Remodeling ancient cities?

[r3bl]

I've got this idea that we could bring ancient history closer to the players.

I think that we could form small teams (although one man should be capable to do the job in a month or two) that would find some sources online about what the cities actually looked like and remodel ancient cities inside the game.

Think about it. Some guy wants to learn something more about ancient history. He just downloads the game and inside the game there's an option where he can see exatly what ancient cities looked like during a certain period. So I'm thinking rebuilding Rome when Roman Empire was at its peak time. Athens. Carthage. And more.

Now I'm not suggesting any new gameplay or something like that, just an option where a player could see what those ancient cities looked like in a certain period of time.

I volunteer for doing the work if you guys think that this is a good idea. I'm guessing that it won't be too hard to make it real. All I need is scenario editor, some basic Blender knowledge and some good online sources about what the cities looked like.

What do you guys think about this idea? I want to hear your opinion before I do anything.

BTW I'm pretty new to this dev forum and the game itself so sorry if some similar idea has been discussed before or if I broke some forum rule by posting this.

[Ryze]

I like the idea. I don't know about Carthage or Athens, but I'm almost certain there is a site with a 3D recreation of Rome. It might give you some inspiration

[Lion.Kanzen]

I was thinking that but is no easy to do.

[LordGood]

Surely there are greek settlements that can be cannibalized for street plans, I know the foundations of Kerkouane can be read for Carthaginian urban design

I know we'll have to give it a go eventually for scenario design

[Donner]

If you were going to model real ancient cities, there will be limitations that you will run into, mostly in the amount of work it will take to create them. The basic building in 0 A.D. has a scale of about 2:3. You will have to upscale the building models first, as soldiers walking around a dwarf city is not very realistic. The basic in game buildings do not cut it if you were going to make a city with any realism, and many custom building models would have to be created. This would take much longer than 1 to 2 months for one man to create a city unless he was working full time.

At least there is some realism in the effort it will take to make one. It would be great if we had historical cities in 0 A.D..

[r3bl]

First of all, thank you all for posting. It is wonderful to see that some of you agree that this is a good idea.

Some of you kinda opened my eyes. You're right. This job is not going to be easy. It will take a while for a city to be completed and will require a lot of custom models. I have no prior Blender knowledge what so ever. I did open Blender a couple of times but I immediately got lost and closed the program.

However, I will try to make this happen. I'm a fast learner and I have a lot of free time. I'm going to start with Carthage because I was always fascinated by that civilization. I'll start learning Blender today. Some folks said to me that modeling is not hard at all and that you just need to figure out how to use the program. In the meantime, while I'm learning Blender, I'm going to start looking for sources about how Carthage really looked like. If any of you knows some useful resources, please, share them with me.

I hope that my next post in this thread is going to be in a week or maybe two weeks and I hope that by then I will have my first custom built model that represents some building in Carthage.