mimesot

In case that happens ... just a console error but no visual representation any more ... Assume you removed the Ptolemaic wonder. Could I simply search my maps XML for the phrase "structures/ptol_wonder" and delete that entity section and it will be fine? Is a missing entity uid of any concern? One further question. If I have an actor that has multiple visual representations that occur with specific frequencies when you place them (like it is the case with various stones and grass patches), how does the map file "remember", which one was chosen. I can't see my map pick a random kind of e.g. short cretan date palm each time I load it, fortunately. Sorry, but I have a third question. It is an issue with my map, which you can see in some of my screenshots, but I think this can lead to a feature request if feasible. You surely noticed the black horizon on most flat angle screenshots, which is not very pleasing. I guess this this originates from some kind of compromise. The skybox is needed to create, well, a sky and the beautiful reflections on the water. On the other hand there is the equally beautiful circular map shape with its smooth transition into blackness, which you usually look upon from above. What if the transition wasn't into blackness but into transparency and the skybox had a much lower lower boundary. As the botton of the skybox is black, you wouldn't see any difference at the transition zone when looking down at a steep angle. At a flat angle the transition zone would look much slimmer (except the terrain was inclined steep upwards) and transition from terrain texture to sky texture. If the terrain at the map boundary was sloped downwards you would even get a hard horizon line. Is this possible? Does the engine support alpha values for terrain surfaces?

Thanks a lot! I'm always glad to see that 0 a.d. evolves, and so will my map. Of course this rises a few questions: What happens if an entity is no longer available in the map editor? Is the map going to load or crash? Will there be some kind of dummy-entity, which replaces all obsolete entities of will it leave void spots? Will all current entities still be present after these changes, with just their visual representation altered? Greeting mimesot

Hi! Yes, the Nile has 6 shallow areas where you can cross it. As you said, if the parts of the map would be islands, this would be very difficult to balance. Their main purpose of the positioning of the shallow spots is to direct the flow of units across the map. The placement was particularly intended to provide three things: 1) To elongate the distance between Alexandria, Siani and Memphis as their starting positions are so close. This is of course irrelevant for the 1 vs. 1 version of the map, but it could potentially become even an 8 player map. 2) To reduce the advantage of the north-south riverbank route regarding long distance travel time in comparison to the routes via eastern and western desert. 3) To make the the route from river Nile to the southernmost oasis via the valley of kings equally convenient compared to the route via the great sand sea. I honestly wouldn't feel comfortable ignoring your remarks. In contrast, as I totally agree with you. The question is, what can we possibly implement within the boundaries of the game mechanics and map size. E.g. the Persian base on Sinai is just there to provide diversity. If we had the possibility to create a map twice as big, it could be extended to include the Zagros mountains. Then the Persians could be used to represent the Parthians and the Seleucids could cover the area of Syria. I think there are two main problems with even bigger maps. The game, I believe it is the pathfinder, has troubles handling such large maps. It already struggles with the map size "giant" when you add more than four players. The second problem is that you would need to limit building to fertile areas or areas that are otherwise suitable: Otherwise you wold see huge deserts covered in civil centers and farms. I think a solution to this problem is currently out of reach. It it was possible it would shift the gameplay a little from tactical to strategic, as the time spent traveling on long distance routes and reconnaissance becomes crucial. The reason I reduced the Nile delta to two navigable arms only is again map size. The arms are thinner than the main river. The width of the main river was chosen as small as possible, but it had to big enough to allow two ships of the biggest ship class pass by each other. The arms therefore can't handle that sort of ship traffic. As a consequence I created two major arms. If I dug an East-West canal this means there were three navigable rivers in the delta. I am thinking about a way to place them without creating too much additional water surface. It would look odd if there was more water than land in the delta. Any suggestions? Indeed the wood of date palms is not comparable in quality to that of the cypresses of Lebanon. Sure, you could create palms with less value in wood, but than you would has to introduce some kind of trade function for wood from external places or something like that. Do you have any idea on how to implement such a feature? Greetings mimesot

Thanks for the hint. I would really love to be able to insert specific tags into the map-xml file, in order to affect just the specific item I want to manipulate. This would be much easier than to create a separate entity file for each modified enity class. Currenlty thhe xml can only store xy coordinates and orientation, right? You were just faster reading than me inserting all that stuff ;-)

