Aoidos

I usually play 0ad with my siblings every weekend and we have been using mumble all this time, it really works great, and yes it is free software.

I agree with Iltis2017 that open source should support open source, and 0ad is already amazing in which it has both code and art assets free and is one of the biggest free software game projects out there. Drew Devault has an interesting article on why free software should not rely on proprietary infrastructure https://drewdevault.com/2022/03/29/free-software-free-infrastructure.html the most critical point in my opinion is when he writes that by using proprietary services you lend some of the credibility of the project to these services. Anyway, I know Discord server is not official I'm not saying 0ad is endorsing anything, I just think this is an interesting and healthy discussion. I didn't know you had IRC, that makes me very happy! Guess I'll pop up there some other time. I suggested matrix, instead of IRC, because I know what a hard pill to swallow IRC is for most people (although I don't get how things like Slack take off, it is basically a glorified IRC that hogs all your memory).

I too believe having an open source alternative to discord would be greatly beneficial (I for one don't have any will to join discord). What about matrix https://matrix.org/? it is a mature protocol with good clients, including web. Regarding the AGPL, I understand there is a continuous debate between the permissive and copyleft licenses camps, but I don't see how that would impact we using something under the AGPL, as long as you don't modify the code or distribute it you don't need to AGPL anything, and isn't 0ad engine GPL (great choice imo)?

Hi @SciGuy42first, congratulations on the awesome work in this campaign. Regarding what is need to update these for alpha 25, I did some testing and updated the first scenario to alpha 24, following the instructions here apart from applying the scripts mentioned there I found that most of the differences lie in the new subfolder structure specified here https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP24216 also some buildings have changed name like blacksmith -> forge workshop ->arsenal and some units have changed names as well. For the subfolder issue something like " sed -i 's,structures/civ_,structures/civ/,g' " and sed -i 's,units/civ_,units/civ/,g' where civ is "mace, spart", etc should solve almost everything. The js file also needs some tweaks like missing functions, which I didn't look into. When I tried this converted version in a25 it didn't accuse any errors, so I think you shouldn't have much trouble going from a24 to a25. Regarding you being stuck on a23b I know how it is, I run debian and guix and neither have updated even to a24, but you can have it as a flatpak if you wish (although I dislike flatpak it can save you in a pinch) or you can build from source, I did it for a25 and it is not all that hard and well worth for people developing neat stuff like this campaign.

A very good idea indeed is to learn from lichess, they even have a very good FAQ, with a section explaining their rating system(Glicko-2, which I think is very good), how leader boards work, how they treat disconnections or leaving without resign, etc. All very pertinent to 0a.d. https://lichess.org/faq

Why not simply use a well established rating system, like ELO, or Glicko? There are plenty of sports out there that use them regularly. I think what @Player of 0ADsaid pretty much sums it up. That is how it works, at least in online chess, which I play a lot, if you stop playing rated your rating will fluctuate more when you next play, also this is the case when new players start until their rating is adjusted to their level, with each game played the uncertainty decreases. As asides, a system like in tennis of "defending" points as I saw mentioned above doesn't really fit here, in my opinion, as we don't have regular, fixed calendar events. Also, I don't think we should care about possible "inflation", it doesn't matter if the lowest rated used to be 1250 and now it is 1000 or whatever, what matters is that the difference between a good player and a not so good one will show in their rating difference, after all this is not a professional competitive game (although people can be very competitive even when no stakes are on and that is ok) and I also think the relatively small pool of player is to be blamed a bit as it makes harder for ratings to stabilize overall. Finally, I also agree with @LetswaveaBook that rating shouldn't be reset between alphas for the reason he just exposed, players that know best the underlying mechanics will inevitably crop up to the top.

Just my 2 cents on this, I searched quickly and "phusis" apparently means something like "nature", if that is the cause I don't think "gaia" is used simply because it is greek, if it was just for the meaning then simply "nature" in each native language would do it. I think the use of "gaia" is more because of its connotation of mother earth, as she is the originator of all life in mythology, also it is used in other famous games, people are used to it, and to me it seems like it is the name of a "player" controlling that "color", much like sometimes specific historic figure names are used in scenarios for certain colors.

As it turns out the answer for this is we know almost nothing about the punic sacred band, even the name we know might be misleading. I find it very interesting that this came up here as I just read about it a couple days ago https://www.ancientworldmagazine.com/articles/punic-sacred-band-clearing-up-confusion/

@eTrey what 0ad version are you using? I believe these only work on alpha 23.