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0 A.D. 1.0 Planning


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First let me stress that this is just a preliminary discussion about one way forward, so don't think this is necessarily the only way forward. Also, please only comment if you are certain you can add something to the discussion, in this particular thread we're more or less only going to allow comments which say "I'm willing to commit to work on feature X and estimate I'd be ready to finish it by this date". If you want to discuss which approach is best or other related topics, but which are not part of the actual planning please start a new thread.

To be able to make a good decision about whether we should try and aim for part 1 within the foreseeable future or if we should wait a bit longer before deciding exactly what will go in the final version we would like to see where we would stand if we would only include features/improvements which we either already have or can have people commit to doing within a specified amount of time. This does not mean that these features would necessarily be the only features included, but that we would have to be ok with only these features being in the final game to go forward with this approach.

So, programmers (both in team and others who are prepared to commit to doing some work throughout the year), please post here what you estimate you are able to work on during the upcoming year or so. And please be reasonably conservative so we don't make a decision which then will have to be heavily revised just because you can't live up to what you've said you should be able to do (it's one thing if you can't say if you will be able to finish programming a certain feature in June or August, but a completely different one if you promise to do a certain amount of features until December but will not be able to complete half before March next year, so don't be afraid if you can't make a perfect estimate).

(This is mainly aimed at programmers as it's a lot easier/quicker to e.g. decide to cut an animal or two from the final game if we don't have animations for them - and it's a lot quicker to do the tasks as well, so it's not time to make a final decision on the rest of the game's content yet regardless of which approach we choose :) And also, this is just one of the possible ways forward as I said before, if we find that we cannot get to a good enough 1.0 this way/reach Beta within a year we'll continue as now and make a final decision later.)

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I should be able to commit the js debugger in the next two weeks and will focus on the spidermonkey upgrade after that.

It's impossible to make an accurate guess about how long this will take because I have no idea how much the API has changed.

I'm not even sure yet which version we should use.

There's some information here and here.

There are quite a lot of trivial API changes between mozjs185 and 188, although most are picked up by compiler errors or seg faults.

Every programmer knows that "trivial changes" can cause severe headaches. ;)

My conservative guess is that it will take 6 months but I'll make a more accurate estimate when I have done the first tests.

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Ok, but it should definitely be possible within a year then :)

And I most definitely encourage every programmer who is able to at least with reasonable certainty commit to working on something to post here, regardless of whether you think this is a good idea or not, and regardless of whether or not we will go forward with this approach. Knowing roughly what will be possible to accomplish within the next year or so is good anyway :)

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Wherein lies the danger of discussing other approaches?

I can probably do triggers, but I'd rather wait until I can use Git (y)

There's no danger in discussing other approaches, just in doing it in this thread as that would make it lose focus quickly :)

And yeah, Git is probably also a pre-requisite to going 1.0 regardless of when and how we do that. We will need to maintain 1.0 with bug fixes etc while being able to work on new things, so being able to easily work with different versions at the same time would be needed :)

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AI-wise, I can expect to commit API v3 (with some changes before committing) this summer, and probably even keep working on that, adding some of the ideas I already discussed, and likely improving naval and tech support; then focusing on speed optimizations. By the end of summer, I can reasonably expect the AI to be able to handle most of the game's feature at least basically. Can't say too much about speed, but I should be able to at least put some work on it.

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I don't have much insight to add to this thread except that a migration to Git should be somewhere in the top 5 tasks. Moving to Git allows for a quicker development workflow and opens doors for many other contributors. (Weak points, I know -_-) I believe progress is stalled due to an auto builder.

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I'm going to implement infinite farms with diminishing returns, non-dependent on terrain (although that could be added later). I expect I could finish that by this summer (July?), but it depends how busy I am (school and whatnot). Hopefully it won't take me nearly that long though.

Also, I'd prefer to wait until the Git migration is finished before I work on this.

This is really more to remind historicbruno, but #9 should definitely be finished before 1.0. It no longer applies cleanly to the latest SVN, but it won't be hard to update (I might do that).

Edited by alpha123
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  • 3 weeks later...

I know in the past I have seen a list in the wiki of the 'must have' items fro a release, but I can't find it now. Anyone have the link? I think the link should also go on the front page of the wiki. In large flashing red letters! OK, maybe not, but prominently.

I also believe this game is much closer to release than most people think. 99% of the people you would get from a release would have a great experience paying the game as is and won't ever get to the point where they can crush the AI.

I see no problem with limiting single player games to 1 vs 1 (to avoid lag) at least in the beta. And then concentrate on optimizing, balancing and bug fixing as we push to 1.0.

It seems many of the complaints I hear could easily wait until a 1.1. BTW even in Rise of Nations (my favorite) I have watched armies of AI run back and forth on the map confused, and they make the AI tough by giving it a huge resource gathering advantage. So there is

Its a shame that on a project this great anyone is downhearted at all! You are all too close to it to see how awesome it is!

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99% of the people you would get from a release would have a great experience paying the game as is and won't ever get to the point where they can crush the AI.

Sorry, but this is absolutely not true. Lots of progress has been made on the AI, but it is still well below the skill level of an average gamer. I know this because even I can beat it :D

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Sorry, but this is absolutely not true. Lots of progress has been made on the AI, but it is still well below the skill level of an average gamer. I know this because even I can beat it :D

lol I never said you wouldn't beat it, just not crush it. It always gives me an entertaining challenge. I guess I just suck though.

Anyway my contention stands that its good enough for beta and we can focus on addressing some issues with it for 1.0

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It's become clear from this discussion and others that we are not yet at a point where we can "see the end" for part 1. However, we do continue to look at ways to improve the development process, and it's definitely valuable to have had this discussion as it allows for a better long-term planning :)

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I have a Question, thats means in Part 2, we can enjoy the Campinigs, even 500BC-1BC?.

The above doesn't really mean anything for Part 2, but we certainly want to add campaigns at one point. Whether we will end up calling it part 2 or something else, or release campaigns for part 1 sooner etc etc will have to be seen in the future though :)
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Thanks! That was the link I was looking for...

You know we could trim quite a few items from there by moving all of the naval issues to version 1.1 (or 1.2)

I agree on that!

Ships as they are currently are not acceptable for a 1.0 release, in my opinion. It's true that how ships behave in 1.0 could be less interesting than what we hope to eventually do, but they still should be worked on to improve them.
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Ships as they are currently are not acceptable for a 1.0 release, in my opinion. It's true that how ships behave in 1.0 could be less interesting than what we hope to eventually do, but they still should be worked on to improve them.

+1

The new pathfinder will improve them dramatically, but that will only help with movement. Their actual gameplay mechanics are still pretty bad for a 1.0.

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