Radiotraining

Good one! Terrans : I like EGO (Earth Global Organization) as an acronym for a terran organization. And also it's kinda existentialist at the same time. An interesting combination! Protoss: I came up with SHU, as lame shorthand for Superhuman. But we can just switch it to SHA (like, "shaman"), which has some atavic, since it must be an ancient civ with probably some mystical characteristics. I mean it came out randomly but we can just stick with it without going too far! Zergs: no idea, honestly. In a movie, District 9, the aliens were called "prawns" ahaha I find it funny and interesting. Maybe their name could be unknown so they can have another spregiative surname given by humans? idk.. something that sounds like insects

AWESOME!!! This is the perfect kind of collaboration!! Thanks so much for providing other inputs! Very, very appreciated! I was kinda satisfied by the idea of our "protoss" being the fusion of human and aliens, it worked well as justification. But hey! I find the idea of an ancient civilization quite interesting as well. It opens the door for an interesting work of concept art around it. The rest sounds all very good! I also like the idea of an ecological collapse as backdrop of the story. Let's wait and see if others have some other ideas and, in case, I'll write up a "clean" version so we can go with it!

sure!! Let's go with 2500 if everyone prefers! We can also change things in the story, eh! The idea was to run with something that everyone can agree upon, so we can "freeze" some features that can be translated into the game. Things like the name or characteristics of the races, the year, locations etc.. I've seen a lot of different ideas also in this thread, but nothing that was decisive, so I just wanted to cover this aspect so nobody will have doubts in the future on what we want to do. I think it's an important step to get the project going

yeah right I just picked a random year honestly ahahahaha we can push it later a bit Anyway one of the reasons why I thought to have it not so far it's because I remembered of this game, Gears of War, which had quite a cool setting. In that case the aliens are those invading the earth and I kinda liked the possibility to develop also that kind of scenario, since we are at it (just my idea). But at the same time we would have room also to imagine space travel and stuff like that

Okay guys! I was talking a bit with @Lopess these days to understand if there's interest to continue elaborating ideas for this mod. Surely it would be a great pretext to experiment the full potential of pyrogenesis engine. I don't know if @Stan` you're also still interested about it, at least to supervise it with your experience, or if you're definitely too busy at this moment. Maybe with Lopess we can kickstart some little progress anyway. So, I thought that the initial step to move things further would have been to come up with a loose storyline that could cover a bit the setting of this new mod, the new civs, how they developed and it can give a backbone structure for future work. So thinking about this, I wrote a (very dumb) short story to explain how all the races have come in contact with each others: Some ideas for a background storyline: YEAR : 2121 (far, but not too far) After a third world war that has consumed the planet, the human race has finally found a compromise for global peace, creating a new overarching power to keep stability: the EGO, Earth Global Organization. It all goes well for years until one day an alien civilization finally makes contact with the earth. Some communication is established between human and aliens and, after an initial conflict, the two parts finally come together. Thanks to the contact with the aliens, the humans enter in possession of new knowledge and resources that make space travel quick and affordable. This is especially possible due to a new energy source, the "dark matter". The collaboration with aliens makes possible a new age of space travel and colonization for the human race and they quickly manage to establish a colony on Mars to source the new resources. On Mars and on the following planets, the humans discover a new league of materials, the ADIUM, a metal elastic but resistant that can be mined from space or meteorites and can be modeled to create almost anything. Once on Mars, the EGO take control of the entire operations of colonization and estraction, and secretly start to experiment with the alien collaborators. Finally they manage to merge the DNA of humans and aliens and create a new superhuman breed in their crazy experiments, the SHU (Short for Superhumans, lame I know). Quickly the SHU becomes dominant on the new planets, cutting ties with their human progenitors on the earth and try to dominate everyone else. Meanwhile, the aliens discover the crazy experiments that had been secretly conducted by humans and they break the collaboration with them and declare hostility to humans. --------------- So with this backstory, at the end, we have: CIVS: - EGO (Terrans) try to reconquest their lost colonies. - Reptilians (Zergs) an alien-organic species (haven't found a good naming yet) - SHU (Protoss) a superhuman, highly advanced race that is combination a humans and aliens + mecha features RESOURCES: - dark matter (energy) - Adium (metal) SCENARIOS: - Earth: destroyed and a bit apocalyptic because of the terran wars and alien presence - Mars: space colony - Alien planet: where the aliens came from. The planet is all organic - Some other planet, highly technological, where the SHU had been experimented Inspirations: Starcraft (ofc), Warhammer, Gears of War, Final Fantasy Spirit Within, C&C

sure I can try and see what's possible! That was a beautiful shot by the way.. But what plans do you have in mind with this @Lion.Kanzen?

