MirceaKitsune

I'm happy to announce my first map and mod for 0ad! Gaia is a random map aimed at beauty and realism: It aims to provide beautiful landscapes and pleasant environments that are different every time, making use of all capabilities currently provided by the engine. You can usually expect plentiful resources and large forests with a lot of wildlife, may contain lakes and mountainous features alike. Supports all the default biomes and player placement formations. Roads connect player positions, longer roads will appear more worn out. You may encounter mercenaries and random buildings or camps you can capture. A time of day can also be chosen, night is supported as well as stormy days with weather effects (biome dependent). Games aren't guaranteed to be fair and perfect all the time: Due to how heavily randomized the map is, each player may start in a better / worse area nearer to different resources. I had several matches with AI and it feels fair and balanced overall. Give it a try and let me know what you think! gaia_1.0.zip Instructions: Since I didn't feel I should make a whole mod for one map I packed the map as is. Just unpack the zip in ~/.local/share/0ad/mods/user, don't know what the path is for Windows. It should then appear in the random maps section when creating a match.

Yes, they're the most painful games for me as well. I like how the different biomes make such a difference: There's at least one with barely any wood, and one with so many trees you couldn't run out for hours.

Is this still at an idea level, or is there even part of a playable faction implemented or expected to exist soon? The engine is so good and I'd like to see alternative games / mods for it too... something scifi would definitely work to complete the set.

Wow on this. I gave it a try last night and am legitimately impressed by what I saw. This is more beautiful than any FOSS game or 0AD mod I ever thought I'd see! Yet at the same time I'm also disheartened for a few reasons. In terms of development and completion: I'm seeing a very solid basis with some formidable assets, however mixed in with other assets that still look and feel really basic: Most factions have a very solid and consistent design between units and buildings... a few others are at the opposite end with simple looking buildings or animations. The GUI has many issues too and can be harder to understand, worst of all though there's a lot of lag and my screen is covered in error messages. I know those are things that can and likely will be fixed over time... till then this is unfortunately unplayable, but still gorgeous to experiment with hoping for the future. My biggest sadness is that this likely won't get anywhere in the long term for one simple reason: It's based on Zelda which is commercial IP, copyrighted to Nintendo which is also the worst abuser of content creators on the internet. They harassed countless developers who made Pokemon fan games, I don't see Zelda being different if they ever take notice of this. So much work was put in here still... I don't want to see it going away, of course they wouldn't care about wiping it all out. I wonder how many of the units are based on official Zelda characters... could anything be done to branch this into original IP without too much effort, especially if that will ever be needed at a later stage? This is an option I'd carefully consider.

Oh gods, Hyrule Conquest looks very impressive! I'll happily give that a try for sure. The latest trailer indicates they've gotten far with it at this point. The name Hyrule indicates it's a Zelda fan-mod though. I don't mind of course, just hope I won't have to see another good project go down over Nintendo-style Copyright trolling. It can probably be renamed in a worst case scenario, unless the units are also of IP characters in which case it may be complicated. I wonder how much of Stella Artis is playable at this point, seems to be a concept with some assets so far. Will definitely follow their thread too. Only other one I'm seeing is Byzen. It seems to be almost the same theme as vanilla 0AD though so I'll pass for now.

I've been meaning to ask this question for a while now. As we all know 0AD is its own standalone game, with its default factions and setting that takes place in the medieval age. Beyond that it's also a great RTS engine in general. In the mod selection page of the main menu I can see that "0 A.D. Empires Ascendant" (default game) gives you the option to disable it, presumably in favor of running alternative core games instead. So I wanted to know: Are there any other base games built on the engine? By game I primarily mean to custom factions, presuming any will work with existing maps and biomes granted resources are the same. The ones I'm curious about in particular are those in different genres from the default, meaning either fantasy or futuristic. As far as fantasy games go: I strongly see 0AD being a fantastic engine for something like Warcraft 3... used to play that as a child and loved the magical atmosphere and different races and factions you could play as. Glest / Megaglest covered this in the FOSS world for some time, its ancient engine is slowly dying and 0AD kinda seems like its replacement. For the scope of my question anything with magic and wizards counts... also other races like orcs or dragons, I'm also wondering if unit assets for these were ever made; Only one I know of is Ponies Ascendant which as a MLP fan I installed and am eager to try out once I find some time for that. As far as sfici games are concerned, I see this being a great replacement to another fellow FOSS project of 0AD: Spring RTS engine has a few futuristic RTS games available, I wanted to try them out at one point but for some reason its loader always messed up and none of the game packages worked... I prefer 0AD and its architecture anyway and would welcome an alternative here instead. So do we have any factions with computers and holograms and droids and rovers yet?

