Vantha

@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

Is it worth suggesting name changes like this? Because I'd have some too from my research for the encyclopedia.

Most likely a literal translation into Chinese. I've come across some names like this as well. I'm working on Han Xin already by the way.

Liu Bang: https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/110

Ok, I figured it out. It was on me, there was another backslash in another file I edited. This fixes it: https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/109/

That's bad. The backslash came from one of my texts, right? And I forgot to mention it in the last post, but I will write the heroes next.

3 more finishing the cavalry: These are the ones I was referring to when asking if I could write about more general stuff instead of specific units. I finally finished them. I put one in the stables, one in the cavalry spearman, and one in the cavalry archer. Horses in the Han dynasty (for the stable): https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/106/ Han cavalry in general (for the Cavalry spearman): https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/107 And the horses of the Han cavalry: https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/108 Btw, @ShadowOfHassen have you managed to fix the error?

Yes, some sort of illustrations for the encyclopedia would be amazing. And while I can't really estimate how much work the encyclopedia, that @wowgetoffyourcellphoneshowed, would actually take to implement, I'm sure we will find someone to do that. Also besides this, I think 0AD can always find good use for an illustrator.

Han barracks: https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/104/ Han dock: https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/105

Always happy to see new players enjoying the game:)