ShadowOfHassen
-
Posts
605 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
8
Posts posted by ShadowOfHassen
-
-
The thing with AI is it's very very derivative and even if you do it for just planning purposes it's going to be very similar to tracing over someone else's image. (Those two pictures are literally colorized faces of coins) and those icons look like things I can download off opengameart.org
I think the complaint of copyright by now is a lost cause legally, so there is no worry about being sued. But I do think we should think about the potential costs. It's obvious that having a professional artist draw it will be better than tracing over any AI. The thing is most artists and other non-programming creatives hate AI with a passion(and for good reason) I'm afraid that using AI for 0 A.D. would scare people away. And while we'd get half decent art sooner, we'd be losing the chance of more artists later.
But artists aren't here right now!!! Be patient I think after this release things may be turning up, we literally have the coolest open source game here if Battle for Wesnoth can get artists we can too. (I have some marketing ideas we can try with the encyclopedia and I might be able to get a history Youtuber's attention, but I make no promises.)
That said, I do think AI art might be useful for prototyping and stuff, but I don't think it should be used for anything that is shown in the main game.
To the point of music, we don't need that we have an amazing soundtrack, and if we really need more songs I know some guys. It might not 100% real instruments, but we'd not be getting that if we use AI anyway.
I said from when the Encyclopedia was just a GitHub on my profile that I wouldn't be accepting any AI writing for the encyclopedia. The number one reason for that is the same with Art and Music, if you know what you're doing, the AI created content is very obvious compared to proper English. Even if I couldn't 100% detect it as AI, I'd probably a ton of edits because it's just terrible. I don't know what Vantha's feelings on it and as he's a very big part of the encyclopedia he might have different ideas, but I know I wouldn't be accepting anything that I knew was AI.
Additionally (and this is a potential problem with art too). We want to be historically accurate and AI doesn't know how to be historically accurate, an article or picture of a hopilite would have to be scrutinized to be sure it was right-- We'd have to do all the research anyway on how it looked, and we'd have to know what to do in order to fix a bad image/article so we'd need the skills anyway to do that which begs the point why we'd start with that anyway.
Again I think the art is OK for prototyping for things like DE (which I really need to get around to playing) but I really don't think anything AI generated should make it in the base game.
-
2
-
-
Quote
What are some of the future plans for 0 A.D.? Are there any upcoming features or expansions that players can look forward to?
Exciting developments are underway for 0 A.D. The biggest change is shifting from an SVN-based workflow to Git, making contributions easier for programmers but potentially challenging for artists. We’re also working on an in-game encyclopedia, player moderation tools like muting, and a new renderer that will boost performance—on macOS, switching from OpenGL to Vulkan can increase FPS up to fivefold.A
You can't understand how crazy it is to see the encyclopedia listed as a feature for the game upcoming.
It won't be in A27, but we'll be able to get at least part of the encyclopedia out in A28. We want to do some reorganizing after Vantha and the other smarties get the UI figured out, but after that we should be ready to set up the stuff we currently have and writing more.
-
3
-
-
I don't play online games, but I love this idea!!! it's too late this year, but we should remember this and work with WFG to make this a bigger thing next year.
-
2
-
1
-
-
32 minutes ago, Vantha said:
Sounds reasonable, but I can't really speak on that since I'm not a native English speaker. What do others think about this?
Offhand "shade" does sound better and I think it's right. If you want I can dig around the mythology books and see which ones use which word.
Soul does have a connation of Christianity, or Hollow Knight
-
1
-
1
-
-
1 hour ago, Vantha said:
The long continuous marching doesn't really match the typical gameplay, right?
On the other hand it would offer a logical explanation for why you need to build a new city from the ground up in each scenario -> constructing fortifications along the route to defend against ambushes. And launching a grand attack against the city of Rome would make for a great climax.
I think that would be better suited for a higher level campaign instead of the tutorial. Having the final attack against Rome should be climactic in a huge sense and in my opinion better when the player already knows what they're doing
-
1
-
-
4 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:
How do you balance that? If the Greeks can become athenians, spartans, thebans, corithians, and syracusans how on earth do you plan to play against them when any of their options can be completely different after a single phase-up?