I find the elephant one cool myself... gotta love watching where people manage to place ASCII graphics like that Only issue I see there is that it's breaking the list formatting of the server list: Perhaps servers should have an optional description field for this sort of thing?

If you ask me, I also think attackers are a bit overpowered sometimes... sometimes. I'm mainly thinking of this change for realism as a very tiny boost, but it would be interesting to see how it could affect gameplay too.

I see. Are those icons free assets, or ones you can use if you created them? The general design is really good so I hope it can go in that direction. Doesn't sound like it has time to make it in 0.26 in any case, but hopefully at least 0.27 may have it.

That would be another idea if the limitation you mentioned could be fixed: Buff / debuff the walking speed ever so slightly, so you're a bit faster on your own territory and slower on an enemy's. That's one that should make little difference in combat and not throw off the balance noticeably, but on the downside it would look a little odd if units switched speed while walking.

I know. It just might be fun to allow it as an option for people who want to risk that. Am actually curious how a game with this would go... for the time being I figure a mod would be possible to test it out of curiosity, not familiar with modding game changing functionality though.

Is the image from the first post from a mod, or visually edited? I feel that's by far the best design and icon style, if work was already done on it that's hopefully the graphics and implementation being worked on.

Or a special building boosting unit stats across a large radius? Unlocked in city phase and costing enough to build so that it's not abused. This could also be an alternative, some civs might already have it. The initial idea should be a very small effect though, mostly for realism and strategy. At most it should make a difference among the lines of, if 10 units are fighting 10 enemies on their territory this should give 1 unit that wouldn't have normally won the victory.

Another simple but powerful idea I wanted to suggest: What are your thoughts on implementing a tiny stat boost / unboost based on the territory your units are standing on? Whether for health or how well an unit preforms in combat or some other unit stat. It would be identical to how a hero boosts the strength of units close to them but for territory. It's based on the idea that when near their home, soldiers feel safer and can preform better... when in an enemy's territory by comparison, they're more scared and might preform a bit more poorly. The phase of the territory you're standing on should increase the effect, thus village is weaker (it's a small and weak place) town is normal (a larger and more crowded establishment) and city is stronger (big city so more reason to feel safe / scared). Optionally there could be a bravery upgrade that can be researched to mitigate this. The gameplay effect would of course be that attackers have a somewhat harder time conquering an enemy base. I envision it as something among the following lines: Own territory, +1.0 boost: Soldiers are fighting in their home and feel braver. Allied territory, +0.5 boost: Soldiers are fighting in the territory of an ally, they feel safer but it's not their own home, halved boost effect. Neutral territory, 0.0 boost: Units are battling in a place owned by no one or a neutral faction, no buff / debuff. Enemy territory, -1.0 boost: Your army is alone on the enemy's land, they're nervous and may have a harder time preforming.

I thought of a small change which I felt like it would be interesting: An optional game setting to disable restrictions for building only in your own areas. When the option is enabled, players can place buildings anywhere on the map including untaken / neutral / allied / enemy territory. Building ownership decay would remain in effect: If you don't garrison a building placed in a place you don't own, it will fall to gaia or the enemy who's zone you built it on, meaning you will need to do it very carefully. And of course if another player builds a Civic Center near it before you do, your building is in now their territory and may fall to them. One reason for this suggestion is that unlike lack of a resource or an upgrade needed to build something, there's no logical physical limitation saying you can't construct something in territory you don't own: As long as you have the resources needed to build it, there should be nothing stopping you from building anywhere. And it does feel like this could make games more interesting in practice: Players could build towers in areas they just explored to secure them before building a Civic Center there, later explorers may have to take those towers down in that case... you could also combine your own towns with an ally's. The only exception of course would be the Civic Center or any other building that creates territory: You can't place a CC in someone else's territory and take it over, only your own or neutral space. Houses, barracks, towers... all others would be allowed for games with this setting enabled.

