idanwin

The problem with actors is that units walk through them, it looks a bit unrealistic. It is also strange to see racks still standing when you've just destroyed all of the city. Racks as entities are more realistic.

Hmm ... the problem with shields is that they are civ-dependent. Maybe I could make a variation per civ? But that would be rather cumbersome in the map editor. Or a seperate model per civ, but that would result in massive amounts of actors ...

Much better! The player color on the gate is really good, the others look a little off.

Phew! Glad to hear that! I thought he'd been in an accident or something! It is true that your posts are not always understandable and do not always bring new things into the discussion, but ff you do have new ideas to bring into a discussion, please do so without hesitation, but try to make it understandable.

I did a quick basic web search for him (Lion Kanzen/Marcio Durón). He has either a hidden facebook/twitter page or has deleted it (I found links, but they lead to 404's). There has been little activity outside of the 0A.D. community for the past months. I also found out that he likes playing 0A.D. a lot! (0 A.D. has a higher playing time counter than AoM, AoEO and Warcraft) Let's just hope he's alright and will come back to shed a light on his retirement. @Lion.Kanzen: Sorry about the intrusion in your personal life, I was in no way intending to stalk you. I was just surprised you left so suddenly and without goodbye.

I was really shocked when I saw his avatar had disappeared and even more shocked when I read the RETIRED beneath his name, and that leaves me wondering: what happened?

On some buildings the 'basement' looks really really good (towers, fortresses), will all buildings have terrain flattening?

Once there are triggers I will try to make this obligatory (a 'king of the hill' scenario was my original idea anyway), but until then I'll just leave it.

I've downloaded them, they look really nice!

I think we need a site were people can upload their contributions (maps, scenarios and mods). We could do a screenshot contest (every month, every two months?) I'm quite sure that the addition of triggers will attract some contributors. Weekly/Monthly updates with new maps, models, concept art ... anything that looks good. There hasn't been an update since 23 december!

And now, to go totally of topic ... in the gym where I went you got a fine for not arranging the weights afterwards, so they were pretty well aligned most of the time xD Ouch, they're so badly aligned now that it hurts my eyes!

Jails, Slave Drivers, Revolts ... it all sounds a bit too complicated and much too much micromanagement to me. Having captured these enemy units, I don't want to worry about them revolting and about building jails. If I had to, I would just kill them, much easier. If slavery is implemented, I'm of the opinion that it should be simple and straightforward, at least for the player. My whole speech about slavery may not seem that simple, but for the player it is just: Protect your women, never send military units to enemy territory on their own and always put some champion units and heroes in your army.Those three rules are rules that you would apply anyway, even without the slavery system, but they become more important now. I was thinking that civs who were known to have slaves could have increased gathering rates for slaves or their carrying space, or maybe enemies in their territory lose loyalty faster? Sounds like a good idea, but if we implement slavery the right way this should not be necessary - except maybe for scenarios - because the slaves should not cause much - if any - micromanagement. In my opinion slaves should be like female citizens. Easily capturable. Can gather resources and assist construction. They should (in my opinion) not be able to construct buildings themselves, but if you think this should be changed for gameplay reasons I will not argue. Fully agreed. This is a total must. (one remark though: why have both moral and loyalty? why not make that one? if moral has to reach zero before loyalty decreases, you might just as well make them one and the same thing) I don't agree here. No intermediate state between enemy soldier and friendly slave. It wouldn't look good if there is suddenly some chained beggars on a battlefield. Loyalty should be calculated not per soldier, but per group of soldiers. This would make sure that during a battle no soldiers get converted to slaves while others are still fighting. When one of the two opposing sides is greatly outnumbered (the sum of values of all citizen-soldiers, champions and heroes is smaller by far), all of their citizen-soldiers (in that battle) would become slaves at the same time. Thereby ending the battle. There may still be some champion units or a hero left to kill. But that should not pose a problem because they were outnumbered anyway. In my opinion this is a really bad idea. What if the corners are all water? Running after them is a waste of time, really. Painstaking micromanagement. Slavery should certainly broaden the use of heroes (and in my opinion champion units). I think Pedro is headed in the right direction, but I wouldn't go as far personally. I think we need to keep things simple and avoid adding micromanagement as much as possible.

