Pureon

Welcome to the forums Marco. Hopefully in the next few months you'll get to play the game using the Iberian faction I agree that this project has something special about it, that's why after finding out it had been made opensource I decided to devote my own time to it.

So those stats are from people who have downloaded the svn version? Nice. Some newer cards getting owned by older ones

Welcome to the forums! Feel free to join in the discussions, your English is much better than my Italian

Philip, I have got to buy you a beer sometime. Fixing the jerky framerates is top of my wishlist, so even seeing the performance improvements from r8999 to r9001 makes me

The editor still needs a lot of work, selecting between circular, square, and rectangular maps is planned for the user interface. I wouldn't worry too much about map size, one of the maps i opened was bigger than any map I'd ever seen in an RTS, so it is possible. The limit will always be your computer, there's no fun in having a map so big that it's completely unplayable.

Defensive AI:

The autobuild's fixed it for me. Why does building pyrogenesis in visual studio now take about 10 seconds? It used to take a few minutes for me. Gameplay video? Cool!

Once Alpha4 is released hopefully we'll get more feedback about the AI, and we'll probably see a few more AI scripters show up once they've seen an AI is now functioning within the game. I've managed to create an AI that works independently from TestBot, cunningly named PureBot, so it's very possible for the community to experiment with what we have. Whilst watching TestBot in action, these were some random thoughts: 1) If food sources are nearby, such as animals or bushes, these should be gathered prior to multiple fields being built. 2) Field building should be limited to flat land, or we'll need to rethink how fields are modelled (can model props conform to landscape height?). Testbot was building fields on hilly terrain which didn't look very good. 3) Can AIs be given extra resources or have a resource gathering multiplier/limiter? (Cheating AI) 4) Soldier gatherers should aid in gathering resources until they are required to attack. Maybe only relevant when larger attacking forces are employed. PureBot had an attacking force of over 40 units, which meant it got very crowded around the AI's CC 5) Attack-move will have a big impact - It'll stop the attacking army being picked off all the way to the CC by long range units. 6) Running an AI on Miletus causes errors (Because the AI only has ships to start with). Perhaps Miletus shouldn't be the default choice map for Alpha4. I'll stop there

SupCom didn't support random maps, and it's maps were very open with fewer obstructions (because alien worlds are just dust with a few rocks ). A pathfinding algorithm is the best solution for 0AD, I shouldn't have even mentioned pathing nodes really.

The answer is very easily, most map designers kept it very simple or didn't even use AI pathing nodes making maps almost useless for singleplayer matches. It took a few years of testing. Alongside the pathing nodes, you also had defense markers, expansion markers, naval (port) markers, and island markers - so a lot of the singleplayer AI gameplay was pre-defined by the map designer for the AI to follow. As I said before, it didn't quite work...

Very interesting read. Pathfinding is way beyond my abilities, but after reading through your post twice the AOM method is starting to make sense now. Another approach used by some RTS games for medium-to-long range movement is to use predefined node networks. These nodes would be added by the map designer, probably using the map editor, to guide units around the map. A simple example looks like this: This type of pathfinding probably wouldn’t be very useful for 0AD, I don’t like it personally because I find it too linear, but it’s how Supreme Commander worked so I have some experience placing AI nodes. Short-range movement is a whole different story, as are random maps...

marsha, how's your AI going? If it's any good we might be able to release it with Alpha4 as an alternative to TestBot

It makes sense, but still completely unexpected. (Talking of orcs, I modded some into AOE3 many many years ago. No idea why...)

Devil999 must have known Ykkrosh has a soft spot for kittens

You're so nice to us I mostly mod AIs without ever reading any documentation (not that commercial releases come with AI documentation). I didn't poke around in the common-api files, just experimented with the testbot javascript to see how easy it was to mod. Any documentation should make it easier for experienced developers like yourself to expand the AI. Could someone like marsha develop the AI further using the current implementation, or is the AI system likely to change?

So Robot Entertainment are no longer working on AOEO... it's now being developed by GPG, the developers of Supreme Commander and lead by Chris Taylor, known for being a fan of AOE2. He also designed Total Annihilation, which alongside Age of Empires is one of my favourite games. http://www.ageofempiresonline.com/Articles/Blogs-2-24-2011.aspx

I can't wait to see community AI competitions once the AI system is nailed down

Looking good Quacker!

Great news Yves! Thanks for the update

Maybe not, but it's the future.

You'll get used to it Aldandil Any news on fixing the post formating buttons (like Bold, Italic etc.)?

I need to stop modelling and start committing (before you guys decide to ban me). Gone are the days when Mythos would commit things for me Eventually some of them could have operators, but for now these will all be static eyecandy objects without men or horses.

Some very simple eyecandy wagons based on reconstructions and archeological finds. I spent a few hours going from bookshop to bookshop yesterday evening because I had no idea how wagons looked/worked during 0AD

Hi All, thanks for posting!

Oops wrong game...