Aeros

I did maybe 4 drafts of trees over a year before we got to the model we use now, each time using less polygons and less texture. I'll hold off on details right now because I'm probably going to be talking about this in the near future when you guys will get a major update on WFG and 0 A.D. but to answer your question here, the trees have 5-10 times less polygons than a typical unit and use about 24KB of texture memory per color/shade. We have a clever randomising system that assembles the trees and picks their color. When I say clever, I mean its just that, we make use of the same randomising system that assigns random facial features and weapons/shields to units. If we had the art assets in place this system could be used to randomise anything as many times as you want, one idea was to have randomised props and eyecandy around buildings so it looks different each time, but for now thats not a priority and I don't think we will be doing it unless we (artists) have spare time to do so. The tree randomizations...Right now its not too dramatic, but that is due to the art assets, I want to go in for a 5th draft sometime and make the trees look even more random. Right now though, the variation and the branch detail combined with random rotation upon placement (and later on, random scaling) ensure you practically never see the same tree twice, aside from the fact that their assets look too similar right now for my liking . We design the trees by creating a branch that is 1 face (thats right 1 face a triangle, not 2 faces, a square) and then build the tree by aranging these branches in 3d space the way you would see them in a real tree. Due to the way the branch texture is designed this looks very convincing. The true beauty in the trees is revealed when you are rotating the camera. They look like sprite quality in screenshots but imagine them spinning around in 3d. Because of this branch method the trees look extremely dense and 3d and use only 20-35 face per canopy. (+30-60 for the trunk/base) This is what happens when you get some artists to devote some time into their work rather than crunching them and making them turn out all the art for a game in a months time the way proffesional game developers work. btw...2d trees?! do you think we'd cheap out on you like that?

That very well could be so, its very hard to get levels perfect without me dropping $200 on a proffesional sound card and $500 on proffesional monitors, I don't have that kind of cash, and if I did I'd spend it on some gear before replacing what I have now Nothing is ever perfect but before uploading I go through and do the best mixing and mastering I can and periodically I like to go back and rework parts and remix the levels. About the lead - a trademark for psytrance right now (full-on style) is to use a highpass on the lead, I think its alright (lowband and highband) in the beginning but towards the end I have a different EQ on it lowering the lowband so that <1000hz can be heard better in other synths, such as that phaser-pluck/guitar. Again though, hard to get it "right" without pro monitors (speakers). As for the bassline, yeah, very low and full is again the trademark for a psytrance bassline, they are always used more as a ground for the music to drive the beat and emotion. But the bassline was nothing special in this song, same pattern all the way through. Thanks man, that means alot to me, someone who's been wanting to make this music since I first heard it 4 years ago (Befoe that I used to be a progressive trance guy like yourself, but have since also found what I likes best ) I was talking with another friendly producer who's got some friends already with a label who might be starting their own psy label, and if that works out its very likely I could get a few songs out on a compilation or two...otherwise for getting signed, thats very hard and I don't think it will be happening for me for a while, I would need to be abit older, abit more independant, and have abit more time and cash and gear to start DJing or doing Live Acts or something like that to get noticed, Psytrance is a very party oriented genre and labels don't like to pick up people who aren't in the party scene. Once again thanks for the comments, getting something to happen with my music (and future music) is a long-term idea I like to have fun with, we'll see how it is 3-4 years from now As for more mixes, hell yeah, keep me informed I've got your last one you put up for download and am glad we've got a real DJ here at WFG

Soulburn -> http://www.beatbiz.net/artist.php?USERID=704 Psytrance with alot of emphasis on the trance part, very progessive. Adam you might like some of this.

If you have one arm or one leg hacked off I don't think there would be much chance of you still hoping around on the battlefield with full armor and still being able to give a fight... although that would make a nice monty python sequence :-p About arrows, we were speculating on an idea that a unit being hit with a volley will have arrows stuck in their shield or body, but the feasibility of that feature is not yet detirmined.

I know, but acidplanet sucks because it wants wma format for the first upload and I have to upload a separate mp3, and I'm lazy and put one up at beatbiz eaither way, so download from there. You can grab an mp3 from my beatbiz account though Mindcrawlers & Infinite Dimensions - Wizard Magic - had alot of fun, this one might be released on a compilation later on if things go well for the guys I talked to. Many thanks to Dave for letting me remix one of his tracks (Wizards) Stream or Download at Acidplanet or Beatbiz

Yes, I'm simply saying the quality you see in the screenshots is done through clever art styles and techniques. I've had a few people think we have normal mapping or shaders on people's skin/helmets. And then theres all the people who think this is AoE3 when we show them a screenshot.