That's a good idea. Hmm... well, I guess we'd have to do some brainstorming...
It's just an idea, if the majority of people don't like it when it's a fully developed idea we can not do it.
-
2 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:
I also fail to see why completely reworking the civ design benefits campaign design.
Well the thing is the gameplay between single player and multiplayer should be reasonably consistent. Someone should be able to after beating the campaigns be able to jump right into the multiplayer and vice versa.
Currently, in the campaign discussion we shot down half the suggestions because we didn't have a civilization. Making a new one we didn't want to do because
A. of the work to make a visually distinct style, units, and bonuses like in the normal game, we'd have to make units that are reasonably work for a given civilization. The most effective way for that would be to make a generic civilization for each large group and base the civs off that, like a Greek one to cover Corenth, Thebian, etc.
B. We'd have to balance these new campaign civs for every update you do for balancing the multiplayer games. Granted we could do meta balancing, and it'd be easier but still. To do the civs we'd still have to do it.
So even after everything, in order to make this easier we'd have to practically make generic factions anyway.
2 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:If you add on the massive detriment this would have for multiplayer in exchange for this supposed improvement to campaigns, and the work this would involve, it becomes clear that frankly this isn't a good idea.
I don't see how changing the gameplay effects the multiplayer determinately, it'd just be different. Yes, it'd be a lot of work, but at least this way the ton of work could benefit the multiplayer people too.
-
13 hours ago, Genava55 said:
If it would be the case, there wouldn't have been so much reticence when we discussed the possible scenarios for the campaign. Currently in the editor, you don't really create a faction, but you create customized units and buildings with dependent technologies and other dependent buildings. This works, but the rendering and consistency are not equivalent to a faction. There are always elements that will seem odd.
Yeah. I know that Age of Empires 3 you played civilizations you can't get in the original game, but that just made me feel cheated (WHAT ABOUT MY HOOP THROWERS!?!) And it is a little excessive to have to design a completely new civilization for literally everything we'd want to cover.
On 06/11/2024 at 9:48 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:-
1-click strategies (chosing civ specifications upon phase up) results in cheap gameplay. If the civ design itself depends on what option you choose then the game could be decided by clicking A when your opponent clicked B. The same thing goes for the "cards" you get in aoe3.
- additionally, it would mean each umbrella civ is capable of a massive number of strategies which makes trying to counter them or shape the game early on pointless. (an example would be denying metal when your opponent is likely to go for mercs)
We don't want to get too much like Age of Empires, but what if we limit the strategy that players can do before phasing up? If the player has to make a decision on what alliance they want to take within the first 5 minutes, then the other players would know and be able to change the strategy.
On 07/11/2024 at 6:03 AM, alre said:I'm kinda opposed to this. it's good to have this structure for art I guess, but I think that for gameplay it's bad. Why should two greek city states like Athens and Sparta play alike? One is a thalassocratic democracy with a stratified social system, the other one is a militaristic oligarchy with a frozen society and political system. They would have a similar military in many regards, but the eco should be different, and new players should not feel like they are the same at all.
Well, that's easy enough, we just design them to play different.
-
1-click strategies (chosing civ specifications upon phase up) results in cheap gameplay. If the civ design itself depends on what option you choose then the game could be decided by clicking A when your opponent clicked B. The same thing goes for the "cards" you get in aoe3.
-
This would be a LOT of work, but honestly, I'm for it. I agree with everything @Genava55has just said.
-
20 minutes ago, Genava55 said:
Basically yes. This is a good analogy. Choosing between a city-state, a tribe or something else, with the idea that it's part of a strategy. In some cases it can be very specialized and in other cases a bit more general.
I'm kind of for that idea, I don't know if everyone would. At the very least genericing out the units would make it easier to do civilizations.
It would have to be something a lot of people would have to agree on. (I'd also probably require us to redo the encylopedia, but that's OK) if you want we could open another discussion forum post on it.
-
10 minutes ago, Genava55 said:
I'm rather concerned to hear these comments. How do you imagine we'll ever be able to include the Greco-Persian Wars, the Peloponnesian Wars or even the Punic Wars as playable campaigns, if we get stuck at the first non-playable faction?
