Props now can have turret-like scriptable capability thanks to Sander.

[Radagast.]

Breaking News:

Sander committed his reworked entity on entity system. (turrets)

Now we can make units embark on elephants, vehicles of all sort or even make one unit bear another(?). (Note that the prop-position is fixed and relative to the turret_holder wrapper, i.e. the object which bears the e.g. turret)

Picking up arrows from the ground is now doable. (though it may need some special coding as usually the prop's position is fixed. If we could attach a prop to another prop,e.g. the hand while the body + arm + hand is being animated as a pick-up movement, then we only needed to attach the object to pick up to the hand prop and it would follow it in with a fixed relative position offset while still being free to rotate as defined per script!! not animation, rotation is now possible in a dynamic way!)

Tanks with rotating turrets are now possible.

Archers on horses/elephants/vehicles are now possible.

Prop demolition system is now possible. (as props have their own health status + stamina! The latter could be used for limiting the endurability of material of e.g. tank turrets.)

Now the sword first can break before the unit will be destroyed.

Props are basically selectable now + have own health.

Anarchid is furthermore putting Sander's turret system to work to achieve a full prop-holder prop animation synchronization (which I think could be used for tanks and horse-archers as auto-targeting, i.e. following moving targets.).

The team is really going put a lot of magic into the next Alphas. Ormay it even be the first Betas ... who knows. At least it feels not really like Alpha if hadn't lag, which is being worked on ...

I can't express enough how excited I am of where 0AD is going. Perhaps we can turn the tide even more. I will try by adding more 3D models for several other timeframes.

[Radagast.]

Also quite incredible is that this way static units on walls are possible. (and sander already added it)

The same is true for towers and any other entity (e.g trees).

Walkable walls + roads/bridges/wooden planks are a different story as the pathfinder has to be inolved (and props currently are position-synchronised to the holder object currently if I understand it correctly). It must know when a bridge is passable despite deep creep/slope underneath the bridge such that the underneath tikes are marked as impassable on the engine-side.

[Stan`]

Well walkable walls are not that urgent since we don ´t have ladders

Anyway woul be nice to put archers on it

Same goes with boats

Wha is missing in the ticket ? ( it isńt closed yet)/

[Lion.Kanzen]

Nice , A big feature, may be update planned features.

[Radagast.]

It will also be useful for corralling/herding or to visualize how many units you have in your horse stables for example.

As we now have prop/position

Points that will be used to visibly garrison a unit.

More development awesoneness:

Also historic ben is helping with the save/load games issues, while Philip is making the culling work properly + optimising. If I must have dreamt all this development then feel free to delete me + my misleading messages.

AI devs agentx and mimo + our language dukes like Itms are also really pushing development. Hopefully we can catch up with our excellent art department .

Josh + leper + scythetwirler + alpha are also much more productive than my humble self. I will therefore increase my efforts + 3D output over the course of the next weeks due to this unexpected progress.

I should also ask our friends from SuperTUXCart (Arthur) if we can borrow their weather system. I recently saw a match between Mythos + Enrique and I never saw such high-graphics settings before. There are already clouds/particles so I wonder if rain + snow flake particleswill be much different.

[Radagast.]

Well walkable walls are not that urgent since we don ´t have ladders

True. Tough we can use ramps in the meantime, but it 's low priority now that we have entitities on entities.

[Radagast.]

I can't other than think of units in trees now. It's possible now and I still can't believe it.

If we had transition animations then we could have climb animations when changing from moving to garrisoned (and th other way round).

[Trinketos]

good work

[hhyloc]

Nice to know that all the awesome developments are going underway, please keep up the good work.

[auron2401]

Is it possible we'll be able to see a demonstration soon? this sounds cool!

[sanderd17]

The problem with props is that they're only graphical, and not network synchronised. So to have turrets, it must be placed on a fixed offset wrt the main entity. Placing it on a fixed offset from a prop point gives you the same problem again.

So can it be used to pick up weapons? No, it can't be placed relative to the soldiers arm.

Can it be used to have a fortress demolish part by part? Yes. But this requires additional scripting.

Visibly gaining units on walls and on any other structure is possible and already implemented. For moving things (like boats), I need to look into the obstruction too. As now, units on boats will most likely hinder the boat movement because they have their own obstruction.

[newspace]

If we can put units on walls and ships then do models of buildings and ships need to be scaled up? Currently they are 0.66:1 and quite small to accommodate units.

Does it also mean a lot of additional programing? (like change the proximity of everything related). I know it's hard work but it make the game so attractive!

Edited May 31, 2014 by newspace