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ShadowOfHassen

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Posts posted by ShadowOfHassen

  3. Narrative Campaign General Discussion?

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Vantha said:

    In my opinion, the story has to include...

    - a single-stranded, easy-to-follow plot. No time or place jumps.

    - any element that new players can recognize right at the beginning. Could a person, a place, or a civilization.

    - one clear protagonist (a hero) throughout the entire campaign. Could be the founder of the colony.

    - one clear enemy (a group of people) fought against throughout the entire campaign. That could be bandits, a tribe, a city, a civilization, etc.

    And (at least to a large extent) only require units and civilizations that we already have in the game.

    I agree.

    1 hour ago, Vantha said:

    Unless I'm missing something, the best concrete ideas so far are: Cyrene (or Naukratis), Syracusae, Alexander the Great. I think they could all work out in some way, but we need to come to an agreement and pick one of them.

    We also had my original idea of doing some Athenian colony like Thrace...

  4. Narrative Campaign General Discussion?

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    50 minutes ago, Vantha said:

    That's a good point. Maybe controlling a handful of units, leading them across the map, collecting some treasures, building a camp, and fighting off somd wild animals? Something like that?

    My basic outline for scenario 0

    "Let's go find a place to set up a colony"

    Walking through waypoints"

    "Ah! Wild animals"

    Fighting.

    "Oooh look here's a treasure"

    More walking with hidden treasures and some more fighting.

    "This looks like a good place to set up a colony, let's build a civic center" (from the materials we got from treasures)

    End.

     

    52 minutes ago, Vantha said:

    I know I'm repeating myself, but I like the idea of a building up a colony as well, Cyrene could work well, as long as we keep the story simple. The only problem I see is that most colonies were founded before 500 BC which means they technically fall out of 0ad's time frame. I'm not sure if that's something to worry about.

    I wouldn't worry about it. Personally, I think we should pick a colony that we know literally nothing about other than it exists so we can play fast and loose with it.

    Also the battles should be rather low stakes, (fledgling colony vs bandits or something). I think the simpler/ lower stakes the conflict, the better. (Keeps the important civs down to one)

     

    4 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

    The founding of Syracuse could be your topic.

    Yes it could. Any reasonably remote colony could work, I was going for an Athenian colony because we already have an Athenian civ and so that's less time. But I'm not married to my idea, as long as we can get the story small.

  5. Narrative Campaign General Discussion?

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    52 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

    People won't notice that, it's just a background story.

    I didn't even notice the story behind the Egypt learning campaign in AoE I.

    It's like the Empire Earth ones, I don't remember the story behind it either.

    There will be no cinematics and it will be pretty freeform except for locked technologies and units.

    From what you wrote, it seemed a little more than a footnote in history...

    Even that aside, I think only a couple civilizations would make gameplay simpler. Your's would be a good campaign, I'm not sure if it'd be a good tutorial campaign.

  6. Narrative Campaign General Discussion?

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    12 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

    If you pay attention this story is linked to Egypt, Kushites, Persians and the Greeks obviously.

    I don't think the campaign should be that complex, the history Bar should be practically nonexistent, so the player can focus on learning the mechanics. That idea is a good story, but it might be better suited as a normal campaign

  7. Narrative Campaign General Discussion?

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted · Edited by ShadowOfHassen

    21 hours ago, Vantha said:

    Here's the outline I was able to come up with.
    (I deliberately left out ships and naval warfare for now as I feel like all that should probably be taught in a seperate, fourth scenario.)

    (Core concepts (marked with a *) need more detailed (skippable) explanations for player new to the genre.)

      Hide contents

    1. Scenario

    Goal: develop a starting economy, survive a small raid by the enemy, and advance to town phase

     

    Concepts:

    selecting and giving orders*

    gathering resources* and placing dropsites

    training units*

    building structures*

    building houses to increase the population limit*

    research technologies*

    unit classes

    raising and ending alerts

    basics of combat

     

    Resources to collect:

    wood

    food

     

    Units to train:

    Women

    Citizen Infantry

    Citizen Cavalry

     

    Structures to build:

    Dropsites - Farmsteads and Storehouses

    Houses

    Fields

    (Coral?)

    Barracks

    Stable

    Outposts

     

    Technologies to research:

    improve gather rates

    Town Phase

     

     

     

     

    2. Scenario

    Goal: Scout for strategically important positions, take over an enemy camp, fortify it, protect it against a large recapture attempt, advance to city phase

     

    Concepts:

    exploring the map*

    Territory - roots, expansion, decay*

    defensive fortifications and garrisons

    defending against attacks

    capturing

    Bartering

    (Trading?)

