Hello, and a little bit of feedback

[Corbo]

I discovered, downloaded and played your game. I'm very glad I did that.

I only played for a couple of hours in solo mode. This is a first impressions list.

- First, it compiled and ran flawlessly on Fedora 14. Rare enough for that kind of project that it's worth congratulating the people who made that so.

- Then, straight from the menu, it's gorgeous. I didn't expect that. The game definitely has what it takes to attract players, and developers. The level of detail is captivating. So is the life on the maps: the units, animals, water, plants... even the mines look great.

- The music is absolutely on par. I disable music in 99% of the games, because it's annoying or distracting. Here I didn't even look for a volume control. It was just perfect, all the time.

- Playing was easy. The introduction text was enough. I didn't need a tutorial. All I needed was to change the opponent's AI (I was still only reading building descriptions when qBot almost wiped me, which it did with a second wave about 3 minutes later). I may have inherited bases from my very few past-played RTS games, yet I think you're doing great when it comes to simplicity. Few resources, no separate weapons making, no starvation, few figures to watch, less micro-management, and that's all good.

- I don't know if this will be a game for me; maybe too war-orientated for my taste. Yet building was enjoyable. And it offers fortifications, so it may be a game for me after all. I just love to build walled cities and defend them under siege. Your system, with its rotation of buildings and walls, is the best thing that I know of. No more rectangular orderly towns. What's next ? Walls on slopes ?

- You've got giraffes ! It doesn't matter if your fauna is geographically accurate or not. Having such beautiful camelopards roaming your maps will attract loads of players.

In short, I can't compliment you enough for this little jewel you're cutting. I quickly forgot that this is only an alpha version. I already rank it higher than many finished games. Truly impressive.

Now I'll mention a few flaws I noticed, so that I can pretend to be a little bit useful. Note that I don't know anything about the game status, your road map, etc. It will take me weeks to browse your forum.

- My only serious problem was readability. It starts from the introduction screens, where everything is white on black. Beautiful, but it made my eyes sore, even on a 37" screen. In the maps, a lot to read also, and it's all very small. Please do not forget the "visually challenged". Fortunately, the trouble only lies at the bottom of the screen. Font size options would be great; a pre-set of background/font colours even better.

- Path finding isn't perfect. I built a wall, 10 contiguous sections long, not linear. Units couldn't walk around it and got stuck at the base of the wall, until I deleted 1 section at the end of their awareness circle.

- Rotated walls don't adjust well to towers. Perhaps a wall template could automatically anchor itself to a fortification when it exists, and rotate around this anchor ? Then graphical adjustment of the overlap ? Anyway, it's the only visual imperfection that I've seen, along with a tiny gap between 2 walls.

- Persian units show their Persian names. Therefore I had to constantly go back to the correct buildings to be reminded what they mean. I commend the purist approach, but still disliked it.

Things that surprised me:

- I sent a couple of women to milk goats. Lovely. Then, when the goats died, they just went around killing every chicken they could find. I stopped them before I ran out of egg-makers. Joke aside, I'd expect that there will be an option to recreate farm animals automatically, to avoid micro-management. Or even better: creation of males that don't provide any food but make the species reproduce automatically.

- Enemies kill absolutely everybody and destroy buildings and farms. Well, no conqueror does that. I hope the game will become more conquest and assimilation than destruction. Use of slaves to various degrees according to the factions would be brilliant.

- I had a dozen guys idling in the oasis, and one of them died. That was a lion's doing. I checked more closely: nobody but the victim moved when it happened again, either in aggressive, violent or defensive mode. I guess the feature is not there yet. Still, I had the lion killed by a large warship, and that's something I don't see everyday.

- Indeed, I had a giant warship built in a pond. Don't forget to find a way to disable that in the future.

Some suggestions:

- Add kids and elders to the city. Just for the added life. They aren't units but still show your colours. They do their own stuff, which isn't much, but run and hide when enemies attack.

