Eyecandy!?

[Aeros]

Loosely, that would be possible by editing prop points and actor data in the editor (or externally), but that wouldn't be the same as modelling your own objects from scratch as you were implying.

However you can model something in 3dsmax, export it and have it in the game within minutes, indeed thats what us artists do here

[cfgoforce]

I have a new question. Will water move?

Edited August 28, 2005 by cfgoforce

[Wijitmaker]

We hope it will, it is planned to. But, until it is actually implimented - no guarentees.

[golthos]

Brothels? haha. Well, that would be historically accurate. Any units garrisoned inside would gain HPs?

Brothels are not only historically accurate but you can "disguise" them as temples too, such as the

Temple of Venus/Astarte/Diana/Aphrodite/Isis (yes the temple of Isis was in Rome)

You can have maidens out in front luring potential "worshippers" inside.

In fact you can have a morale check for anybody that is in close proximity to see if they are tempted of entering the temple.

This opens up scenario possibilities like that of having Circe capture soldiers or converting temple priestesses into Medusa.

You can even have a scenario like that of Conan the Barbarian where a Roman soldier in Germania enters the warm hut of some alluring witch to gain insights of the location of a particular object or enemy.

When the soldier enters the Hut shakes a little as if some "wind" was blowing.

Smoke from the hearth flashes with small bursts of fire and smoke. A hags cackle escapes from the Hut

Since I am already here i might as well add my ideas to the mix.

SPOOKY CREEPY STUFF EYECANDY:

Hangman Tree:

In line with the Germania and Circe stuff scenes in Germania can include trees with dead people hanging from them as is in some very spooky gallows. Creepy music can be playing.

(Historical note: the hangman tree is not just an idea from King Arthur it is also part of the mythology of Wotan/Odin and these hangman trees date way back into ancient history especially in the areas in the north of Greece, parts of southern Russia, and Georgia. Also the Minoans alluded to these trees in some of their ancient ceremonies by dancing while holding snakes in their hands around trees that had dolls hanging from their necks )

Around these trees you can have different kinds of shadows for day light and moonlight.

The bodies can swing in the wind. The sounds of the wind can be mixed with ghostly voices and the sounds of owls and bats flapping. There can be howling wolves in the dark and lurking about.

Fog:

There also can be a thin mist that clings closely to the ground and shows the disturbances as units move through them. This mist can hide snakes, wolves, and deadly pools of dark water. These hidden traps can be seen only in the brief breaks in the fog.

Instead of a thin mist you can have a thick fog that is layered where the thick white is on the bottom gradually thinning out as it gets higher. In this thicker fog there might be brief glimpses of ghosts as the wind blows.

Crucifix:

A more Romanized version of the Hangman tree can be a road or grove lined with crucified bodies in different stages of death. If this is too sensitive perhaps the crucifixes can be in the form of an "X" or on the trunks of trees instead of a "T". Instead of decomposing bodies there can be skeletons. As people pass by you can hear faint groans and the faint sounds of women crying in the air.

On these crucifixes there can be Vultures and Crows perched about looking to attack passers by. All the elements mentioned above with hangman tree can also be used here.

The crucifix scenario can be applied to desert climates too with hot sands and howling dust storms.

Gaseous Vents:

This is inspired by stories of heroes like Bellerophon and his battle with the Chimera.

Imagine rugged rocky terrain on the slopes of a Dark forested mountain. From these slopes hot bubbling springs trickle out of dark cracks and form shallow pools of water at various places on the mountainside.

Alongside these cracks dangerously close to the hot water, patches of precious gems and ore can be seen. Any thing touching the hot water is scalded.

As time passes the ground rumbles and pebbles can be seen and heard falling. Horses lose their footing and Neigh in fear. From the cracks burst steaming geysers or hot poisonous gases. Anyone caught in these bursts is killed.

At night and the early morning hours curls of steam rise from the ground making eerie, ghostly, veils in moonlight and in the pre-dawn light. Lurking in the trees is a lion stalking anyone who camps nearby or comes near the streams.

