Vantha

The role of peltasts should indeed be rethought. According to my knowledge it is still debated whether it actually were peltasts who Ihpicrates reformed. Iphicratean pikemen could be added separately from peltasts, maybe replacing the hoplite champions. About the peltasts themselves, I suggest to either: increase their armor and balance it with reducing speed, firing speed or damage. Or: enable them to switch from javelins to swords.

Library of Alexandria https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/124

For the Chinese chariot, instead of switching between melee and ranged, I think the best way would be to have two soldiers on the chariot dealing damage simultaneously, one with a bow and the other one with a dagger-axe. (ranged and melee at same time)

Thanks

I have some more texts in the works, but in the meantime here's an update on the UI work: A quick showcase: 0 A.D. 2024-03-03 20-49-23.mp4 I have done some layouting, moving everything to a place where it fits. It already looks a lot better than before, but I will probably still change some sprites, fonts or colors. How do you like the new arrangement? The right is still pretty empty, this is where the related articles section would be, they have to be added manually to each file and I havent done that (the Athenian civic center is the only article where I added some for testing). Here are the new features (mainly improving navigation between different pages and menus): - Because everything is structured like (and in) folders I added the current "path" at the top, by clicking on different parts of the path you can switch to the respective page. There also is an "UpButton" (with the arrow pointing up) to the left of the path that will alway open the current page's "parent" (like the "up" button found in most file managers) - Every action you take/ every menu or text you open will (temporarily) be saved. With the back and forward button you can move back and forth through your history (like the back and forward button in browsers) - the button "suprise me!" opens a random article (I am aware that it currently chooses "general" and "environment" more often than "civilisations". That happens because folders inside "civilisations" are only partially filled with files/articles (yet!)) I've also put together a quick mod: encyclopedia.zip Try it out! Let me know any errrors or unwanted behaviour you encounter or any suggestion you have! Keep in mind that it is still in progress, I have cleaned up the code, but it's not very well commented yet. I'm quite new to programming, so don't be suprised if something's done in a confusing way. Tell me if you think I should change something to bring it into line with 0ad's code. And regarding the sprites, @wowgetoffyourcellphone You've done a great job with the mockups. What textures did you use? Are they in the game files? I couldn't find them. I'm specifically talking about the beige/white background and the golden frame around the image. Was the background texture just a brigther and hueshifted version of 0ad's black background?

I'm in parallel also writing some texts to keep the progress going. Here's the Ptolemaic, Seleucid, and Macedonian civic centers: https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/123/

corrected

I just finished two more Han texts that I had started some time ago. With that we've now entirely finished the Han, our third civ. @ShadowOfHassen and I decided to get back to the Greek civs, we will do the Macedonians next and then maybe the Ptolemies and Seleucids in parallel. Here is the PR: https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/121 The Battle of Mobei: And the entire Han Xiognu war: (it's the longest text I've ever written, maybe I should split it up into multiple texts) I'm also still working on the new encyclopedia page UI, adding some more features. I think I'm close to finishing a good-looking prototype.

Hi! I've dug a lot in 0ad's files lately and I've noticed two small things regarding the naming of files: 1. There are two 'standing_stone' templates. One in the treasures folder and one in the ruins folder. They are almost identical, use the same actor. Why not just remove one of them? Or at least rename them to avoid to different objects being called the exact same? 2. All civ emblems are called 'emblem_' + civ name. For example 'emblem_macedonians' and 'emblem_kushites'. But for some reason, the Gaul one is called 'emblem_celts'. I don't really see a reason to call them Celts here because in all other files (and in-game) they're called Gauls. I would suggest to rename it to 'emblem_gauls' to keep a uniform way of naming civilisations in the game files.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone I actually really like the look of your mockups and I would like to design the new page similarly. What textures did you use?

So, progress has sadly been going a bit slow lately. I haven't done the UI design of the page itself. But I have restructured the entire page. Now it has every text we've ever written that I'm aware of. This includes all templates, mixins, animals, trees, and more. Here is a short showcase, clicking through what I have done so far: 1300745683_0A.D.2024-02-1618-46-25.mp4 There are seven categories chosen by the buttons on the right, every category has its own overview text, displayed where later the article will be shown. We never wrote such texts which is why I use placeholders right now ("Here is..." at the top). The categories also have subcategories that are chosen by the buttons appearing on the right. My idea was to have the overview text and then something like "Learn more about ..." below it. After selecting a subcategory, there is the list of articles in the specific subcategory, and here one can open the individual articles. In addition to all that, the civilisations tab also has a dropdown for choosing civ. The civs' overview texts are of course the ones in the game. The categories 'historical background' 'maps' and 'gameplay' are currently empty. If you're curious, here is the file with the folder structure in it that I use for my external setup script: folders.json I also added a related articles section on the right. The related articles need to be manually added to the files (which is why in the showcase only one article actually has related articles showing up). And there are back buttons to more easily navigate all the menus. I am aware that that some name choices aren't very good or fitting, I am definelty open for any sugggestions, especially regarding adding, removing, or renaming categories. What do you think of the 'category-subcategory-selection' system in general? Does anyone have ideas on how to arrange all the buttons in the middle panel? P.S.: I will upload a mod with the current version soon for people to try out. I have to clean up my messy code first.

