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maroder

WFG Programming Team
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Posts posted by maroder

  1. The Term Citizen-Soldier is Problematic

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by maroder

    3 hours ago, Stan` said:

    if 0 A.D. continues getting some traction, we might reach that point one day

    hopefully :D

    I don't think there is a general problem with introducing social classes including slavery into the game. Most (if not all all) ancient civilizations used slaves to build their empires and because 0.A.D pays close attention to historic facts, this would fit to the concept.

    But the problem is the specific implementation, which is why I think it is not a good idea.

    For one, there are the concerns @Stan` mentioned, about how to depict and balance complex social classes for all the different civs.

    There are also moral implications (which I will discuss based only on my thoughts, so the generalizations I make are only assumptions ):

    0 A.D is a game of classical warfare. This means explicit depiction of violence and war is to be expected. Also the violence is used by all players, so there is the concept of resistance, counterattacks and so on. Therefore the game tells a tale of a cruel but "fair" fight for the win between equal parties, using classic motives of victory and heroism. This is why the violence is morally justifiable for many people.

    The problem with depicting slaves is that it is only a one way violence relationship. And because complex sociological roles and the effects they have are hard to depict in-game (we have no concept of popularity as a commander or morale of the units as Stronghold for example), they would probably just be very weak "throw away" units. So this could change the story of the game from playing a commander fighting "honorably", which has a positive connotation in many cultures, to playing a slave owner exploiting slaves, which has a negative connotation in many cultures and will deter people from playing, even if it based on historical facts.

    And just to remind everyone what effect the depiction of social roles has and how people react to it we can look at women in 0.A.D:

     

    So the questions for me are: Do we have a concept for an implementation that doesn't have the inherit bad connotation of playing a slave owner? Can we really depict the historical complexity in an accurate way? How would the gameplay actually benefit from the introduction of social classes and slaves and is it worth effort to finding a good implementation?

     

    Now about the naming question: I think it makes sense to stick to common terms everyone understands even without historical background or knowledge about the game. The term citizen may not be correct for all units, but it is the word that everybody understands and that is used in many RTS (I believe?). If we want to change it I would either switch to using the unit roles e.g "worker" and "soldier" ect. or use a generic term like "residents". Word combinations as "worker-solider" are really not good in user facing texts, because no one knows what is meant by that when seeing it for the first time.

    • Like 1

  5. Capturing enemy / gaia units and capturing gaia elephants

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    I like the idea to convert mercenaries for money. see here for a concept mod: 

    I also like capturing of eles. imo they could have a much more interesting dynamic.

    27 minutes ago, PyrrhicVictoryGuy said:

    Bad ideas. Makes mercs even more of a liability and gives elephant civs free elephants.

    Disagree. You can change the usefulness of mercs to accommodate such a mechanic (and not to forget that there already have been huge changes to the mercs for a25).

    For the eles: yeah that is a concern, but there are surely ways to make it not too op.

     

     

    • Like 1

  7. Animals' animation and moving speeds

    in Art Development

    Posted

    I never looked into it, but from guessing I would say that the speed in the animation file is the speed at which the animation is played at and the speed in the unit template file is the speed at which the unit actually moves in the simulation.

    So you have to change both, until they speed of the animation looks good in combination to the speed at which the units moves.

    So I would guess that the speed in the animation file is a unit of time (probably seconds) which controls the length and therefore the speed of the animation and the speed in the unit template is an actual speed (meter per second or something like that).

    • Like 1

  8. Forum changes

    in Help & Feedback

    Posted · Edited by maroder
    attached pics

    On 29/06/2021 at 3:09 PM, Grapjas said:

    which icons did you have in mind from the game?

    We could take the civ icons, because they look nice. Problem is that would maybe imply some kind of rating of the civs.