     

    Resources to collect:

    Stone

    Metal

     

    Units to train:

    Merchants

    (Mercenaries)

     

    Structures to build:

    Forge

    Sentry Towers and Stone Towers

    Palisades and Walls

    Market

     

    Technologies to research:

    increase unit damage

    increase unit resistance

    increase population bonus of houses

    upgrade sentry tower to stone tower

    enhance stone towers

     

    3. Scenario

    Goals: develop a strong army, conduct a full-scale attack, destroy the enemy’s city, actually win the game

     

    Concepts:

    building a second Civic Center

    using Siege Engines

    healing wounded units

     

    Units to train:

    Champions

    Heroes

    Siege Engines - Battering Rams and Catapults

    Healers

     

     

    Structures to build:

    Arsenal

    Hero and Champion training facilities

    Fortress

    Temple

    second Civic Center

    (Wonder?)

     

    Technologies to research:

    unlocking Champions

    increasing damage and resistance of Siege Engines

    (Will to Fight?)

    (Glorious Expansion?)

     

     

     

     

     

    As already planned, the guided tutorial section encompasses three scenarios, the first one focusing on the Village Phase, the second one the Town Phase, and the third one on the City Phase.

    For technologies, I would not individually order the player to research every single important one, but rather tell the player "This structure has important technologies. Periodically check for available one here and research them as soon as you comfortably can." and remind them to do so if they forget about it.

     

    Any criticism/suggestion?


    Any ideas how to embed the story?

    I like that outline a few things.

    I'd add a scenario 0 that covers treasure gathering, moving 101, exploring the map, combat 101, leveling up and pull those objectives partly out of the other lessons.

    This is partly because I personally remember struggling with RTS's controls, and a lower stake map dedicated to that would be nice. Also if we do this the first scenario can be focused more on economy and less on the person struggling with left-clicking and right-clicking. (It happens and we should account for it.

     

    Quote

    It is possible to set custom victory conditions from scenario scripts and my idea is to make it the winning goal of the first scenario to reach Town Phase, and of the second one to reach City Phase. And to let them build on each other, so at the beginning of the second and third one to just tell the player "Do what you did before." and start guiding again when the player has reached point they haven't been to before.

    To make it easier to fit with to a story can we gray out upgrades until we want them to do it? A player could accidentally break the tutorial otherwise.

     

    I have a simple enough idea how to incorporate the basics of naval warfare If we have a scenario 0 to cover some of the material we can have a dock in scenario one, and we can just have scenario two have boats as well. If there's some really high-tech stratagems I'm missing that might not work, but it might.

    I can see Athenian colony working here, or an Alexander the Great, if we didn't do boats. Personally, I like the Athenian colony better, but that could be because its my idea.

  10. Why is the 0 A.D community so small?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    40 minutes ago, vv221 said:

    I can’t say how easy or hard it would be to pass through their curation process, but I think 0 A.D. would be a great fit for GOG, if distributed there as a free game. It would no even need an "early access" label (it is already in a much better state than many *released* commercial games).

    Many GOG customers are starved for RTS games, and multiplayer games that can be played without going through a store launcher/DRM. Many of them joined the store for "old" games and are still waiting for Age of Empires, so having access to 0 A.D. could scratch their itch.

    I expect launching the game on GOG would have a bigger effect on 0 A.D. popularity than what itch.io did, if only because of the small catalogue leading to each game getting more (relative) exposure.

    To get an idea, here is their full list of so-called real-time strategy games (most of these are not even what we would call RTS): https://www.gog.com/en/games?genres=strategy&tags=real-time&hideDLCs=true

    It would be very easy for 0 A.D. to shine when compared to most of these games.

    ---

    On the topic of the alpha version, I too am in the opinion that it does no longer help. I would suggest dropping alpha, beta or whatever and stick to the 0.0.27 naming scheme (0.1.0 would be first beta, 1.0.0 first "complete" release). Alpha/beta could stay in internal discussions, but no longer has an useful meaning for distribution.

    So if it would work, what do we need to add it there? We'd want binaries for Windows macOS and Linux (.exe, whatever mac uses, and appimage?)

  11. Narrative Campaign General Discussion?

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    12 minutes ago, Genava55 said:
    1. Alexander learnt to hunt during his childhood and continued to hunt during his adolescence and adult time.
    2. He was learning with his companions Ptolemy, Hephaistion, and Cassander at the same spot. So probably they did hunt.
    3. There is a minor battle against the Maedi and the founding of a town, Alexandrupolis. https://www.livius.org/articles/place/alexandrupolis/

     

    That could work. It would give us a continuation into history, and we could make Aristotle "Teach" the game mechanics. I like it.

     

    Any other thoughts or things I'm missing?

