Vantha

Here are two more articles on the topic of Seleucid cavalry: https://github.com/indoptogopt/GUI-page-for-0ads-encyclopedia/pull/2

On another note, I came across a series of articles that I wrote some time ago, but never actually added to the encyclopedia (mostly because their topcis were not directly related to 0 A.D.). I decided to at least put them up on a PR for a review before I forget about them again. Here are the first two (about arrowheads): https://github.com/indoptogopt/GUI-page-for-0ads-encyclopedia/pull/1

For anyone interested, I just opened a differential revision submitting the core pieces of code for encyclopedia page: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D5319

Welcome @whiteebony82! In regards to the encyclopedia GUI page, it is in stage of finalization already, so the necessary UI elements have already been created. And for doing that all by myself, I'm pretty happy with result. However, the design is not set into stone. And in fact, I'd appreciate if you could take a look at it, test it out and tell me what you think could be improved. We could also meet on platform of your choice to talk about the details. Feel free to PM me!

Yes, the basic concept and structure is similar. But I dislike how the selection is cramped into a list of dropdowns. And the division of the page into three sections in the last image feels a bit awkward. Just my personal opinion Although, I think the overall page looks a lot more coherent than ours.

Very clean UI for sure. But I'm not a fan of the layout.

ShadowOfHassen mentioned it already; it's about letting devs know we exist, what we do, for them to integrate that into their workflow, and to accept our patches. But that's probably achieved best by just getting the (big) stone rolling...

To continue the thought: In short, can we become the official "writers" for the project of 0 A.D.? The idea is, there are programmers, artists, playtesters, but no one responsible for creative writing tasks yet. Having dedicated people for that would not only help keeping the style consistent, but also ensure a certain level of writing across the game. And it would of course lift some things off other people's current workload. In practice it would mean improving current texts, writing new ones, and overseeing all other related matters. And when I say "texts" I'm referring to (the untranslated English version of) everything textual in the game - from tooltips to various descriptions to campaigns to encyclopedia articles.

Sorry for the confusion yesterday, I just found my answer in the code, everything's clear now . @ShadowOfHassen I can take care of making the encyclopedia translatable.

Sorry to bother you, but I'm not sure if I'm understanding it correctly. Are the strings extracted while the code is running?

Ok. And does the translating always need to be done in the init() function?

And what about texts in files other than XMLs? The articles are stored in JSON files at the moment, and from those templates aren't generated. The credits text are stored in JSONs as well, how are they being marked for translation? Or should we convert the articles' JSONs into XMLs and have them being treated just like the simulation template files?

I'm glad to hear that!

Turns out, the crashes were caused by some corrupted png files. I'm neither sure what exactly damaged the file structure nor why it would sometimes work regardless, however, I was able to fix them. Here is an updated mod: encyclopedia.zip

Thanks. Yeah, adding hotkeys for certain actions is definitely something I should (and will) be looking into in the future.

I will submit a diff for the encyclopedia page soon. And while it's getting reviewed, we will start with the process of "customizing" the articles - adding titles, subtitles, images, related articles, references to xml templates, and some formatting to the text contents itself. There is a ton to say about the features' implementation and what to pay attention to. I tried my best to lay out the information as logically as possible and I'm open to explaining it further, if anything is unclear:

Well, it's not too different from the current system, is it? What is it in particular that's bothering you? Yes, I know! That has been on my radar for quite some time. It is way better structured and more visually appealing than what we currently have. And I plan to implement it sooner or later.

Yes, exactly. The structure of the encyclopedia is not very hard change codewise. And as ShadowOfHassen said, we're more than open to suggestions!

I suggest we add the page to the game now (after fixing the bug), but only with selected articles for testing. The review process will take a lot of time anyway and in parallel we can already "customize" the rest of the articles (adding images, subtitles, links to other articles, etc.). And as soon as the page framework is merged we can add the bulk of articles to the game too. I don't think incompletion is be something to worry about in this case, since the page framework is indeed complete and we can simply remove the button from the main menu as long as it doesn't contain all the articles to prevent players from finding a (seemingly) incomplete and empty page in a full release. And the existence of temporarily unused files in 0ad's code wouldn't be anything new either. Howevere, I will talk to some developers and adapt to what they deem best. I made the mod for the latest version, but it should be working with A26 (except the unit portraits) as well. Have you verified the mod is installed properly? Does anyone else face the same issue? You can try opening the javascript console with the assigned hotkey (per default '^' and F9) and entering the following command: Engine.SwitchGuiPage("page_encyclopedia.xml");

Big news regarding the encyclopedia page! New features: - the ability to put images in the article header. I decided to place the images to the top right and the title to the top left. This saves a lot of space compared to other possibilities and it looks good with images of most aspect ratios. But I will talk more in depth about the implementation in a future post. - the ability to add subtitles. They are fully optional, but really enhance the header's visual appeal (in my opinion). - a button below the title that opens up the the template viewer showing the unit's in-game stats. Its portrait is embedded into the button, so players can visually recognise the unit from in-game as well. - buttons to directly switch to the next or previous article in the same subcategory (to the suggestion of @nifa) They currently do not include any text as I think the arrow sprites are enough of a hint as to what the buttons do. Here is a quick showcase: screen-recording-0ads-encyclopedia.mp4 Other improvements: - fixed GUI scaling on lower screen resolutions (down to 1024x768). This turned out as quite a hassle, but it had to be done eventually. I haven't tested it on large screens (yet), mainly because they usually don't cause problems. If you notice any problem with the GUI scaling, let me know. As always I packed it into a mod, please try it out, any feedback is welcome! encyclopedia.zip (unfortunately I have not yet managed to resolve the issue with the crashes, I recommend trying to open it multiple times and supressing the error, if you notice any patterns or have any idea on how to resolve it, please let me know)

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I agree. I think any decent team game rating system would bring a good improvement over the current system, just because most players play more team games than 1v1s and a higher number of rated games will automatically result in a more accurate rating. We wouldn't even need to abandon the current rating system, players can have both 1v1 and team game ratings at once. I can't even imagine it to be that hard to implement, the problem is a lack of manpower. However, if anyone decides to start working on it, I am open to help coding it.

I just uploaded a patch: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D5297

Han minister To my understanding the name currently in use ("官吏 Guānlì") is a collective term for government officials ( which is obviously not wrong, as ministers symbolically represent the entire government). However, after all, the unit is still called "minister" and limited to nine at a time in reference to the Han dynasty's nine ministers. And these nine ministers (/ chamberlains) were called "九卿 jiǔ qīng" with "九 jiǔ" translating to "nine" and "卿 qīng" translating to minister(s) or other high ranking officials. Here is the change I am suggesting: Guānlì -> Qīng Sources:

Wow, that's so much more simple than I hoped for. It even allows to get the actually displayed size for GUI objects directly as well. Thanks.