The weapons don't just look so well aligned ... they are. They were mathematically aligned to perfection ... I'll change that.

Dutch is a really small language, and we love seeing English movies ... in English. Ask any Flemish people, they'll you they don't like dubs, this is for most part because movies that have been dubbed in Dutch are dubbed in Dutch from the Netherlands (which is to Flemish like American is to British). Most Flemish people dislike the Dutch spoking by our northern neighbours. Internet is mostly English for us as well. The English wikipedia is often used instead of the Dutch one. All games are in English. There is no escaping it. Everyone here tends to know English ... and most like it. Many words have found their way into our language: "Cool", "Chill", "Hot", "Rocks", "Hi", "See You" ... and when it comes to technology: "Computer", "Stereo" ... okay, most languages take these from English ... but in Dutch we pronounce them exactly the same (or at least try to). Saying "I love you" has become more popular than "Ik hou van jou". When giving a lecture, using some English phrases makes it sound 'more professional' (there has been research on this). I read Shakespeare in my first grade (1st and 2nd year of secondary/highschool) for fun. Normally you have to learn it in 3rd grade (5th and 6th). Dutch doesn't have a very long history of literature (but it does have really great literature) because it was mostly a spoken language. At first Latin was the elite language, so any decent writer wrote in Latin and then French took over. French stayed the elite language until the 20th century ... after ww2 ... luckily we had some really (nationalist) writers would wrote for 'het volk' and not just for the well placed people who spoke french. Unfortunately they wrote all of their great works in Dutch, so they never got a wide public. There are no Flemish writers who don't need a half-time job, it's sad. Anyway I learned English before I went to school, by reading Antony Horrowitz and Terry Pratchett and learned French thanks to a language immersion of three years in a French college. I've never had problems to get high scores in languages because I'm quite fluent in all of them. Most people here have more trouble than me. @Bruno: That was actually fun to read. When it didn't sound like English ... it sounded like Dutch to me xD (Yonge Sonne = jonge zon, the droghte of Marche = de droogte van Maart, so priketh hem nature = zo prikt natuur hem) @Atenmeses: What is Farsi? @Zoot: I love Beowulf!

I think that as long as we don't make all slaves black it shouldn't pose too much trouble. What's more, slavery was a big part of ancient history. Romans, Greek and Egyptians had them, and probably they weren't the only ones. Then again I'm European, we were wise enough to decide on banning slavery much sooner than Americans, so we're much more 'over it', speaking of slavery won't get you any strange looks, angry comments or hate mail (though that depends how you speak of it ...) I would like to be able to raid an enemy base and steal their women ... not very realistic, really, but the male civilians would fight back. Slave revolts would be much too much micromanagement and it's not worth coding it into the game, for me. Once you 'capture' slaves, they should become yours, and stay yours. I can imagine citizen soldiers getting captured, so I would give them loyalty as well, but heroes and champion units should not be enslaveable. When citizen soldiers lose their loyalty (the fewer they are the faster their loyalty drops if they are in neutral/enemy territory, champion units and heroes would help them keep loyalty) So: Female Citizens & Slaves: Lose loyalty quickly when in neutral or enemy territory, can easily be enslaved by enemy cavalry when undefended. Friendly military units in proximity slow down the rate at which loyalty drops.Male Citizens: Lose no loyalty in friendly territory, few in neutral and more in enemy. Other (friendly) male citizens in proximity slow down the rate at which loyalty drops. Friendly champion units and heroes in proximity slow down the rate at which loyalty drops even more, or may even increase loyalty. When captured i.e. they are greatly outnumbered in neutral or enemy territory they become slaves to the player with the biggest military power at that location* (if in a player's territory, that player gets the slaves, if in neutral territory all citizen-warriors, champion units and heroes that are near should be counted and the player with the biggest military power gets the slaves)Champion Units & Heroes: Cannot be enslaved. Increase the loyalty of nearby units.Ships: Naval warfare could be implemented with boarding enemy ships, this would allow you to not only damage the other ship, but even get a slight chance to make it yours.Siege Weaponry: Difficult topic ... these are certainly interesting to capture, but then again, I believe that when on the brink of capture you could quite easily destroy siege weaponry (chop important pieces off, cut wires and cords and set the rest on fire). And for gameplay I think it would be better if they could not be captured (losing siege weapons is quite costly enough, to lose them to your enemy is even worse)*now that I think of it: Maybe calculate the total military power of that location and give percentages of slaves according to these, so that if two allies have joined forces, both can get some of the loot? On the transportation, negotiation and trading of slaves: Slavery is bad. You shouldn't do slavery. If you do it, you're bad. Because slavery is bad, okay. It's a bad thing to do slavery, so don't be bad by doing slavery, okay. That would be bad. Slavery is bad, okay.Joking, that's not what this is about. (if you don't get it: ) Another interesting idea may be to allow sending slaves to other players in the diplomacy window. Why? 1) Your ally needs an economy boost? Send him some slaves. 2) I can imagine an AI that asks you to send his slaves back to him, or he will destroy you. (this sounds soooo nice) (I would probably say: "Take them, if you can!" but hey, it's still fun) 3) It could add some interesting interactions in multiplayer games without fixed alliances and a lot of players. Is this conceivable? Certainly. The easiest way is to send them immediately to the 'main civ center' (oldest standing civ center) of that player. A more graphical way would be to send a cart with slaves ... this would look amazing ... but it has many disadvantages (could be destroyed on its way, takes time to get there, can't go over water ...)

