0 A.D's Built-in Encyclopedia

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

You probably have to contribute knowing that your work can be used and remixed at-will. 

[ShadowOfHassen]

9 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

You probably have to contribute knowing that your work can be used and remixed at-will. 

I'm fine with that. But the attribution and distinction of CC BY-SA 4.0 is useful so any of those remixes (if they're factually incorrect) don't look bad on 0 A.D.

[Vantha]

War Over the Heavenly Horses

https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/95

Quote

In the second century BC, the Han had a big problem: a nomadic people called Xiognu, who inhabited the lands north of the Han dynasty, were continuously raiding the border regions. For almost a century, the Han were forced to send massive tributes to the Xiognu to keep the peace. However, the Xiognu kept pillaging nonetheless. But why didn't the powerful Han military just fight them? Well, they had tried. But the Xiognu fought off their horses, and the Han infantry and chariots proved simply too slow to chase them.

Only Emperor Wu decided to finally put an end to it and declare war on the Xiognu. And to counter the Xiognu horsemen, he planned to raise a big cavalry force himself. There was only one problem: one of the few natural resources that the mighty Han dynasty lacked were powerful horses suitable for cavalry warfare. Local breeds were simply too small and weak. And large parts of the Empire were everything but ideal for horses grazing.

But the news Zhang Qian brought came in very convenient: Zhang Qian was a Han envoy who had been on a decade-long journey exploring the unknown Western lands. He, among others, also came to Greco-Bactria. Greco-Bactria was, because Alexander the Great had conquered this region and established colonies there not even 200 years prior, inhabited by predecessors of Alexander's soldiers, hence by Greeks. And Zhang Qian reported seeing extremely strong horses there—exactly what the Han needed. The horses he had seen were the mystical breed of so-called Ferghana horses. They were comparably small and had short legs, but they were very fast, powerful, and endurable. They were even said to have sweated blood. In fact, Zhang Qian was so thrilled by the Ferghana horses that he called them “Heavenly Horses”.

Emperor Wu immediately sent an envoy, trying to buy some horses. However, the Greeks declined and killed the envoy. It is not entirely sure why, but the Ferghana horses were probably considered national pride and not to be sold. Emperor Wu then sent an army of 20.000 infantry and 6.000 cavalry to take the horses by force. However, to get to Greco-Bactria, the army had to traverse the hostile Gobi and Taklamakan deserts. They also got into fights with the local Tocharians. And although the army eventually arrived at its target, it was very decimated and forced to withdraw back to China. Emperor Wu subsequently sent out an even larger army to attack Greco-Bactria. This time consisting of 60.000 infantry and 30.000 cavalry and taking over 100.000 cattle to avoid the food shortages faced during the first attempt. However, they still suffered high casualties during the trip, and upon arriving had lost every second soldier. Despite that, the Han managed to defeat the Greeks and seize 3.000 of the desired horses. The journey back to China was no easy one as well. The Han lost a large portion of the Heavenly Horses, and only every tenth soldier made it through the entire expedition.

Although it had cost thousands of lives plus a lot of time and money, the Han had finally acquired the Ferghana horses, bred them, and used them for their cavalry. And it paid off: the Ferghana horses were even superior to the Xiognu's, and after decades of fighting, the Han defeated the Xiognu and secured their borders and passage to the West.

Also the dynasties following the Han made high use of the Ferghana horses. However, today this breed is, over the course of time, sadly thought to have become extinct.

 

[ShadowOfHassen]

5 minutes ago, Vantha said:

War Over the Heavenly Horses

https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/95

 

We decided that this text really doesn't have a place with any of the units, but because @Vantha put the work in, we decided to add it in an unused file in the base part of the encyclopedia repository.

 

However, I recently had an idea, once the article is tidied up a bit, what if it was used as a sort of promotional trailer? If someone read it aloud and someone else gave it clips of the game, it might be an interesting thing to show off what the game looks like.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, Vantha said:

War Over the Heavenly Horses

https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/95

 

 

1 hour ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

We decided that this text really doesn't have a place with any of the units, but because @Vantha put the work in, we decided to add it in an unused file in the base part of the encyclopedia repository.

