Lord Zorinthrox

Beautiful, just awesome looking. Can't wait to see the full screenies.

Good idea, but it would probably be better to have a check box when in unit placing mode that diasables movement type discrimination. Normally you would be restricted in placing units on terrain. Boats would have to be placed on water, etc. Then, you could check the box, and be able to place objects anywhere. You could call it "movement type binding." On second thought, it would be checked by default, then unchecked to disable it. I think it would be really awesome for the editor to be able to edit water surfaces like it does normal terrain. For instance, being able to raise "hills" of water in the middle of a lake. It would really be useful for rivers and waterfalls. On a similar note, how about several water textures? Like, some that ripple in one direction, and others that ripple in a different direction. Texture blending would have to be implemented into water surfaces, though. AND (almost done) logic that creates wakes wround objects (such as boulders) in water in the direction of the water's course. It could be related to the water texture the object is placed in. For instance, a rock placed in "water45degreeflow" would have a wake effect flowing arounf it at 45 degrees from North on the map. Which brings up another idea: terrain dependant animations. When infantry walk through marsh, they slogg and stomp through. Better yet, as the "deepness" of snow increases, denoted by the snow texture the unit walks across, the animation elevation relative to the unit's position gets progressively lower and lower, until the units are knee deep or so. And I suppose in there would also be movement penalties for walking through tough terrain like marshes, snow, mud, and the like. EDIT: Just had another idea. What about being able to build walls off the sides of fortresses as well as stand-alone? You could have a "Great Wall of China" thing going. And that would necesitate the enlargement of the size of walls from the standard RTS size (which I always thought was rather slim for a defensive structure). Also, the ability to voluntarily build different grades of walls. For instance, you could choose to build slim, medium, of Fortress grade walls. Or something like that. Anyways, I think it would be cool. Would make it too micro, though...the secind part, not the first.

You guys posted a want ad for scripters in the AOMH modding forum. I don't script yet, but I figured I shuld check it out (and was suprised I hadn't found 0AD before). This engine is a dream. I'm going to make it my main modding theatre for my...projects...*maniacle laughter*

I know it isn't flowing with the conversation, but I just realized something while looking or freeware stuff: bitmap terrain generation. The AoM editor, for instance, came up with that default elevation by reading a bitmap, a targa to be precise. You could have it so the designer could load a grayscale bitmap image with the same dimensions pixel-to-vertex wise to generate elevation. Better yet, the designer could load a small grayscle image as a brush for editing terrain elevations (be even cooler if you scenario designer could in corporate such images into triggers and elevation effects). Inspiration was the discovery of the program Height Map Generator. Haven't tried it, but stuff for GNU is usually pretty good/useful.

Ooo, shiny! I like that idea; makes the game more "organic," and organic is always good. Too bad damage types are already set, otherwise there could be pierce, hack, crush, and burn. Ships would then be resilient to most damage types, but very vunelrable to fire. Turtles or siege cover type units would also be more suseptable to fire. But that would also complicate things far too much.

Opps! It was only supposed to be a standin for the actualy order, like a general statement of using SVO. No confustion intended. And the grammar thing is jsut an obsevation, really. It could be different somewhere else, but grammar in English class is never approached in the same way as in Spanish class. Like, you learn how to use grammar, but not the specific names of things, nor how the tenses work, etc. But I suppose that is due to Spanish being more gramatically intensive.

UHHH, I hate those books! Tell me, how can the noun "palo de esquiar" POSSIBLY be more important than "cucillo" (knife), "tenador" (fork), and "cucada" (spoon)? My sister went all the way into colledge without knowing those words! Think about it: how many Spanish-speaking countries that you are going to be in that will feel the sudden urge to go sking? There's like, Chile, and that's it. Horrible, horibble stuff. And does anyone find it weird how most people learn their English grammar in their language class? How many many people go into Spanish class not knowing what a demonstrative adjective is, let alone the general SOV structure of English? Enough ranting. Well, Spanish has three different types of verbs: -ar (the ones you learn first), -er, and -ir. These are called first, second, and thrid conjugations, respectively. -er and -ir have roughly the same conjugations, and the only difference in present tense is the nosotros and vosotros forms (which is imos instead of emos and ís instead of eís). So: Vivir viv-o _| viv-imos viv-es | viv-ís viv-e _| viv-en versus: Comer com-o _| com-emos com-es | com-eís com-e _| com-en

On scaling, I think somewhere it was said that those would not be included. :-( But, in that spirit, what about a seige tower that can land units on top of enemy walls? Actually, it would be cool that when infantry units attack buildings, they do actually set it on fire by throwing a torch up into it, causing the building to loose HP until the fire is quenched by civilians or something; but they cannot directly attack it, because it would take hours. And plus, they are better used attacking other military units. But I agree: infantry vs. stone buildings should be futile.