We don't have to learn Middle English, but in decent secondary schools you're expected to read some of the grand literature and write essays about it. It comes as no surprise that Belgium (Flanders in particular, the French-speaking people are less motivated to learn other languages because French is a world language anyway ... and - unfortunately - some Flemish people feel sooo proud of their language and history that they refuse to speak other languages and would like to ban speaking foreign languages in public because it makes them feel threatened) has some really good translators. When you go to university you should be trilingual, but a lot of people still struggle with their third language, and people who choose practical courses end up speaking other languages less fluently as well. I studied Latin-Mathematics at school, which meant that I had a lot of cultural education, and this included English, French and Dutch literature (as well as Latin of course, and some Greek, but that was generally translated for us). Unlike most other countries, a Belgian diploma does not require you to do 'A-levels' or anything similar, rather you have to take examinations in every course taken (which in my case resulted in 13 examinations, bad luck xD ) I've often wished we could specialize here as well, but then again it is probably a good thing we get such a broad spectrum of knowledge before going to University. Unfortunately getting into a British university is really hard because of the requirements (getting really high average scores when you hate half of your subjects is not easy). In Science subjects at university some courses are even given in English.

Yes, you can make your object in multiple parts and merge these together in the game by making multiple actors and then adding one of these as a prop to the other. this way one actor can use player transparency and the other can use base transparency.

And what if they break formation? (during battle)

Really interesting article

You may not, but the crowd you'll attract will be glad to make all the unofficial campaigns you want! That's the thing about triggers. Okay, they're a requirement to make a campaign, but most of all they're a requirement for a solid community and a lot of community content. There will be a lot of silly scenarios made by inexperienced players, but there will be some really talented people making scenarios as well ... and I believe that some of these may even want to help you work on the official campaign!

To me it doesn't, certainly with military/defensive buildings. A tower just finishing when under attack, or a barracks can make a huge difference in deciding the outcome of a battle.

You're lucky*, in Belgium I've had to learn Dutch, French and English .... and read Middle Dutch, Middle English and langue d'oil (predecessor of French) ... I've also taken Latin and German, but those are not obligatory. *I like learning languages, so I didn't really mind ... except for the examinations maybe

unless you had some c4 ... or barrels of gun powder ... destroying a building should take time. And 'deconstructing' would be a better verb. And maybe we could add something which makes the deconstruction rate slow down when loyalty is changing so that the enemy can take over the building before it gets deconstructed entirely. Imagine a case where you want to remove a badly placed building, but an enemy unit comes into its vicinity. In this case you don't want to not be able to destroy the building, it would just slow down a bit.

"Not much would change" - that depends on what is 'much'. If day/night cycles get implemented we would need to make sure that it does make a difference by giving certain units bonuses. Instead of different species fighting better, the attackers would have the advantage of surprise (LoS being smaller, they can set up their siege weapons close enough to the enemy base) and I guess that ranged attacks would lose accuracy, making the enemy towers/forts less effective.

Do you have to learn ancient Greek in Greece? It's just a question I've asked myself before, back when I had Greek in school.