real_tabasco_sauce

Yes, it looks much better. I'm so used to low settings I forget how real the game can look! I guess the cursors look a little fuzzy, but I meant to make them large.

Should it be the default settings?

@Vantha I came up with a tooltip image for these: The tooltip images are all 512 by 512 so I made this also that size. However, the other tooltip images don't look very square: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/Vantha/0ad/src/commit/e9257edcdb5a3b02815b69ff90acd28b13c6107d/binaries/data/mods/public/art/textures/ui/loading/tips/army_camp.png

Nice work! The colors of the roofs are often very similar to the colors of walls and other parts of the structures. I think that makes it difficult to quickly identify the building, which is especially important for multiplayer. I think it would be good to make the tile-based roofs either a darker brown or a darker grey.

Ok so I made the changes described above and added a phase dependent building damage buff of 20% Here is the current version if anyone wants to test: community-testing.zip Just unzip it to your mods folder, the directory name will be correct.

Ok are there any suggestions for version 12? I heard from someone that the conscript spearman should be available for romans from the CC upon researching the reforms. I think its a good idea.

Ok, well if I leave crenellations alone, I think I would have to let damage be phase dependent, which maybe isn't so bad since capture point regen is also phase dependent. If I revert crenellations as is, I would have to come up with another tech to serve as the first arrow damage increase which would make the tech situation more complicated.

imo crenellations is pretty quirky: depending on rounding, you get different numbers of additional arrows. With a fully garrisoned tower, you get 2 additonal arrows. I don't like that it leaves ungarrisoned towers unaffected, and that there are no general upgrades affecting non-tower arrows. In general, defensive buildings being next to useless (for defense) if not garrisoned is sub-optimal.

Also, I should nerf siege towers a little.

I suppose this could be done, but the tower techs are largely unhelpful/uninteresting save for crenellations. Crenelations currently only buffs garrisoned structures, while the tech is redesigned to be a more general-purpose damage buff. my approach was to try and re-purpose existing techs to be more applicable to arrows in general.

Ok the non-random arrows and ui improvements are working toward a building arrow overhaul. I've heard from a lot of players that because building arrows don't get much stronger as the game goes on, arrows are too strong in p1 and too weak in p2. So I came up with some changes to improve building arrows in general. Building prepare time 1200 -> 400. buildings get value sooner when a unit steps into range. The practical range of enemy structures is made more apparent when circling a structure. Tower and CC arrow damage: 10/11 pierce -> 8 Fort arrow damage remains at 10. Generally speaking: building repeat time increased (more so for CC, less for towers,fort), building default arrows increased (more so for fortress, less so for towers,CC) Fortresses gain a minimum range I added a new technology and restructured the existing tower technologies into something that will work for towers, forts, and CCs. Sentries: unchanged Crenellations: Towers +40% garrisoned arrows -> all building arrows +20% damage. available from the fortress too. Arrow Shooters: unchanged Sturdy foundations: made much cheaper Murder holes -> moved to the fortress, affects fortresses as well as towers. "Professional Garrisons" (coins above) supersedes crenellations in the fort, and is another 20% arrow damage for all buildings as well as +4 default arrows for the fortress only.

For the community mod, I can't change defaults, so I think players will just need to bind force-attack to something else if they want to control in all three means i discussed above. ^the behavior for both autogarrison and force attack being bound to the same hotkey (ctrl by default) just results in force-attack coming out on top. for a27, i think it would make sense to make force-attack 'f', since force capture is 'c'. Then follow unit could just be unbound by default.

they can work independently of each other if you use the hotkeys 'autorally' and 'force-attack' to control garrison and arrows respectively. But the default mode is for one click to set both since that is more common and easy to understand.

maybe its fine with the right sound.

In this implementation, without the use of hotkeys, targeting building arrows and the rally point are the same. So in the video, if i just click on the ram, both the arrows and the rally point are set to the ram. This is done because it is easy and intuitive and it works for 90% of cases. Hotkeys are needed if you want to separate the actions. Players that want fine tuned control can use the hotkeys more, but it takes a bit of effort. On its own, yeah it would be fine. I'd just prefer something short and really simple.

ah rally point. In this case, I think it should be silent, because we wouldn't want both the building targeting sound to play at the same time as the rally point sound. As is, its kind of nice that you get a visual for the rally flag and audio for arrows. It means when u just click on an enemy unit without hotkeys, both can occur nicely at the same time. If not for the building targeting sound, I wouldn't be opposed to it.

Wait don't we already have the order sound when a waypoint is planted or added?

Yes there are some that should be looked at. But there is some grey area: if the graphics give the user enough information, it may be good to avoid adding too many sound cues to avoid audio clutter. for example, aoe2 docks will make a lot of ding dongs and it can get overwhelming XD.

20240916-1553-07.9350148.mp4

I don't think any sound is used. I kind of like the idea of using https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/src/branch/main/binaries/data/mods/public/audio/attack/weapon/arrowfly_02.ogg but with more volume. It's fairly quick sound and is the least monotonous of the arrowfly sounds. maybe even one of the old sling sounds could be good: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/src/branch/main/binaries/data/mods/public/audio/attack/weapon/sling_22.ogg edit: I went with the second one since the first one doesn't sound very exciting.

@Stan` @wowgetoffyourcellphone any sound recommendations for telling a building to attack something with its arrows?

Ok so I have made some developments: 20240916-0307-49.9922231.mp4 In the above are some nice UI improvements: Instead of the arrow, a rally point cursor appears when a unit's destination is just to a particular location. When all a structure's firepower (building arrows AND degarrisoned soldiers) are to be sent to a particular enemy unit, the familiar sword icon appears. This is the behavior if no hotkeys are involved. If you press ctrl ("autorally" hotkey, for example used to garrison trained soldiers back into the selected building), the rally point alone is set to that enemy and building arrows remain untargeted if you press "force attack" (unfortunately this is also ctrl by default), you are in command of the building arrows and only the building arrows. shown by the red crosshairs. Also, the arrows now fire in sort of volleys or bursts, rather than a constant stream of arrows. This means they can be dodged to a degree, which is fun. Next steps: change force attack default hotkey (or find another appropriate hotkey). add some audio feedback for when the arrows of a building are being targeted. rebalance building damage according to non-random building AI. rework building technologies and/or change building damage with each phase.

Ok, there have been issues with OOS in the new version of the community mod. It seems many of these are related to install issues with version 12: For example: <p class="warning">WARNING: Technology "phase_town_spart" does not exist</p> In this case, a version 10 file called "phase_town_spart" remains after installing version 12, which is supposed to be deleted in version 12. How to fix (and hopefully this solves the OOS for good). uninstall all your mods navigate to your mods folder (For example, windows might be C:/Documents/My\ Games/0ad/mods/ delete the community mod folder open 0ad and re-install the community mod and your other mods.