MirceaKitsune
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Posts posted by MirceaKitsune
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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.
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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!
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Just now, Lion.Kanzen said:
this is an important point. 2 opposing cultures tend to quarrel.
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.
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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.
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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.
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2 hours ago, Ceres said:
Well, I agree that deforestation is in general, i.e. also in real life, ugly. But for realism in 0 A.D. I would doubt that trees regrowing during a match would be good. If you built too many e.g. ships, you should cope with "empty forests". And if trees would regrow, you could not chop some away to later have place for e.g. a new CC. On the other hand, it could be fun. Anyway, I understand it's only possible via a mod and not a simple toggle to implement.
One could maybe consider it new fish spots could apparate from time to time, but that's maybe connected with the same technical consequences said before.
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
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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.
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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:
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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.
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23 hours ago, nwtour said:
Hello,
AI names hardcoded in map property.
You can open maps in the editor and change them to absolutely any
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.
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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.
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When setting up a single player game, or creating / hosting a multiplayer match: Could the player be allowed to change the name of AI factions in their game? They always seem to get random names you can't modify like Whatever the Great. That's okay as a default, but do you think match admins can be allowed to set their own names for AI's if they want, so they can name the allies and foes they play against to whatever they enjoy having in that match?
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Thanks for all the info! I'd definitely be happy if we had this in some form. Mainly for added realism: If gameplay was the issue we could simply make it so the resource has more health and you can mine it for a longer time. Oppositely, if it's considered that this would overpower factions, we could reduce the health of resources that regenerate / reproduce to make sure players typically get roughly the same amount of resources overall.
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4 hours ago, Stan` said:
It's implemented, but it was rejected for balancing considerations. It doesn't grow new trees and produce animals though.
Meaning the code still exists? If that's the case what about having it as a game option, even if it remains disabled by default for gameplay reasons? One extra checkbox hopefully wouldn't hurt to add for players who would enjoy this. Is there a config setting or console command to test it for the time being?
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I know I'm probably not the first to bring this idea up but I found it worth discussing. What are your thoughts on making some resources renewable, meaning they either regrow or regenerate? I namely had three in mind which would make a lot of sense in my view:
- Tree regrowth is one of the first that seems logical. With how often you struggle to find wood on some maps and how difficult everything gets if you run out, this would help from a gameplay perspective too alongside added realism. Best implementation feels like having trees spawn saplings near them when there's enough room: The little tree offers fewer resources but gradually grows if you don't cut it right away... since trees are static models they should be easy to just resize without requiring any new assets. For example: A sapling can be 0.25 the scale of a grown tree and offer 50 wood if cut, but if you wait 15 minutes it grows into a full tree offering 200.
- Animals should be able to reproduce too. Not going to suggest a realistic simulation as this isn't a Pokemon game, just a simple mechanism to have some animals spawn another identical animal on random occasion. Like trees we could simulate babies by having them start out small and offer less food if killed until they grow up... for animals this might be more complicated than it's worth though, simple probabilistic duplication might be enough for starters.
- Fish banks are prolly the easiest to do. As fishing boats consume them, the resource should slowly regenerate over time and have its "health" climb back up... once they're gone though they stay gone forever. Regeneration should be very slow, just enough to emphasize fish in that bank reproducing. This would require players to be more careful about how fast they consume fish if they don't want to run out, fish too fast and the source is gone!
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1 hour ago, Gurken Khan said:
Well, hm. On one hand I could imagine different regions of a civ differing in their advancement. On the other hand I think it would be difficult where to draw the line, like are techs and units of later phases are universally available or only in certain regions? And how would you balance that? I don't know if it would add enough to go through all that.
I was thinking about that. When it comes to unlocked units / buildings / upgrades easiest way seems to leave those universal: If you have at least one civic center of a certain phase, you benefit from what it unlocks everywhere. One can make the claim that the technology is transferred between establishments, same way blacksmith upgrades apply to all troops anywhere on the map automatically.
Wasn't sure about buildings; Technically we could have it so a phase reliant building can't be built in territory maintained by a civic center below that phase. But this might get too complicated and confusing, probably not worth it. So in the end unlocked buildings should be possible to place anywhere once they become available.
Not sure if downgrading should be a possibility instead. So if you lose the last civic center of a given phase, you can no longer build / produce / research things from that phase until you upgrade a new civic center to reach it again. You don't lose existing stuff, just can't do new ones till you get back to that phase somewhere. This one seems more reasonable and I'd be in favor of it, what does everyone think?
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11 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:
Probably most likely for Civic Center. Probably not for all buildings in the set.
Cheers for that suggestion. Based on it I was thinking of an even better plus easier idea for this: Why not make the civic center a building you can upgrade, having the village / town / city phase in that area represented by which version of the civic center you have?For one thing this makes more logical sense if you think about it: A faction can and will build multiple civic centers across the map, each meant to represent its own establishment. It's rather illogical that the phase is an universal property of the faction worldwide, instead of a property of each individual establishment. Normally one territory could be in village phase, another in town phase, another in city phase!Going this route would also require less work and new assets being included: We'd only create different versions of the civic center for each faction, that's magnitudes of times simpler. This could be later accompanied by other changes to emphasize the advancement, such as a different HUD border or switching to different music.Perhaps I should make a separate thread for discussing this in detail? Making the phase per establishment / civic center rather than faction universal is a change with different implications. But I can say the idea feels a lot more correct in many ways, including more correct functionality gameplay wise. What are your thoughts on this? -
Is there an unpack-and-run archive or appimage for Linux? I'd like to test but don't wish to make root system changes, for this test I'd prefer a version I can just run as user if possible. Am on Manjaro OS / KDE Plasma: I have the stable release installed by my system packages, don't want to make changes not maintained by the packages otherwise.
