Suggestions for 0 A.D.

[asasinuxp]

If you want to introduce more language in 0 A.D., I can translate this game in romanian, notify me when you want to do this.This game is fantastic.

[WhiteTreePaladin]

asasinuxp:

Thanks for your interesting in translating. It is something we will need in the future. However, right now we don't have translation support yet. Any translation work done now would be wasted, because you would have to work through many files. Whenever the game changed (which happens often), you would have to track down what had changed and translate those relevant parts again. It would be an insurmountable amount of maintenance. When we get a proper translation system in place, then the task of translating will be much more reasonable. At that point, we will welcome volunteers to help get the game translated into many languages.

[Aldandil]

Is localization of the website overview and/or open source page still ongoing, or is that also on hiatus?

Edited September 25, 2010 by Aldandil

[Jeru]

On hiatus. Come to think of it, maybe we'll do a new one to reflect the game's current state of development. (And this time we'll make it shorter and to-the-point).

[famer]

Hello designers of 0AD, I have an idea for the UI (user interface), but can I expose it?

I have a sketch for it!.

[feneur]

Hello designers of 0AD, I have an idea for the UI (user interface), but can I expose it?

I have a sketch for it!.

We are working on a new design for the G/UI, but feel free to post your own sketches, even if it's not something we end up using it might still give us good ideas on how to improve it

[KaosKeith]

my 4 cents:

1. select idle villagers button

2. unit outline so you can see them through trees, buildings, etc

3. search hosted games on your network and list them

4. button which shows your ip address

Edited October 25, 2010 by KaosKeith

[Mythos_Ruler]

my 4 cents:

1. select idle villagers button

2. unit outline so you can see them through trees, buildings, etc

3. search hosted games on your network and list them

4. button which shows your ip address

All definitely planned.

[Alezzy]

are you planing to add a attack / deffence stance to the units ? like when on attack mode they have less deffence...but they auto attack, more attack or so and deffence for like holding possition while it increases the deffence and decreases the attack value.... or simular

will we be able to put soldiers on walls? makes the game realistic and gives players more options on deffending ... while it gives more options to the attacker ... ladders ... siege towers , .... so on

also

how about naval battles .... will the ships include soldiers ? i think they should ... since ships cant sail by themselves.... makes naval battles more interesting ... and just like fishing boat should need fishers to fish and a trading boat traders..

also i think you should add stables ... like .. u would first have to breed a horse to make a horseman soldier...

i've been watching this game closely and i must say the dev team did a great job....the game already looks better than AOE 2 for me ...

keep up the good work!!!

[feneur]

are you planing to add a attack / deffence stance to the units ? like when on attack mode they have less deffence...but they auto attack, more attack or so and deffence for like holding possition while it increases the deffence and decreases the attack value.... or simular

Offensive/defensive states are definitely planned, but we haven't considered whether or not to give any increases/decreases to values etc. Not sure if the added benefit is worth the complexity, but it's definitely something to think about.

will we be able to put soldiers on walls? makes the game realistic and gives players more options on deffending ... while it gives more options to the attacker ... ladders ... siege towers , .... so on

Units standing on walls is likely, units walking on walls unlikely, siege towers/ladders would probably take too much work to make them worth spending any time on. Perhaps there's someone who's got a great idea how to do it programming-wise who'll join the team later though so one can't rule it out completely.

how about naval battles .... will the ships include soldiers ? i think they should ... since ships cant sail by themselves.... makes naval battles more interesting ... and just like fishing boat should need fishers to fish and a trading boat traders..

Battle ships will definitely include soldiers and siege engines on them, but boarding is probably not going to happen.

also i think you should add stables ... like .. u would first have to breed a horse to make a horseman soldier...

