comp3820

Sorry I missed all the posts - for some reason I'm not subscribed to this. Anyway, I found a Carthage.zip in my documents and uploaded it to 0ad.me again, but it's waiting for Admin approval - when that comes I'll post the link here. Or asmartgoat will, since I think that's his site. Otherwise, just browse around on the site to see if it's there. I haven't changed it, so there could be errors with all the changes that have been going on with 0ad. EDIT: Here's the link: http://0ad.me/sword/download.php?view.15

Here are a few clips I made with Fraps. They've got "www.fraps.com" on the top, and they're compressed. I do have higher quality versions, but they're also quite a bit larger. Zipped Folder Nothing terribly exciting, but they do showcase some of the graphics. A few clips panning over Miletus with ships sailing by, a very small fight in the Oasis map, a sunset over the oasis, and some villager/soldier gathering clips. There are more, but not from the player's perspective. I had a number of them that I'd recorded to make a video, but I lost the scenario file somehow, so if you want a half-complete film about a Celtic ambush of a Roman army, I've got that too.

I think there should be a pile of resources either way - the unit would drop the resources to defend himself if he was attacked, but even if he was killed right away, there would still be a pile of resources after his death, since that's how it would really happen. That would make for more interesting raiding, too, since the raiders could wipe out a mine plus all the workers, quickly gather the crates, and walk off with hundreds of resources.

I think satchitb is right about the resources, but you could compromise on that by making a pile of wood/gold/stone/iron appear right by where the unit was attacked. I think in real life that's exactly what a unit would do - not worry about putting it in a certain spot, but dropping it right away. The pile would be in the form of a crate or something that can be gathered faster later.

I've never played a game with a concept like this, but it sounds interesting. To extend the idea further (and make the doctrine choice less permanent), you could have buttons on the side of the screen, or at a specific building, allowing you to switch quickly back and forth between different doctrines. For example, you could put your nation on a war footing when gearing up to attack an enemy, at which point your economy would slow down considerably, but unit production would increase. Maybe you could even get a temporary attack bonus. A boom doctrine might help your economy at the expense of your military, by lowering soldier's attack, but increasing their gather rates (ie they left their weapons at home to work in the fields). Of course, you'd have one for a last-ditch defense, where economy is cut completely, and all units fight (maybe female workers garrison in houses and give the house an attack?). It would kind of be like a combination/extension of the "town bell" idea in Age of Empires, as well as the "Revolution" idea in Age III. At the same time, the doctrine choice could change the GUI setup (or make this a different option, separate from doctrines?). When attacking, your minimap would highlight only military units, you would get a tally of your entire army, a highlight on idle soldiers, special alerts for newly built soldiers, one click selection for formations, etc etc. When switching to economy mode, your GUI would color-code workers per their job on the minimap, show the number of workers per resource, give special buttons for building economic buildings without having to select villagers (nearest villager would build? nearest idle villager?) etc.

I think trees and bushes affecting the sight of units is a great idea. It's pointless to hide in the forest if your enemy can see you anyway. You could cut the effectiveness of the LOS in half for forests, or even less, and decrease speed through there as well, which would greatly increase the effectiveness of a well-planned ambush. It would be neat if cliffs would have the same effect - you can't see over them in real life, why now? Make the units find out how to get on top to see what's up there.

Ok, so I went and did it: I built some buildings to model the actual dock. It took a bit of doing, seeing as though I had to teach myself how to mod. But here are the screenshots:

Well, I got most of the bugs worked out. you can check it out at 0ad.me. The numbers are down to 200 Romans vs 80 Carthaginians, but the Carthaginians have desperation (or a lot of heroes) on their side. It seems to run mostly smoothly on my computer, although it does bog down at times.

