Suggestions for 0 A.D.

[feneur]

Honestly I think the only issue I can foresee with the aging textures is leading the player to mistakenly assume that the building will eventually crumble and they'll have to rebuild it. With seasons, as you said, we can simply include states that specify a slower gathering/walking rate, which ultimately I think has far greater benefit to gameplay than an old building. While seasons are perfectly reasonable to see having effect on the game, is the player to assume that the building he built 20 minutes ago is already looking to be 200+ years old? Because if it needs to be noticeable, that's ultimately the direction we'll end up going in art-wise.

True, it probably adds more confusion etc than necessary without adding enough value. The player has to assume that the unit he ordered to be created gets through training (or birth, growing up etc if you look at it that way) in just a few seconds, so 200 years in 20 minutes is not the problem in my humble opinion. But yeah, unless we want the buildings to have to be rebuilt, which in my humble opinion is, while realistic, too much micromanagement without any real value.

[oshron]

my main thought was that buildings would be maintained over the in-game years even if we never see it. i just thought that aged textures would be cool for realism

another idea also occurred to me. could it perhaps be made that specific textures have fades for the seasons, again to add to realism? for instance, a specific grass texture becomes covered in snow during the winter. this could potentially work for scenarios which are supposed to represent a real region. as an example, you have a grassy hellenic countryside with beautiful mountains that, during the summer, become covered in snow. iirc, the design document said that its planned that at least some trees will be designed so that they lose their leaves and become covered in snow during the autumn and winter

[feneur]

For what's been planned for weather effects, see the Design Document: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Background:_Weather

[Aldandil]

I have a suggestion for horse cavalry and chariot units: I would like to see the coat colors and patterns of the horses randomized somewhat, like the shield figures are now. Obviously not a high priority, but it would remove the unrealistic appearance of having identical horses when many of the same unit are together in an army.

[oshron]

i agree with that. after all, a huge focus of the game is realism

speaking of which, i think nearly all cavalry units should have a "trample" effect, meaning that they hurt adjacent units when in motion. it was already suggested in the designdocument that the celts' chariots have that effect, and any elephants would almost certainly have that effect as well. for more regular cavalry it should be very small, though, while the celts' dog units dont have it at all

[feneur]

The horses does have color/pattern variations.

While there won't be a trample effect for all units, I think you'll not be too sad reading this page: http://www.wildfiregames.com/0ad/page.php?p=10066 closer

[Pureon]

The horses do have color/pattern variations.

That's what I was going to say. Only the straps are identical on some, perhaps they could be moved a bit.

Completely different thought:

Are the Celts going to have any viable siege abilities? The Hellenes already have a few to choose from, but the Celts have none from what I can see.

I was reading bits of Caesar's 'De Bello Gallico' and IMO one of their strongest siege tactics was to undermine structures by tunnelling under towers and fortifications causing them to collapse. Could we have a unit which is constructed like a building but instead looks like a tunnel entrance - After a set period of time it destroys the wall/tower it was built to attack. Maybe it can only be used once, or can only attack structures within it's attack radius. You could even implement a garrison function, where if you garrison 5 infantry within the tunnel (to dig), the structure collapses faster. What do you guys think?

[feneur]

http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Civ:_Celts#SIEGE

[Pureon]

I'm happy with Rams

Tunneling has some historical significance for the Celtic tribes so maybe it could be an alternative someday...

[feneur]

I'm happy with Rams

Tunneling has some historical significance for the Celtic tribes so maybe it could be an alternative someday...

It might be a cool addition eventually, but for the first release I think it's better to do things as simple as possible

[Pureon]

Completely agree

[oshron]

It might be a cool addition eventually, but for the first release I think it's better to do things as simple as possible

sappers would make for a cool unit. i think they should be portrayed as people undera shelter of some kind (in fact, i already wrote those up as the egyptian siege unit for my mythology idea). functionally, they should still be rams, though. i think elephants should technically count as rams, too, though have traits like a cavalry unit

Edited January 20, 2011 by oshron

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

unit for my mythology idea). functionally, they should still be rams, though. i think elephants should technically count as rams, too, though have traits like a cavalry unit

But they do. (look at the design document in the wiki/trac about the Carthaginians.) They also go into a frenzy when they have 75% of their health down, meaning that they will attack all units excepting healers. They become sane when they are healed. The one other feature with them is having a "stench" aura that makes cavalry less effective around them.