BABIES AND CHILDREN EYECANDY:

In towns and villages there should be children and babies (I know they were already mentioned but I would like to elaborate here)

Women with infants

There should be women dressed in their ethnic attire (Greek, Roman, Celt etc.)

These women should be accompanied by slave women or servants and some can be carrying infants in their ethnic way such as in swaddling clothes, slung on their backs, or in baskets on their heads.

They would be doing the daily chores appropriate to their time and culture. Such as bathing at a Roman or Greek style Spring, fetching water at a well or natural brook, gathering food in the field, shopping in markets etc. (bathing doesn't have to be full nudity it can be as simple as washing hair in a streams of water, wading in some creek, or pouring water on their child.

Some of these women can say interesting things like "Don't worry about those barbarians Gaius, mother is here" Or they can scream in horror as their babies cry in fear saying "save my baby" while running for their lives when the invaders charge in.

Many of the phrases can include the names of other famous leaders in history such as Ceasar, Alexander, and so on.

Young Children

In addition to infants you can have groups of young children playing and running and singing and apply the same kinds of scenarios as mentioned above for the infants.

Young children can be playing "hide 'n' seek" in town or in the forest. When you see this you find children's heads and bodies suddenly popping in and out of hiding places. This could startle your horsemen and can be a good foil for any scouts hiding in the bushes.

NATURAL SCENERY EYECANDY:

Reflections in water.

To be able to see the sky reflected on the surface of still and running water.

At night you can have scenes of constellations and clouds moving past the moon reflected on dark pools of water. The constellations can be specific to a particular part of the world at that time.

In the day the surface of running water would be semi-translucent so that you can see the fish and pebbles on the bottom and parts of the surface would be reflective showing the blue sky, moving clouds, and birds flying in the sky. At dusk you can see the sun set reflected.

Rain effects:

Another cool eye candy is to see rain splash on bodies of water. When rain hits the ground puddles of water should form and foot prints should fill with water.

When troops and horses run through wet ground you should see the splashing of mud and water and their legs get stains of mud on them.

Water effects:

Well water, fountain water, and water in shallow streams should have a more transparent, sparkly or silvery look to it instead of bright blue colors that look so phony and weird. In fact it looks like blue ink. I would not bathe in or drink that.

I would like to see water that shows that it has a current in a particular direction. It could just be an animation accompanied by sound. To make water deep it can be treated as a lower elevation and anything that “fell” into this water can be animated to drown in it. The same goes for creating units and objects moving down a river or a stream. This could just be an animation of the object disappearing of the land appearing in the water, and flowing down that current water and reappearing at the end of the current. If the river goes off the map say goodbye to the unit or object.

Along this moving water you can also have rocky rapids that can damage boats and many, small, water falls.

The coastal shores where land masses meet oceans should have waves that move towards the beaches complete with sound effects. These sound effects should be conditional as in when you move closer you hear the sound of the waves and when you move away they fade out.

Fire and smoke effects:

It would be nice to see fire that produces smoke. Each plume of smoke can have different effects. Fires caused by burning oil can be black in color ad fires by dry burning wood can be white or gray. The size of the smoke will vary by the size of the fire. I would like to see many variations of smoke from the wispy smoke of a small flame to the thick dark billowing smoke of great fires. When smoke is large is should block the light of the sun switching the source of light from the sun to the fire.

Fires should also be treated as a different light source especially in dark conditions. Fires should also have different colors from an almost bright white-yellow of small flames to dark orange-red of large forest fires.

Smoke and fire should change direction as wind blows. It should also move when burning objects move such as wagons and boats.

When trees burn, as in a forest fire, part of the effect should be that the ground immediately surrounding the tree should smolder and burn with small fires.

