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Wijitmaker

WFG Retired
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Posts posted by Wijitmaker

  1. Sorry, if I I caused confusion. My intention was not to insinuate that anything in the game be changed. I was just answering the question that was posed. :)

    Games have inherent trade-offs that counter-balance reality with fun and practicality. Those either/or decisions are made all the time in development. At several points I remember emphasizing that we are making a game with 0 A.D. and not a simulator. True there is some educational value to games, but a game shouldn't be overwhelming with education to ad nauseam. Very few people will care about the historical accuracy of wheat, they would likely care more about the historical accuracy of units in the game. So we focused our time there.

    I gave guidance to Mythos and did some of the texture work myself for the wheat and barley you see in the game. I'm not suggesting it be changed. What is in the game is sufficient to modern age players that represents wheat as a food source :)

    EDIT - 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?

    • Like 1
  2. As a farmer's son I can assure you that the wheat in the picture is indeed fully grown (the ears are only developed when the plant has reached its final height).

    Ha! i didn't know that Erik? Neat, I'm a farm boy too ;)

    Why is the wheat not taller than Mr. Gladiator? Maybe because it is not fully grown, would he ever stop to ponder explanations?

    Like the guy in video was saying... modern wheat is different than ancient wheat. Erik is correct, what was shown in the gladiator footage was "full grown". Modern hybridized wheat is bred by design to shorter stalks, it provides a better stand for the heavy heads of grain (sometimes 4 or 6 rows). The idea being that the plant should spend more resources on making kernels than useless straw. Ancient wheat was a simpler variety that looked something like this:

    http://www.primegrains.com/prime-einkorn.htm

    They didn't have modern chemical fertilizers and irrigation either... so the density of the fields was probably much less. Their yields were probably a 30% of what modern farming techniques can do with the same piece of ground today.

    • Like 4
  3. I think there should be a way to get the look you are after. myconid was the last programmer (to my knowledge) that did some major changes/updates to the graphics engine. Here is the full evolution of his changes unfolding before your very eyes - post by post:

    http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=16022

    You should be able to get a glow effect like this you see in the bottom image:

    http://imgur.com/a/oRHdk

    After reading this... try playing with the alpha layer of the spec map:

    http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=16022&p=242478

    • Like 2
  4. I managed to finish some more buildings with working decals, check them out:

    grounded_by_undyingnephalim-d8k3ybd.jpg

    Thank you, that helped a lot.

    It is neat to see a new look in Pyrogenesis. I'm looking forward to seeing more :)

    Perhaps you can't select - because it is a gaia object instead of player 1? That would be the first thing I'd check.

  5. It is neat to see a form of auras back in the game. They were once a huge part of the game design's strategy for play. It was something that really was intended to separate 0 A.D. from being an Age of clone, it also adds more real time tactical depth rather than just masses of brainless fodder being waypointed around the map (like I see in a lot of 0 A.D. youtube videos today). This game wasn't intended to be be won by "they who click their mouse fastest" but rather "they that thinks and strategically out maneuvers their opponents". Auras were key to this idea and implemented in the game at one time, but were never re-added after a rewrite about 8 or so years ago.

    More info on their intent and purpose: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/XML.Entity.Traits.Auras

    Back in the day, auras were only represented by a simply player color vector ring when an entity was selected.

    Morale and stamina (running/charging) were two other aspects to the game that were once fully functional that we lost in that same rewrite... I still morn this loss to this day :crybaby:

    • Like 2
  6. I would like to propose a countering template with three distinct types of relative strength.

    1) Attack advantage against unit type (e.g. 1.5x)

    2) Attack disadvantage (e.g. 0.5x)

    3) Neither at a disadvantage or advantage (1x)

    Let, 1), 2) and 3) be represented by:

    1) ---------------->

    2) ---------------->

    3) ---------------->

    Here is the blank template:

    attachicon.gifCapture.PNG

    This reminded me a lot about something I posted 10 years ago. I'm not able to make the thread visible for you (it is in some private staff forums), but it might be a fun read for you if a moderator could move the thread.

    http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=1064

    • Like 2
  7. The actor editor was a pretty handy tool for people that were not familiar with modifying xml tools. It also caught a lot of mistakes before you made them. I guess it wasn't documented well enough to pass on the usage to the next generation of developers. There was a lot of elements (groups, variants, random, loading, unloading, prop point recognition, prop point browsing) that really made setting up a a new or editing an existing actor quick and simple to those that aren't familiar with coding and syntax.

    I'd encourage not loosing sight of it.

    Philip made it and did a fine job IMHO :)

  8. as you can see i have a plenty of time...for now, And Yesterday i came up with an idea to make a little animation for the logo of 0AD, i'll upload it in a couple of days. It's no much but maybe you like it. Here you have an advance about how it's looks like.

    attachicon.gif2_0090.jpg

    Nice work on the animations, it is good to see some new animations since the once I did 10 years ago :)

    I like where you are going with that animated logo. I like the use of depth of field.

  9. The alpha channel of the texture could be used for color. Similar to the how horses are done. It is the same concept as player color.

    This allows you to "color" the Auroch brown/tan/black randomly in the actor xml file using a single texture. If you are interested in that, check out the horse textures as an example of how that is done.

    • Like 2
  10. That is really odd, I just did a quick count and I could only count 160ish tris in that image, So I can't imagine you would be up over 500 total. Perhaps there are cloned tris in your model?

    Are you comfortable modeling? I wasn't aware that you weren't the maker of the model. Yes, I do think there are to many tris in the face region.

  11. Sent you an email (for some reason the attach files doesn't work from my workplace computer).

    Hopefully you see this as constructive feedback :) This is also slightly subjective. I'm kind of old school low poly in my methods. Enrique and Micket might give you a little different guidance, so take this advice with a grain of salt.

  12. Yes, that is a little higher poly than you'd put in the game, but I do like his proportions and scale.

    A few comments on #31

    I would try and unify the mapping more. Often the problem with doing that is that it will cause the texture to stretch and pull, but there are some neat features in 3ds max - one is called pelt mapping. See the demos here:

    http://3d-studio-max.wonderhowto.com/how-to/use-pelt-mapping-3d-studio-max-376299/

    If you unify the UV mapping you will also have less seams in your texture, which is good. One thing to remember is the perspective of the model in the game. Most everything is top down isometric angle, so try to avoid placing UV seams in a highly visible areas.

    There is something funky going on with the mesh at the top of the head near the ears. The ears don't have to be a part of the body. They could be just a separate attached mesh.

    Add more geometry at the joints, this will help when it is in animation and there will be less low poly mesh distortion.

    This used to be a bigger deal back in the older days of slower computers... but take advantage of left and right side mirroring, that maximizes the use of texture space.

    Double check your proportions... This looks like a great resource:

    http://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-draw-animals-foxes--cms-19886

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