- Give us a speed adjustment in solo mode. Not everyone can give 50 orders per minute. darn that qBot was fast !

- Make a building where idle people automatically go back to, so that we can see them. Or use existing buildings like the bazaar or whatever.

- Let us create a cemetery area. Populate it with dead units. Even if you don't find any practical benefit for it, it will look cool.

- The most important resource of all is absent: water. It may be included in food, but it would make for nice buildings by itself.

For more suggestions, I'll wait until after I've read the forum. I bet I've said more than enough known things already.

That's it, for now. I just wanted to give you props really. And, for what it's worth, it's something I do at best once every 5 years, being a very busy, hard to impress, internet-lazy and condescending old fart. Props. Props. Props.

[Guest afeder]

I actually agree that roaming kids/elders would be a nice touch. I don't really feel welcome in my own cities because everyone is working so darn hard I feel bad just sitting around gaming Edited December 28, 2011 by afeder

[kubrat]

Welcome to the forum!

Try playing on a bigger map with only one opponent. That way you'll have enough time to build up your city before he comes.

Right now when you destroy the town hall of the enemy and their boundary decreases, the buildings that were placed there, slowly self destruct. But in the future if they happen to fall within your boundary they'll convert to your side.

There is an Idle worker button where the minimap is.

[quantumstate]

- Path finding isn't perfect. I built a wall, 10 contiguous sections long, not linear. Units couldn't walk around it and got stuck at the base of the wall, until I deleted 1 section at the end of their awareness circle.

Pathfinding is being redone by Philip which should increase performance significantly and solve things like this.

- Rotated walls don't adjust well to towers. Perhaps a wall template could automatically anchor itself to a fortification when it exists, and rotate around this anchor ? Then graphical adjustment of the overlap ? Anyway, it's the only visual imperfection that I've seen, along with a tiny gap between 2 walls.

Wall placement should be made more sophisticated with a line of wall segments being easily placeable, this should sort out this problem.

- I sent a couple of women to milk goats. Lovely. Then, when the goats died, they just went around killing every chicken they could find. I stopped them before I ran out of egg-makers. Joke aside, I'd expect that there will be an option to recreate farm animals automatically, to avoid micro-management. Or even better: creation of males that don't provide any food but make the species reproduce automatically.

If you search for 'corral' on the forums/wiki then you should find some info about plans for domestic animals.

- Enemies kill absolutely everybody and destroy buildings and farms. Well, no conqueror does that. I hope the game will become more conquest and assimilation than destruction. Use of slaves to various degrees according to the factions would be brilliant.

Capturing of buildings/units is another panned but unimplemented feature

- I had a dozen guys idling in the oasis, and one of them died. That was a lion's doing. I checked more closely: nobody but the victim moved when it happened again, either in aggressive, violent or defensive mode. I guess the feature is not there yet.

This should be fixed sometime.

- Indeed, I had a giant warship built in a pond. Don't forget to find a way to disable that in the future.

I don't see any problems with a warship in a pond myself, though it might be worth looking at having a minimum required depth for warships.

- Give us a speed adjustment in solo mode. Not everyone can give 50 orders per minute. darn that qBot was fast !

The functionality for this is already in the game, it just need to be exposed to the UI, it will be an option implemented at some point. For now you can open the console (F9) and type Engine.SetSimRate(0.8) where 0.8 means 0.8 times normal speed. I have noticed some slightly odd behaviour sometimes in this mode though.

- Add kids and elders to the city. Just for the added life. They aren't units but still show your colours. They do their own stuff, which isn't much, but run and hide when enemies attack.

- Let us create a cemetery area. Populate it with dead units. Even if you don't find any practical benefit for it, it will look cool.

This is unlikely to be implemented, because it is just eyecandy so is low priority and will decrease performance and increase the chance of bugs.

- Make a building where idle people automatically go back to, so that we can see them. Or use existing buildings like the bazaar or whatever.