Mines:

It would be cool to see ore and stone mines look more like real ore mines and stone quarries. There should be different styles of mines and quarries too. Mines and Quarries shouldn’t always look so obvious. Ores might look like streaks of gold or silver on the ground or on the hillside. You can also have pebbles or flecks of gold gleaming from the bottom of shallow streams. This gold can be seen collected with an animation of a unit using sheep’s skin (A la Jason and the Golden Fleece legend.) Ore mines should be dug into making depressions into the ground or in a hillside. Units digging can look like they disappear into a mine making the impression that it is deep. The longer they dig the longer it takes them to “come out.” Each time an individual unit is sent back to retrieve ore it takes a fraction of time longer to come out of the mine unless you add more units to the mine which divides the existing time by that many units added.

This would be an interesting strategy affecting element in game play. The fact that it takes longer and longer to retrieve materials from mines creates incentives to assign more units to a task and if that is not possible it develops the need to find new mines and temporarily abandon old ones even though ore material still is left.

Stone quarries should be larger areas outside cut out from hillsides of various sizes. It should have ladders on different levels with stones being cut out in block like shapes giving the quarry a step like appearance. Cracks and piles of stone rubble would be falling everywhere as people pounded this quarry. When a quarry is started an indentation is formed and as more stone is taken out it grows wider until it runs out or until the entire hill is gone.

There could be different kinds of stone to quarry for the different kinds of stone structures needed to be built. Temples and government buildings may require marble stone while fortifications require granite to be quarried.

Mining tools should be seen too. There should be baskets of material lying around. You would see carts being loaded and/or donkeys with baskets being loaded on to their backs (a good reason to use donkeys and mules in the game), ladders sticking out of the ground showing people going up and down them, and wooden, cantilever cranes with rope lifting people and baskets out of holes.

You could have different ladder styles too to represent the different civilization styles. You could have ladders that look the ladders of today, or the ladder can look like a log with steps or notches cut into it, or like a log with pegs protruding out the sides.

MILITARY EYECANDY:

Boats:

I couldn’t stand the boats in any of the Ensemble Studios games. They were tiny and moved so phony.

Ancient ships usually had oarsmen and a sail like the Trireme and Corvus. It would be nice to see the oars on these boats moving and maybe see the oarsmen rowing them too. You can command the ships to raise sail so that they could move faster in the wind.

Oars on warships should be retractable so that you can pull up towards other ships and ram their oars off.

To make boats be stationary there should be an anchor animation. If rivers were given a set direction of current, when boats travel on them going down river should be faster than up river. When boats cross rivers they should move diagonally to simulate drift from currents.

Attacking Buildings:

It annoys me to no end to see soldiers with swords attacking buildings as if they were people.

I think an animation should be made showing soldiers attacking buildings in different ways.

A soldier with a sword or spear can come up to a building and set it on fire or they can throw torches on to buildings from as far as their normal attack range. If fire is not an option non-missile troops can come up to a building and use rope to tug at buildings until they are pulled down. When it comes to showing an attack against fortifications units can appear they are undermining them to knock them down. Archers and the like can use flaming arrows to burn down house and flammable structures.

Archers should not be able to shoot down stone walls even with fire, that’s what ballista and battering rams are for.

Edited February 13, 2006 by golthos

[Justinian]

I was reading this and eyecandy is mad. ALL games should have some.

But reading through i saw somebodies list of animals. My rant is why would something that isn't there naturally be there at all ie. Why would you have Kangaroos that live in Australia in Europe and Asia Minor?

Simple, you shouldn't

And Golthos said

"Attacking Buildings:

It annoys me to no end to see soldiers with swords attacking buildings as if they were people.

I think an animation should be made showing soldiers attacking buildings in different ways.

A soldier with a sword or spear can come up to a building and set it on fire or they can throw torches on to buildings from as far as their normal attack range. If fire is not an option non-missile troops can come up to a building and use rope to tug at buildings until they are pulled down. When it comes to showing an attack against fortifications units can appear they are undermining them to knock them down. Archers and the like can use flaming arrows to burn down house and flammable structures." end quote.

In Aoe 3 they worked in soldiers (Musketeers, Skirmishers, Cavalry) throwing fire at buildings and Archers firing flaming arrows and it looks so much better than a dumb soldier swinging a sword at a brick wall.