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One of the things I love in this style of game is the feeling of starting from scratch and progressing as time goes on. 0ad definitely has this, and one of the parts I love in that regard is the transition between three different phases (village phase, town phase, city phase). I feel these transitions would be even better if visual modifications were made to units based on the different stages to further emphasize the changes, making them appear more solid and upgraded when a new phase is reached.
I'm mainly looking at buildings here. Civic center at the very least, maybe houses, possibly all building types that can be built at a certain phase and will carry through to the next phase. The general theming I had in mind is something among the lines of:
- Village phase: Buildings look dirtier and pretty rough, little detail in the structure, gives the feeling of small establishment. Reliance on plain wood.
- Town phase: Buildings look more solid and clean, some additional detail is added, gives the feeling of a growing establishment. Reliance on plaster.
- City phase: Buildings look clean and fancy, pretty and detailed, gives the feeling of a massive establishment. Reliance on sculpture and painted walls.
This would require some artistic effort by the development team of course, considering how many unit related assets we'd have to modify. One way to make the process easier would be creating simplified versions of buildings for the early phases based on the existing ones: Take each model, remove some of the detailed parts of the mesh, save as town phase version... now take that version, delete more unneeded components, save as village phase. Afterward do the same with the texture, adding a bit of cracks and plaster then saving that as the town version, then adding more structural instability with some wooden planks and saving that as the village phase version. As a bonus we may do some minor resizing especially vertically, so town phase models look a bit more crumpled and short whereas village phase look even shorter and more crooked (mind the UV stretching).
Is this a detail we can hope to have at some point? What are your thoughts on it? How do you think this should be done and look like?
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I noticed that for some of the random map types, the faction can be placed in a completely isolated hole in the ground (fully surrounded by mountains). This seems like an issue that may make levels unplayable due to impossible navigation. I took a screenshot as well as a savegame of the map which I posted below.
0ad a24.b7 (OS package / Manjaro). Map Type: Random, Map Filter: Default, Select Map: Ambush, Map Size: Medium.
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One of the things that makes 0ad great are its gorgeous graphics and breathtaking environments! Yet they're limited by a factor I couldn't find much discussion of and was curious to ask if there are any plans for: Lack of a dynamic time of day and weather. I had 3 different questions:
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Is a dynamic daytime cycle going to be implemented at some point? I've looked at the shadows closely and the sun never moves during a game, it's always a fixed time of day.
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Even with a static daytime I haven't ever gotten a mission during a red sunset or night time, it's always day with different sun angles. I understand a night option was implemented in 0.24b; Is there only day and night, or are times such as red sunrises / sunsets possible as well?
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Will weather ever be supported? I noticed that on some maps there are particle clouds in the sky, but there's never any raining or snowing or sandstorms going on.
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I really enjoy some of the unique mechanics in 0ad, including the ability to capture and hold enemy buildings (even if they're of a different faction) instead of downright destroying them when attacking. This inevitably begs the question: Why not have the ability to do the same thing with people and other enemy units? Wouldn't it be fun if workers or enemy soldiers could also be made to join you? Here are a few ideas I was thinking of:
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Capture units on attack: At rare random intervals, when an unit being attacked is close to dying, the unit may choose to join the attacker rather than take the final blow. This could be connected to how loyal your units are to you... if you're doing a poor job and the town is under-developed or you lack resources, you could have a greater chance of your units deserting.
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Capture units by bribing: You can already bribe spies to share their line of sight. With this mechanic you could also bribe an enemy unit to become part of your team! The more developed your enemy is, the more the bribe could cost.
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Capture units by destroying their city or defeating the faction: When an enemy faction is defeated its remaining buildings are transferred to Gaia. In case the game is configured so you can take down an empire without killing all its units, any unit left alive surrenders and becomes yours.
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Trade units with allies: You can already send or receive resource donations to and from allied factions. It would be cool if an ally could also opt to donate soldiers when need be, meaning they allow some of their units to chance become your units.
Just like buildings, captured / donated units would retain their original faction but change color and become part of your team. If the received unit has the ability to create buildings, it could additionally be allowed to create the buildings of its faction rather than of your own: This would allow the interesting circumstance where your team can have units from multiple cultures at the same time despite starting off as part of just one (eg: Romans), which is already part possible by conquering enemy buildings. What are your thoughts on having this even as an option?
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Hello there! I'm not sure if this forum is the best place for an OS related issue, but I'm presuming the group that handles the openSUSE build may be here to read this and perhaps take a look. 0ad is presently broken on openSUSE Tumbleweed: I have 0ad installed from the official openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Games repository. As of recent, it seems to have been broken by two package related issues.
The first is a bad libicu version: The game is packaged for libicu67 which no longer exists, now having been replaced with libicu68. Trying to run the engine without the deprecated lib installed will crash with the error:
/usr/bin/pyrogenesis: error while loading shared libraries: libicui18n.so.67: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directoryThe second issue is that although the engine remains at version 0.0.23b, the data was just updated to version 0.0.24b. The two are incompatible; I had to downgrade the data package from another repository to fix. Can both be bumped to 0.0.24b please?
Looking at the build page I'm noticing some compilation failures for Tumbleweed. Maybe that explains the inconsistencies? If the openSUSE maintainers are available, please let me know if and when a fix may be possible. Thank you.
Suggestion: Unit buffs / debuffs based on territory
in Game Development & Technical Discussion
Posted
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: