Wijitmaker

I'm pretty sure you could kick something out, because when I prompted it (again this is Microsoft's AI which isn't premier) - this was 1 of the 4 it pushed out: I'm trying not to push the matter, but for you non-artists (speaking as one who made a whole lot of artwork for this game), art is built off of art. I didn't sit down with oil and paints and canvas to make the celtic building texture you still see in this game - as illustrated here: Sure, I made some from scratch (the thatched roof texture - I drew with a pencil, scanned, brought into PSP and colorized it, found some leaves and cut & pasted them onto it), but others aspects (the wad and dabble, the stone) I utilized art resources from "other sources". My thought at the time was, if you modify it enough it becomes yours. I remind you all that WFS (aka WFG) was born out of the modding community. We modified existing game art. Modifying art incorporates elements from the original work in a transformative way, adding new meaning, interpretation, and in a distinct 0 A.D. artistic style. What you are essentially doing is using the previous art as a starting point for a new creative expression. Honestly, this practice was a great way to learn. You have no idea how many games I tore apart to look at their art assets to see how they were doing something, achieving a certain look, or be efficient in polygons (back when that was important). Think of it also from a programmers perspective. Just because you use libraries to accelerate development vs. writing all the low level code from the binary all the way up certainly doesn't cheapen the work that you do. You are standing on the shoulders of giants. I'm not suggesting you use AI art to replace or change the entire look of the game, I'm just saying if you are struggling to push the final aspects of the game over the finish line that you have been laboring at for years now... this might be a lift in the upward direction. You are still going to have to artistically manipulate its output anyway because it is never going to be perfect. You wouldn't use art that it kicks out that looks like cartoons or hyper realistic. Your art lead should be able to hold together the cohesive look of the game. I also don't think anyone would force you as an artist to use AI either if it doesn't give you any pleasure in the creative process. I just think you should consider it as a tool to put in your toolbox. For example (of a final push), take this thread. I didn't read the whole thing, I'm not sure if this list has been completed. I'm assuming not, otherwise why keep it pinned? But, if you need help - maybe something like this would help: https://elevenlabs.io/sound-effects I get the glory/honor of doing things from scratch - and I respect that. But at the same time I'm thinking... 25 years in development? I hope this thing gets to beta before I die Again, I respect the team's choice however you decide. I see the merit from both perspectives. Sorry for playing devils advocate on this, I just see this as a tool to succeed and I want you all to succeed

It is odd because it is "artificially" intelligent. You have to "teach it" with instructions to craft what you want. Here was my prompt: "A video game wall texture that has large granite blocks at the bottom, transitioning into vertical wooden boards, with a window looking into a dark room illuminated by a candle. Include some wear and tear so that it looks aged, and also some climbing ivy." That was it's first draft (one of 4 images it gave me) with no follow-up instructions. I'm not saying you all need to use this, I'm just saying it is a tool that could be used and could be explored further for use to assist the art department. And like I said before, art is just one facet of its capabilities... many more possibilities exist. I'm aware it could feel threatening like it is going to "take someone's job", but if you need work done and you don't have people in the position you need - and this could help... seems like a no-brainer to me. But, I'm not developing the game anymore, so it doesn't really matter to me what you guys want to do with this. I just wanted you all to be aware of the possibilities. :peace:

Now you are catching on, nice work

I was using this one just because it is free, and the tokens recharge daily: Images - Microsoft Designer You can review the terms here: consumerTermsOfUse.pdf A quick look over the terms outlined, it seems that the primary concern would be whether the use of images created by Microsoft Designer in the game could be considered "personal use" or if it violates commercial use clauses. For non-commercial open-source games, it would appear to be in the clear, but commercial projects (or projects that raise funds) there could be legal challenges.

I'm sorry I'm back... I just had to try this to see if it worked and to my surprise in a matter of seconds I got some pretty neat results. So I had to share. Sorry this is now completely off topic... Now, I'm sure it could be dialed in for better historical accuracy if someone put the time into it to teach it what you want. But what you think? I was just messing around with some pretty simple prompts too. Sure you'd have to bring them into photoshop to fix them exactly how you want them, but it might speed up the art flow (if you all are doing much art these days?) From a programmer side, you could use it to comment the code - create documentation. They also have AI narration that sounds IMHO undetectably human. What questions do you have Lion? I could try and answer some of them.

Huh , ok - well then never mind - keep on carrying on... *exits back into the shadows*

Ha! Apparently, the older I get the more senile I am... OT Side note - Michael (and others) have you looked into using AI to generate more art content? Can it generate textures? I'm sure it could do things like icons and portraits (like your avatar). Have you guys looked into some of the music it makes? I even saw how there is a version that generates sound effects. Have you guys looked into feeding it the Prometheus code base and had it review it for bugs/glitches. It might even enable some technically minded non-programmer type people to write some scripts?

Hard to remember, but I think that was going all the way back to the beginning...

I'd like to clarify, I don't think the game is completely off the first design - I'd estimate it is 80% there. You guys have done great.