Sorry if I sound rude but that's not going to happen unless you play a mod. If anything we might remove buildings if testing shows that people are too confused by all the buildings. To explain why I'll say that the game is just that, a game, not a simulation, and definitely not reality If the game were to be 100% realistic it would be boring, would you want to have to wait while the smiths made the weapons or the men ate/slept? That does of course not exclude the stable in and of itself, but when the game was designed the set of buildings included were decided and unless there's a really good reason to change the number/which buildings are included we won't. That said, we intend to make it as easy as possible to mod the game so someone can easily create a stable, and several buildings not in the main game design are already included as editor-only/scenario buildings so, who knows if there'll be a stable included among them (Disclaimer: This is not a guarantee that there will be, simply a statement that it's not impossible )

i've been watching this game closely and i must say the dev team did a great job....the game already looks better than AOE 2 for me ...

keep up the good work!!!

Thanks for all the nice words Hope you'll keep following the game as it progresses, and please continue to post in the forums, it's always nice to see new feedback. Even if we may have heard it before it's still useful to know what people thinks

[oshron]

yknow what would be a great tool for the editor? to be able to select terrain and everything on it on a map and then just move that terrain freely, leaving water behind and sheer cliffs where terrain is "broken", kinda like continental drift

[oshron]

DPFAR: an idea occurred to me earlier. wouldnt it be cool if you could "make" canals for some maps of the game? by that i dont mean actually designing a building that literally carves out part of the map as water, but instead that, in the scenario editor, you dig down into the ground to make water and then cover it with a special "terrain" that can be destroyed by the player's citizen-soldiers. instead of actually being terrain, it merely replicates teh appearance of terrain (perhaps for many different regions, such as sand, grass, snow, and maybe even solid rock). this "terrain" should ideally be able to be walked over by land units, and the attack animation for this particular building would be the unit digging with a shovel instead of actually attacking it with a spear or sword. by removing the "terrain" you can uncover teh water and form a river that ships can move over. this would work well for recreations of the mediterranean to open up passage in the same place as the suez canal today, or the panama canal for any maps that simulate north america

another idea that occurs to me is a sudden possibility for bridges and tunnels (though bridges may not work so well): instead of actually creating the tunnel itself, there's a special neutral entrance building that can be used by all players that teleports units that approach it to the other opening, unless you plan for events to take place in the tunnel (i think it would also be a good idea to make some "indoor" areas, but thats beside the point)

thoughts, anyone?

[SMST]

A small concern regarding the double-clicking system:

Double-clicking on an Elite Hoplite lets me control all Elite Hoplites on the screen. Double-clicking on an Advanced Hoplite lets me control all Advanced Hoplites on the screen. But what if I want "all Hoplites"?

[Mythos_Ruler]

Perhaps that's what triple-click can be for instead of what its doing now?

[WhiteTreePaladin]

Actually, I was just discussing this with Philip. (The band-boxing code also has this issue, but we use the unit name rather than the template name to circumvent it. Since using the unit name is not the safest approach, we'll likely use a new XML tag to manage this.)

[oshron]

i was looking at a picture of an old viking longhouse taken in the present day and an idea occurred to me: what if the buildings in 0ad had two basic skins, one to display a brand new building--fresh-looking wood, well-polished metal, and no debris--and a second to display an aged building that looks like its been standing for a hundred years or so, with weeds growing up around it, birds nests and dead leaves on the roof, dulled wood, discolored stone, moss, and so on. could it be engineered that all buildings start out with their primary skin (the "clean" one) and, as time goes by, they slowly transition to the "dirty" skin, perhaps over the course of, say, half an hour or maybe an hour at most, slowly fading from one skin to the next. there's even a bit of precedence for this, though its on an entirely different engine with different filetypes: the sim game jurassic park: operation genesis has, on higher graphics settings, two skins for every dinosaur in the game: a "living" skin and a "dead" skin. without ever changing the model, a dinosaur's carcass gradually ages into a body that looks rotted, with bones exposed and whatnot

[Kimball]

It would be incredibly easy to create two sets of textures for buildings to show the old/new. There's two problems I see with this is the transition between the two. At what point do the textures change? If they don't fade, I assume the abrupt change will be a bit ugly to say the least. You mention fading the texture in over the course of 30 mins, but I assume that if all buildings are doing this simultaneously it could be rather costly for the CPU.