As soon as I find all the little mistakes and make sure it works correctly I playtested it with 250 legionaries vs 222 mostly Celtic infantry. Since I made quite a few of the Celts super infantry, or used heroes, to make them look/act a little more like desperate Carthaginians, the Carthaginians swamped the romans. Not exactly a historical ending. I did use the find/replace method to change all the buildings to player 1, and then again later (some of us don't learn ) to change the celts to player 1. In doing so, I figured out that there were 1027 buildings ( plus any that were already Player 1, including all the docks) on the map, and 222 Carthaginian soldiers. The biggest problem is that it ran fairly slow at first, then sped up a little later - I actually think it ran faster than it was supposed to - it felt like it was trying to "catch up." And I've got a Radeon HD 4670 that runs AOEIII like a champ. Hopefully if I reduce the number of Carthaginian soldiers it will run faster. A few more issues: due to my use of the flattening tool (I think), there is occupiable land outside of the viewable area, so the legionaries tend to get stuck out there. Also, as far as I know there is no victory condition yet unless you destroy all the opponent's units and buildings. Good luck!

Ah, thank you. Exactly what I was hoping for. I think I'll use find/replace to make everything player 1, then if I need to I can add a few attacking player two units and actually test this map out. Is there any way to suppress the errors that come up for "missing projectile" ?

Yeah, there are a few docks in there . @satchitb: the problem with playing this map is that the players aren't set up right. The first time I worked on it, I made the buildings Player 1, but after I reopened it Atlas must have defaulted back to Gaia, so the rest of the buildings are Gaia. Also, it constantly gives me errors for "missing projectile" for the wall towers (since they're shooting at the ships). Does anyone know how you could change a ton of buildings to a different player at once, or is that a job for sometime when I'm really bored?

I made this map working off of the first few Google images for "Carthage," so its not exactly a research project. I also scaled things a little bit different, in order to get a few more city features into a smaller area. You don't even want to know how many docks I put in that center dock - a smarter person probably would have just made the Carthaginian dock in blender . A few more pictures: Img 1 Img 2 Img 3 Img 4 Img 5 Img 6

I can see how complete randomness like a single-hit loss could get really annoying, but a compromise might prove to be the best way. Giving units a random attack, ie ranging from 10 to 20 or something similar, might produce the same effect, but keep players from randomly losing scouts to a single arrow. If you want to throw math into it, make the unit's attack a normal distribution centered around the nominal attack value, with most values near the center, and some further away that could cause considerably more (or less) damage. There's a certain fascination (and realism) in watching a horde of arrows being fired at a single unit, and that unit still surviving. I think it was Stronghold that had this - most arrows seemed to miss, but some arrows hit and produced random effects on the unit. [completely unrelated -> an arrow-hit animation, or a unit pausing slightly when hit, but not killed, might be really cool] Also, I think realism would actually go down with a one life point unit because it would remove any idea of a wounded, tired army struggling to finish the last goal of the campaign. There's nothing like a bunch of red bars hovering over your troops to keep you on the lookout for potential ambushes.

What would actually be neat, and would incorporate what you just mentioned, would be a directional armor. +5 armor if attacked from the front, for a unit with a shield. That would give significant incentive to ambush or flank your enemy, instead of sending in mass amounts of troops from the front. It would also create the "shield wall" effect for the phalanx, which was obviously pretty significant in ancient warfare.

Ruins would be really cool. It would certainly add another level of realism - you couldn't get away from the fact that a battle was fought here not too long ago. In fact, you could turn the ruins into collectible stone, just like the temple ruins on one of the maps (I think). Little caches of food and gold would also fit in naturally with a destroyed city and a spoiling army.

Sweet! Someday I'll spend some time looking into the finer points of life, like AI scripting and game modding How close is the game language to C#? I've had all of one semester of programming, but it might be fun see how much I can understand of how the game really works. I am only capable of blendering and playing right now

First off, I have no idea how hard it would be to implement any of this! However, I think spetsnaz' idea is great - you don't necessarily have to animate the person leaving the building, but you could show a short, generic animation inside the building. It's one of those little features that make people go "wow!" when they play the game - like running units and people on walls. Stronghold has little animations inside buildings, and it brings a little more life and a little less "same old RTS" in the game. But, of course, it's easy to sit here and contemplate features that I don't know how to make anyway