OMG !! That polearms bug is utterly RIDICOLOUS! Okay sometimes I make fun of AOE4 lightheartily, but in all seriousness I'm kinda shocked by the amount of missteps since the release! Like, it really come off as something amateurish by the quality of these bugs and really not a premium title. Or maybe I'm just too used to good ol' classic games that felt more "finished" when released? I know it's custom now to sell out buggy games and patch them along the way.. but darn!!

not sure it's exactly the right place, but i wanted to share it. About Rome, in general.. but in this case there are references to Batavians and their relationship. Great channel I've found!!

I think it can be quite an interesting idea .. but I also think it's something that can dramatically change the gameplay, so not something that the devs would take lightly. Maybe could be interesting to try such a mechanic on a mod? Anyway, I'm all up for some small innovations that can keep the game interesting! I find the game tends to become a bit repetitive after a while, so this could be one of the small things that would help to keep the strategies more varied.

Yeah, I was reading a bit through the thread. I'm very down with that! I could also write down some rough ideas for world building. Not that I have some at the moment, but I can think of something. Unless you have already some people in mind for the mission! that would be fine as well. From what I've seen nobody is claiming paternity over the project, so it really just needs a push to get the ball rolling and break from the initial uncertainty

Btw : is there anyone appointed to write the lore behind this mod? Are there already some ideas or it's all up to be created from scratch?

ah yeah! I have it! Sorry, I shared only the small png that I used as assets (idk, I saw the original emblems were only 128px and I did the same) the original are a bit bigger: 600px I can attach a couple of .psd files, if necessary emblem_russya.psd emblem_byze.psd emblem_norse.psd

well.. maybe @Andronikos Medina could better intervene here since he's expert on the matter, but, from what I could understand also from his lectures, a lot of Byzantine culture and aesthetic had been a conscious heritage more of hellenic culture rather than latin one. So a lot of symbolism that belonged to ancient, classic period had been preserved and re-utilized in this era. In this case the emblem would be a representation of this cultural heritage that was present in Byzantium.

aaaah it's okayyy!! I'm good with the current "old" ones! Mine was a simple exercise to see how something different would work. It doesn't work? Fine, let's get back to the traditional ones, which I find absolutely good for their purpose! EDIT: But I welcome ideas if there's a serious intention to work on them! As I said, there hasn't been particular thoughts on them, only some historical suggestions and just the intention to try to something out and see how it would work! Not much else

Hey @Lion.Kanzen I'm good with your feedback! As I said, these redesign weren't meant to be particularly relevant, because functional symbols were already existing and I have no qualms about them. To be honest, the only really "needed" one was the Umayyads that I improvised a bit from scratch in absence of something else. The others were just a follow-up that have been suggested internally in the Discord and I tried out for the sake of experimentation! It wasn't exactly a feature change planned for this mod, but more like a simple improvisation. We can simply use the already existing symbols if necessary! No problem with that

the Byzantine one was inspired by the cross found at the Chora monastery in Costantinople. This is part of the historical material provided by @Andronikos Medina But obviously, it's all part of experimenting a bit with aesthetical boundaries before settling to any definitive solution. The original Byzantine faction had already a functional symbol, as well as the Carolingians. This is all "extra" corollary material, but certainly nothing particularly decisive to the "core" of the game. The only missing one was the Umayyads that I created from the material in the forum! And the Rus, but I shared the link to the original material!