    • Like 1

  12. Narrative Campaign General Discussion?

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    15 minutes ago, Genava55 said:

    Philip II of Macedon rebuilt Stagira in exchange for Aristotle tutoring his son https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagira_(ancient_city)

    That is a cool idea, and it'd allow us to link it to a coming campaign (Alexander the Great) you could even have Aristotle teaching the game kind of.

    The one thing is to make sure it's accessible to even beginners for RTS we need (in my opinion) the first campaign cover basic movement, fighting and some basic treasure stuff (NOT a full battle though) Alexander on a hunt??? After that, you need one on economy and a little fighting (economy in RTS is tricky) and finally one that's focused on the military (Ships, rams etc.)

    • Like 1

  13. Narrative Campaign General Discussion?

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    2 minutes ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

    Honestly, I'd argue for telling a somewhat Historical Fiction tale about a colony that we know very little about. That way, we can say it's Historical Fiction and don't have to sacrifice history for a solid tutorial campaign. We'd tell them it's how we guess what happened, of course, but real life really doesn't match up to a good tutorial system.

    Oops I didn't see the replies after this. Still, my point stands.

     

    I kind of like @Genava55's Massalia idea. But would we have to make a new civilization? I think we'd want to keep to an already made Civ A. because it'd be easier and B. the player could hop right into free play/ online and be familiar with a civilization. (We just swap out the hero with a named one.)

    I think it might be a good idea to use Athens because it's a fairly standard civilization. I see it almost as a "generic" civilization of all the Hellenistic Civs (which are a large part of our civilizations.) But more experienced players can disagree, and they'd be probably right.

    • Like 1

  14. Narrative Campaign General Discussion?

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    3 hours ago, Vantha said:

    Thirdly, and most importantly, (I admit my experience with other RTS's is fairly limited) but the storyline in general seems too complex for a tutorial campaign. I think we should avoid time and place jumps entirely. And limit the number of characters as much as we can. Battus, Psamtek, Apries, Amasis, Cyrene, Naukratis, Daphnae... I did a decent bit of research on the topic and still don't understand all connections. If I as a new player encountered this campaign, I would feel helplessly overwhelmed by the story. I believe what we need is one city, one protagonist (the colony's "oikistes"/founder), one conflict, and one straightforward storyline.

    Honestly, I'd argue for telling a somewhat Historical Fiction tale about a colony that we know very little about. That way, we can say it's Historical Fiction and don't have to sacrifice history for a solid tutorial campaign. We'd tell them it's how we guess what happened, of course, but real life really doesn't match up to a good tutorial system.

    • Like 1

  15. Narrative Campaign General Discussion?

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    I don't want to insult the intelligence of new users, but I strongly suggest that we don't bog them down with so much history for a tutorial. The Egypt stuff looks pretty cool and all, but it would require a LOT of set up with the history, and if somebody wants to sit down and learn the game for multiplayer there shouldn't be that much.

    I want to stress that for the Age of Empires games, there was a difference between the tutorial level and the beginning parts of a campaign. The beginning parts of the campaign did have a lot of similar information, but the actual tutorial was something different.

    This is the AOM tutorial

    https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Tutorial_(Age_of_Mythology)

    There is a difference between reminding the player what to do when he needs to do it in a medium stake environment then letting the player get the hang of it in a low stakes environment.

    I think the Egypt idea is really cool for a campaign, but I think it's history is complex for a tutorial. The player should be focus on learning the mechanics.

    (If you have a better idea for a tutorial than mine that's OK I don't care, but I do think the History should be at minimum and the campaign story should be REALLY simple.

     

     

    • Like 1

  19. Narrative Campaign General Discussion?

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    31 minutes ago, Vantha said:

    @ShadowOfHassen what's with the idea for an outline that you mentioned?

    Long story short, it's about a group of Athenians who want to create a colony in Thrace (the aeaa between modern day Greece and Turkey)  The brief Outline is:

    The year would be around 600 BC ish, I've seen records of colonies created there around then like this one ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neapolis_(Thrace))

    I think a made up hero should be created for the campaigns as a sort of POV character for the people to focus on.

    Scenario 1: A scouting party is trying to look for a good place for a settlement, they fight some wild animals on their way to find a good place. In my mind this scenario would cover basic movement, attacks, treasures and some other tricks. It's sounds simple enough, but we kind of need the tutorial to help the people who've never played an RTS before or it's been a long time since they did. In the end, they find a place for a settlement.

    In scenario 2 the fledgling colony expands, building farms, working mines and even meeting with the local people (Some kind of Persia/Macidonian civilization that is very basic and doesn't have anything that dates it past the time ) The player would learn resource gathering, resource drop places, building, advancing to the town phase, and finally allies and trading.

