Alpha 17 is near

[Radagast.]

I pick the

1) blender addon, this week beta production release. Only after that I can decide the pace we can achieve.

2) playtesting and fixing of Aristeia issues,

3) committing the Han China storehouse.

4) After those I will focus on capturing.

5) Han Chinese hero: Liu Beng's face.

6) Assyrian simulation templates using Zophim's design document.

7) Assyrian art rush using the blender addon of 1).

8) Han Chinese hero: Han Xin. Face to be omitted as no reliable historical reference available (a movie is no reliable source).

9) Mod configurator GUI fixes (not the release blocker crash!, just 2 occasional GUI errors).

10) Modern warfare: tank proof of concept

11) Modern warfare: flying object fix in the engine (pyrogenesis c++)

Trigger maps somewhere inbetween.

As the animation conflicts with Sander's great garrisoning visualisation. (<-- fixed in turrets by Sanderd17, no problems in the shieldbearers using garrisoning visualisation)

Stan, how can I reproduce your Gate animation problems concerning visual garrisoning?

[Stan`]

Just Garrison units in the gate, and try opening closing the gate.

[Radagast.]

Gates are not garrisonable by default. I had to mod them to allow garrisoning in them. Then the gate's door wings didn't close anymore. It seems this can be addressed by examining not only for nearby units, but also checking if the units are garrisoned, and if so, then ignore them in the evaluation.

I have addressed this issue and it's fixed.

What was wrong with the ship animations and I'll fix it too. How can I reproduce it?

If interest exists, then I'd like to at least commit it myself.

Edited September 19, 2014 by Radagast.

[Stan`]

Do you have a patch for this ?

Same for boats ie : garrison a catapult on one of them.

[Radagast.]

Of course I have. But I'm tired of providing patches that dry out on trac. I've already lost overview of which patch in which state has been committed and which not. It's included in 0AD Extended already.

I'll look into that boat issue. Might be not as easy to fix as the gate.

[Radagast.]

Stan did a good work on the houses, but Niek noticed they didn't stretch far enough into the ground:

So we made them stretch farther into the ground:

Edited September 20, 2014 by Radagast.

[Stan`]

Sanderd said the gate anim patch was a todo in the code, so I guess you can submit it

[Radagast.]

Hm.. Sander has no time anyway currently, so I'll wait for him to return.

The ship issue I couldn't reproduce, moving a ship while visibly garrisoned units inside the ship fight another ship works fine, no reset like for the chariot. The chariot seems to be most broken then. I have to find the bug.

I'll probably have to test with a ship where the oars are animated?

Edited September 21, 2014 by Radagast.

[Stan`]

Yeah, Problem is only there with animated meshes

Sanderd Discussion

Me : Hi, I'm sorry to annoy you again, but I looked at the code and don't see how to make animated mesh compliant with your system.

Why do I want them :

- Animated meshes on boats without losing animation, would be really nice especially for catapults on quinqueremes and archers.
- Animated units. Ie : Hannibal could be scripted to be a unit garrisonned in an elephant and therefore giving him the ability to attack.
- Animated meshes on gates.
- Better understanding will allow having animals garrisonned in the corral, being visible, and also producing a little food income.


What I don't understand.

- How animated meshes are handled : Is there a function UpdateActor ?
- Where should your got be modified.


I'll be really grateful, if you could give me a way step by step on how to fix it (Because then I'd learn something) or just implement it.

Sorry for the Hassle.

Regards Stan.
Him : Not sure what you mean. Turrets are meant to be separated from the parent in most ways. So the animations aren't set from the parent, but rather from the state of the turret itself. This allows the parent to be in the moving state (with the moving animation), but the turret to be attacking or idle.

Turrets are entities like all other entities, and their animations are handled in different files. Like the units on walls are handled by their regular UnitAI. The patch in trac somewhere, with fixed turrets on those chariots, those animations are handled by a new AI component.

me : So I should rather look in the unit ai. Js file instead of the garrison. Js ?

him : UnitAI decides the animations of the units indeed.
me : Should your garrison holder function call a updatanimation function ?

him : Animations are managed by UnitAI, and it would be easiest to keep it that way. Else you get conflicting animation requests. See the siege tower that loses its garrison flag when it starts moving. That's because the garrison flag is an animation started by the GarrisonHolder, and the moving animation is started by UnitAI, and they override each other.

I'm not sure why you want other animations for garrisoned units.
me : Oh maybe that wasn't clear.