Update of map post alpha 23 (version 1.0.7 in the download section) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi everyone! I wanted to share my first 0 A.D. map - well, rather a preliminary version - with you. I was inspired by the map of Assassins Creed Origins which just crammed everything Egypt into a single place, often disregarding realism in favor of aesthetics and gameplay, which I did as well. I did for example borrow the idea of moving Cyrene, which is around 700km to the west into Alexandrias vicinity in order to add some Mediterranean environment. A further reason for me to pick that setting was that it allows me to have a lot of different cultures on the map. The upper Nile area is dominated by ptolemaic retro-egypt buildings, whereas the city of Alexandria is dominated by hellenic influences. Cyrene gave me an excuse for adding the Romans with some greek buildings, while I put the Persians, who were admittedly not really present at that same time, in the east. For purely aesthetic reasons I let Carthage occupy the Siwa oasis, and the Red Sea became a tourist destination for Mauryan coral reef divers. Map variants First of all, please take note, that this is not a final product, not even close. The map already includes most of the geological features and special locations I intended to add, but there are many areas that severely lack in detail, which is quite ok for sand deserts, but looks odd in places like coasts, riverbanks and rocky deserts. Blocking the map is also an issue, mainly because it feels strange, when the AI builds farms in the middle of the desert. The greatest thing that needs to be taken care of is balancing. Basic properties Type: skirmish Map size: giant Players: 6 Game version: alpha 23 (re-release) Right now (8.2.2018) I will only publish a 1 vs. 1 map. This has the benefit of being at least a little easier to balance out. I will provide A regular day version And a full-moon night version, because it looks just darn beautiful. I really love what you can do with the lighting and ambient conditions ... Update march 2018: A 3 vs. 3 map variant is now available and several small fixes regarding terrain, blockings and balancing have been made. On the long term I will try to release two varieties of the map regarding gameplay An all-in map: This one is outfitted with full grown cities and you will start with huge amounts of resources and a sizable army. Don’t try to play this with 7 AI players, as it will probably lag horribly. A stripped down version: Everything, except for the most prominent points of interest (e.g. the library) will be deleted. The difficult thing about this is that I will need to create a mod in order to achieve what I desire: See, if I make these buildings actors, all units will just pass through it, and if I leave them as entities, they will be taken over by the players within a few seconds and this would severely unbalance the game. Thus, I need to create a mod, which has all these buildings in a special version. I will increase those buildings capture points by a huge amount and also make them invulnerable, such that capturing them remains the only option. In some cases I might also try to reduce their functionality. Thanks to all the guys who helped me with useful tips and insights regarding modding. Gameplay In this map I tried to elongate the distance between neighboring players and create straight routes between the distant ones. In order to achieve the first requirement, the rare shallow banks of river Nile, meandering mountain tracks and marauding packs of soldiers prohibit straightforward shifts of large armies. On the other hand far away players can often be reached via wide patches of desert, which act like highways on this map. One major problem was the city of Memphis, which is located almost in the center of the map. I order to provide this city with a slight chance for survival I shaped the eastern and western desert like a bypass circumventing Memphis and relocated the city to the eastern shore of the river Nile, which I made impassable from north to south, while only the western riverbanks remained open. The Mediterranean Sea and the river Nile are navigable, which serves as much better means of transportation than the walk along the river by foot. Every player has wood in close vicinity to the starting point. No player will run out of wood easily. The banks of river Nile are especially rich in palms for obvious reasons. Stone is predominantly located in mountainous regions. Limestone can be found close to the pyramids and there is a rather large granite quarry in the very south. As I wanted the player to travel through the sandy dunes a lot metal can be found on the borders of sandy deserts. If you play the map, please let me know where you found too much resources and where they are missing. Players & Matches (and faction recommendations, mostly for esthetic reasons) Currently (9.3.2018) only the six players are available. Player #1: Alexandria (with greek and ptolemeaic entities) in the center north as Seleucids Player #2: Thebes in the very south as Kush Player #3: Siwa/Charga Oasis in the west as Carthage Player #4: Sinai in the north east as Persia Player #5: Memphis in the center as Ptolemeis Player #6: Cyrene in the north west as Romans Player #7: Red Sea in the east as Mauryan (buildings might be reverted to random later) Player #8: Desert nomads from the south west (random) Note: The AI does not get along with that map too well. It will soon be very crowded and very laggy if you choose a game with too many players. Proper matches would be: 2 players: Lower Egypt (#1 Alexandria) vs. upper Egypt (#2 Thebes) Lower Egypt currently has the edge, due to access to the Nile delta. 3 players: Lower Egypt (#1 Alexandria) vs. upper Egypt (#2 Thebes) vs. Siwa (#3) 4 players: Egypt (#1 and #2) vs invaders (#3 Siwa and #4 Sinai) Slowly approaches being balanced (version 0.19.10) 6 players: Egypt (#1, #2, #5) vs invaders (#3, #4, #6) Slowly approaches being balanced (version 0.20.7) Points of interest (selection) Alexandria: library, harbor, lighthouse Memphis: necropolis, pyramids, Apis sanctuary Fayyum: Crocodile sanctuary, Bahr Yussef channel & dam Thebes: Temple district, valley of kings Western desert: Siwa oasis with fortress, Great sand sea, Quattara depression, guelta Eastern desert: Red Sea coral reefs, mount Sinai, "Suez channel", deep wadi I collapsed some more screenies for you here ... ToDo and Changelog My ToDo-List is growing and shrinking all the time. If you have suggestions, please let me know. Unfortunately I cannot promise you, when or if I will implement them. You know, real life can be unpredictable ;-) Download Download the files and put them into the specific folders for maps and preview images. The paths I will state below are default paths for typical Windows 10 installation but may vary depending on your system and installation path. In case subfolders do not exist yet on your system, simply create them. Map files: Download: Version 0.19.6 (1 vs. 1) Version 0.19.10 (currrent) Version 0.20.7 (for upcoming release alpha23, new route through the red sea for balancing) Version 1.0.7 (30.12.2018, based on published version of 0 A.D. version alpha 23, design enhancments: red sea riffs, more nile river bank vegetation, parapets for persian base, fire places for town centers, small secret garden, other small fixes like missing ground textures, etc.) Path: “C:\users\yourname\documents\my games\0ad\mods\user\maps\skirmishes” When is the good time for deleting older versions from a post? Can I make the XML files all use the same PMP file? I noticed a zipped xml is about 10 times smaller. is the community OK with zip files? Map preview images: Download: Path: “C:\users\yourname\appdata\local\0 A.D. alpha\binaries\data\mods\public\art\textures\ui\session\icons\mappreview” In case you are playing this map, please let me know about anything that can be optimized. Thanks a lot in advance. Greetings mimesot

