fabio

You can use a software renderer OpenGL driver, see llvmpipe: http://www.mesa3d.org/llvmpipe.html

It's unfortunate that some users won't be able to play 0 A.D. on their older system, but I totally agree here. Hardware vendors no longer support these older cards, open source mesa drivers also dropped some older chipset in 8.0. Desktop users can still buy a supported card if they really want to play on newer 0 A.D.. Maybe you can also start to offer optional features on newer OpenGL 3.0 cards (in some recent commit I noticed however that something requiring OpenGL 3.0 was adapted to be compatible on 2.1 also).

I don't know as I never used it personally. Another non-youtube HTML5 example with subtitles: https://www.xiph.org/video/vid1.shtml

Distributing VLC may not be legally in some countries, while it's free software it include many patented codecs (this is also why Debian/Ubuntu/... don't ship it by default). But probably no one will complain with 0 A.D. since there are many others bigger sites still distributing it

Most Linux distribution only supports Ogg/Theora/Vorbis and Webm/VP8/Vorbis by default but they are not natively supported on Mac/Windows. Maybe Webm could be used also bundling the decoder for Mac and Windows?

The videos shouldn't have embedded text, but could use youtube subtitles that can be translated to different languages.

The in game shots looks really nice! What type of license do you plan for your game? If you use the same CC-BY-SA used by 0 A.D. there should not be any problem in using every 0 A.D. arts.

Wikipedia article has some examples of cutscenes used in games: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutscene#Types

Eventually the configurable options should be removed from default.cfg and local.cfg and put in a xml file used by both the graphic engine and the option menu, so that every option could have: a short description (used for screen display); a long description (used in the tooltip); requirements (e.g. OpenGL 1.5, ARB_XXX extension, ...); if the requirements are not respected the option should be "greyed out" definitively; requirement for "enabled by default"; dependencies (e.g. advanced water may require water reflection); the option should be "greyed out" until the dependencies are also enabled; This should permits to configure these options without touching the code and also avoid syncing between the .cfg and the menu which can use the xml. Custom config can be saved in user.cfg. Also a couple of command line option could be added: safe -> start with the minimum settings; default -> start with the default setting, avoiding customized settings.

Theora and Webm/VP8/libvpx are likely alternatives. They are already used in games (see e.g.: game that use theora).

On the new Polynesia the darker areas are more noticeable and it's clear that they are the waves: Note: attaching a file in the forum gives: "Error The server returned an error during upload"

OK, I tested it. r12814, Cycladic Arcipelago 1 while viewing sea and a shoreline, changing options with the in-game menu: No Water Reflections / No Advanced Water: 20-24 fps Water Reflections / No Advanced Water: 15 fps No Water Reflections / Advanced Water: (this combination looks the same as the first one) Water Reflections / Advanced Water: 11-12 fps EDIT: Core Duo, Radeon X1600, 1024x768 windowed mode, Shadow PCF disabled, Ubuntu 32 bit with r300 mesa driver from git. Yes, the little dark points move, and I can see a repeating pattern on both space and time.

Do you know about the recently open sourced, MIT licensed (GPL compatible) Torque engine? It looks to have nice water rendering, maybe there is something that could be useful for 0 A.D.: EDIT: it is Direct 3D only apparently.

Yes, thanks, I know about it but I am using older r300 driver, the patch is only for r600 driver. I opened an interesting similar bug affecting both r300 and r600 with 0 A.D. some time ago, however: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44536

Sorry the performance drop was with superfancywater. Fancywater doesn't have a noticeable FPS drop. They depends on the distance and IIRC they move, however I am not sure since I cannot test again until next week. (Also a note that with superfancywater I don't see error by the graphics driver about unassigned input).

I had some problem with postproc effects see here and later posts for the full story. FPS went from 20-21 to 13-14 with fancywater here (RV530 with git mesa driver).

You may want to try my PPA, see my signature (packages for 12.04 are currently unavailable due to mesa build problems, but they are working for 12.10).

12811 break this test: Running 270 tests.....................................................................................................................................................................................................ERROR: JavaScript error: simulation/components/GuiInterface.js line 77 TypeError: cmpPlayer.WantAlly is not a function ()@simulation/components/GuiInterface.js:77 ()@simulation/components/tests/test_GuiInterface.js:162 In TestComponentScripts::test_scripts: ../../../source/pch/test/../../../source/simulation2/components/tests/test_scripts.h:43: Error: Test failed: L"Running script simulation/components/tests/test_GuiInterface.js" ../../../source/pch/test/../../../source/simulation2/components/tests/test_scripts.h:43: Error: Assertion failed: scriptInterface.LoadScript(pathname, content) ........................................................................ Failed 1 of 270 tests Success rate: 99%

Yes for the "black areas", I suppose yes also for the zigzagged shoreline, but it's probably less noticeable on some maps (clearly reproducible at least on two maps). A last design issue is that waves always go to the beach, while foam goes back and forth: in some maps it doesn't seems very realistic, maybe in this case waves should be disabled?

The menu now works indeed. A couple of issues in this screenshot (Cycladic Arcipelago 1), only reproducible with superfancywater: zigzagged shoreline; little black areas (little points) when zooming far, see the top left seas.

What I mean is: is superfancywater local.cfg option matching "Enable advanced water" in the in-game options menu? If yes it's not working properly because the in-game menu option is always enabled no matter of the local.cfg option.

Have superfancywater config option an equivalent in the setting menu? I am asking because whatever setting I have in the config file for superfancywater, the water options in the game menu are always enabled. Also it would be nice to have a sound effect for waves (with volume depending on zoom level, no sound when zoomed too far).

I already suggested something like that here.

Thanks for the update! I think that at this stage it would be cool to have a proper in game option menu for managing all these amazing new effects, without editing the config file. Similar to what was done on the match setup GUI.

(Sorry for the delay) The error just appears with preferglsl=true (and no other settings), even if I add materialmgr.quality=0.0 Without preferglsl=true: Removing <PostEffect>hdr</PostEffect> from Zagros Mountains 01 removes the corruption. However I cannot notice any other effect (fog included). No errors are printed (also with hdr restored). With preferglsl=true: Removing <PostEffect>hdr</PostEffect> from Zagros Mountains 01 removes the corruption and I can notice some effect (at least fog). Errors are printed.