serious note though: the territories does add something, currently not as much as things like capturing and technologies (to enlarge the area your buildings influence for example) aren't implemented. They can be used to limit your enemies access to resources and by placing your civic centres strategically you could essentially block him from expanding. So the "rush" in 0 A.D. might end up being more of grabbing as much of the map as possible (or at least the useful areas with resources or chokepoints) than quickly taking out your enemy by overwhelming him with a small (relatively speaking) group of soldiers. One of the benefits of not having to sell the game is that we don't have to rely on catering to people's lessening attention span And one of the benefits of the game being open source is that if we don't make options that make it fast enough someone else is able to That said, it's not too unlikely that we will have some kind of deathmatch mode as in AoK where things are sped up and you could start with all technologies researched etc, and it's a possibility that we will include an option to turn off territories. It will not be the default/most tested/balanced though, but something to cater to people who want a quicker game is likely

Cool Looking forward to hearing the results

Well, considering the number of phrases isn't all that large I don't think that would be a problem, so it would probably be worth a shot. Try recording outside first though, I have no idea if it will be better (as I'm not working with sound, I do have a feeling it might capture as much noise as indoors if not more though, but I could be wrong ) but it will at least be easier to try than to have you go bug your friend

You may also use the shortcuts: , for idle military units . for idle workers This is being implemented, so should hopefully be included in Alpha 8. For speed in general: there will be a way to change the overall speed. For tearing down buildings: Perhaps we can include a "weak buildings" setting for people who like quick games? (Also, you need to use the correct units, a dozen catapults tear down buildings pretty quickly ) Definitely coming. Not sure what's stopping you, Civic Centres can be built in neutral territory (i.e. a forward base) and I fail to see how our territories hinders rushing Rise of Nations territories did as they had attrition (i.e. enemy units in your territory took damage) and supply (your units did not take damage in enemy territory as long as they were near supply units). Other concepts, like citizen soldiers, do have some impact on rushing as a useful strategy though. I suppose rushing will be more confined to raiding than actually taking out/seriously damaging the enemy. Art/sound/music and programming is done by different people, so having the artists work less will not make the programming happen faster =) But yeah, the focus is more on the gameplay and related parts of the engine (i.e. not graphical improvements and the like).

Ooh, pretty nice

After some team discussion we've come to the conclusion that while the offer is flattering it's not something we are able to participate in at the moment. We want to finish 0 A.D. before we take on another project, and that's still probably several years into the future. We wish you the best of luck with your project, and hope you find ways to move forward.

The best way to be assured of the best results would be if you'd be able to buy a real microphone, but we can hardly require you to buy an expensive microphone just to record some sounds for us Just to be sure we get the best chance to evaluate your ability to produce usable sound files, would you care to try and record at least one of the phrases outdoor? Perhaps it's not possible to get a clean recording without noise there, or perhaps it doesn't work practically for you, but in that case we'll at least know you've tried your best to get the best possible files for us to use. You should know that we do want to try and get this working though, you seem like you know what you do when it comes to pronunciation etc I asked our history lead to listen through your recordings and he said they were very nicely done. So it's just the technical side we need to figure out. You wouldn't happen to have a friend with a recording studio or something? (You never know nowadays when so much is done digitally, even a kid with reasonably rich parents and/or a part-time job could get a basic setup together )

Ogg is used in the game, but wav is preferred as source files as they're lossless. That's especially convenient as we can then convert all sound files to OGGs using the same settings to ensure a more coherent sound.

Hello Luca, Are you sure you're not mistaking us for Wildfire Studios? ( http://www.wildfire.com.au/content/standard.asp? ) An Australian game development company. We're Wildfire Games, an online community of hobbyist/volunteer game developers.

