8 In-Game Suggestions

[baddestboots]

I have to say this is one of the best games I have ever played. I'm coming off of playing a lot of Empire Earth II and Age of Empires. Great job on the game and thank you to all of those who have put their time into bringing this game to where it stands today! I'm in love with it and wish to support the cause. Today, I wanted to leave some feedback after playing the game for about two hours last night. I do understand the game is in it's alpha stage and has much more development ahead but ideas for the future:

1. While playing the game, hitting the escape key on the keyboard will bring up the main menu. Edit: In-game main menu.

2. Being able to build roads to travel faster by horse and foot (especially beneficial to markets) and build bridges across streams (could be buildable only by soldiers).

3. The resources don't seem to last very long. The trees aren't bad but I feel like stone and iron are depleted too quickly. Maybe add twice the amount of abundance to these resources.

4. Building limits are pretty nice the way they are but I don't care too much for having any restrictions in a game like this. Maybe it's just to help with lag in the long run. I also think a player should be able to build whatever they want (except maybe a civic center) in an enemy territory but the health will deplete for that structure after so long.

5. The implementation of "vehicles" for both foot soldiers and citizens. This would probably create too much lag for the game but it would be neat to be able to upgrade citizens so they will have a faster means of transportation when gathering resources or when having to travel long distances.

6. A better diplomacy screen and more involved one. This one's probably not finished yet, as I'm judging but I think this could be a very effective tool for the player and should be well thought out.

7. The possibility of civilization morale. I agree the majority of the game is about waging war on the enemy but I think a lot of rts games such as this one focuses too much on the military aspect and not as much on economy and national pride. These are both major factors when it comes to the success of a nation. Correct me if I'm wrong, that's just the way I see it. More options and buildings regarding the actual city itself might be cool so you would have to balance military and economy better. Of course the economy part is gathering resources and trading with allies but it all boils down for building up the army. How much replayability and involvement would be added when trying to gain the approval of all of your citizens at the same time as waging war on an enemy? If you worked your citizens 24 hours a day like we do in the game gathering resources then they would all probably leave. This might be too big of an element to add though.

8. Gold. The world wouldn't survive without some sort of bullion with monetary value. I understand the trading of wood to get more iron in the market but when wood, stone and food fail; the best way to buy it is with some sort of currency. Currency could be tied in to civilization morale above. Another economy would exist outside of the gathering resources and generate bullion for the entire empire to use at your fingertips when all other resources fall short. Trading between allied markets would generate bullion of course. Maybe after defeating an army or killing of an enemy soldier you'll get the bullion out of the pocket of that soldier. A bank for the citizens would be another money maker; collecting off of loans. As emperor, you could raise or lower taxes for your citizens. This would raise or lower morale also. Possibly building churches that will sell indulgences or something like that.

Edit: Two more suggestions after consideration...

1. Implementing a unit to guard a marked off area rather than just one object.

2. An explore option for all human units so they can automatically explore the map on their own rather than having to move them everywhere.

These are all just a collection of suggestions. As I think of more, I'll post them. Great job so far though! Let me know any reactions or comments to these. Cheers everyone!

Edited March 25, 2014 by baddestboots

[niektb]

1. While playing the game, hitting the escape key on the keyboard will bring up the main menu.

2. Being able to build roads to travel faster by horse and foot (especially beneficial to markets) and build bridges across streams (could be buildable only by soldiers).

3. The resources don't seem to last very long. The trees aren't bad but I feel like stone and iron are depleted too quickly. Maybe add twice the amount of abundance to these resources.

Edit: Two more suggestions after consideration...

1. Implementing a unit to guard a marked off area rather than just one object.

2. An explore option for all human units so they can automatically explore the map on their own rather than having to move them everywhere.

These are all just a collection of suggestions. As I think of more, I'll post them. Great job so far though! Let me know any reactions or comments to these. Cheers everyone!

1. Why?

2. The problem is that the pathfinder (that piece of code that calculates the movements of units) doesn't support roads and stuff.

3. That is to make sure you have to expand and cannot stick to one place.

Those edits look reasonable to me and I am in support of it.

Edited March 25, 2014 by niektb

[baddestboots]

Thanks for the reply!

The Escape key would just be a shortcut to the main menu as seen in a lot of games. It doesn't have to be there but maybe if the UI changes drastically and the clickable main menu button becomes smaller or won't exist at all, then it would come in handy. I like the UI right now though. I believe the game is put together very well!