Secondly, what gameplay purpose would this serve? Players are right to assume that anything they see change visually will affect the game in some way. Unless "older" buildings are more susceptible to crush damage or have fewer health points, I see little benefit to have the buildings change in appearance at all.

[Ykkrosh]

There wouldn't be any CPU cost, the blending would just be done on the GPU (probably via a second render pass on all buildings, which shouldn't be particularly expensive). I think the main problems are the complexity of implementing any new features in the renderer and the effort of producing new art, versus the value the feature provides.

[Kimball]

Well the production of that sort of art is almost trivial. Making all of them look aged would take me under a week. The value, however, is where I struggle with this particular request.

[feneur]

Something like this will probably have to be implemented in any case, since we need something like it if we want the seasons to work as they're described in the DD. That still doesn't say anything about the need for this though =) It can have a value in the sense of helping with the immersion in the game though, but sure, that would interfere with things having a meaning. As long as it's something that's possible to turn off/on per map (as the seasons would be for that matter as they're currently just going to be for visual purposes) it's probably fine though. In either case I think it's something we can think more about when the seasons are implemented, there's enough to do in other areas to keep everyone occupied in either case

[oshron]

At what point do the textures change? If they don't fade, I assume the abrupt change will be a bit ugly to say the least. You mention fading the texture in over the course of 30 mins, but I assume that if all buildings are doing this simultaneously it could be rather costly for the CPU.

my thought was that they would begin to transition as soon as they are built. have you ever played age of mythology? in that game, there are special attack/life meters for certain units which determine how long you must wait until they can use their special attack again or (in the case of the "minion" undead unit) how long until they die. i was thinking it would be like that, going individually for each building, so suppose your start out landing troops on an island and you build a small base--a civic center, a few houses, a barracks, etc. time passes and an hour or so later, you go and build a fortress and a temple as well. by this time, the older buildings have visibly aged but you can clearly tell that the fortress and temple are brand new because of how clean they look

the changes wouldnt be abrupt; instead, as soon as the building is completed, their "clean" skin begins to very slowly fade away and reveal the "dirty" skin

Secondly, what gameplay purpose would this serve? Players are right to assume that anything they see change visually will affect the game in some way. Unless "older" buildings are more susceptible to crush damage or have fewer health points, I see little benefit to have the buildings change in appearance at all.

no purpose, just graphic realism. and after all, 0ad is all about realism

There wouldn't be any CPU cost, the blending would just be done on the GPU (probably via a second render pass on all buildings, which shouldn't be particularly expensive). I think the main problems are the complexity of implementing any new features in the renderer and the effort of producing new art, versus the value the feature provides.

for the record, i wasnt envisioning new models for the "dirty" skins, just things like pine needles and moss that are painted onto the second texture

[Pureon]

I'm with Kimball on this one, at least at this stage in development. In any case, adding a damage effect, whether it's texture dirt or physical fires, should supersede ageing graphics.

[Kimball]

"Dirty" models is a whole different story. That's an entire mountain of new art that we'd have to develop for what I'm currently seeing as a relatively insignificant feature, unless you've got some compelling evidence otherwise. Also, you can't really fade a model per se. If your intentions here are to fade into the aged art, we're essentially limited to texture modifications.

@ Erik

But of course, that calls to question: do we want both seasons and aging textures?

[feneur]

But of course, that calls to question: do we want both seasons and aging textures?

Hmm, I'm almost starting to lean towards aging textures =) Not really as seasons give more effect and allows for more varied maps, especially for scenarios. (And also if we have seasons "for looks" it should be less work to make them have actual gameplay effect later. Though thinking about it, at least things like making it slower to walk on snow shouldn't be too hard to do already as textures can already have such effects.) But there could be a nice use of the aging effect: you could determine how far your opponent have come, if this is a new colony or an old. Though things like the number of buildings/what buildings there are could probably be of almost as much use for that purpose, so it's no big deal either way. If there's time and interest aging could be fun to have, but it's not anywhere near a needed feature in my humble opinion

[Kimball]

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.