Wasn't it simply a lack of vision at the start of the game's development? I'm thinking in particular of the split of the generic Greek faction into two factions with Athens and Sparta. I think we should have umbrella factions which should allow us to incorporate minor factions into the game and even take advantage of them to include them in innovative game strategies.
It's extremely difficult to bring variety to building design. Creating factions that are entirely dedicated to one people has a significant cost from a conceptual point of view. The risk is of producing uninspiring, sloppy content by having to vary the designs for the same cultural sphere, or of giving up on including certain peoples altogether because of this challenge. And multiplying the selectable factions by including lots of peoples from the same cultural sphere is simply going to make the UI less interesting and less user-friendly. If we have to add Thebes, Corinth, Syracuse and Massalia as playable factions, we're walking on our heads. However, these city-states are interesting and can bring in lots of units, technology and interesting bonuses.
I think that umbrella factions can integrate these minor factions in interesting and diverse ways. In the case of the Greeks, we can imagine starting with a generic affiliation to the Greek faction and quickly having a first choice offered in the civic centre building to move towards Athens or Sparta. Each brings different bonuses and different units that can be used quickly. However, the player can continue as a generic faction to unlock other choices such as Corinth, Thebes or Syracuse in the next phase.
This is just a rough draft to illustrate how it might work. But I really think it's a better approach to bringing diversity into the game without degrading the visual quality of the game and without bringing in too much art. Umbrella factions can also address the problem of balancing civilisations that are either too weak because of a lack of variety, or too strong because of too great a diversity of units and technologies. The fact that certain units are dependent on specific choices can lead to interesting strategies and counter-strategies.
This approach could also solve problems such as that of the Iberians. Which is still a faction implemented as a patchwork of three very different cultures. Introducing the option of choosing sub-factions or minor factions during the game would highlight the differences within the Iberian Peninsula without creating new, similar designs. I'm thinking in particular of the difference between the Iberians and the Celtiberians, who were culturally, politically and linguistically very different, but who had points in common in the architecture of their cities and fortresses. The aim of my proposal is to take advantage of the diversity of the ancient world without overloading the game with too many elements. But also to allow for diversity in the scenarios, and to allow for a respectful treatment of ancient peoples and cultures.
So to kind of reiterate you’re thinking something like age of mythology where you pick a different god , but instead you eventually just pick a civilization to allign yourself with?
that would drastically change the game but I kind of like it. That would solve some of our problems and make aging up a bit more game changing
-
1
-
-
1 hour ago, Vantha said:
If no one objects, let's move forward with this idea.
First thing we need is maps.
@Lion.Kanzen@wowgetoffyourcellphone You said you could create some?
I would suggest we make a document with information for each of the four scenarios containing exactly what players need to learn in what order, and make the maps to work with that.
For example if the first scenario is just them exploring, we kind of need to know for how long and what they need to do, so we can build a map with everything.
Plus we need to research the region and see what it looked like and figure out how big the maps we need.
-
1
-
-
On 19/10/2024 at 4:34 PM, Vantha said:
I'm for enabling all economic and military ships (maybe except fire ships) to collect the treasures. Champions and even heroes can do so too on land.
By the way, whether a unit can or cannot collect treasures is determined by the XML tag "<TreasureCollector>" (therefore really easy to change.
So if we're in agtement, a PR?
-
2
-
-
You know, we could just put a kernel level anticheat... Maybe that'd help...
-
2
-
-
1 minute ago, Vantha said:
@ShadowOfHassen My problem with Athenian colonies in Thrace is that we lack the Thracians as a civilization in the vanilla game. And, in the grand scope, most of those colonies were rather insignificant.
I like the Carthage one too. The basic outlines we made I think still work for that, and it fits our criteria. With the Thrace colonies, I was just trying to find somewhere with a fairly well known civilization that would fit, I'm happy we found something better.
-
2
-
-
33 minutes ago, Vantha said:
This idea has a lot of potential in my opinion. While not comparable to Alexandria or Syracuse, Carthago Nova (modern-day Cartagena) still offers considerable historical significance. The required civs are the Carthaginians (the founders) and the Iberians (enemies) both of which are already fully playable in the vanilla version. The hero of the story would be Hasdrubal the Fair - whom we don't have yet, but besides him no new game content would need to be created at all.