Hi there! You guys are awsome :-) @Skhorn Indeed, thanks for the suggestion! I would like to ask you further, if there is any comprehensive list of the XML-tags. I opened quite a lot XMLs yesterday but i didn't stuble across the one, which wowgetoffyourcellphone came up with ... like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. <VisibleInAtlasOnly>true</VisibleInAtlasOnly> It is always good to be reminded of possible pitfalls. Is there an elegant way to do so? As the root folder of 0 a.d. appears not to have a fixed relative path regarding the maps folder I cannot simply create a self-extractinng zip. How does the game remain consistent among different players? By just adding files, not modifying existing ones, does this alter the game in a way it becomes impossible to start multiplayer games? I would have to place a big warning sign on my map then. @wowgetoffyourcellphone This is a great template. I will incorporate it. Thanks a lot. @stanislas69 By "a flag" do you actually mean something like <invulnerable/>

Hi! Thanks for the fast response. Wow, I really like that game as a game, but now I am absolutly amazed how every thing about these entities (except for meshes and such) is human readable and tidily hierarchically structured. (OK, right now I am asking myself why they mixed xml and json). You just need to know that the entity file inherits every property from its parent and you can just overwrite one, including the actor for the visual representation. I just created an indestructable, uncapturable seleukidian library with the looks of a the macedonian library. This is really awsome. Is there a way to remove the health but keep the option to capture it? And in case I want an object, which is impossible to capture: Is there a Way to remove the capture points bar? I realized that there is a parameter looking like this, which I can possibly use to place a special stone in the desert/mountains which blockss alll building. <Obstruction> <Active>true</Active> <BlockMovement>false</BlockMovement> <BlockPathfinding>false</BlockPathfinding> <BlockFoundation>true</BlockFoundation> <BlockConstruction>true</BlockConstruction> <DisableBlockMovement>false</DisableBlockMovement> <DisableBlockPathfinding>false</DisableBlockPathfinding> <Static width="100.0" depth="100.0"/> </Obstruction> I will try that tomorrow. Thanls again and good night! mimesot

Hi! I am currently having a lot of fun with the 0 A.D. map editor. One thing I noticed, when placing objects was that I can move my units through all actors. Only entities are blocking the path. If I have a desert stonnemine, these large chunks of rock can only be placed as actors, all units are moving through. I could place a stationary entity object right beneath it to block the path, but then that entity object would be a gaia object, which you can either mine or destroy, which thus does not reslove the problem. Is there any way to have e.g. blocking actor or to define an entity as indestuctable or to have a dummy object, flat and small enough to hide it beneath rocks and gaia-buildings? The second question is wether there is a way to make terrain, which is flat but still not usable for building something upon it. Like when creating a lava lake. I especially would like to prohibit farms on desert and rocks. Thanks and kind regards mimesot

Hi! That trick, adding a path like this added a map preview for me. But what is the necessary resolution for the image. My preview appears too large and stretched as well. Kind regards and thanks mimesot EDIT: I looked into the public.zip in binaries/data/mod/public and found the previews there to be 512x512px with the actual mappreview occupying roughly 400x300px in the upper left corner. I rezized a screeny accordingly and added the black space. What is this black space for? Anyway, it worked out perfectly.