Aeros

By the way, theres 3 animals in the screenshot. First person to name them all (whos name isn't Wijitmaker) gets +1 rep

Then you're in luck, Centurion We've got 14 animals so far, and lots of plants. Our plants don't just have generic 1, 2 ,3 variations. AoM for example had 5 variations of their "grass" object. We have 14.

Woop Woop! That was heart warming, Sunny Ok, since 3 people have already asked me - Mipmapping is where a texture gradually blurs as the view point zooms out. Otherwise there are too many pixels fighting over a small ammount of space and it starts to look ugly and distorts the texture. Instead, Mipmapping blurs it by scaling down the texture. Also, you if you look down a field you won't be able to see a blade of grass 100 feet away, but you can see a blade of grass thats right infront of you. Mipmapping takes care of that factor too. Generally, it means the game is going to look better.

http://wildfiregames.com/0ad/album_page.php?pic_id=257 Hurray, I lived up to my promise - you didn't have to wait 2 months for a new screenshot This one comes in exactly 3 weeks after the previous shots, again focused on the celtic art in the game. As with the previous screenshot, this screenshot's caption releases more interesting facts on the world of 0AD. Since I have nothing else fill up this slot of text, I'll go ahead and quote the screenshot's caption. Nothing more to say, other than incidently this is also the first screenshot with Mipmapping. We've had it for a while, but it's just our nature to not give you any idea of how far in development we are . On a further technical note, we've got a new alpha blending system (the method at which one terrain blends to into another) so hats off to Rich for doing that By the way, This is the first screenshot that I blasted my Anti Aliasing(8x), Anisotropic Filtering (16x) and Quality setting on my graphics card, the results are amazing, very sharp and contrasted. Just the what we're aiming for.

Hehe, we don't haven't finished the game yet we're already planning cheat codes Nah, most likely you would type "A small jig performed by Jason" and then a funny Gif-like animation would apear on the screen for a while ala Tappy, the tap dancing kitty which is my avatar. One things for sure, 0AD's cheat codes will have style

lol alex, you still remember that joke? 0AD is built from the ground up using our own "A small jig performed by Jason" Engine We just have to honor that with a cheat code

We've compiled a list of 28 (and counting) wonders of the world that are appropriate to 0 A.D.'s time period. However I am 99% certain that not all of them will make it into the game, atleast in it's initial release, simply due to the sheer volume of work they require. Though we've got 1 wonder already finished, and more to come.

Each of the 6 civilizations in the game are unique in gameplay and units to eachother. That means we don't re-use units in other civilizations, and the Hellenes spearman (Hoplite) will look and act differently from the Persian spearman (Neyzedar Madi). This is obviously a nightmare for balance but thats why people hold things like alpha and beta tests.

Matt must be some sort of pirate-hating ninja.

Q: What movie did the pirate see last night? A: HARRRold and KumARRRR go to white castle

Would you be the Matt from Empires Earth Aeon? That was a really awesome site man, I was good friends with The Scout who used to work there.

Q: Why did the pirate go on vacation? A: He needed some ARR and ARR

Unreal Tournament has a really smart single player AI that acts almost like a human. Infact if you play online against humans and computers, you won't be able to tell who's a human and who's a comp player. However, in UT I still prefer to play online against real people. It just gives so much more value to what you're doing when you know you've beaten 31 other people rather than 31 fancy computer scripts.

Yeah, we recently found that out too We're checking into it to see if theres going to be any legal issues or anything. Eitherway, it won't effect the outcome or quality of the game, so you have nothing to worry about on that front

We're using our own original model and animation format, however some exporter/importer scripts should be released with the game for 3dsmax, and maybe Gmax too. In the future possibly Blender and some other programs like that.

Who does a pirate enjoy listening to? Pedro del MARRRR

I think boredom is one of the worst things ever, so I keep myself busy with (just like Nat) my many computer and online projects.

Agreed, and I've been thinking of something like that for a while Differnent culture's houses would give different ammounts of population. Also there might be more than one house, like a "long house" that gives more. But those're just my random ideas, nothing documented for gameplay yet. Though testing will be when the ideas start flowing.

Let alone if it'll be a useful feature that people will use in the game and not something that's just cool to have.

Must you?

Their server must be down, Matt.

No, not yet. But towards beta stage we plan to put up some articles about all the modding, design, and scripting details possible in 0AD, and also introducing you to each section.

Read. http://stfunoob.com/pictures/gay.jpg

Guys, what do you think of the trees? (in the most recent shot), I know you haven't seen them much, but I've had a few people tell me they're too pixely. The ones in the previous 2 screenshots were, yeah, but I took care of that while making the trees look better at the same time (by that I mean, completely redesigned them).

No, not currently. And for the record the Unreal 3 engine uses Normal mapping which can shade a surface through infinite light sources and shaders while Bump mapping can only shade through one light direction. Bump mapping/normal mapping is only needed in games that change very dynamically in their effects. So they're perfect for first person shooters where you're constantly in different environments. However for 0AD, the camera angle and setting will mostly be the same throughout the game. However, as you noticed in the celtic screenshots, they really do look amazing thanks to the illusion of bump/normal mapping which is in the texture and not a rendered effect. Anyway, the only purpose I can see for bump mapping or normal mapping would be for use on water, but I'm not sure how we're doing that yet or if we'll be doing it like that at all.