    But we could also use other technology or building icons. I made some based on your suggestions and what was available:

     

    overview.thumb.png.ac9264ffaf0b978ec00c82eb4f729b1d.png

    forum_ranks.zip

    • Like 2

  12. Alpha 25 Pre-release/Release Candidate Build Testing

    in Game Development & Technical Discussion

    Posted

    13 minutes ago, Ceres said:

    Erm, please forgive me my absolute ignorance about the technical background of programming and building, but I have this (dumb) question: Is it possible that certain fixes are applied without a (noob like me) user's need to build from svn?

    yes definitively, as long as you only want to change javascript / strings / unit stats ect. In these cases you can make patches based on the svn autobuild and there is no need to build yourself.

    When you want to change c++ code or anything that is related to how the engine works, then you probably want to rebuild, to actually test what you are doing.

    • Like 1

  13. Shadow Cutoff Distance

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hard to say tbh. Am I correct to assume that shadows outside of the camera get not rendered anyway and don't influence the performance?

    Generally I like to zoom out from time to time to have a better overview and then 500 or 600 is definitively better.

    Or the best solution: LOD for the shadows. High res the closer you zoom in and lowest quality when you zoom out :D

  15. suggestions for Next Alphas (A26-30)

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    2 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

    If you guys can give me all of the small mods or some requirements that you would like then I can collate all of them into a big mod, then call it 'Empires Extended'. But of course some balancing advisors will be needed to sort out the clashes. Currently we have:

    I appreciate the enthusiasm, but there are so many mods and concepts out there, that I think a design document would be a better start than just throwing all together.

  19. suggestions for Next Alphas (A26-30)

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted · Edited by maroder
    added link to other thread where the problem is discussed.

    10 hours ago, wraitii said:

    Based on A24 experiences, experimenting too much in any given future alpha is unlikely. If we want to depart from the current gameplay, we'll have to ship two mods

    Strong support for this idea.

    There are the players who like the a23 gameplay and want it refined through small incremental balancing changes and there are other players who want to have new mechanics and a different more experimental gameplay style. And it is obviously not possible to do that at the same time.

    Link to relevant discussion in other thread:

     

    So we could have a game setup option called "classic" or "Empires Ascendant" and one that is called "experimental" or "Empires Extended".

    With this we don't split the community, because you could decide each match, what gameplay you want. Also: one "official" experimental mod is much easier to maintain as multiple small mods that are maintained by different persons and not integrated from the beginning.

     

     

    • Like 3

  21. A25 Feedbacks from testing

    in Game Development & Technical Discussion

    Posted

    @chrstgtr I think I get what you're saying and the concerns about taking away the difficulty.

    But do all multiplayer agree with you? As @Player of 0AD mentioned, @nani's widely used autociv mod also implements autotrain and made it efficient. AFAIK those two are regular multiplayer (correct me if i'm wrong) and autociv is used by many people, so some of which surly also used autotrain in MP games.

    So my question is (because I don't play MP that often): Did that had a negative impact on the skill level that is/ was required? Where there any negative consequences for the competitiveness?

    Because all I heard about autociv until now, is that it is one of the favorite mods that really enhance the game experience.

     

    • Like 2

  23. A25 Feedbacks from testing

    in Game Development & Technical Discussion

    Posted

    2 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

    I really don't get the casual vs. MP divide on matters that involve skill like this. Casual players can still play their game as they always have. They just won't be as "good" as they could be, which they purport to not even care about. It's almost like proposals like this seek seek to eliminate any aspects of the game where skill does exist. Meanwhile, changes like this will diminish any "competitive" gameplay that does exist. If casual players don't care about doing micro for efficiency they can easily pick game play settings (such as high starting res) that eliminate the need to be efficient. 

    Even if you play causally against other people or the AI, you still want to win. And the way to do that is the produce as many units as you can (Even with high starting resources). So causal player can still get annoyed by the repetitive action of microing the unit training. Therefore, autotraining will help those players and as it is implemented atm, it still benefits manually queuing for the micro enthusiasts.

    And about the diminishing of the competitive gameplay: So you are saying when autotraining is enabled in a match you would play on the same level as someone who plays the game for the first time? I doubt it.

    Experience, strategic thinking and the ability to execute a plan still matter. So why would this diminish the competitiveness when such a feature is there and it isn't even as good as you microing?

    • Like 1
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