Well done Stan. Pushing the game forward for over 12 years. That is an excellent contribution and quite an accomplishment. Take a minute and look over the before and after differences. You will be proud. That is 2x the length of time of what I was able to give it. I think it would be helpful for the team to push through a few more days and formulate some sort of a succession plan. Whether that be some sort of election process or maybe a search plan for nominations or recruits. Or perhaps it would be as little as helping to facilitate the conversation for the team, internally. Maybe formulating a helpful internal poll? The project still needs some sort of leadership to continue forward. As the last one to wear the mantle it would be wise to the team bestow it instead of allowing chaos to emerge in the vacuum... Unless the game is destined to have some sort of division/branch like when Alexander the Great died suddenly

Fun factoid from the past. The old website was attempting to collect articles that would later be used for in game historical articles: Factions :: 0 A.D. :: Wildfire Games (archive.org) History Articles :: 0 A.D. :: Wildfire Games (archive.org)

Ah, if we only had AI image generation 20 years ago. Cool pics. I see a little Braveheart / Mel Gibson in the eyes of one there I wonder if AI could be used to generate textures?

Yeah, I would guess somewhere around 2004-2005

The subject of this post caught my eye. A little 0 A.D. background for you. The concept of the citizen soldier was born out of a frustration with AOE series games. They had a villager unit and they had military units. The villagers would knife people and die easily but would construct and gather. Military units would only kill. It seemed to make sense to use at the time (20 years ago) that many of the ancients typically didn't support a standing army, they would fight during fighting season and then return home and gather/build during the off season. A hybrid of both roles. So, the idea of a citizen soldier was born. Champions and mercenaries were supposed to be excluded from economic capabilities. We understood it is just a game. Not all the nuances of history can be captured and communicated properly in a game.

I have a copy of the original vector. It should be on the website too in the press kit... Here it is: https://play0ad.com/about/official-logos/

Yeah, it all kind of started with Michael's dream to convert 0 A.D. into his dream game he was calling "Age of the Aegean". I think the Hellenes were the first generic civ that was broken apart and split into multiple civs. When you look at RTS games 15 years ago (I'm not sure what is out there these days) you usually find that they are either many civs/races that are slightly different from one another (Age of Kings), or few civs/races that are drastically different from one another (StarCraft). Each Civ was supposed to have a general theme and favor a certain playing style... Romans - Generic all purpose, Strength in siege Hellenes - Generic all purpose, Strong fortifications Persians - Cannon Fodder, Cheap infantry, Cavalry strong Celts - Aggressive and Offensive, Cheap/weak structures Carthaginians - Economy is based on metal/gold because of mercenaries, biggest variety of units, strong navy Iberians - Defensive, Small numbers, Tactical New civs were created and I'm not sure how they fit in or how they are distinct but I would encourage there to be a distinction to give players a reason to use them. For me - 0 A.D. was always a game first and wasn't ever intended to be a historical simulator. That was for games like Total War.

Probably a mute point... but this thread caught my eye. I had numerous discussions about this exact issue over a decade ago. There was a reason the original game design limited the number of civs. The civs were intended to branch as the game developed. So, for example - when you start the game you choose the generic civ of "celts" then when you reach a certain phase (city) then you are offered the strategic choice of either going with the Britons or the Gauls. Depending on what strategies and tactics you wanted to finish the game with (based on the sub-faction's strengths and weaknesses). Michael didn't agree and opted to separated them all into their own factions.... So... happy balancing guys

More on the scripting decision here:

Oh, and most of the old shield textures live here: https://wfg.itms.ovh/?dir=oldfiles/users/files/art/members/stag/shlds These originals were made in a much higher rez. You'll have to probably install one of these... Anything newer than v6 should work: http://www.oldversion.com/windows/paint-shop-pro/ You can export a .psd file if you'd like from psp.

Ah, yes - when making Buildings (and weapons) we thought it was redundant to make a unique building texture for each building at the time, when we were trying to be consistent in the theme and look of a building. Probably shouldn't have done that in hindsight, but we didn't know in the future there would be AO and normal mapping capability. Also had no idea that we'd be releasing the game 20 years later on "super computers" (or we would have thought at the time). Compare the textures of 0 A.D. with those of Age of Mythology - even our old textures were quite a bit higher quality.

Do you have an example handy? I'm guessing that merged textures were used for GUI applications? Shared textures were used with buildings. You got to remember that 15 or so years ago our minimum specs were: CPU: 1 GHz Intel or x86 compatible. RAM: At least 512 MB. GPU: Any supporting OpenGL 1.3 with 3D hardware accelerated drivers and at least 128 MB memory, e.g., Radeon 9000, GeForce 3, or similar. OS: XP, Vista, 7 or 8. Resolution: 1024×768 or above. I'd wager to guess that most all our phones today have 10x the computing power :p

Yep, we thought casual modders would find it easier to tweak textures than to tweak models. All you had to do was save your texture in the folder structure and make a tweak to point to the new file in the actor editor. Easy as pie

Ooo, sorry. Maybe someone can pull it out of archives so you can see it.

I like your eye candy. It reminds me of the original intent with the UI. I was intended to be very circular and orb like. We had planned to do lots of context sensitive commands that appeared around objects that we're clicked to minimize the mouse cursor travel all over the screen. It was annoying at 1024x768... I can't get imagine what it's like in 4k. Another:

Fun factoid... City phases (at one time) were planned to be associated with each territory. Not simply an upgrade that effected the entire map. So, if you managed to establish (or capture) a second CC in an opposite corner of the map, it would grow independently from your first original CC.