I for one love the way that looks, the minimap feels much more modern and complete this way! I also see the change being extremely useful, you can actually understand what's going on instead of having to guess from the little dots / squares currently used to represent buildings (I often confuse them with resources). For both reasons a big +1 from me, I'd be thrilled if this change made it into the next release!

This is a very true point. It's unfortunate how much division different cultures can have... by which I don't necessarily mean just national cultures, which make a little difference but people are divided everywhere. In my case I grew up with a strong "protect people from clear undeniable harms, have thick skin and don't care about anything else" mindset... not something I claim is perfect just my way of thinking, in part it's because I have a strong spite for authoritarianism based on how it affected and scared me in the past. While I can't personally transpose and envision it, I can imagine others being different for their own motives... while I hate everything being so strict and taken so seriously nowadays, I don't want to ignore how they feel either if a bad word can truly make someone feel considerably bad. For this suggestion, perhaps an option of sorts would be good, such as regex expressions to replace words. It would be nice if it was left up to individuals if possible.

Went to play right now and I did see a server with the F word in it, nothing bad like that screenshot though. Honestly I found it funny and harmless... in a way it would seem boring if this stuff was completely outlawed like in the AAA games, kinda gives me a pleasant memory of that long lost vintage internet where people would say whatever but still had fun in it Of course doing this shouldn't become a purpose in and of itself, the list is meant for making servers and playing after all, it would raise questions if this ever became a phenomenon with ill intent which luckily doesn't seem to have happened yet.

This is a complicated one. I can see the issue from that screenshot and don't approve of such... at the same time I so don't want to see the endless fashion of a thought police trying to enforce "rainbows and sunshine" coming here next. A good way for now would seem an ability to block certain servers from appearing in the list. Same way we could have supports for favorites to bookmark them... we could then have an un-favorite category for people to hide such servers when they spot them.

I can see that point. On the other hand, this is in a world where an entire giant empire is created and established in less than an hour: Smaller trees regrowing in half an hour doesn't seem that unrealistic when you think about that

A possibility I suddenly realized: What if we supported this as a map defined feature? The map already decides the biome, trees, minerals, etc: It could as easily specify whether to enable resource regeneration, what for, in which form (regain health over time or reproduce). Heck mappers could to define rocks that make babies if they feel like it if this were implemented as a generic override for any resource or map item I haven't created any maps yet though, I don't know the details of how items are defined and if this would simply be something like an xml parameter you can add to your biome.

Can't believe something as amazing as those screenshots was done, yet the project seems to have dropped dead for almost 3 years. May we please ask for an update on this? Is there still no way to integrate the code in a proper way so this can make it into the original engine? I was just wondering about things like additional building lights and glowing windows in another thread:

Little suggestion that popped to mind today and I wanted to throw in. Since 0.24 we've had the ability to select night time on some maps (sadly very few of them). Could this be accompanies by glow textures for windows on buildings, ideally as a map setting so the map / biome can define intensity? This would require creating an emissive texture for all buildings that have windows, but hopefully it's not a big task and may be an option for the next release. On that note it would be nice if buildings containing flames (eg: some faction's version of the temple) could emit light. I assume this would require larger changes to the lighting system though, IIRC it only knows to work with one light source which is the sun / moon. So I understand it may not happen until later on at best.

Interesting, didn't know that. Thanks for this info! I typically play randomly generated maps with random AI factions, it's also those I was curious about. Didn't get to play with the map editor yet though it would be nice to eventually.

Playing again I remembered one of the reasons why I thought this would be nice: Deforestation looks pretty ugly and often ruins the mood and aspect of a map once too many trees are cut. I figured it would be nice if trees could regrow so entire forests don't just disappear when you have a lot of workers cutting wood.