Oh us artists use quite alot of tricks that we've got up our sleeve as well as perfecting techniques and always brainstorming on how to make things better. But yes, all our art are simple traditional textures and models. We're lucky to not be pressured like artists in profesional studios so we can have time to put effort and quality into our art. In my opinion the best part is the performance factor, we don't throw away processing power on normal mapping or HDR lighting (yet? ) or all this gunk that new games have which are very rarely pulled off well (Half Life 2 is maybe the only game thats used shaders to proper potential). As for having good artists, there are two people making 90% of the ingame art here, myself and Wijitmaker the project leader. The remaining 10% is sprinkled out over a few other people helping out in certain fields. As a point of interest, I have had zero 3d modelling or texture art experience outside of this project and one of my goals in joining was to learn how to do this stuff. Our real advantage is having real artists on the team who have an understanding for color, scale, motion, position and lighting, as well as having enough time to put quality and effort into our work and if its not good enough to do it over. P.S. Oh my gosh that whizbang screenshot looks terrible...funny what a year and a half can do to the project. :-P

Hahaha, so thats atleast one person who's read my sig

If that means can you add more civs...we certainly hope so, thats the kind of modding power we're aiming for.

We currently only have a 3dsmax exporter plugin for models and animations (.pmd and .psa) for the artists to get by on , but yes exporters and hopefully importers for other programs such as gmax and blender are planned to be made, so long as we can get someone to make them. I don't know when we'll release these tools, but presumably close to when we release the game or maybe shortly after we release the game, depending on how we'd like to manage our community at that time.

Both (planned)

Hey Antisback, yes thats very good thinking, so good that its already something we already plan to do as philip said In order for data or art modifications to take place in a scenario and not conflict with the normal game (overwriting data, aka the old yuck way of modding), all customized data can be setup through our workspace manager in the editor and will be distributed with the scenario. You could add entire new units, customized scripts, new terrains, whatever you want and it'll be packed up and distributed with your scenario so that everyone is on the same page in terms of data when playing it. Additionally the same system will similarly be used to manage modded content in the game, even patches, or entire other games.

Welcome Acid happens to be a very good friend of mine

Firebloom -> http://www.acidplanet.com/artist.asp?pid=703165&T=6803

Well we're working on them, aren't we? Hehe, it'd be nice to have them done before we say what they are, makes more sense than promissing things and then throwing half of those promises away because we didn't have time or resources to complete them. One of the problems that people here likely can't relate much is that we being a hobbyist team have anounced this game since it was started and have had websites and a small fanbase to keep updated. For nearly all game developers - they don't anounce a game until they are almost done with it and need to go on a marketting blitz. Take Age of Empires 3 - its been in development since 2001 (maybe even further back if you think of the idea for it) but it wasn't anounced until 9 months before it was to be released. People don't realize how long it takes to get a game off the gound and finished. Same deal with Half Life 2's release - and these are the proffesionals who spend all their time on their projects for years. So to answer your question, there are tons more features that make this game distinct, for a quick preview you can read the FAQ which has lots of detailed information about this game. And obviously, as progress continues we'll let you know more about the game and what will be in it. For now though, we like to work on 0 A.D. rather than brag to people about what will be in 0 A.D. As for whetting your appetites...considering how much development time is still left for this project It would really be a bad idea to get you pumped up for the game and then tell you you still need to wait a long time for it. The information, the teasers, the movies, the screenshots, and eventually the whole game will come in due time, for now we believe our fan base has better things to do than spend their time drooling over something that is still far away from being completed.

Well what can I say, its that time of year again isn't it?

haha, thats the spirit

There is an old saying that goes something like "Too many chefs cooking the same thing makes for bad soup" or something close like that. The idea is if a bunch of different people keep adding salt and pepper and their own things to the pot its bound to make a bad mix.

Open Sourcing the game at this stage would be a nightmare to manage, organize, execute and hold together. We are quite comfortable developing the game under our own team and manpower which has assembled here for years. We've had many discussions on open sourcing and all of them have been inconclusive or have created more problems than they would solve. The topic will be up for discussion again after the release of 0 A.D. when we decide what the best way for progressing the game will be.

Archers don't always hit, and they work best in volleys

We always have plans, more than you can imagine The problem with getting a solid release date is this: We can give you a date, and then you can be dissapointed when it passes, or we can tell you what "we think will be the release date", which is our current estimate, which still stands for late 2006, which has been what we've been aiming for for a while. The game will obviously be released when its done, picking dates to do that on makes no sense to us when all the time put into the project is all variable to the people working on it, however we are all here with the full intention of finishing this game and every day we get closer and closer to the finish line.

Plunge

New track finished http://www.acidplanet.com/artist.asp?PID=663825&t=8063

If you're interested in knowing what part of the song I made, basically the whole part Psyrius sent me This and I turned it into this Hehehe, oooh yeah but I would first need to make much much more music (this song is only my 9th song) and finish climbing out of the amateur stage before I want people to listen to my music Thats why I'm keeping this project (since the past year and a half) low profile, theres still much more I can do to improve.

New one much much better http://www.acidplanet.com/artist.asp?PID=652186&t=697