If you don ´t have animations if you garrison units in the gates the gate stay closed and open close door only remove the obstruction making units go through the gate even if is it´s closed. If you do that on boats they stop rowing. If you do that on chariots ( not really useful) you lose the wheel animation. What I want is being able to garrison in any building without losing those moving anims.
him : Ah, that's the TODO in GarrisonHolder (L563). You should be able to change the variant without changing the animation. Though that TODO will require a lot of work. Not only in the code, but also in the actors. As you need to have some way to to differentiate between animations that set the variant and animations that don't.

One possibility is to have different combos. Like in the UnitAI SetGathererAnimationOverride. That replaces the default walk and run animations with animations with the right props. So you could have a walk_garrisoned, and a run_garrisoned. And when garrisoned, that combo of animation and props would be used (i.e. the wheels would turn, and the flag would be up).

For the gate, it's a bit more difficult though, as it's not a walking animation. You should probably make 4 animation for all combos (like gate_opening_garrisoned). And in the Gate.js code itself differentiate between the garrisoned gate and the other case.

And you'll probably need to special-case the gate inside the GarrisonHolder code too.
me : Oh so it´s planned ? Okay so thatl what i thought we need to add different animations names. But why is it so complex. Can ´t we just tell the garisson functions to update the actors normally by making it separate ?
him : Making the garrison thing to change the variant is rather easy. The problem is that animations override the variants. This is needed in most cases (you don't want a unit to attack while in the gather_meat variant, or it would just beat you with a piece of meat).

So the TODO, as it's written there, is very hard to achieve. Manually fixing those things is a lot easier. Though the code is a bit less generic. I still think this will cause less problems in the future.

me : I'm afraid I don't have enough knowledge, then. Do you plan to do it ?

him No, I can't really find the time to do stuff now.
me : Do you have a clear idea of what should be changed maybe I could be your hands ?
him : For the gates, every gate actor should get 4 animation names for the combos between opening/closing and garrisoned/not.

Then the Gate.js code needs to see if the gate is garrisoned or not when opening or closing, and pick the right animation. And the GarrisonHolder needs to check whether it's a gate, and also use the right animation when garrisoning.

Probably some details to be figured out there.

Edited September 21, 2014 by stanislas69

[Lion.Kanzen]

We can have rafts I want good river fightings

[Radagast.]

Dude, that's all working. Tested with oar animations (modded carthaginian trireme to allow for garrisoning visualization) and the animations all work while the units fight, the ship moves and all that at the same time.

Thus I can't reproduce your issues you outlined to Sander.

The only remaining problem with visible garrisoning is the jumping rotation when units are visibly garrisoned in a chariot (can be seen in Aristeia in the Atlas Editor just add the egyptian chariot and some archers and garrison the archers in the chariot. Then when moving the chariot jumps around in rotation, it looks like a reset of the animation state.)

[Radagast.]

- Animated meshes on boats without losing animation, would be really nice especially for catapults on quinqueremes and archers.
- Animated units. Ie : Hannibal could be scripted to be a unit garrisonned in an elephant and therefore giving him the ability to attack.
- Animated meshes on gates.
- Better understanding will allow having animals garrisonned in the corral, being visible, and also producing a little food income.

These things are working for me and I've added some proof of concepts in Aristeia some time ago. The problem is only the chariot. But perhaps the oar animations are not what you meant? Sorry if I misunderstand. I'm a noob. :/

[Stan`]

I made a video to show you

(It's for the gates)

Sans titre 25.7z

[Radagast.]

Comrade, that's what I already fixed. Didn't you talk of something with animations to ships not working? I might be wrong. Then it's all fixed but the chariot.

The gate operation is working now. Visible garrisoning by Sander is working like a charm and A17 will strike like a bolt.

Edited September 21, 2014 by Radagast.

[Stan`]

Mind to submit a patch to trac ? (I believe we need to share everything we fix even if it's not reviewed) This is the idea of OpenSource.

There is a ticket for it http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/2679

and this one seems related and useful for 0ad extended http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/1550

For the boats I assumed it didn't work.

To fix the walking units, you'll have either to replace the mesh with one that doesn't have a walk /run anim, or disable those anims, and replace them by the steady one.

Edited September 21, 2014 by stanislas69

[Radagast.]

Yay, I fixed the chariots, I know what it's all about now. I also found away to add the long-awaited trample damage.