Aw, that's a shame about the pathfinder. That's a feature I didn't use to fool with until I started using it like crazy in Empire Earth II. It gives more of a "Sim City" sort of feel as well, which I also used to be a big fan of. 0 A.D. armies also march in a straight line and never really zig zag or snake around terrain. I'd like to see more of a fluid motion in that aspect but this might be for the same reason roads can't be built. Empire Earth also did this and I believe Age of Empires if I remember correctly but I don't see it as a very big flaw. Gamers can deal with that.

Agreed on the expanding part. I didn't think of the limit on structures for that reason. I do think they are pretty reasonable the way they are though. The limits also make the game more of a challenge. So does the smaller amount of resources for that matter. I'm a little on the fence about that one now. I kind of like the "Mad Max" scouring for resources kind of play too.

I keep making references back to Empire Earth and Age of Empires. I would love to see continuations of both of these games but I would have to argue and I'm sure a lot of people will agree with me on this is, the success of 0 A.D. will depend on how different it is from like games. That's pretty much a given but I don't want to sound like I'm wanting a remake of the games I've already played when suggesting features.

I wish I knew more about coding and animation. I am a graphic design student but really only have expertise in Photoshop and Illustrator at the moment. I feel like the developers bring the most to the table in terms of creating a game but I figured suggestions would be the least I could do. The fact this game is open source and off to such a polished start is really an awesome opportunity to get involved. I hope more people understand that and take advantage of the offer. Kudos to the Wildfire Games Team!

[niektb]

[...]

I wish I knew more about coding and animation. I am a graphic design student but really only have expertise in Photoshop and Illustrator at the moment. I feel like the developers bring the most to the table in terms of creating a game but I figured suggestions would be the least I could do. The fact this game is open source and off to such a polished start is really an awesome opportunity to get involved. I hope more people understand that and take advantage of the offer. Kudos to the Wildfire Games Team!

Look for Lion.Kanzen, he did the same study. You could maybe assist in texturing models and stuff? (and maybe do some 2D art like buttons (=> not needed for the main game, but mods around here look to create there own UI) etc.)

[Lion.Kanzen]

The interface is easy to Mod. Problably we can do me thing with some users that he wants a bright GUI. But wee need wait to last GUI and the improvements, the game uses very low files(size and resolution) in order to have high performance, 2d the old GUI uses mask to show alpha as screen in game session. With this cut the interface and lets see the environments and main screen.

The two game in strategy that have modern and minimalistic GUI are Rome Total War 2 and Civilization V.

Recently I discover a mod for RTW2 GUI, share with you, have some from old school and modern.

There were my first modding, obviusly testing... Was long time ago.

Edited March 25, 2014 by Lion.Kanzen

[baddestboots]

niektb,

Thank you for the suggestion! I was thinking textures would be cool and I have had some experience modifying website buttons and menus so you could have something there.

Lion.Kanzen,

Thanks for sharing these with me! I haven't played Rome Total War but it looks like I will have to. I do see the minimalist menus as being a plus. It's great for the gameplay too because I would rather be indulged in the game rather than caught up in menus. Some games seem more like a browser-based game with all of the clunky buttons to navigate through.

I downloaded the first version of 0 A.D. maybe half a year ago after searching for games like Empire Earth. It's interesting to see how much has changed just since then. I appreciate you showing me what the menus looked like in an earlier version. I think it all looks great. I do believe the theme is pulling together more as time goes on. It'll be interesting to see where 0 A.D. will be in the next half a year.

I'll have to try some of my own GUIs. I'll take some screenshots of the game and then go off of the current one. It'll be just for fun and I could put that in my portfolio too I guess. I think it would be cool to have a different theme for each civilization. Maybe there already is...I always play as the Romans so I haven't really gotten to exploring the others yet.

[sanderd17]

I have to say this is one of the best games I have ever played. I'm coming off of playing a lot of Empire Earth II and Age of Empires. Great job on the game and thank you to all of those who have put their time into bringing this game to where it stands today! I'm in love with it and wish to support the cause. Today, I wanted to leave some feedback after playing the game for about two hours last night. I do understand the game is in it's alpha stage and has much more development ahead but ideas for the future:

1. While playing the game, hitting the escape key on the keyboard will bring up the main menu. Edit: In-game main menu.

Our main menu isn't very functional, so I don't see the need to have such an easily reachable hotkey. We do have F10 as hotkey.

2. Being able to build roads to travel faster by horse and foot (especially beneficial to markets) and build bridges across streams (could be buildable only by soldiers).