Additionally, many people, even if not particularly into history, have heard of Hannibal, Carthage, and the Punic Wars before. Mostly from the Roman side, though, so this campaign could open a new, interesting perspective on the conflict.That matches my criteria , I think.
-
1 minute ago, Vantha said:
New idea: What about colonies established by Alexander the Great? They were founded in the correct time frame. Plus, we have the Macedonians as a civ, and several they fought against.
Of course, Alexandria (in Egypt) would be the obvious pick, but there are some other interesting ones as well.
Could work. Though, I don't think a colony from Alexander the grate would have any problem establishing itself. Alexander the Great had the manpower to get behind it.
I don't want it to seem like I'm shooting ideas down or anything, just trying to point out (in my opinion) valid criticism.
-
1
-
-
26 minutes ago, Grautvornix said:
While I do like historical accuracy and reference, it looks to me as if it is not so easy to find that one suitable scenario for a beginner's tutorial.
I think we can use one. My idea still works, and some people have suggested other colonies that would work. We just need to settle on one and start scripting/ researching/designing.
-
1
-
-
10 minutes ago, Vantha said:
Is this meant as an idea for this tutorial campaign? Or for future campaigns in general?
I think he's saying that way, waaaaay back those were the planned campaigns. We can do whatever we want now.
-
1
-
-
20 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:
One of my candidates is Tarentum, another is Syracuse and another is Agrigentum.
Wait... I thought we were doing colonies that were founded by a civ in game. There's no Corinth civ, so how can we have a colony founded by Corinthians?
30 minutes ago, Vantha said:Yes, let's make a poll. What are the current options?
If we are voting, my vote is for Cardia or another Athenian founded colony in the area of Thrace.
But currently I've seen like 6 people participate off and on in this discussion, that's not that big for a poll.
-
Just now, Lion.Kanzen said:
The topic of continuity is interesting and would be novel.
Saving resources from one map to another, the difficult part would be transferring troops from one scenario to another.
That would be tricky. Something like how Battle for Middle earth did it might work, but if we did resources it'd be a nightmare to balance. You'd have to account for the player who narrowly wins a scenario and the player who wins the scenario with thousands of extra resources, and allow both to be able to enjoy the next mission.
-
1
-
-
28 minutes ago, Vantha said:
Or is this "flaw" just something to accept in RTS campaigns?
It's a flaw. In age of empires i'd get a huge army and then in the next scenario have 5 men.
Personally I liked the Lord of the Ring's Battle of Middle Earth's method of allowing you to bring all level 2 units with you, but I don't think that can happen in 0 A.D.
-
1
-
-
24 minutes ago, Vantha said:
Hmm, in a campaign, players start each game from zero (more or less); they need to develop a base and an army completely from scratch. I know, technically, that doesn't have to be the case, but the tutorial should teach how to play entire games, from start to finish.
On the other hand, in the process of establishing a colony there are no such "resets", the city is only build up once.
Any ideas to work make that work with the story? How do other campaigns deal with that?
Well, going back to my original idea and combining it with your outline. In scenario 0 they scout. Scenario 1 they build up and get attacked. Scenario 2 they leave the colony to figure out who attacked them and meet an ally, and in Scenario 3 they have chased the enemy to his base and have to do a full out attack.
Each time they have to build a new civic center and start pretty much from scratch.
-
25 minutes ago, Vantha said:
What about Tarentum? See https://www.worldhistory.org/tarentum/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Taranto
They are also known to have had some bloody conflicts with local tribes. Though, I'm not sure where we'd get units and buildings for those. Maybe we can take something from Delenda Est?
That could work, what's the new strategy for Sparta after the new patch? Is it anything outlandish or would it be a good starter civilization?
Interview by the Linux Professional Institute (LPI)
in Announcements / News
Posted · Edited by ShadowOfHassen
Oh, I forgot, the interview was very good. Good job!
I didn't know the formations were based off my favorite RTS Battle for Middle Earth-- will the 0 A.D. formations get bonuses eventually like in the game?