Your 0 A.D. Screenshots

[Sundiata]

Is anybody else ready for some Total War style mechanics in 0AD? I know I am...

A lockable battalion system keeps popping up as a requested feature. Being able to add any unit you like to a battalion (with different advantages/disadvantages), and then locking that battalion, would make you select the entire battalion upon clicking one unit within that battalion. Being able to add these battalions to lockable armies (which you can compose any way you like) would be an awesome system. This should be done with easy to understand buttons, where you also set formations and stances.

This would make managing large armies a lot more pleasant. On the more recent models of MacBook pro, 0AD runs like a doozy. I can play with over a thousand pop, without any serious hiccups. I imagine that in future, with more improvements to the game, this ability to generate so many units will be utilised to create much more epic gameplay.

 

[Sundiata]

This game is so pretty...

Some more Kushites, in Vox Populi:

 

 

And some more:

Spoiler

The Royal City.

 

"The army is ready to march, my Queen"

 

"Then we march!"

 

Total chaos! Persian dude about to be stabbed by 8 or 9 pikes at once, ouch...

 

Morning jog.

 

Check out: Vox Populi & The Kingdom of Kush, a proper introduction for more information. 

[LordGood]

I'm glad I didn't skimp out too much on polygons, those low angle shots look nice.

lol I haven't even played as the Kushites yet in any capacity

[Sundiata]

13 hours ago, LordGood said:

I'm glad I didn't skimp out too much on polygons

So am I! They look amazing from all angles. Zooming around my little town on a low angle allowed me to catch some glimpses of those areas of your models which you wouldn't see in a standard game, and they look great, inside and out! 

 

13 hours ago, LordGood said:

those low angle shots look nice.

Thanks, but they could be a lot better. The Skybox isn't working properly. At low angles, you can see the lower rim of the box above the horizon?? Very displeasing, from an aesthetic point of view. The Skybox should extend far below the horizon to avoid such weirdness.. 

 

13 hours ago, LordGood said:

lol I haven't even played as the Kushites yet in any capacity

Maybe you should, lol. Anyway, spending your time making so many pretty models instead of playing really isn't wasted...

[Nescio]

13 hours ago, LordGood said:

lol I haven't even played as the Kushites yet in any capacity

Nor have I; I guess I will if they're included into A23

By the way, I don't really like the faction emblem; the style seems to be too different from those of all existing civilization icons.

[Lion.Kanzen]

4 minutes ago, Nescio said:

Nor have I; I guess I will if they're included into A23

By the way, I don't really like the faction emblem; the style seems to be too different from those of all existing civilization icons.

I don't like your style neither, lol. The icon is based in @sundiata design.

[Sundiata]

 

4 hours ago, Nescio said:

I don't really like the faction emblem; the style seems to be too different from those of all existing civilization icons.

Hmmm, I'm probably biased, but I like it: Amun looking down on his subjects... It's different, but Kushites are different from the existing civilizations anyway... I don't see any real stylistic continuity in the other emblems either, apart from them being round, so I decided on one of the most commonly mentioned and depicted symbols of power: their state-god, the ram-headed Amun of Napata. It fits well with the obsessively theocratic nature of Kushite society. I'm always open for suggstions, but please nothing generic... Factions, including their emblems should be historical and unique, not hammered in to uniformity to fit with the other civs (that's how you get a bland game).

 

Anyway, any ideas on this more important issue:

4 hours ago, Sundiata said:

The Skybox isn't working properly. At low angles, you can see the lower rim of the box above the horizon?? Very displeasing, from an aesthetic point of view. The Skybox should extend far below the horizon to avoid such weirdness.. 

The issue creates a very distracting and ugly black band along the horizon.... Extending the box far below the horizon, would make the horizon look like an actual horizon, and not a black hole resembling the end of the world. It's necessary to fix this in order to make marketable screenshots without having to "hide" the horizon behind structures...

[LordGood]

2 hours ago, Sundiata said:

It fits well with the obsessively theocratic nature of Kushite society. I'm always open for suggstions, but please nothing generic... Factions, including their emblems should be historical and unique, not hammered in to uniformity to fit with the other civs

Think the royal cobra would work better? The colors would be more solid and bright, and we could make the rest of it shiny gold

[Sundiata]

1 hour ago, LordGood said:

Think the royal cobra would work better?