Yes, that's what I was asking. I probably should have been more precise.

Thanks. I found there what I've been searching for.

I have a dropdown in an XML for a GUI page like this: <object name="dropdown" type="dropdown"/> I know I can add items like this: <item>name of the first item</item> <item>name of the second item</item> The problem is that I want to have more than ten items in the dropdown, and preferably add them from a JavaScript script instead of listing all of them in the XML. How can I do that? I found list functions here: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Exposed_GUI_Functions#List_functions. But I'm not sure how to use them. And from a quick search not a single instance of 'addItem' or 'pushItem' was found in 0ad's code.

Do you know this captcha? https://youtube.com/watch?v=4Ks-C4YJGnc Seems to be a newly developed system. And I assume it's made in such a way that bots using most recent technology can't pass. I have to say though, they can get very annoying. When you get one wrong you have to start all over. And the amount increases. I once had to do twenty or so. But it depends on the implementation. What about having to solve a captcha like this when registering a forum account?

Sorry for the delayed response. I couldn't figure out how to work with the current XML templates because I'm not a very experienced programmer to be honest and not very familiar with 0ad's code (yet). I believe we should store the articles separate from the templates to keep them clear, easy to read, and everything in them related to gameplay. Kind of like the text in the credits popup is stored in JSONs too. But if you insist and think it's better the other way, I can of course change it to read the texts directly from the XMLs. I'm sure I'll figure everything out, it can't be that hard. And I was planning on pulling other information from the XML anyway, the portraits and some stats. Not entirely sure what you mean. But yes, it's possible to add tags inside the history tag. We could also rename the 'History' tag to 'Encyclopedia' and then put 'Title' 'RelevantArticles' and 'Content' and 'Quote' in it for example.

Yes. Basically the same way as retrieving information from the history tag.

When starting with everything, I actually tried retrieving the texts directly from the XML templates. But to be honest I didn't get that to work. My current idea is to store all texts only in JSONs and only show them in the encyclopedia. And to entirely remove the texts from the small viewer popup (and from the template XMLs) because they don't fit well there. And maybe add a button in the viewer popup that opens the respective article in the encyclopedia instead. Yes, that was also my plan. I will do that in the next few days. Making the Civ Selection similar to the dropdown in the top right of the structure tree actually seems like a good and intuitive solution, if that's what you mean. Don't reasonably sized buttons take up more space than text? I'll see what I can do. That's probably best, it shouldn't take me long to implement them.

Hey everyone, For the past week and a half or so I've been working on implementing an encyclopedia page orientating towards the concept shown by @wowgetoffyourcellphone. And the framework is done. Here's a short showcase: showcase.mp4 And yes, I am aware that it is incredibly ugly. I wanted to get everything to work first and then focus on aesthetics. I moved all texts to new JSON files with a script, and the engine is retrieving the texts from there. I did this because JSONs are easier to read and also provide more flexibilty for adding new features like different formattings, subheadings, or inline links. There are also some elements I'd personally like still missing, for example the portraits, but they are on my to-do list. If anyone has a suggestions, for example on how to cramp the many buttons into the small space in the left panel, definetely let me know. Btw, applause to all developers of 0ad's engine. It seemed very overwhelming at first but it is very easy to learn how to use. Very well done! P.S. no pressure on anyone of course, but (and I know we've asked this a few times already) how can we get to merging into the mainline? Or is it a bad time for that right now?

As @ShadowOfHassensaid, it'd be great if we could start merging what we already have. Is there someone who can explain when and where to do that? Pr for Wei Qing: https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/119

Han Xin: https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/115 And two of his most important battles: Battle of Jingxing: https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/117 And the Battle of Gaixia: https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/116

https://play0ad.com/game-info/project-overview/ 0 A.D. (pronounced “zero-ey-dee”) is a free, open-source, historical Real Time Strategy (RTS) game currently under development by Wildfire Games, a global group of volunteer game developers. As the leader of an ancient civilization, you must gather the resources you need to raise a military force and dominate your enemies. But I like the German "Null 0 A.D." better too.

I find 0ad's soundtracks fantastic too. It's very hard to choose favourites, but I'd put these as my top three: 3. Peaks of Atlas 2. Cisalpine Gaul 1. Honor Bound (the main theme)

The small "Zhanchuan" ship: https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/113

We already have a wall mixin, however, I think the Great Wall deserves a text of its own: https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/112