Wijitmaker

Well, we only really had 3... Myself, Erik, and Michael. I can only speak for myself and the transition to Erik... but, I took the helm because I wanted to play a Roman era RTS in a similar vein of AOK with some C&C and RON twists to it. Then I went out and recruited people with a similar vision to help me do just that. Shortly after I got married, I recognized that 0 A.D. wasn't helping my relationship with my bride. So, I recruited Erik to take the administrative role (from gamedev.net? I forget...). He's done a fabulous job since and has stuck with the project longer than I have now. I'm afraid not. I still have an interest in 0 A.D. succeeding because I gave 6 years of my life to it. But, as a family man now - I don't have time to game anymore. I'm always available to consult though.

I hear you guys. I think the challenge is volunteer turnover. This game has been in development for so long that is continually evolving due to the people working on it. When I was running it for 6 years, I did my best to maintain a cohesive vision for the game. I took a lot of heat for "locking in" some design decisions and would tell people to hold off on criticism until it could be played as a whole. We got 60% there, but I couldn't finish before I handed off the reigns to Erik. Again due to this being a volunteer effort, people come and people go and that shapes how the game is made. Michael saw 0 A.D. in a very different way than I did, and things started to change (what was once locked was open again for debate) - but I don't think he made it all the way to the end of his vision either. The dangerous end result in this path is a hodge-podge of halfway implemented features that don't quite make sense as a whole. Ken Wood (lead designer back in the early 2000's) once stated: The fate of 0 A.D. is in the hands, of those who have vision and perseverance. This is why it is going to be super difficult to make a game that is cohesive over a period of 15 years, everyone has a different idea of how it should be done. It is both good and bad. The flip side is... If you don't like it, you can get involved and do something about it to change it.

Just out of curiosity... I was wondering if anyone has ever read this? http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/War_Story

Over a decade ago, the plan was to have ambient sound play a large role in the sound scape for the game - more so than the music. The frequency of music played was a setting in the user configs. Music would be queued on command (attack/under attack) or randomly (frequency settings). The ambiance sounds played were going to be associated with what terrain types were displayed on the screen. http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=308 http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=309 We wanted to get away from endless looping of music and have the dynamically change.

Just watched the youtube video. Most impressive - you have put a lot of time into this. I love the medieval building set. I think I was most impressed by your icons which look beautiful. Though I don't understand the pony stuff, well done - bravo

Awesome work, great improvements

Ha, yes - it does! Christoph - I honestly can't believe some of the stuff that you programmed at such a young age. That was very impressive. If I recall, you did work on the run/stamina as well as auras. I'm not sure if either of those features have been fully reimplemented to the degree of their prior maturity since the rewrite.

Cool. Fun factoid from the past - this is the last video I can remember that was made using the cinematic camera: I think it is the has the highest number of views of any 0 A.D. video because it was on slashdot. http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/07/15/170217/0-ad-goes-open-source It would be cool to get a nifty video using this for the next alpha release. *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*

Awesome! I don't think I have seen anybody make use of a cinematic camera in 0 A.D. in nearly 10 years. Way to go! Just out of curiosity - were you able to salvage any of the old code?

That is a nice collection of units. It looks like quite a bit of work that you put into the mod! Thank you for the offer What software did you use to make them? What kind of animations did you make for the Civ mod? What file formats could you share (3D, textures)?

Yep, that is Brendan. He is a fantastic artist. I enjoyed working with him. Here is his blog: http://keo-art.blogspot.com/ For the last 6 years Brendan has been working at: http://www.venan.com/ He may still be connected to the PM system here on the forums. You could try: http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showuser=579 Otherwise I'm connected with him via LinkedIn and I could make an introduction for you.

Sorry, off topic - that is interesting news to me. I bet it has probably has been that way for years Just out of curiosity does anyone remember why the departure was made from XML? I'm assuming there was a logical reason why...

Nice Reminds me of one of the first screenshots made of 0 A.D. back in 2001. Before the game was even fully 3D.

I don't think that artwork is a gigantic concern, it is always changing and evolving. It could always be used in the scenario editor, and could be changed on civ selection in game. I think the depth of strategy it would return to the game would be worth the trade off. With fewer factions, this enables greater diversity. The more factions you have, they all start to blend together in similarities - with only subtle differences. Balancing a dozen plus factions is also challenging. Red Alert had 2 factions. Star-craft had 3. The original 6 civs were chosen because they had some distinct historical differences that gave players a unique experience when they played. Mythos changed that after I left. He really liked the Greeks and was influenced by his own desires to recreate his dream game "Age of the Aegean". So, when he took over the game design of 0 A.D. some of the original vision was lost. When I say balance, what I mean is that you don't want the outcome of the game decided by a players faction selection before the game even begins. Every faction should give players an opportunity to win if played with a strategy that compliments the faction. I'm not saying that what 0 A.D. is doing today is necessarily bad. I'm just saying that it is different than what was intended and (in my opinion) removes elements of strategy and makes the game harder to balance. (An extreme version of what I'm suggesting is that you start the game without a civ selection - just a generic civilization. Everyone starts the same. The civ is then selected in play after you have had a chance to observe the behaviors of your opponent and the map.)