The Uraeus wouldn't be a bad choice in itself. The thing is that it's just as closely associated with ancient Egypt as it is with Kush. Anybody that is familiar with Kushites will immediately recognise the ram-headed form of Amun, which is much more specifically associated with Kush:

- Human headed Amun = Amun of Thebes or Amun of Karnak

- Ram-headed Amun = Amun of Napata

Second issue with the Uraeus is that it's vertically orientated, and the important parts, like it's head surmounted by the solar disk, would either be cut off on top, or the entire thing needs to be scaled down to fit in the visible part of the circle, which would make it awkwardly small. There'd be no filling to the left and right of the cobra either.

Spoiler

Egyptian Uraeus:

 

Kushite Uraei originally lining the rooftop of one of the kiosks at the temple complex at Jebel Barkal in Napata:

 

[Nescio]

To clarify, I'm not saying the current Kushite emblem is ugly, nor do I have any objections to what is depicted (Athens, Carthage, Persia, and Ptolemis all depict gods as well). My point of criticism is how it is depicted. I fear I can not exactly pinpoint it, (it might be just me), but the style seems simply too different in comparison to the other emblems:

Maybe it's just that the golden background is too bright, maybe it's because it lacks the suggestion of being a shield, maybe it's something else; I can't say exactly, it's just that the Kushite emblem seems too different.

PS Why is Amun green? Isn't a green skin typically reserved for Osiris in Egyptian iconography, a red skin for males, and a yellow skin for females?

Edited November 1, 2017 by Nescio

[Sundiata]

@Nescio You know what, I think I see what you mean...

13 hours ago, Nescio said:

I can not exactly pinpoint it

I think it's because the other emblems have a greater sense of depth, and at least 9 of them are spherical... I made some adjustments. Is it better like this?

Old vs New.

 

How the new one looks next to the others

 

13 hours ago, Nescio said:

PS Why is Amun green?

The human form of Amun is usually depicted blue. The Ram headed Amun is usually green (with red eyes), black or an odd type of brown.

 

13 hours ago, Nescio said:

Isn't a green skin typically reserved for Osiris in Egyptian iconography, a red skin for males, and a yellow skin for females?

Eh.. Your right about Osiris usually being depicted as green but red skin for males and yellow for females, although common, is by no means universal. It depends strongly on the period and place where the depiction is made. Iconography isn't as static as it's sometimes insinuated (over thousands of years of history things change/evolve/adapt). A variety of colours can be used, and in Southern Egypt female deities can be depicted as dark as their male counterparts.

[Nescio]

Yes, it's better.

47 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

The human form of Amun is usually depicted blue. The Ram headed Amun is usually green (with red eyes), black or an odd type of brown.

Thanks for the clarification.

48 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

[...] common, is by no means universal. It depends strongly on the period and place where the depiction is made. Iconography isn't as static as it's sometimes insinuated (over thousands of years of history things change/evolve/adapt).

Completely true (and not just applicable to Egypt only).

 

Something else: it seems those two figurines on Amun's crown wearing the red and white crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt (I forgot which one is which) are both cobras; isn't one of them supposed to be a vulture? (Or is this another example of evolving iconography?)

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

On 11/1/2017 at 4:46 AM, Sundiata said:

Thanks, but they could be a lot better. The Skybox isn't working properly. At low angles, you can see the lower rim of the box above the horizon?? Very displeasing, from an aesthetic point of view. The Skybox should extend far below the horizon to avoid such weirdness.. 

 

I have complained about the skybox for a long time. Perhaps there is a ticket.

[Sundiata]

1 hour ago, Nescio said:

Something else: it seems those two figurines on Amun's crown wearing the red and white crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt (I forgot which one is which) are both cobras; isn't one of them supposed to be a vulture? (Or is this another example of evolving iconography?)

The White crown is for Upper Egypt (and Nubia), and the red crown is for Lower Egypt. Interestingly the earliest depictions of the white crown come from Nubia, during the pre-dynastic/early dynastic A-group, like the Qustul incense burner dated to c. 3200 -3000 BC, and continue to be used all the way through to the Late Meroitic period.

Well, the crown is a typically Meroitic Kushite mash up of elements. The crown seems to be some kind of an elaborate variation on the double feathered crown of Amun (falcon feathers), with horizontal ram's horns, a central solar disk, flanked by uraei wearing the white crown (left) and the red crown (right). It bears similarities to elaborate versions of the double feathered Atef crown and/or Anedjiti crown with horizontal ram's horns, which can both feature double uraei (no vulture), with solar disks. The feathers in those crowns are double ostrich feathers (curving outward on the top), instead of falcon feathers (straight).

