Aeros

Given that many of the people on staff are avid modders, 0AD is going to be extremely modable, that is to say if you want to get a new unit in the game it shouldn't take any longer to do than it takes me, which is a few minutes for getting the art in and a few more minutes if I wanted to set up the unit for gameplay. I don't know if we're going to keep open formats or not by release (no reason not to, but its not up to me to decide), but if anything our file structure, tools, and organized folder heirarchy should make modding much less anoying than it is for other games. Given that we have no publisher, that also means we don't have anyone to tell us what we can and can't do with the game files or if we have to lock them up and encrypt them the way all other developers do. Without giving out too many details or confusing you with technicalities - I'll say that you should be very comfortable modding 0AD, and if you know how to script you'll be able to mod gameplay and things like resources if you want to among other things. If its any reasurrance, our sister project - The Last Alliance will be developed off the 0AD engine, so we're making sure our stuff is flexible enough so that other games can be made off the same system. Oh and check the FAQ, it'll probably have more stuff on this subject than what I could ramble off the top of my head about

* what different kinds of testing are testers expected to do * What are the different styles of testing, describe them from intensive (technical) to casual (large scale beta tests)

STOP...... jasontime

My sig at HeavenGames: CheeZy ex-HG Angel WildFire Games - Artist and Lead Scenario Designer for 0 A.D. "But really, stop fighting and listen to CheeZy when he says use good grammar." - Phantom_rider. its been like that for a while (with respective links to WFG and 0 A.D. ofcourse)

I too am a bum-man, Tim though for qualities, the character in a girl's eyes interests me the most, followed by her hair and how different from normal it is...the crazier/messier the hair, the more I like

Being in charge of that whole department, I would be the one going around and selecting candidates for scenario designers as well as planning and and doing the campaigns. Currently I've got some plans on how a small team of designers would work together to get that all rolling, however, design work on the campaigns will not take place until the game is nearly finished and we have a finished stable editor to work with. Otherwise we would just be wasting our time. Campaign work should take place towards the very end of the development cycle when we're undergoing beta testing and thats a very long way off. Our current editor is very primative and serves only for the purpose of giving our engine something to load and play on. There is a huge amount of designer tallent out there and indeed within our own team. Its not likely we'll be recruiting very many scenario designers, probably only 2 to 3 when the time comes. Additionally we would favor much more people with story-telling and game-designing skills more than people good with eyecandy (we have as much art as we want at our disposal so eyecandy won't be too big a deal). Eitherway our editor is a different package from other games out there so any previous knowledge you have will not put you at much of an advantage. A fine eye for art and storytelling is what would be the most important asset. Eitherway, campaign work is a very long way off I don't want to get peoples hopes high for no reason, although Papaya if you're interested in the campaign its likely you could help out as being a tester to test the campaign. When we're in Beta we plan on getting lots and lots of people to test and give input on various portions of the game.

December 15th

Finished another song yesturday, this stuff seriously distracts me so much from 0AD But here it is for those who want to have a listen Clicky - I've had good responses from everyone who's heard it so far, a first for me (only been actively producing for 4 months now)

we're not afraid to experiment where other developers are afraid to

By hand, probably by script or progamming, doubt it

Well what I meant was I found this part worth noting Being able to copy unit locations and exporting them for RMS use nifty, could definately add alot of spice to RMs

Heres an interesting thread on exactly this subject at AoE3H http://aoe3.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums...&f=1,24379,0,10

From my personal opinion - qualitatively 0 A.D. looks much more pleasant to the eye to me than AoE3 Richness in world detail beats fancy shaders for me any day. I'm not worried about how our graphics engine will compare with others. Since when have shaders and reflective helmets made a game more fun to play. Sure its attractive but after 2 weeks of playing you won't care anymore, the game's concept of gameplay is the most important thing.

The zoom wouldn't be dramatic, maybe a 33% increase in view. The ships aren't going to be designed to take up the entire screen. If you're battling on shore, then you would simply continue battling, you would just have a slightly larger view due to a number of ships being near the screen as well. 2 seconds, 4 seconds, 5 seconds, that all counts as " a few seconds" or however long it takes for the effect to be good and not anoying. Eitherway its a concept I said would be worth investigating, what is the point argueing about it now especially since I don't think anyone is quite getting what I'm saying. Why? Gameplay would never stop. Think of cinematics in AoM playing without the letterboxes on, you still see the UI and have full control of everything, think of that but instead of playing a track it simply gradually zooms out. Whats the problem there, it wouldn't be necissary to be zoomed out to control the navy, it just makes it more comfortable.