About the emblems.. well, mostly they were already present in the game. Although I took the liberty to update them. The only really new is the Russian one that I sourced from wikipedia ( https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granducato_di_Mosca#/media/File:Banner_of_the_Most_Merciful_Savior,_1552.svg) CC BY-SA 3.0. The rest is either from the forum or made by me from scratch in photoshop/illustrator.

yeah..! I know about it and I'm aware! As I said, those are the only 2 elements that have been consciously sourced outside, knowing that I would have changed them eventually. But, admittedly, I forgot this detail at the moment of sharing the github link. My bad!! All the rest, including faction symbols, is material either free, from 0ad or created entirely by me. I'll welcome suggestions for the textures. I read the disclosure and they can be used for game assets. But maybe you have a couple of other trusted websites where to find material

oh, that's true!! For the Rus building I used a couple of new textures from https://www.textures.com/, they should be legally possible to use. I may have to check more further. In case, do you have suggestions where to source texture material possibly? - another disclaimer: I used some background music from youtube intentionally only for experimental purposes with the idea to change them before any official version... but I shared the github link!! shut!! I forgot that! Maybe I should cancel that link? I forgot to mention this and update the assets EDIT: I deleted the link and I'll update those assets without any possibly copyrighted material

ooooh yesss!! this is very useful indeed!! thanks so much, I was missing this!!

- Quick update: I moved some of the discussions around concepts and production on a separate Discord channel to not pollute too much this forum with inside debates and too much of technical conversations, but I'll try to offer an updated view of the progress also in the forum. Currently I have to thanks @Andronikos Medina for the historical background and @Dasaavawarfor participating with feedback and ideas! - Together we came up with an initial review of the current meta of the game (Gameplay_sketch) And, from that, we distilled a plan of present and future features that would be possible to implement: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gEokmKtmHw_1vQwC2tTUMvgxO_ttm3Z_Xq1GBUeMKT8/edit#gid=2057863749 (it's meant to be a general blueprint, some things may be further reviewed in terms of gameplay balance) - The main focus would be on the current roast of civs: Byzantine, Umayyads, Carolingians, Anglo-Saxons, Norse + a new faction: Rus. Some things have to be completely updated (Umayyads buildings set, thanks also to @Lopess support!) and some things may be refreshed following a organization of civs into 3 main categories: "Empire civs", "Medium civs" and "Tribal/Nomadic civs", to help manage the balance of each of them. Something that @Dasaavawarhad already conceptualized in this thread: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/58002-civ-differentiation-playstyles/?do=findComment&comment=460284 - Currently we've decided to focus on refreshing the Byzantines, the most complete and central civ of this mod, thanks to @Andronikos Medina particular interest and expertise around this civilization and historical period. We decided for the introduction of an administrative building (Bouleterion, based on the monastery of Nea Moni) that could: 1. Mark the imperial status of this civilization 2. Offer a blueprint to update current buildings/texture pack somewhere in the future 3. Experiment new techs that could be adapted to the following civs and revive the gameplay that hasn't been updated since a23-24 After this first step we would have maybe reached enough maturity and expertise to tackle maybe a new civ like the Rus' and hopefully provide a new, fresh update to Millenium AD. but we're still at the very beginning of the adventure! Gameplay_Sketch.txt

Working on this mod, so far I managed to make something similar to what @Lion.Kanzenwas explaining. I introduced a new civ (Rus) and a new building with special functions based on my initial idea/concept at the beginning here: Stan gave some suggestions in this thread on how to develop the concept from the templates available: So here you go! A new 3d model that can be built in neutral territory and, as you can see from the pictures, act as a market (and also as a dropsite!). It's all playable here : https://github.com/stereotipo/millenniumad If you're interested I can keep you updated on future progress! I didn't exactly know how the Council of Modders operated, but now I think it will be good to share more of new material here in the forum, so it can benefit also of the supervision and feedback of more experienced people! I just hope I'll not bother too much

Awesome!! Great explanation!! We could definitely think to make it more easily available for everybody else! Since I'm working on the Millenium AD mod I can think to create some documentation from the work and the stuff I'm progressively learning! I think that some clear explanation of the file structure like this, could be very, very helpful to whoever wants to take a look into modding

I don't know if it was google translate, but I love the definition of our species as "very Spanish" That makes me think, for some lore, that we may take inspiration from the colonization of America to represent both humans and native populations of other planets Maybe this could be the basis for a "X" civilization of highly developed human fused with cyborg elements that have gone rogue and separated from the more - vanilla - terran civilization. It could be an interesting element of conflict. YEAAAAH!! Looking pretty cool!!

ahahahaha yeah!! we wrote basically the same stuff at the same time