Edited January 20, 2011 by Thorfinn the Shallow Minded

[phil44]

A thought (inspired by total war), are you guys planning on implementing directional formation movement, by which i mean u can tell your units exactly which direction to face? An easy way to do this would be when you right click to tell your units to move, hold the right mouse button and drag, and an arrow or shadowed version of the formation would appear and let you drag it into the direction of your choosing, so once arriving at the destination, the formation would orientate themselves in that direction.

A step further would be choosing the number of ranks in the formation as you drag the right click sideways (basically identical to total war), but this might be a bit much for this style of game.

[feneur]

A thought (inspired by total war), are you guys planning on implementing directional formation movement, by which i mean u can tell your units exactly which direction to face? An easy way to do this would be when you right click to tell your units to move, hold the right mouse button and drag, and an arrow or shadowed version of the formation would appear and let you drag it into the direction of your choosing, so once arriving at the destination, the formation would orientate themselves in that direction.

A step further would be choosing the number of ranks in the formation as you drag the right click sideways (basically identical to total war), but this might be a bit much for this style of game.

I sure hope we'll have the first one We'll see about exactly what features we'll have, but we do intend to make formations more important than in e.g. the AoE games, so there will definitely be improvements to this area.

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

How will the fourth alpha depict the testudo formation?

[feneur]

How will the fourth alpha depict the testudo formation?

Formations will probably have to wait a couple of Alphas, unless we get some new programmer/s who are able to deal with it. So the fourth alpha will not depict the testudo at all I'm afraid.

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

so will the formations be mainly just the box, open line, closed line, open column, closed column, or will the wedge, skirmish, phalanx, and syntagma formations be at least partially implemented?

[Mythos_Ruler]

All of those formations will eventually be put in.

[phil44]

I sure hope we'll have the first one We'll see about exactly what features we'll have, but we do intend to make formations more important than in e.g. the AoE games, so there will definitely be improvements to this area.

Good to hear! It's something i always thought was missing in the aoe games.

[Jubalbarca]

Have you thought about the idea of capturing buildings? It does seem a waste if I'm running into an enemy town to have to stab all their women to death and burn everything down when a more realistic option would be simply to take it all over and give myself a new base. So I suggest a feature which lets me take their homes and steal their wimmens.

Maybe only within a faction, I dunno. I came up with the idea making a scenario based around a city-state in a civil war, and thinking how weird it was that (playing as the rebels) I'd have to throw the city's walls down, detroy the fortress, and the houses, and the fleet, and kill the entire populace THEN rebuild the whole thing.

[feneur]

Have you thought about the idea of capturing buildings? It does seem a waste if I'm running into an enemy town to have to stab all their women to death and burn everything down when a more realistic option would be simply to take it all over and give myself a new base. So I suggest a feature which lets me take their homes and steal their wimmens.

Maybe only within a faction, I dunno. I came up with the idea making a scenario based around a city-state in a civil war, and thinking how weird it was that (playing as the rebels) I'd have to throw the city's walls down, detroy the fortress, and the houses, and the fleet, and kill the entire populace THEN rebuild the whole thing.

Both capturing buildings and (cavalry) capturing women is planned

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

This is an idea I have. Why not having a technology called "dressing spreading". This technology would make your farm production be better for each cow you have because of using the manure of the cows as a fertilizer. I guess that it might sound a little disgusting, but I am pretty sure that it is a method that has been used for a long time.

Edited January 24, 2011 by Thorfinn the Shallow Minded

[Spetznaz_007]

These is a glimpse of one of the many ideas I have, this one is for buildings and training queues.

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One thing you could do is animate the training of units inside of buildings <<< very cool.

Secondly, if possible, when its done training it it could walk out of the building exit, to the nearest gather point.

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If you choose to train an archer, an archer or three will appear in the archery range and start practicing shooting at targets.

Once it's done training, the unit could walk out from the exit and to the nearest gather point.

With a blacksmith, you see and actual blacksmith come out of the hut and start working on a piece of metal.

OR, you could stick with your current method: units pop-up around the building when done training, like in every other RTS.

The only challenge I see here is the scale of buildings and units.

If actual unit size is maintained through training process, then you might need bigger buildings for them to train\walk around in (which to leads to my other idea which I will discuss later).

On the other hand you could scale down the units, keeping original buildings, in which case the "walk-out" spawning method may not work.

[oshron]

there IS actually precedence for units physically walking out of the building; they did that in EE2

seeing the units training sounds a bit too complex to really be worth it. maybe there could be a mod or an auxiliary patch to include that, but, like my aging buildings idea, it sounds to be more trouble than its worth