Our current pathfinder supports this, but it is the source of a lot of performance problems. So with the pathfinder redesign, we opted for a faster algorithm (A* + JPS). This algorithm expects a uniform cost grid. So no faster or slower places. It could maybe be modified so a map could have a few different speed regions (like define the center of a map as a slow swamp), but it won't be precise enough to have roads.

Bridges are also something unsupported. The pathfinder only works on a 2D grid. While bridges would allow some unit to pass under it. To the pathfinder, they would have the same position, which isn't true.

3. The resources don't seem to last very long. The trees aren't bad but I feel like stone and iron are depleted too quickly. Maybe add twice the amount of abundance to these resources.

That's a matter of map design, and it differs from map to map. The expected time a game will take is under an hour though. So most maps don't provide resources for more than one hour.

4. Building limits are pretty nice the way they are but I don't care too much for having any restrictions in a game like this. Maybe it's just to help with lag in the long run. I also think a player should be able to build whatever they want (except maybe a civic center) in an enemy territory but the health will deplete for that structure after so long.

Then I fail to see the use of the territory system. It's made to stop players from growing too fast, or rushing with buildings instead of units. There are special buildings here and there that can be build in neutral or enemy territory, that's enough I think.

5. The implementation of "vehicles" for both foot soldiers and citizens. This would probably create too much lag for the game but it would be neat to be able to upgrade citizens so they will have a faster means of transportation when gathering resources or when having to travel long distances.

Do you mean as a technology? Technologies can change speeds of units, so that's no problem.

6. A better diplomacy screen and more involved one. This one's probably not finished yet, as I'm judging but I think this could be a very effective tool for the player and should be well thought out.

There are some mockups to improve it.

7. The possibility of civilization morale. I agree the majority of the game is about waging war on the enemy but I think a lot of rts games such as this one focuses too much on the military aspect and not as much on economy and national pride. These are both major factors when it comes to the success of a nation. Correct me if I'm wrong, that's just the way I see it. More options and buildings regarding the actual city itself might be cool so you would have to balance military and economy better. Of course the economy part is gathering resources and trading with allies but it all boils down for building up the army. How much replayability and involvement would be added when trying to gain the approval of all of your citizens at the same time as waging war on an enemy? If you worked your citizens 24 hours a day like we do in the game gathering resources then they would all probably leave. This might be too big of an element to add though.

There is some capturing functionality planned, which will go together with a unit morale system.

8. Gold. The world wouldn't survive without some sort of bullion with monetary value. I understand the trading of wood to get more iron in the market but when wood, stone and food fail; the best way to buy it is with some sort of currency. Currency could be tied in to civilization morale above. Another economy would exist outside of the gathering resources and generate bullion for the entire empire to use at your fingertips when all other resources fall short. Trading between allied markets would generate bullion of course. Maybe after defeating an army or killing of an enemy soldier you'll get the bullion out of the pocket of that soldier. A bank for the citizens would be another money maker; collecting off of loans. As emperor, you could raise or lower taxes for your citizens. This would raise or lower morale also. Possibly building churches that will sell indulgences or something like that.

We don't use "iron", but "metal" as a general collection of all metals (gold, silver, iron, bronze ...). You will see that you pay mercenary soldiers with metal (you hire them with some currency), while native soldiers cost food and some other material to represent their equipment.

There's also looting available in the game. Though it's not visually implemented yet. But when you kill a soldier, or tear down a building, you normally receive around 10% of the original cost.

Edit: Two more suggestions after consideration...

1. Implementing a unit to guard a marked off area rather than just one object.

2. An explore option for all human units so they can automatically explore the map on their own rather than having to move them everywhere.

These are all just a collection of suggestions. As I think of more, I'll post them. Great job so far though! Let me know any reactions or comments to these. Cheers everyone!

Those last two are planned more or less.

[baddestboots]

"2. Being able to build roads to travel faster by horse and foot (especially beneficial to markets) and build bridges across streams (could be buildable only by soldiers)."

Our current pathfinder supports this, but it is the source of a lot of performance problems. So with the pathfinder redesign, we opted for a faster algorithm (A* + JPS). This algorithm expects a uniform cost grid. So no faster or slower places. It could maybe be modified so a map could have a few different speed regions (like define the center of a map as a slow swamp), but it won't be precise enough to have roads.

Bridges are also something unsupported. The pathfinder only works on a 2D grid. While bridges would allow some unit to pass under it. To the pathfinder, they would have the same position, which isn't true.

Traveling faster wouldn't be a necessity I guess. Lower in the post I brought up the idea of having "vehicles" such as horses for faster travel. I was thinking more something physical rather than a technology but more technologies could prove deciding factors in the game. I like the way you have to choose between one technology or the other and maybe that could just be a new technology that can be researched. That would keep the game from lagging too much to from all of these citizens on horseback everywhere.