    A few times bandits/ raiders (some civilization I don't know which) would try to attack either the player or their ally at the end there's a big force of men spotted and the player has 5 minutes to prepare and a (fairly) small army comes, they defeat it but decide to go after the bandits

     

    Scenario 3 would teach the ins and out of combat with you setting up to attack a bandit camp and building siege engines etc.

    The campaign would have to be supplemented by more complex tutorials for things, but I think a simple campaign that eases you into the history (You don't have to know a lot, they're just building a colony) and the mechanics will help newcomers to both ancient history and 0 A.D. (and the RTS genre too.)

     

    • Like 4

  21. Narrative Campaign General Discussion?

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Vantha said:

    I want to completely honest, even though it hurts: Progress of writing the encyclopedia has been stalling lately, I'm afraid "after the encyclopedia" won't be anytime soon. I don't think it's a bad time to lay that aside for a bit, help with some tutorial campaigns, and after some time pick it up again. For a fresh new start. Maybe even with some personnel reinforcements. The eventual merge of the GUI page will also provide a good boost in motivation.

    Well, this might be better on the encyclopedia forum, but from my point of view the biggest thing that is holding it up is merging the UI. I really don't want to push any more articles until the UI is exactly the way we want it, mostly because we already are going to have to go back and spruce up the old articles with images and everything and I don't want to have to redo a ton of work.

    Also because we're kind of moving from articles linked to every unit to in depth articles about things in civilization, you and I @Vantha might want to have a talk about what we want to cover in the articles and what should be in shorter descriptions/history bits in the units. For example, we do not need the history bits I wrote for the treasures to be in an encyclopedia page because that would be kind of boring and kind of pointless. I think it would be perfect to see it in game, so players can learn about it, but it doesn't need to be in the encyclopedia. Just as the 4-paragraph articles we've written on siege engines probably doesn't need to be the first thing somebody sees in game about the battering ram.

    Going forward though, after all that the encyclopedia will sadly be really slow, other than the Romans and maybe the Celtic tribes we're getting to the more niche civilizations and to make sure we're not spreading misinformation we'll need to do a lot of research. It also doesn't help that search is showing up more bad websites for me.

    Anyway that's a long way of saying, yeah the encyclopedia is going to be some time and we're going to have to work some things through, and starting on a campaign might be fun.

     

    I do have an idea of an introductory story campaign  (maybe not a tutorial, but a campaign) about Athens setting up a colony on the cost of Turkey (I think that's where it is?) I think that might be a good place to start. It'd be like 1-4 scenarios, and need dialog and some kind of cinematic overviews, and some scripting. I can elaborate if anybody wants.

    • Like 2

  22. Narrative Campaign General Discussion?

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    2 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

    What do you have planned or what have you talked among you ?

    Well it’s not that much, we talked about keeping track of good historical periods to make campaigns about, and at least in my mind we had the rough idea of starting working on that after the encyclopedia, I’m not sure if @Vantha was on the complete same page, however.

    i have a plan for a story based introductory campaign/ tutorial , though I like the idea of individual scenarios that can be done played in any order too.

    i also had some narrative choices I kind of wanted to implement nothing hard fast or anything though, I’m willing to work on writing / design for campaigns but I can’t do map stuff or scripting or anything like that.

    • Like 3

  24. Norse_Harold is taking a break from moderation

    in Announcements / News

    Posted · Edited by ShadowOfHassen

    On 06/10/2024 at 5:37 PM, Gurken Khan said:

    I can't really say much about moderation, the people, the processes, the policies.

    But it seems obvious to me that policies shouldn't be decided by a single person. And it also seems obvious to me that the single address for a complaint about a person mustn't be that person themself.

    Regarding leadership and inaction: maybe it's time that the people who can decide something decide something. It's been over a year now that @Stan` stepped down as project lead? As far as I'm aware there hasn't been a word since regarding leadership or the general structure of the project.

    Let's hope we can sort out this situation and the way forward amicably.

    He has a point. I understand there are different ways to manage open source. If we're going to do a benevolent dictatorship, that's OK, or even benevolent Illuminati. But I would kind of like to know what's going on. Stan supposedly stepped down a year ago, yet in the meantime we've decided to move to Gittea. The migration was a good idea and love it, but who made the decision? What's going on?

    If what Norse_Harold says is true, why does a single dev get to make a decision by himself? And maybe he does have a shadowy Illuminati who gave him their blessing, but who are they?

    The only was open source projects work is through transparency and community. I think it's very unfair to expect contributors to help row the ship (0 A.D.) if they don't know who's steering the thing.

    I don't have any idea what's going on with moderation, though I do applaud you, @Norse_Harold, for what you've done. One of the hardest things I can imagine doing is take something you thought fun (0 A.D.) and turn it into a job (moderating). Thank you for your work.

    • Like 3
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