The emblem is entirely referenced from a Meroitic period carving of Amun on the Lion Temple of Apedemak in Naqa and coloured according to other approximate parallels. 

Spoiler

 

@wowgetoffyourcellphone  #3458 if I'm not mistaken. The problem is discussed there.

@elexis 

Spoiler

Changed 3 months ago by elexis

 

The catch is that the player expects black and not a blue sky at the ground level where the map ends.

So the skybox could become a threeway option (disabled, partial, complete) so that it could be enabled manually for screenshots and when cinematic paths are active, the skyset could always be rendered completely.

Another option might be to just change the size of the skybox so that the map border is always black while the skyset is always visible when viewed from the currently problematic angles (don't know if that's feasible though).

Perhaps the skybox can somehow be triggered once the camera reaches the angle that the horizon becomes visible? No need for a skybox above that angle (i think?), and the ground will remain black where the map ends when seen from above? 

[elexis]

Doing things depending on the angle sounds like an idea that might be explored further. I thinkt the skyset is also visible with the default angle when zooming out far (probably further than the default config values permit though)

[wraitii]

Tbh we could just make the "black" actually be transparent and have the background be entirely black. Our skybox only appears when you're looking above the ground iirc.

[Sundiata]

I really have no conception of the complexity of the issue, but perhaps it's possible to generate a huge image of a static, low poly, unplayable "map" (a fake map) surrounding the playable-map, giving the illusion of infinity. Then the skybox can be extended far below the horizon without an issue. If you approach the edge of the map (demarcated somehow), it would feel like you could almost continue, and if you look up, you'd see a perfectly believable horizon with a generated image of a believable continuation of the map. Or is that way too complex? 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

18 hours ago, Sundiata said:

Perhaps the skybox can somehow be triggered once the camera reaches the angle that the horizon becomes visible? No need for a skybox above that angle (i think?), and the ground will remain black where the map ends when seen from above? 

1. The skybox proportions are also wrong if you look at it. Looks like a pizza box. The sides are squished, compressing the texture.

 

2. Also, the skybox doesn't seem to move upward with the average height of the map, so that the "ceiling" of the skybox by default is very very close to the terrain on the default blank map in Atlas. This causes some problems, notably with water reflection of the sky on user-created maps. The solution to that particular problem is to lower the default height of the blank map to something like height="2048". As always, see Delenda Est for this viable and easy solution.

Edited November 3, 2017 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[elexis]

Typically (as in other games) the skybox doesnt move when the user moves and is rendered first (so the size of the skyset and map doesn't matter and it appears indefinitely far away).

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

8 hours ago, elexis said:

Typically (as in other games) the skybox doesnt move when the user moves and is rendered first (so the size of the skyset and map doesn't matter and it appears indefinitely far away).

Indeed, in relation to the camera in-game this is true. But the skybox's relationship to the default height of the map grid is what I'm talking about, especially since with a very high default height, the water plane has to be even higher, placing it very close to the ceiling of the skybox, affecting the quality of reflections in the water. I am 100% right about this. See the water reflections on Britannic Road to see how stretched/blurred the skybox reflection is. I created that map before I reduced the default map height.   Also, the skybox is currently very very squished. See how the side textures are compressed here:

Edited November 5, 2017 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Hidan]

[Skhorn]

Multiple layouts of water workaround. Testing so far

Spoiler

If you wonder how:

Using multiple rice_water## from TerraMagna mod.

Spoiler

 

Edited January 10, 2018 by Skhorn

[Lion.Kanzen]

Too much blur the first one.

[Sundiata]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the Depth of Field effect can be "regulated". It's like an on/off thing, which is a real pity, because it can't really be used like this. The only default setting is indeed way too strong. A wasted feature? 

Being able to set the intensity of this feature would be a great addition for screenshots and even in-game beauty.

Edited January 10, 2018 by Sundiata

[Imarok]

1 hour ago, Sundiata said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the Depth of Field effect can be "regulated". It's like an on/off thing, which is a real pity, because it can't really be used like this. The only default setting is indeed way too strong. A wasted feature? 

Being able to set the intensity of this feature would be a great addition for screenshots and even in-game beauty.

If so, maybe you want to create a ticket? (I might look into that)