Alpha3 - What do you all think?

[Pureon]

I had no idea Alpha 3 was so close to release, I must say for such a short period the new updates and features are impressive.

The game menus are excellent, both the starting screens and the summary screen look great and provide the user with interesting information. Huge improvement from Alpha1!

The new maps show a clear progression from the first Alpha, they are very appealing visually and strategically. The inclusion of circular maps is very welcome, not many games offer different shaped maps - It’ll be interesting to see how much flexibility we’ll get with map shapes in the future. It’s a shame the AI isn’t functioning yet because I’d really like to test the maps out properly, not just marvel at the eyecandy!

The new ships, of which there are more in this release than old ones, are very impressive too. No I’m not talking about the ships I created, but the ships from the Roman and Persian factions that have been released with this Alpha. They show a glimpse of the quality we can expect from the other factions - find these new ships dotted around some of the new maps.

Adding resource shuttling has answered the question ‘where do all the materials go?’, and reminds me of the good old Age of Empires system. Shuttling has added an extra level of depth to the game - now resource buildings are required near to resources or units end up walking long distances back to base.

Plus you can now garrison units inside outposts and fortresses which shoot at the enemy! Amazing

Alpha 3 sunk my ship! I would have spent more time on the hull textures had I known

What does everyone else think?

[SMST]

The new menus are gorgeous yet functional, though they don't have a consistent art style yet. I agree with you about the ships (and look out for siege engines, there are actors included that give a glimpse of what we might expect in the future!)

The ressource shuttling is nice, but that also means that the team abandoned the game concept of gathering auras - or if not so, please correct me.

The garrisoning is probably the greatest new feature in my opinion, because it adds more strategical depth to the game. Now the tower buildings serve a purpose at last. Ships are now useful too, in that they both attack and transport units over water.

So ... with Cebereus I may try 0 A.D. Multiplayer, eventually. Anyone who likes to have a little match with a total noob in regards of online matches?

[Pureon]

The ressource shuttling is nice, but that also means that the team abandoned the game concept of gathering auras - or if not so, please correct me.

Both methods have positives and negatives, I can't really choose between them. I'm happy with resource shuttling, unless gathering auras are added later and prove more entertaining.

I would play against you in a multiplayer match, but like the vast majority of RTS gamers I only play singleplayer

[SMST]

Both methods have positives and negatives, I can't really choose between them. I'm happy with resource shuttling, unless gathering auras are added later and prove more entertaining.

I was quite happy with the aura thing, because it would fit my ideas for ARCHÉ better, where I wanted to introduce "Mine" and "Oil Derrick" buildings, which would have given the player access to the respective ressources in the area around the buildings. It's kinda hard to justify citizens gathering oil via shuttling.^^

I would play against you in a multiplayer match, but like the vast majority of RTS gamers I only play singleplayer

I played AoK online with some friends once or twice. That put aside, I am also a singleplayer person.

[Ykkrosh]

The problem I had personally with the gathering aura concept is that I couldn't see how to make it really clear to players. If they tell their people to gather some trees and it just pops up an error message saying "Sorry, you need to build a wood dropsite within an unspecified distance of these trees before I'll let you gather them" then that's not much fun. If they build a dropsite and the units chop down all the trees within range, and then stand around idle for five minutes because all the remaining trees are one tile too far away, without the player even noticing, then that's not much fun either. Shuttling is much easier for new players (since they don't have to bother creating any dropsites at all, it'll just get shuttled back to their civ center and take longer), and also it's easier for players to learn more advanced strategy (if they see their units are taking 30 seconds to return resources then the advantages of building a dropsite are immediately and visually very obvious), and we don't need to add any artificial graphical effects to represent maximum ranges or gathering efficiencies or anything.

Nobody seemed to strongly disagree with that, so that's what we've got for now . And now that we've got it, I think it makes the game look more dynamic and alive and interesting, with the units constantly moving around by themselves, which is nice.

(As far as I could tell, the main reason for the original gathering aura concept (~7 years ago) was to save on pathfinding cost. But pathfinding is pretty cheap in this case, since the units are sparse and rarely colliding (unlike e.g. combat which is much more expensive), so I don't think that's a relevant reason.)

If you have ideas of how to solve the problem of making resource auras clear to users, it probably shouldn't be technically hard to implement them as an alternative to the shuttling system.