Vantha

Regarding voicelines, they would indeed be neat, but not being able to make them shouldn't be reason not to create singleplayer content. I too would be in favor of voicelines being spoken in ancient languages, that would also save the trouble of having to translate them into different languages. The only problem is that that will just work for Latin and Greek, many of the other languages are too incomplete to write (and then speak) full sentences and texts in them. I think there has been a misunderstanding. What I am currently working on and was talking about earlier is something like this mockup: When I wrote "dialogue" above, I was referring to speech, the possibility to make characters of a story talk. I think the game shouldn't be paused while a cutscene like this is running. What I settled with is to provide two options and leave it up to individual scenarios whether to disable hovering, selecting and giving commands or not, but always let the player move around the camera. And by the way, yes, the narrative overlay I opened the PR for already pauses the game behind it.

Pausing the game completely isn't really an option, unfortunately, because then the animations won't play, units won't move around, and so on. But what I'll do is add the possibility for map scripts to register callbacks, so that they at least can pause in the meantime, and wait with actions like triggering big attacks until the dialogue is closed.

Back to the unit dialogue overlay, do you think player inputs (hovering, selecting, giving commands, ...) should be ignored while the dialogue is shown? As it is done in full "cinema path" cutscenes (that's how it's called in the code) like the one shown in the "Cinema Demo" map?

I see. This might be surprising to hear, but the essence of this is technically already possible in 0ad. It is possible in scenario scripts to push basic decision dialogs to the player and then wait and react differently depending on what the player chose. Now, the system isn't optimised for showing a lot of dialogs in a single game, as the code can get quite cumbersome, but it is surprisingly versatile and works. The reason it's so unknown is because it isn't actually used in any playable scenarios right now, there's only a small demonstration of it in the "Triggers Demo" map (the yes-no dialog). Sooner or later, I'd like to write a full guide about embedding storylines in scenarios and campaigns, to show that features like this exist and how to use them.

Ok, I'll add a next button then. It might make sense to support maximum durations that each line is shown nonetheless; mainly for dialogue in time-critical points of scenarios, to prevent players from gaining an advantage by artificially stalling the game by just not closing the dialogue. At least I imagine it could help in some cases to better enforce a certain pace, in maps like Survival of the Fittest.

I want to implement a system for unit speech/dialogue in cutscenes next, inspired by that mockup. Should I add a "next" button (to the bottom right probably) for the player to click through the dialogue themselves? Or always switch to the next line after a set amount of time, like a predefined cutscene? How do other games do it? It would of course be possible to provide both options and leave the choice up to campaign makers. Could that be worth it? Or would one option of those two be always be preferred anyway?

Good news, folks! https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/pulls/8318

Well, yes, in scenario maps custom victory conditions for each team are possible, even for each player. However, the code behind the victory condition "presets" (the ones selectable in game setup -- Regicide, Wonder, Conquest, etc.) is currently not designed to work on a subset of players only.

Technically, any victory conditions you can think of are possible in scenario games, since you can mark players as won or defeated at any point in the trigger script (if any desired condition is met). And that can also be done "asymetrically". But to make a victory condition work on any map (also random and skirmish ones) and make it selectable in the game setup, the logic has to be centralised in a designated script -- which, however, isn't inherently more difficult than implementing it for a single map) So, yes, a tower defense scenario would be possible.

Hey @ffm2, thanks. As of now it's nowhere visible in the game, but since 1b797ce0a0 the tips are already divided into categories: "Basic", "Intermediate", "Advanced", and "Multiplayer" (not gameplay related). It was always my plan to add a dropdown to the tips page to switch between them. And also to add another category called "Expert" above the rest -- for the multiplayer community; for exactly tips like the ones you described above. So, yes, I can certainly add them to the game. But they will have to be shortened and we need some images to go along with the text. I'm rather busy with some other projects here at the moment, but I will note it down.

I have never worked with the statistics tracker in the past, unfortunately, but I'll keep it in the back of my mind.

I will keep it general and go for just "page". It's not the 100% fitting term, but it's simple, and players will understand what it refers to.

I need some help with naming. How should one instance of the story parchment overlay, text and image together, be called in the game? E.g. for the button tooltip: "Switch to the next/previous ______". Something like a "chapter", but shorter than that.