Not if it was done very smoothly - the idea I have in mind is very cinematic-like. It would take a few seconds to full zoom out and it wouldn't do it with the same speed and then stop suddenly. Additionaly what I have in mind is exactly your example, it only zooms out if you're commanding ships on the shore, or if there is a ship in the view (whichever turns out to work better), but if you go back to clicking units on the battlefield, it'll then do the 5 second fade back to normal view.

A very simple sollution to the scale issue is that if you're controlling a ship on the ocean, the camera could slowly zoom out to transition to a bigger view angle for better control, and once you get close to the shore again the camera will slowly zoom down back to normal view. Very simple thing that I'm sure will easily remove the scale issue and allow you to properly control naval battles. in 0AD you aren't the captain controlling the ship (if you were then the clunkyness and scale of the ship and its vissibility limitations would be a factor), instead you're controlling the entire naval force. Its the same logic that if you were the commander of an army in 0AD you wouldn't be stuck with a ground view of the world. (although that would be something interesting to try in a game). To clarify on what I said, these are just my opinions and its not necissarily true that 0AD would turn out like this in anyway, I came up with the idea just now - but I'd definately like to see it tried for our ship model. There hasn't been much thought given to that yet since we aren't at that stage in development.

That sounds good, but unfortunately it won't help at all. If you have to be moving the mouse to edit elevation in one spot, then that kind of defeats the way elevation is placed since you usually need to move the mouse around and "paint" it. Realize Wize1 that you wouldn't be able to move the mouse to directionally effect the elevation, you would just get a huge block which you could at variable speed control how far up or down it is.

When the time comes for an open beta I don't think it'll be very hard to find out about that Don't worry

Have you done any low poly work, Rex? Low poly modelling for games is abit of a different world from regular modelling (shouldn't be too hard to get used to). Also how are you with textures? The artists here and indeed everyone else here are multitallented so that they can go about creating something from scratch and putting it in the game (modelling it, texturing it, skinning it, exporting it, creating the actor/entity data for it, etc) Regardless of skill level, the most important asset for someone on the team is that they're able to function and lead themselves, they'll be able to work without having to wait for instruction and they can go about doing things without needing much resources from others (besides information).

^ Correct - bittorrent will likely be the main distribution method if we can't get any server mirrors. @HistoryGuy, that is something we were considering but it all depends on how many people want CDs and how much resources we have to make those CDs. For now there is no final answer on that until the game is released and we're at that stage.

Windows and Linux is the plan right now, perhaps some of the progammers could better ellaborate on that for you.

Literally everything That could make a nice huge article for the site one day... But to give you an actualy answer, in my opinion the most challenging thing is simply keeping staff active, which is not up to WFG to do but up to the staff themselves. Between all the things that people have to do in their lives, school, work, other responsibilities etc - WFG falls in as something they can only do when they have spare time, and not everyone always has spare time. That is the biggest thing in the way, simply how much time we have availible to put into the project.

Its a system we use to build the game where we can upload and modify files to a central version that everyone has so that everyone on the team has the same files and is on the same page. I'd ellaborate more on it but I'm kind of paranoid for security.

Hmm, got any evidence of that?

Yup, aware of that I'd still say 20-25% tops - assuming the 50% mark is when its initially playable as an alpha, and 85% when its content complete as a beta. There is an unsane amount of work involved in making a game - and its so much harder when everyone is spread around the globe with different times of availibilty, as well as the fact that we're not working on this 12 hours a day like professional teams. 0AD the vision has techincally been in the works for almost 5 years since the first idea of it - but its only been in production for the past year and a half or so, and there is alot still to do. Most games that are anounced are usually always anounced when they are at alpha or beta - for example Age of Empires 3 was anounced when it was asset complete (meaning the game is all finished but for testing, balancing and bug fixing) - and they still make you wait a year before you can play it. Our story is quite abit different, and its likely alot of people will become impatient with 0AD's progress because it was anounced so early. The screenshots we have now simply serve as proof of the work we've done in the past year and a half, but I can't say it represents the final game at all. The best source to follow progess for 0AD is to check the monthly summaries, they'll tell you exactly what we're doing.