 

This could definitely go into the Encyclopedia under the "Historical Background" section of wars and battles.

 

For instance, here's an article graphic for a potential "Battle of the Hydaspes" encyclopedia article:

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Still iterating and improving things. I was thinking that you could see all of the stats if you hover over the unit portrait, either in a large tooltip, or the portrait swaps out and you see the stats. 

 

[fabio]

On 29/12/2023 at 12:53 AM, ShadowOfHassen said:

I agree that 0 A.D. shouldn't kill itself (they do need to keep the servers online), however, if some of the money was invested in the game so that it's good enough to post on steam, we could get a large enough player base that fundraisers might be easier. Besides with inflation (which I think is happening everywhere) 0 A.D.'s only loosing money.

 

I'll look forward to seeing the yearly report.

There are some reports here: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/forum/419-treasury-committee/

[fabio]

The last report from SPI is here: https://www.spi-inc.org/treasurer/reports/202311/#index23h4

We are rich!

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

6 hours ago, fabio said:

The last report from SPI is here: https://www.spi-inc.org/treasurer/reports/202311/#index23h4

We are rich!

I didn't realize SPI had so many projects under its wing. While 0ad doesn't have the most in its treasury, it's one of the top projects in the list. Debian has $600,000+ cash on hand, while some projects are in the negative.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

 

I was able to upscale the original 256x256 unit portrait.

[Vantha]

What software did you use for upscaling?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

imagine.art to get a 768x768 AI enhance version, which I then upscaled to 1024x1024 on a random website to see if it was possible: https://www.iloveimg.com/upscale-image

 

 

EDIT: I actually used the helmet from the original image superimposed on the imagine.art output image. The helmet in-game was more accurate than what the AI rendered. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

7 hours ago, Vantha said:

What software did you use for upscaling?

Upscaled these (without passing through imagine.art first):

 

(Ramming Ships, coming soon!):

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

23 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

 

In this one, I decided that the idea of hovering over the portrait to see the stats was kind of gimmicky and not intuitive. Instead, I hit upon a scrollbar method to fit whatever we needed into the section next to the portrait. So now there's no limit to how many statistics and other information we can put there (as little or as much as is deemed necessary or requested by players). Now, hovering over the portrait could just give the template's tooltip as in-game, consistent behavior. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

A civilization page:

[Vantha]

Hi everyone, I have got a suggestion:

Let's redefine the encyclopedia's goal, not writing an article about every unit, building, etc., but instead writing enough articles so every unit, building, etc. can be linked to at least one article. 

For example: There is not much to say specifically about Han sword cavalry, however, there is much interesting information about the swords they used, about Han cavalry in general, and maybe about the breeding of the cavalry's mounts. 

So, instead of writing a text about these exact cavalry swordsmen, I could write about the topics I just mentioned in the example which are way more interesting.

And yes, I know that I've to some degree already been doing this. But if the encyclopedia ends up outside of only the unit or building overview in-game, then each article will need a title. And for example, the text for the stable  describes that civ's cavalry in general. And I find it misleading and simply wrong to title this text 'stables' since the text is not actually mentioning stables themselves.

I know this might seem irrelevant, but it's really not for me. That would give me more freedom, I could eloborate further and entirely leave out what would have been plain and boring texts anyway.

And it would only affect only about 10% of units or buildings, and nothing needs to be redone to to fit this new goal.

And we can of course still store the texts in the unit's or building's game file that will eventually link to the exact text in the encyclopedia.

 

Do you get what I mean? What do you think?

[Grautvornix]

@Vantha sounds like a good proposal to me!
(especially since it appears to be rather difficult avoiding to double information (stable and various cavalry types might all refer to the horse breed etc.)

It may make much more sense to provide the texts and then hyperlink to them what ever applies ( so stabels will link, sword cavalry might also link to the horse breed, but also to the sword technology they used).

Wonder how we could organise these links? Do the texts themselves, then in a second round verify all units refer to something, and then edit the referring page with some text connecting the various fragments pointed to?

