Wall Creation

[feneur]

Just wondering, what makes units on walls so hard to put in?

One of the bigger things is that the game terrain is essentially 2D, and to get the units on walls to work properly you will have to work around that. It should be a lot easier to add than e.g. ships going under bridges though (as units would in such a case have to exist at the same spot if there is a unit on the bridge and a ship underneath at the same time, and that will of course make pathfinding harder), so at least in a later version it should be possible. Just adding the possibility for units to be on walls and walk around on walls shouldn't be too difficult, but that on it's own isn't really much more than a visual effect (it's effect is more or less the same as towers apart from perhaps that you can move the untis around). For units on walls to really have an effect on gameplay there needs to be the possibility for units getting onto and off the walls in a multitude of ways, most importantly via siege ladders and siege towers, and that is probably what adds the most difficulties as far as I know. Especially if you want it to be more interactive than e.g. "garrisoning" the units from the siege tower to the wall or something, actually having units moving from the ground, up a ladder, and onto the wall, would take a lot more. (And of course would need new animations.)

[FeXoR]

Depends on what you favor most: capturing or destroying.

Will the player be able to capture garrisoned buildings? If not it's destroying anyways.

Besides civil centers and fortresses and maybe towers the player don't have to destroy anything. It will fall apart on it's own.

Is there a link where the capturing feature is explained in detail?

[oshron]

There are various methods of doing that. We just haven't settled on one yet.

perhaps some civs could have "smooth" walls and others dont?

Right, we hope to alter the basic unit AI so that soldiers will not attack walls. You'll need siege weapons for that. Right now to kind of encourage this behavior I made walls bloody difficult to kill with swords and arrows, so you wouldn't want to attack them with your soldiers even though you can.

you could alternatively make it so that most citizen-soldiers and other units are simply incapable of attacking walls

[Mythos_Ruler]

you could alternatively make it so that most citizen-soldiers and other units are simply incapable of attacking walls

Yes, that'll be what we do in the end.

[tribalbeat]

The new Celtic and Iberian walls look so good.

[nu111]

approximately, when the new wall system is goig to appear in the Dev Snapshot Repos?

https://launchpad.net/~wfg/+archive/0ad.dev

[feneur]

approximately, when the new wall system is goig to appear in the Dev Snapshot Repos?

https://launchpad.net/~wfg/+archive/0ad.dev

Probably the next time it's updated =) Hopefully it should be added to SVN today/tomorrow, and then it will be added to the dev PPA as soon as that's updated

[madmax]

Yep its been rushing me a bit too much too !

[vts]

I've committed the wall patch in revision 11760. Feel free to playtest it and report any bugs you may find

[vts]

why palisade costs stone? costs 30 stone and 30 wood

The templates still need tweaking. I left that up to the people who are more knowledgeable about these things.

where are gates into palisade?

why are hard to close

Gates are not part of this commit. They will be added at a later time.

[MishFTW]

I've committed the wall patch in revision 11760. Feel free to playtest it and report any bugs you may find

Thanks dude

[Mythos_Ruler]

why palisade costs stone? costs 30 stone and 30 wood

where are gates into palisade?

why are hard to close

I've rebalanced wall and palisade costs. Update and try them out.

Gates will come in Alpha 11 or 12. For now, you just have to be creative with your "entryways", like this....

[vts]

You can also make a makeshift gate by deleting a wall segment

[Mythos_Ruler]

You can also make a makeshift gate by deleting a wall segment

Yep, that's basically what I did.

[madmax]

WOW!!...I just tried the wall feature !!

What can I say...you guys just continue to do awesome work everyday !

Knowing a bit about the history of this game and your efforts at least since 2006, to get this long awaited feature in the game finally, its most inspiring.

I just know there are some great things to come !

The only reason I ever began following 0AD was because it was impossible to modify the original AOK Genie engine and to have more complex strategies. Well I guess now that

we have proper walls, its time to start off with scripting

Awesome stuff !!

Edited May 6, 2012 by madmax

[madmax]

Yes I won my first game today. Didnt need the walls much finally, apparently a big army was enough. But qbot almost had me, expanding right up to my doorstep and squeezing me into a small patch. I thought it gave up too soon. Apparently it ran out of food ! Was getting these yellow lines near the top left saying "No food resource found !!" . But I ran out too. Then I made fields!!