The version in Aristeia is broken as is Aristeia in general. I'll probably fix it soon, but as you know, we had make RoTE release ready first, because my ideas are considered minor by the Council (remember Niek, the almighty's words: we should not focus on "personal projects", so he discourages 0AD Extended but still calls Millennium his mod like Lion calls Aristeia his mod). I'm all but happy really with how it all plays out currently and I think you'd be better off without me.

Mind to submit a patch to trac ? (I believe we need to share everything we fix even if it's not reviewed) This is the idea of OpenSource.

I will submit a patch if I'm convinced things are worth my efforts again. Currently I am a bit unhappy and will hold my things a bit back.

There is a ticket for it http://trac.wildfire...com/ticket/2679

and this one seems related and useful for 0ad extended http://trac.wildfire...com/ticket/1550

Thanks for the tickets. Indeed that's something I have to address, it will reduce the art workload.

To fix the walking units, you'll have either to replace the mesh with one that doesn't have a walk /run anim, or disable those anims, and replace them by the steady one.

Which walking units? Sorry for my incomprehension.

[Stan`]

Submit it for me. Not for them. But submit it anyway.

When Using units props on chariot, if the variant you use has a move anim, it will walk in the void. You need to disable/remove/ignore it.

[Radagast.]

RogueRepublic also didn't share their work and only showcased it. LordGood also keeps back his work at times, and haven't I already published my recent storehouse improvements, footprint and obstruction fixes, re-UV mappings, template fixes? I've also worked on several parts for 0AD, I tried to help, and I always tried to add things, while Niek reverts things, randomly removes my code comments, deletes ModDB entries of me, which means that people can never read what I really wrote and only listen to what he sa.

This all is more offense than I can take. I did even state, that the mods will be continued as Addons, which means that essentially nothing changes, but the name (Niek's own words and he is right but strangely he still deleted my announcement despite this not really being anything that was a decision against the council).

I already feel that Skhorn has gotten that misfortunate announcement of me wrong and probably also other councillors, despite probably never having read it.

Thus I retire from not only the Council's core that I wanted to abolish for pure equality but also from CoM. I know that I'm nit-picky but you are no less nit-picky with me.

I also modeled the Egyptian pharao, at least tried to help with the Mod selector GUI and also modeled Liu Bang. It's not that I don't share things. I'm convinced of Open source and I'll provide 0AD Extended sources when the first version is being released.

I have enjoyed being part of the Council, but recent misfortunate mishaps require me to settle things and I thus retire and concentrate on fixing engine lag and other things. It'll take a long time anyway, but the 0AD team is not willing to motivate Philip to do so, so we have no other choice.

Edited September 21, 2014 by Radagast.

[Radagast.]

Niek will lead you, and you have Skhorn, a real rocket recruited by Niek. So I think the council is safe and will look into a bright future, especially since A17 will be a great release once released. Keep it up. This is a pride project, one of the mightiest open source projects my minor self has ever seen.

[Stan`]

Wait...... Whaaat. Rada, If you leave who will I be, the phantom of those forums ? The guy that does what he is told ? Niektb doesn't lead me. And Rada, what about your game, our projects stuff you wanted to see ? I can't hold you back if you wanna disapear, but I will be very sad.

[shieldwolf23]

Radagast, that was a bit sudden. I have hoped we'll not end up like this. Goodness!

[Skhorn]

What? Come on rada for the sake of humanity, there it must be another way to handle this. I second the shieldwolf comment

[Lion.Kanzen]

What happen?

[LordGood]

It takes me time to splice changes from my SVN into mod format, time I don't have. Time that nobody on the team really has. There's a reason this project moves as slowly as it does, it's an open source project with a small team of volunteers and a miniscule budget.

I've fallen far behind academically in order to develop the mycenaeans, and as a matter of the other artists on 0AD, everyone has done volunteer work in vain, and made these kinds of sacrifices to do so.

I understand if you're not up to it rada, but if you want to develop this skill set you'll have to soldier through the criticism and reversion

[niektb]

What did I do wrong?

I told you why I reverted that one particular commit. I explained why I removed these few code comments. I told you why I removed that announcement (And no, the naming wasn't the problem)!

And now you say it as if I always revert everything, remove your code comments without any reason and maintain a censorship policy?

Just because I happen to be the one that cares most about structure and organization doesn't make me a leader.

Anyway, I'll send you a PM later today.

BTW: As always, I second Shieldwolf's comment.

Edited September 22, 2014 by niektb