wraitii

Reading from previous post, the problem was that too many informations had to be shown and that the decision was to cut it all-together. This setup should be able to show even charge bonuses, if dealt with properly. Alternatively, those could be displayed only when the unit is actually charging (in a different color perhaps). Since it's "static", as HistoricBruno said, it's merely a useful reminder for players.

For the record, I think it would be nice to have a more "crammed" GUI option for players who absolutely want to see unit stats, something like this: . (I 'm showing the stamina bar for the record, and the A/D mean Attack/Defense, and should, if implemented, be replaced by two small icons.)

If I may chip in: the player color behind the production queue is okay to me: it balances the color of the "You" banner. I wouldn't completely center the logo, but its center could be a bit higher. The parenthesis around the generic name seem unnecessary for me. It makes it harder to read (for some reason, my inner voice reads that in a quieter voice, which is annoying. But that may be just me.) and there's already a difference: the lack of bolding. About the GUI, taken from SVN: I've red-ed two irks: I feel like the "bar" is unnecessary and looks weird. The other icons are placed in a different order (but perhaps that's already been fixed). BTW: if you're showing unit stats by hovering over the icon... There probably should be no latency.

I'm very curious to see that in the game... I think it'll make a cliffy map like my Corsica random map look really good. Adding a terrain that changes depending on the orientation is a good idea, but should imo not be a priority: it can be faked pretty well right now, even by RM.

Allright, so being all busy with my work, and then wanting to rest, I haven't touched this in a few weeks... But I'll probably resume working on Marilyn soon. I've been able to at last actually play the game since I had a friend at my school download the game and we did a little LAN. Motivated me quite a bit. It was the longest time since I last played against a human (AOE II, how you remind me…).

The problem with making too wavy oceans is that you must have realistic waves (on the shores or on cliffs), which is a pain. I've got to say, when Alpha 10 got released, I was fairly confident the final game would be pretty close from a graphical standpoint. Now myconid has decided to revamp everything up (the tree moving is a nice touch, really) and the GUI is being redesigned completely... Based on the video, it looked like all trees moved at the same rate (in a very uniform wave effectà... Have you planned to offset some, or perhaps implement a "wind" factor?

If Myconid tackles shadows, he might as well try to fix this too.

The last comparison screenshots really show the difference well. Great work.

I support Yves' idea. Further refinement to the sound could be used: if the attacking army is small, or big, the alarm could be slightly different (louder/fuller/whatever). This is also of interest for ai development, btw. If the system gets complicated enough, the AI's might want to use some of the underlying "infrastructure".

I think for smoke particles the game mainly needs a "Time.fade" option.

I think the only land units that would really need it would be running cavalry units. It would make cavalry charges much more strategic.

The comparison pic is really good (though of course for a perfect effect, the textures ought to be slightly corrected).

Steep parallax mapping looks great on those windows. I'm assuming the "flags" on the sides aren't affected?

I see you've added the "gatherer swap" function to qBot. Neat improvement, however, a few things you might consider adding when you find time: -distance is a factor, as is the duration of gathering. If you swap, and then right when each unit arrive at their new resource they're tasked to a third resource, you'll have lost the benefit of the swap. To avoid that, you might want to prevent the unit from being reassigned for some time when swapping, which you could roughly estimate as "distance/speed*2" or something. And prevent the swap if the cost would be too high (it would require 10 minutes to be actually profitable or something). BTW, this is my opinion, but I believe it is time to start adding difficulty levels to qBot. It's getting strong for beginners, economically.

I've always thought that it was "right-click = unit-action" and "left-click = selection/GUI interaction". Following that convention, the OP's proposition makes a lot of sense. I also think that it's a more logical convention than "right-click = actions which are done either directly/with the help of a shortcut key" and "left click = left click initiated button actions". Well, perhaps not more logical, but I find it simpler.

Agreed too.

Congratulations on the release, a lot of great work has been done since Alpha 9, for the better.

Yeah, that's what I meant. I think it's both the most realistic and the easiest way to institute a limitation on the number of workers.

A simple system would be to have markets resources slowly rise, and every trader would take from that stockpile. So if you have 10 traders, the first 3 would get resources, and the next 7 would not because the market has not replenished.

Terrain would definitely benefit from normal mapping and parallax mapping. Units, I still wonder because the camera is always fairly far away (though it could be used, of course). I think buildings could use it for the tiles/blocks of stone/whatever to a great effect. AO should be baked beforehand for units and buildings, to me. There's no real point in dynamically computing it in 0 A.D.

Interesting development tool, interesting to have in the game.

It works fairly well as long as the training follows... The hardest part is dealing with sudden needs (such as a fortress build) or with the aftermath of an attack, because you might want your females to chop wood or stuffs. Testing a very basic version in the early game against the latest qBot, it seems about 600/700 resources more efficient... Anyway, don't expect it too soon, I'm going to have a very busy week.

Allright, I originally intended to implement a complicated resource gathering system... Only, it's too complicated to be any kind of practical (because I need to plan for future unit creation, mainly). So, I'm changing my plans to a much simpler system: I'll assign my females to food gathering, and citizen soldiers to the rest. This won't change during the game, unless there is a particular need (fast collecting for a fortress) or a discrepancy (say, after an attack). It should prove efficient, as it's what most players do, with great success.

Yeah, the game is hardly balanced but afaik it was not a concern (or at least, a very minor concern) for the Alphas. Then again, 0 A.D. will have to come out of Alpha someday, and it looks like it could be soon enough (well, relatively). BTW, Mythos, I see you decreased starting resources to 300 each, that's probably something you want to put in the "release info" on the homepage.

Hence why I think, at least for the first age, it should probably be "5 buildings of the village phase or higher", aka "5 buildings".