Doesnt qbot know about fields ?

By the way, the lag issue wasnt really an issue this time. I was playing Arcadia with 1 qbot. The game lagged only once and I knew that was when qbot was about to attack me !!

AOK used to have an alert whenever an unit got attacked. Is it possible in 0 AD?

Edited May 6, 2012 by madmax

[Patricius]

Right, we hope to alter the basic unit AI so that soldiers will not attack walls. You'll need siege weapons for that. Right now to kind of encourage this behavior I made walls bloody difficult to kill with swords and arrows, so you wouldn't want to attack them with your soldiers even though you can.

Historically soldiers could sometimes attack walls, say Norse warriors with their heavy axes could hack at a cheaply made rubble course stone wall.

[feneur]

Historically soldiers could sometimes attack walls, say Norse warriors with their heavy axes could hack at a cheaply made rubble course stone wall.

Hmm, I would be very surprised if they would dull their axes by hacking away at a stone wall. Either way, for gameplay reasons it's better to separate unit roles a bit, so you have to use all kinds of units to properly defeat your enemy. Not giving ordinary soldiers the ability to attack walls should also make walls more worth building, since the enemy will have to use siege weapons to take them down. And siege weapons are both more expensive and slower, so the walls will actually make some difference since the enemy can't just throw a bunch of ordinary units against them

AOK used to have an alert whenever an unit got attacked. Is it possible in 0 AD?

We do intend to include such a feature yeah, it is not included yet though.

[feneur]

Testing a bit, and as far as I can tell I can only build one stretch of wall at a time (at least with palisades), i.e. to make the wall go in another angle I need to start anew, or am I missing something? (I am using the autobuilt exe and revision 11775 if that makes any difference) Shouldn't you be able to build walls going in new directions? I seem to recall seeing something like that in the videos as well, but I could be wrong, or am just not doing it the right way =) The way I'd imagine things should work would be Left click to place first wall tower, drag to determine length of straight wall segment, left click to end straight segment, continue to do the same or right-click to cancel the construction. That's based on how I remember other games doing it though

[leper]

Press shift to keep building.

[feneur]

Press shift to keep building.

Ah, doh That makes some sense, so I wonder why I didn't think of it. I guess it is because walls, or at least one "wall building session", feels like one building to me and I associate shift with constructing multiple buildings. I'll have to test it to see what it truly feels like, but at least conceptually it does sounds a bit cumbersome to have to press the shift key. That will have to be tomorrow though, don't have time tonight.

[fabio]

Good to see the new wall system

Some suggestions (I quickly tried only the palisade):

1. 100% agree to remove the SHIFT key for continuing walls. With the left/right click it requires no instructions and everyone can find it;
   
2. FIXED in alpha 10 I noticed that foundations are larger than the actual wall (continuing over the limiting towers);
   
3. I like the "snap" to connect a wall to another with a tower. However, also due to previous issue, I was able to create a wall with two tower very near one to the other. Interestingly, the space between them was to low to let units pass through, but, funnily, my units and enemy units could fight in between ! Maybe it just would better to use a higher "snap" distance to avoid these "holes";
   
4. it would be nice to have an indicator somewhat that let you know if the wall are "connected" (either with walls only or also with mountains).
   

Edited May 11, 2012 by fabio

[plumo]

The wall system is neat

Just one minor, trivial thing: change the foundation of palissades (now there are a lot of stone bricks) to only contain wood elements.

I almost feel bad writing this down , so trivial

[WhiteTreePaladin]

100% agree to remove the SHIFT key for continuing walls. With the left/right click it requires no instructions and everyone can find it

Why remove Shift click? There are a lot of hot keys for adanced players, no need to remove them just because new players are not aware of them.

Also, not sure how right click is involved with Shift click. Right click just cancels the command.

So, I don't really understand.

[Edit]

Also, you should be able to hold shift down the entire time.

Did AoK even have a way to continue walls?

[LmScar13]

Did AoK even have a way to continue walls?

AoK did not, but AoM and AoE3 (as well as some other games) both used the shift-to-continue-building method.

Personally, I like the way it is now (shift-clicking).

Edited May 7, 2012 by LmScar13