Just thinking aloud...

[ShadowOfHassen]

57 minutes ago, Vantha said:

Hi everyone, I have got a suggestion:

Let's redefine the encyclopedia's goal, not writing an article about every unit, building, etc., but instead writing enough articles so every unit, building, etc. can be linked to at least one article. 

For example: There is not much to say specifically about Han sword cavalry, however, there is much interesting information about the swords they used, about Han cavalry in general, and maybe about the breeding of the cavalry's mounts. 

So, instead of writing a text about these exact cavalry swordsmen, I could write about the topics I just mentioned in the example which are way more interesting.

And yes, I know that I've to some degree already been doing this. But if the encyclopedia ends up outside of only the unit or building overview in-game, then each article will need a title. And for example, the text for the stable  describes that civ's cavalry in general. And I find it misleading and simply wrong to title this text 'stables' since the text is not actually mentioning stables themselves.

I know this might seem irrelevant, but it's really not for me. That would give me more freedom, I could eloborate further and entirely leave out what would have been plain and boring texts anyway.

And it would only affect only about 10% of units or buildings, and nothing needs to be redone to to fit this new goal.

And we can of course still store the texts in the unit's or building's game file that will eventually link to the exact text in the encyclopedia.

 

Do you get what I mean? What do you think?

In my mind, the encyclopedia articles are supposed to. A. Enlighten the player on the unit/building, and  (B) Illuminate the unit's use. (Give some hint on what the unit/ building is supposed to do.)

 

If there isn't anything specifically fascinating about the unit, you write something generic like what was does with walls, treasures or storehouses.

Yes, you can at the moment write articles about more interesting things and put them in the unit descriptions, but eventually, all of that should probably be turned into extra linked information. For example, you have a short paragraph on the Han sword Calvary and have links off to the swords and the horse breeding.

[Vantha]

14 hours ago, Grautvornix said:

Wonder how we could organise these links? Do the texts themselves, then in a second round verify all units refer to something, and then edit the referring page with some text connecting the various fragments pointed to?

Here's how I would do it: We still go through all units and buildings one by one writing texts about them. And if there isn't enough unique information about one and no text written already that it could be linked to, we write such text. This way we can ensure every unit or building can refer to an article in the end.

And I'd say if the best fitting title for a text differs from the unit or building in whose file it is stored, we add the new better fitting title as a comment. And I can do that for the texts already written too, it should not be too much work.

I think deciding what article each unit refers to, is best done after at least finishing the whole civilisation because many might be related to more than just one article.

And we also have to wait and see whether anyone can be found to turn @wowgetoffyourcellphone's great-looking mockups of the extra encyclopedia into reality.

I have some texts which implement what I suggested almost ready. I'll finish them in the next few days, then you'll also have an example for what I mean.

Edited January 6 by Vantha

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Articles in the mockups also don't have to have inline links. There could just be the Related Articles section on the right. 

[Vantha]

I was principally talking about the in-game unit overview referring to articles in the encyclopedia, less about articles referring to other articles. I personally would like inline links though.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, Vantha said:

I was principally talking about the in-game unit overview referring to articles in the encyclopedia, less about articles referring to other articles. I personally would like inline links though.

I was thinking the Template Viewer could have a button at the bottom that opens the Encyclopedia article for that object. And then maybe vice-versa if you'd like to see the nitty gritty statistics.

[Stan`]

Don't think we support inline links. Most of the time we use buttons for that. And you have to warn people they are leaving the game. Also internationalization might be troublesome.

[Vantha]

What I'm picturing is the articles of the encyclopedia referencing each other. No external links.

If that is really not possible, linking to related encyclopedia articles at the bottom and of the page seems good enough as well.

[ShadowOfHassen]

50 minutes ago, Vantha said:

What I'm picturing is the articles of the encyclopedia referencing each other. No external links.

If that is really not possible, linking to related encyclopedia articles at the bottom and of the page seems good enough as well.

Yeah, there wouldn't be external links, but internal links should be easy. The links as basically really tiny buttons that go with the text.