We've decided to revive, though slightly changed, an old tradition. Starting now we're each month going to award one team member and one open source contributor (i.e. someone who contributes to the game without being an official member) the title of Member/OS Contributor of the Month. This is both a way to say thanks (and to encourage everyone to keep up the good work of course ) and to give all the fans a chance to get to know the people working on the game. People will be chosen because of having done exceptional work the previous month, and will not be able to receive this award two months in a row. This first month though it's not necessarily work that's been done during the month of September, but rather two people who stepped up and did great work for the 0 A.D. Alpha 7 Geronium release: The Member of the Month September 2011 is Brian (WhiteTreePaladin on the forums, and a programmer) and the Open Source Contributor of the Month September 2011 is Athos (Athos, an animator). Brian because he spent a lot of time and energy implementing the new main menu and willingly accepted our input on needed changes. Athos because without him the game would feel far less alive, his animations have done wonders in making the game feel more immersive and interactive. Now for the "getting to know them" part, I asked them a couple of questions about who they are and what working on the game is like: Brian: Tell us the basics about you? I earn a living as a Java programmer, and am interested in things relating to technology, history, and art. I enjoy working with Blender 3D occasionally. When did you join the team? I joined this project (at end of 2008) because I wanted to help it get completed faster. Coming from an Age of Kings background, I saw the potential: three-dimensional graphics and absolutely complete modding support. It offered what I had wanted from AoK; it did not really matter to me whether it was free or not. What do you find best about being a part of the team? It is great fun working with this team. There are so many things I have learned here - information about technology and programming in general, but also fascinating things about different cultures. As for what I do? I work on the user interface with the occasional excursion into gameplay logic. Athos: 1) Tell us the basics about you? I'm Athos, I'm 19 and live in Brazil, currently I'm a student, I have always enjoyed creating 3d models and such, it's a hobby. 2) What do you find motivating about contributing to 0AD? 0 A.D. delivers the basic wish of an RTS fan - an Open-Source game - and that makes RTS fans want to help in some way, either by creating models, textures, complex c++ codes and scenarios. But what makes 0 A.D. different than the others? simple: 0 A.D. has a truly based historical events, imagine re-creating the ancient wars, it's absolutely amazing. If you take a look in the 0 A.D. forum you'll notice how much they research for real facts, real civilizations and how they were military prepared. 3) What has contributing to 0 A.D. meant for you? Contributing to 0 A.D. have brought me new skills and perspective how things can and should be done, specially in the animations part. Also, having a third person to look at your work and say things like "good job" or "I think you can improve your work by doing this..." really helps in creating and developing final results with a decent quality. Thanks guys for your work so far, looking forward to see what you can bring to the game in the future.

That's one of the better compliments a game can get =) In a weird kind of way

I'm not a programmer so I don't know the technical details, but as far as I know it doesn't so much prevent as make it a lot harder to cheat by editing the savegame/datafiles.

I guess the only keys to success is a good enough idea and perseverance =) Btw, I got curious what the actual name of the game I meant was and found out it's called Machiavelli's Workshop ( http://www.machiavellisworkshop.com/ ), still not what your idea is, but anyway =) (I haven't actually played it so I don't really know much about it.) About your idea, seems interesting, and it definitely sounds like it needs a lot of work before you get what you aim for =) But you gotta dream to get somewhere other than the ordinary

Hello Miles, and thank you for your application. Would you please like to record a couple of Latin words/sentences for us to review? If so please create a separate WAV file for each of the below lines and attach them to this topic (preferably put in a zip file): Quid? Domine? Ad Victoriam!

*Hint* If you notice the date of the post you'll see this was before the Carthaginians were released *Hint*

Don't worry, we're happy to hear things worked out well in the end. And also, it's always a possibility that this can be useful for someone else who has a similar problem in the future And thanks for the nice words

You still can choose, just don't right-click on it when you have non-siege capable units selected if you want to destroy it.

Hmm, no, you'll have a choice between three heroes per sub-faction I think we have to find out by playtesting whether it's best to limit them to one hero at all per player alive at the same time or one of each hero per player alive at the same time. Most of them are designed to have local (i.e. aura) effects, so even if you have three you would not be able to use them everywhere at the same time.

You can use [ spoiler] [/ spoiler] tags (remove the spaces).

The best place is usually to log onto the IRC channel: irc://irc.quakenet.org/0ad (if you have an IRC client just click that link and it should open, you can also connect to irc.quakenet.org and /join #0ad that way) If you don't have an IRC client you can connect via the web using this link: http://webchat.quakenet.org/?channels=0ad

Wouldn't that interfere with the purpose of those IDs? (Namely to make the profiles reasonably anonymous while still allowing stats from the same user to be registered as just that.)

Thanks for saying things better than I did Michael