O_o! Now that is screwed up, ElfTheHunter. My friend brough that "story" in one day. I found the refference to ravers particularly hilarious, and specially AMD.

CodeOptimist: Hell yeah, tablets are the best. SO much easier to do textures. DarkAngelBGE: Thank you, I like to think that my writing is pretty good, and many agree with me. Paal_101: Most of those. I try not to discriminate, and any sci-fi (series or no) now is typically good, if not, good to watch.

Oh, okay. That should do nicely. I was kinda hoping, you know, for something like 'actiondef(actionname="jump attack")=(useprojectilepath (parameters)(affecttype=current_unit); use:uniqueanimation; damage(vector for damages); cooldown=(time)); end(actiondef).' *makes up script as he goes along* Something kinda flag based. But you guys are making the game, so I wouldn't know. Anyway, thanks. All I wanted to know was the form it will take, and either way seems adaptable enough for my plans *whips out C++ manual that was collecting dust.* Lord Z

*Only Spanish III student The main thing to remember about Spanish is it is in a lot of ways the opposite of English. The way I think of it is in terms of the grammar and the spelling. IN English, grammar is relatively straight forward, and easy to pick up. Hell, there are only like four conjugations per verb, and tenses are creating from stringing together the verb, "haves" and "have beens" together. The problem is the atroscious spelling involved. The input of four diferent languages really cuts into spelling rules. Spanish, on the other hand, has elegantly simple spelling. The way you say the word is how you spell it (except for a few very minor exceptions when "que"s follow "n"s and other "asthetic" pronounciation rules). The grammar, on the other hand, gets complatcated. So, basically you trade spelling ease for grammar nightmares. Well, they aren't that bad when you get to them, but it seems overwhleming sometimes.

Erm, I meant a graphics tablet, as in with a pen type thingy instead of a mouse...not a PDA type computer *drools*. Still, both are on a similar coolness level, I would think.

Hello, everyone. I am Lord Zorinthrox (Lord Z or LZ is okay, but the latter is perferred if you insist on shortening the name). My real name is Mike O., and I still dwell in the vacuous depths of hell known as...Highschool! *dramatic reverb* My interest in the community is modding the fantastic engine that is being developed for 0AD and TLA. Never have I seen a group of modder/producers that are so hell bent on such a mod friendly game that is also an RTS, and drop dead gorgeous. Anyway, enough with flattery. The mainstay of my spare time is investigating modding, at the moment for AoM. I sat investigating because I have never actually gotten around to releasing a complete mod, even though I would say my knowledge of modding for AoM is pretty good. My aspirations are always too high, and I am a terrible procrastinator, not to mention I am never satisfied with the texture work I do, and it takes several dozen iterations to get it "good." Too much of a perfectionist I suppose. The rest of my spare time is for Table-Top War Strategy game miniatures (don't play, just paint), computer graphical work (mostly skrewing around with my photo editor), and drawing (mainly life or anatomical). Entertainment wise, a Sci-fi any day is good, anime is great, and a combination even better. A good movie (of course) or a good book atre both favorites (though i never sit down and read something, as much as I enjoy it). The game I choose to play typically lean to micro-managment, like Roller Coaster Tycoon, SimCity, and of course the Age Of series. My library of games is old gaming-wise, and most of them are under-par graphically, which I think makes some of the best games, but not all of the time. Favorites are Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, AoK, AoM, C&C, C&C Tiberian Sun, and Starcraft. In music, I usually stick to Classic Rock, like Pink Floyd, Journey, The Who, Led Zepplin, etc. But don't trust me to know anything about them or have listened to all of their songs. Technology wise, got some cool stuff, including a tablet, some realy cool graphics utilities, and a good-enough GPU from two years ago. So that is me. Hello again, and goodbye for now. Lord Zorintrhox

How adaptive and what form will the...I guess "action" definitions be for units? I know it will be XML, but I am really curious of it will be more customizable than AoM, like defining actions not by preprogramed action types, but by describing all aspects of the action with highly specific modifiers etc. Basically, will it be higher level than AoM's static system, but be able to do the same stuff (and better)? Lord Z PS - Pretty sure/hope this hasn't already been directly answered, I am just paranoid about how inhibited my plans will be by engine functionality (hopefully not at all).