I think I have owed you all an update on this project for a long time now. Me and @ShadowOfHassen have neither forgotten about the encyclopedia nor given up on it. I'm as convinced by and passionate about the idea as ever. It's just that I don't consider the project as high priority as other ones (like making campaigns or a tutorial). However, I can promise I will get back to the encyclopedia eventually: My plan is to overhaul the UI completely (in terms of appearance). The current one looks alright, but it just lacks that artistic touch. And, good news, I am actually in touch with @whiteebony82, he's creating sprites for it, and what I've seen so far looks amazing. Something to look forward to. About the articles, I'd love to resume the writing process, I'm hoping I'd able to still write some texts every now and then, but because I'm now more involved in the technical side of things, it'll never be as much as it once was. I haven't talked with @ShadowOfHassen about it yet, but before picking it up again I think we have to find some more people interested in helping, if we ever want to see it finished. One thing I want to do for sure, though, is to go over all of my old art and improve them (as ShadowOfHassen did with his in the past) before adding any new ones. Looking back, I could have done a lot better and often missed the point. Regarding the code, there is still the PR I opened last summer: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/pulls/6997. It contains only the core parts of the page, but also the most recent version of the code. It is marked as"WIP" right now, which means review progress on it has stopped because there are changes planned it -- the UI changes I talked about above. When I've achieved a UI that I'm happy with I will remove the label again, get it moving and hopefully merged soon. Then there is also the github repo I made a while ago: https://github.com/indoptogopt/GUI-page-for-0ads-encyclopedia The code in it is neither up-to-date with the PR, nor compatible with A27. However, the repo stores all of the articles in the latest state. I'm still unsure what to do with it; in regards to the code, it doesn't provide much value to me, maybe it would be better to make a new repo dedicated to just the articles. TL;DR I won't resume now, but I'll do when the time is ready. As a first step, I ported the encyclopedia demo mod to the A27 release version and as recommended created it with pyrogenesis' archive builder this time. To install it, left-click on the downloaded file -> 'Open With' -> '0 A.D.' encyclopedia.pyromod @Genava55 (This mod's purpose is really just to demonstrate functionality, my goal is to add the that to the game eventually, which is why I will not be putting it on mod.io)

https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/wiki/FAQ#what-shall-i-do-when-joining-multiplayer-matches-fails-with-an-error-message Also, Alpha 27.1 will include a patch fixing the automatic creation of port forwardings via UPnP, which should resolve the issue for some players entirely (to be precise, for those with UPnP enabled on their router).

Alright, that's what I'll do, likely starting with the parchment overlay. There's some other stuff I have to finish first, but I will get to this soon.

I came across this a while ago, I have yet to try it out, but it looks fantastic. It's one of the things that I'd like to pick up or help with, if only I had more time.

There's an old patch for it: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4246

Which of the two would you all prefer? If there's no clear tendency then I suggest to provide both options and leave it too up to campaign makers how and when to use them.

Point taken about versatility. It's probably best to provide options for both. We can discuss what style to opt for with built-in campaigns when the time comes to make them. Might make sense to do a poll. About the "hero talking" mockup: In what cases would it be preferred over the parchment overlay? Could they be used in combination? How do other games do it?

It would be really quick to implement. We already have a "cinematic mode" and apart from that it is literally just two black bars, a text field, and a portrait. The only thing a bit more tricky is that exclamation mark above the talking character.

I agree. Any ideas on how could we use it in combination with that parchment?

Maybe we can do both. An introduction at the start like this: "It's the year ___. The ___ wars have ended a few years ago. ___ has died and was succeeded by ___... " and then switch over to a monologue of the main characters. We could communicate the difference between the two by adding quotation marks to the last one and showing an image of the character, for example. These images look indeed quite nice and I'll experiment with them. And I agree the charcoal style fits really well. In general, though, I'm very reluctant with using AI images. For actual campaigns we'll have to find an artist somehow. I'm sure this charcoal drawing effect can be replicated in Photoshop. Then there's also the option of having the characters talk in the game view directly (or a cutscene). Here's a mockup created by @wowgetoffyourcellphone:

Ok, I'll make those changes. Actually, I quite like that "overlapping"; having the image cover everything and then placing the text on top in some free space of it. That's totally possible. The only downside is it could make the text "jump" around quite a lot between slides/screens. Also, it would require specifying the text position for each image separately, although that's a small price to pay in my opinion, and there could be a default layout to fall back on when no custom one is needed. I want to add an image to the mockup, but I don't know what. Do you think stories have to evolve around a specific character? Should they be told in first or third person?