Great! Running units will be awesome. And guys on walls will be too, even if its a little different - more like garrisoning a guy in a wall, I assume. Here's a random idea I came up with (somewhat related to units modifying terrain): units that are capable of changing the "passability" of ground, like on a mountain. For example, I was just playing a multi-player game with my brother where I wanted to perch a fort on a mountain right above his town. nice idea, but the way to get on the mountain was on his side, not mine, so I couldn't get any guys up there without being seen. If there was a unit that could go ahead of my builders and put some spikes into the side of the mountain, I could have gone and built my fortress. Or if there was simply a unit that could climb and build - he could go to the top and build the fort. Or there could be a hero unit that allows any unit near it to climb up a mountain (any famous mountain-climbing generals? Hannibal maybe?). I'd better stop there - I have too many ideas and no capability of implementing them

I definitely like the idea of roads - Rome invested quite a bit in roads, and they could play a significant role in a campaign. Speaking of units on walls, is that going to be implemented? I think you would almost double the interest in the game. Well, maybe not that much, but tons of people are interested in being able to use walls like they are supposed to be used - height advantage, defend from both sides, not just one. Speaking of roads and walking on walls, if there are going to be people on walls, the walls should be a type of road themselves, since, I believe, they were used as roads. I think the Great Wall is an example of this, but I'm not sure. And while we are speaking of speed, are units going to be able to run? I thought the first alpha or an earlier version had units that ran when you double-clicked. Is that still in planning as well?

I don't know if it's worth the trouble, but one application of villagers modding terrain could be the Romans building their camps - they could dig a ditch around the wall. You could also build a dirt bank to protect your city, and to place archers on for a height advantage. ... now you've got me thinking - how hard would it be to make it possible to roll large stones down hills (man-made or not) to ambush enemies? That would be awesome! Modding terrain with the water plane idea could also produce water-filled moats, assuming the water level was close to the terrain level.

I agree. Now that I think about it, even if a POW decided to switch sides, he would never serve in the army against his former nation, and at best would become some sort of civilian, which is essentially the same as a slave anyway, in terms of what civilians do in 0ad. So it's probably not worth the hassle to make a difference.

I like the idea of POWs. I think Close Combat: A Bridge Too Far uses POWs. It would be neat if you could capture your enemy's soldiers, and then you could keep them in a compound and try to convert them, by using priests like in AOE except longer. Once they are converted, they are yours to use. Then, when the enemy tries to rescue them, he can't rescue the ones who are already "converted" to your nation because they are completely yours, but he can regain control of his own units like gaia units in AOE or animals - if he gets close enough, they become his again. Maybe it could be implemented by counting the number of friendly units vs enemy units in a specific unit's LOS, and then use something like pathfinding to see if there is a way out. If there is no way out, and there are no friendly units, and many enemies, the unit becomes "capturable" by the enemy, who can control him, but must keep him in their LOS to ensure that he doesn't run away again.

I like the idea of knowing how many of each unit I have. Maybe the UI could show a medium size icon for each type (infantry, cavalry, siege) or each unit (different types of infantry, cavalry or siege equipment). I like omicron's idea of showing additional information. Maybe you could show total attacking power (add up all attack) or attacking power vs types of units (780 attack if against horses, 500 attack if against infantry). Maybe that's unusual, but it might be a good benchmark to determine quickly where your troop's talents are. Continuing on that thought, maybe a little graphic could show the same thing, but make it easier and quicker to see.

Thanks I did figure out that I can open the map in the game, and look at it, but screenshots there aren't turning out correctly for me. Oh well, at least I get to look at my city every once in a while.

I'm all for anything that makes gameplay more unique and realistic. Are you thinking of an area on the map, or just a building? I think you'd have to have an area, to allow them to rebel if you entered it. If you wanted them to pay tribute, they could send shipments to your village. Maybe on a wagon that isn't yours until it reaches your market, so the enemy can steal it if they are watchful. Maybe you could get a notice when the wagon is ready to leave your vassal nation. And if you wanted them to supply soldiers, they could build soldiers and send them to you the same way, so that they aren't yours until they reach you safely. An even more complex version might have a negotiation, where you set certain conditions based on the description given of the barbarian group (some more submissive, others ready to fight over a certain action) so that you craft a unique treaty. If you fail to make the correct treaty, you have to either destroy them all or risk having them harry you until you can conquer them again. If you treated them well, they might even become an ally. Its certainly an interesting idea, imo, but i suppose everything depends on how easily it is implemented in the code.