The building of universities could be another implementation of the game to "harvest" research points. This would make the gameplay slower.

Bridges are the least of my worries too. That's just something else to keep gamers occupied I feel like. Streams can just be waded through to get to the other side. Maybe the roads could just be something the citizens can snap to instead of having any other benefits. This way you know the direct path your citizens are going. Not a big deal to me though. Roads and bridges I can do without but could add some fun.

I do see the hotkey now for the main menu. I didn't know F10 was a hotkey. Maybe if it just paused the game at the same time and brought up the main menu in the center of the screen. I'm thinking more for ease because it's a little hidden right now for first time players who don't read the game manual first. That's why I thought of ESC as being the hotkey.

I agree with territory limits and resource limits maybe when it comes to online play because I don't want an online game to last more than maybe an hour and a half. However, for games against the computer, I look forward to games that might take eight hours to complete. It's an epic journey! You're able to rewrite history here! Territories may keep a player from growing too fast but if they grow too fast, then they need to play the game on a more challenging level. The way to simplify this may be to slash building limits on certain defensive buildings but put a limit on the population allowed in each territory. Or maybe have researched techs to allow more population per territory as the game progresses.

It seems like the game is more geared towards short online play right now. This might increase re-playability for some but there are some who love having to save a game and continue it later. I like games that get really detailed so I can get lost in them and forget about reality for the time being. I like to be indulged in the tiny features that might not mean much to some such as bridges or roads.

[FLHerne]

Our current pathfinder supports this, but it is the source of a lot of performance problems. So with the pathfinder redesign, we opted for a faster algorithm (A* + JPS). This algorithm expects a uniform cost grid. So no faster or slower places. It could maybe be modified so a map could have a few different speed regions (like define the center of a map as a slow swamp), but it won't be precise enough to have roads.

One of the authors of JPS proposed a way to do non-uniform grids:

If your grid maps contain uniform cost regions, simply treat any neighbour which is of a different terrain type to the current node, as forced. This will allow you to quickly search across a uniform-cost region, stop to expand a node when crossing into a different region, and continue jumping on the other side. I don’t yet know how well this approach works because I haven’t tried.

...

I hope to write a detailed article on this problem in the near future. With, I hope, a better generalisation and some results.

Two years later he still hasn't written that article (or I can't find it), but some people report that his proposed method works as expected. ;-)

[Sanguivorant]

1. I would love that. And I would love some more hotkeys in actual gameplay.

2. I don't really know if that's necessary or not. But sure, it would help transport siege equipment and whatnot.

3. No. Resource limits in the game make it so that you have to plan wisely. Competition for resources is also part of the game. If anything, I would either have a deathmatch game type or a map that has a lot of resources in a player's starting area.

4. I don't know much about building limits. The Romans can actually build their forts and walls outside of their territory, which makes their civilization unique. I think every civilization should have one unique building that they can construct outside of their territory, and every civ should be able to build palisades in neutral area as well.

5. You mean like wheelbarrows? Or an alternative is a tech that increases villager speed.

6. The diplomacy screen is pretty basic and fulfills its role, so I don't know.

7. I have no opinion on that.

8. I kind of prefer the barter system that we have, and I assume that metal is gold, because you can make metal coins out of them. The reason I don't want gold is because we would have too many resources to gather.

[Radagast.]

4. I don't know much about building limits. The Romans can actually build their forts and walls outside of their territory, which makes their civilization unique. I think every civilization should have one unique building that they can construct outside of their territory, and every civ should be able to build palisades in neutral area as well.

Thank you. I love building walls in any territory too. Also I would even let it being constructed everywhere, even in mountains. Instead of forbidding it, we could make it taking waaay longer to construct. Just like in real world, we could even have some difficulties if we want to construct a castle on a hilltop.

Once resources have to be transported, this automatically takes more time to construct. The foundation phase could also be longer ...

In muddy regions we could make houses disappear randomly (and slowly, so that you have enough time to gather enough horses to tie to the building, to keep it from sinking).

We could ask FeXoR for vulcanism. I'm pretty sure he would come with some formulas for the distribution of those on Random maps.

(ah btw. perhaps my imagination bolted)

Two years later he still hasn't written that article (or I can't find it), but some people report that his proposed method works as expected. ;-)

Unfortuantely life is like a round robin, when you just start getting comfortable with the system, your time is suddenly out.

Time on the other hand is highly preemptive - whenever you plan something, just another task pops up and is assigned to your attention.