There is an idle worker button next to the minimap, this will show you an idle worker. Automatically having idle units wander away from where you left them would be very annoying for me.

[Jeru]

Thanks for your detailed feedback and kind words, Corbo!

Many of the points you raise are going to be addressed in future alphas. Pathfinding is under heavy development at the moment. Other stuff like GUI legbility is something we can always learn and and improve upon, so thanks for that, we will look into it.

We have talked about kids in 0 A.D., they might be added as eye candy for scenarios just for fun. Ditto elders, if an artist wants to model an elderly person, a race car or a dinosaur, it will happen. Static objects like tombstones are easy and likely to be added in the game or modded into it by the community.

(BTW, elders were pretty rare before the industrial revolution, AFAIK. People in their 40's and 50's were considered elders in ancient times.)

[historic_bruno]

Glad you like the progress we've made

- I don't know if this will be a game for me; maybe too war-orientated for my taste.

There are some economic features like trade that are planned and we don't have true diplomacy yet, and of course our only game type is conquest, but anyway I think warfare will be unavoidable in 0 A.D.

Your system, with its rotation of buildings and walls, is the best thing that I know of. No more rectangular orderly towns. What's next ? Walls on slopes ?

- Rotated walls don't adjust well to towers. Perhaps a wall template could automatically anchor itself to a fortification when it exists, and rotate around this anchor ? Then graphical adjustment of the overlap ? Anyway, it's the only visual imperfection that I've seen, along with a tiny gap between 2 walls.

Really... most people find it cumbersome to place wall segments one at a time, I think we will actually implement an automatic system of wall placement, hopefully intuitive and working correctly. Something like click-and-drag and it will place wall segments in a connected line between the end points. There are several disadvantages to using walls right now.

- My only serious problem was readability. It starts from the introduction screens, where everything is white on black. Beautiful, but it made my eyes sore, even on a 37" screen. In the maps, a lot to read also, and it's all very small. Please do not forget the "visually challenged". Fortunately, the trouble only lies at the bottom of the screen. Font size options would be great; a pre-set of background/font colours even better.

We could do this with GUI styles, which are supported by the engine but not really used yet. Or we could implement some method of scaling the GUI up/down to user preference. Setting the resolution in full screen mode would work, but there should be a separate GUI setting, in my opinion. I don't experience readability problems, but I think the GUI should adjust nicely for wide screens.

- Persian units show their Persian names. Therefore I had to constantly go back to the correct buildings to be reminded what they mean. I commend the purist approach, but still disliked it.

My preference would be English names only or English in a large font with native names in a smaller, less visible font. Most of the time I have no idea what a unit or building is

[Mythos_Ruler]

My preference would be English names only or English in a large font with native names in a smaller, less visible font. Most of the time I have no idea what a unit or building is

I think in the meantime it should be relatively easy to switch the <GenericName> to the portrait panel and the <SpecificName> to the tool tip.

[Corbo]

Thanks all for your replies, tips and hints.

I've played some more, read the Trac and some forum threads. When it comes to 0AD, I'll soon know what I'm talking about.

Most of the bugs I've encountered so far are related to the pathfinder. Since you're redoing it at the moment, reporting them doesn't seem relevant. Do correct me if I should post them somewhere.

Regarding building walls, the best ergonomy is of course welcome. What's even better is if it keeps the advantage of segments building, i.e., if it takes a fair time to build and if a city is seen (and defended) while only partly fortified. It still should be built segment by segment, depending on the workforce, not pop up all at once when completed. Design as a (curved) line, then cut in short foundations, with a limited number of workers per segment...

So, you've got a great graphic engine, high quality art and sound, even great maps, an already very playable alpha, loads of cool projected features... I congratulate you again, and special cheers to the people who build AIs, for making a good, not predictable one is a tough, tough task.

Ok, time for me to leave this thread and use the proper ones.