Yep, you got the idea Now we just have to convince everyone else to put it back the way it was before

Glad you got it to work Skeleton files seem to be a point of confusion for many people. I'm not sure if we already have a recent and up to date resource to point people to. If not, I think it would be worth capturing what was learned and sharing it with others that could be used in the future. It would also be good to capture and document your art flow from Maya as a legitimate method of making models and animations for 0 A.D. I know documenting is a pain, but it is a tremendous resource to those that don't know where to begin.

Few more hints. There are lots of examples in the location that Sander pointed you to: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/browser/ps/trunk/binaries/data/mods/public/art/skeletons Make note of what your joints are named in Maya. Prop points follow special rules. Some more background info for you.

Check out ColladaMaya or maybe this? https://collada.org/mediawiki/index.php/OpenCOLLADA I'm not a Maya guy either... but I am a Max guy. When we first transitioned to COLLADA and .dae files, 3ds Max didn't natively support a .dae export. We had to use plugins. Most artists used 3ds Max and not Blender then as well. So, the game engine was largely developed around the ColladaMax exported .dae files. That was 2006-2007ish... today Max has it's own .dae export. I don't think the natively exported files work with pyrogenesis (at least they didn't last time I checked), only this plugin worked. Long story short... I wonder if Maya has the same issue? Perhaps you could use a plugin. Would any of these work? http://colladamaya.sourceforge.net/file_releases.php I noticed that this appears to have some activity as well? https://github.com/KhronosGroup/OpenCOLLADA

Micket, this might be some fun reading for you if you haven't read it before. This was the path to getting normal maps implemented in the game by myconid a few years ago. http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=16022

Fun fact 10 years ago 0 A.D. originally had only these civs: Celts Hellenes Iberians Romans Persians Carthaginians Two of the civs "branched" into sub-civs (celts - britons, gauls & hellens - sparta & athens). But, this was intended to happen during the game as a strategic choice - not something you decide and set in stone before the game even started. The choice would have shown itself during one of the town/city upgrade phases, and would have affected the hero choices, special structures, and late game technologies. I'm not saying the existing method is bad, just that I personally like the concept better (more strategy, easier to balance) than having dozens of civs that are slightly different from each other to choose from at the start. But... it is no longer my decision to make and hasn't been for years. I'm just throwing the idea back on the table

Yeah, that is kind of the point though. Female citizens weren't simply intended to be a cheaper citizen soldier that didn't fight. They brought equal or greater value to the game (vs a basic male citizen soldier) by offering higher economic capability, but at the trade off - being the risk of easily loosing that asset's allegiance. If an enemy scout comes into your village and sees 20 unprotected female citizens it would be a goal to capture a handful of them before they ran into a garrison. I could explain in more detail if you are interested in hearing more, or try to find the old discussions. I think this was back in the day when all the civs had the same buildings, none were given special buildings that were civ specific. So, that probably wouldn't work today. I think the intention was that if a celt unit captured a roman barracks, it didn't make much sense historically that the barracks would continue to spit out roman soldiers - but instead it would be used to make more celt soldiers. But, I personally don't think that is a big deal. In the C&C games, it was like you described. If you were the Allies and you captured a Chinese tank factory, you as the allies could start making Chinese tanks.

This discussion jogs my memory from over 10 years ago. Here is what was originally specified. This concept was largely taken from Westwood studio's model of how entities transfer ownership (Command and Conquer - I can't see this video from work, but I think it will show it: )I'm not sure if all can see these links so I'll cut and paste the contents: http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=699 http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=742 Also an interesting discussion that we used to have as part of the design FAQ (Ken Wood was one of the original game designer):

Fun read, thanks for sharing

I think it is all pretty awesome. A+ for creativity, except... ponies? really? I grew up in the era when they first came out and this is what I associate with them: I can't connect the dots in my head between that image and 0 A.D. But... that is my problem. Fantastic artwork! I think it would be a fun mod, to mod your mod into a Medieval faction.

Not sure if this would be something worth pursuing, but I recently posted it in another thread. Thought it was relevant to this discussion: ...there was an idea in the past that you could make a selection in Atlas of multiple entities and save them as a "group". These groups could be then be added to a player's custom pallet of tools. So perhaps it was a collection of trees, rocks, shrubs and bushes - and you define/call that "TemperateGroup01" or something. Atlas saves (or "copies") the x,y (not z) and rotation of each entity/actor into that group xml file. This could then be recalled at any time later and "pasted" onto the terrain, conforming itself to the terrain. The group could be rotated like what is featured in the new alpha release video. The group would conform to the terrain and the z height would be altered for placement as required. I'm not sure if this was documented or implemented, but it might be worth looking into to achieve what I think is what your going after here with this farm idea?