Edited December 16, 2006 by Scipii_Alemanus

[Tathar]

yes non-sword hacking building attacks would be awesome

[Aigis]

WEll i havnt read the entire topic i read a few posts here and there, but i did not see a few things. If they are they then please bear with me xD

Sunken Ships!!! ships that have run ashore, struck rocks etc. These ships could be placed close to the shore to give off a sense of threat in the waters in the area. Or they can be used in scenarios to illustrate a ship running ashore or sinking.

Water Effects. More details u can add to the water. Like motions to show what way it flows. Little ripples u can add where u want them. Things of that nature that are small but can make a difference between a great map and an awesome map!

Roads. Diffrerent styles of roads. paved roads and dirt roads. Maybe also different effects to put on the roads, such as puddles, dirt, moss etc..

Thats all for now folks!!

~Aigis

VENI VIDI VICI

[The_Vandhaal]

not sure if somebody already said this

but here also some ideas for special editor units...... as you can quess the suggestions are for mythlovers like i am

Ofcourse the 7 wonders are important as mentioned before already

i have seen in some posts a list which had also a header Misc Special Units so i think it fits in that part

the units i talk about are not meant to be in the real game....but i see them as special units available in the editor.........would be nice to have them

so yes Mythical creatures and heroes

as many as possible

some examples ( can be a lot more different with all these 0AD civs)

• living colossus.......could match the statue of the 7 wonders collosus but become alive just by a change unit type effect and turned into a playable colossus....huge large myth unit made from stone
  
• Hydra
  
• other greek myth creatures
  
• greek heroes from several time frames: hercules, achilles to Leonidas etc etc etc
  
• heroes for the other civs
  
• roman and other civ myth creatures
  
• some special magical effects ....i think you get what I mean
  
• some god units
  
• some mythical structures or at least elements to build some in the editor yourself
  
• etc etc etc
  

well you get the point.........just some options to make also some more fantastic myth stuff with the 0ad editor. The creatures can function like stand alone units........so see them a bit like Titans in aom.........so not trainable in armies but just single units

oh and yes....blood

would be nice to have some blood splattering around....i think a bit in the direction of war of the ring...in that game blood splatterd around when units hit eachother in battle ( ofocurse since that was a commercial game there was this children option to switch it off in the options of the game hahahahahah)

again above is just a suggestion.......but it would give the freaky lovers of fantastic & myth stuff , like I am, also some nice things to mess around with in the editor and at the same time, since it are just special units in the editor, it will not ruin the historical accuracy of the accual 0AD game...........the game will cover both groups....the historical reality lovers but at the same time give us freaky myth lovers also an option

I understand that 0ad will be highly mod friendly.........but i suggest the above because of the fact that if these options are in the original editor it will be easier because a lot of people do not like to install mod stuff

Best regards,

The Vandaal

[Kimball]

Golthos has some great ideas, especially those ship-related ones. Also, I really like the idea of different ways of destroying buildings. It always bugged me that you could take down a wall with a sword.

As for The Vandhaal, we don't have any myth units in the game for the time being, and it's very doubtful that they will be included at all. The game is open-sourced, allowing the creation of myth units by third-party modders, but no myth units will be shipped with the game.

[Mythos_Ruler]

All good ideas presented here. As far as Mythological units go: No plans are set, but I intend to have at least a FEW myth or fantasy units represented in the editor, at the very least to show what is capable through modding, but to also make it possible for designers to make interesting custom scenarios straight out of the box. I like the Colossus idea, but he'd be Bronze, wood, and iron (he was constructed from Demetrius's "Helepolis" afterall).

[Argalius]

I understand that 0ad will be highly mod friendly.........but i suggest the above because of the fact that if these options are in the original editor it will be easier because a lot of people do not like to install mod stuff

What I understood from previous statements is that mods can be shipped with a scenario. So the mod is incorperated into the scenario and all together it's just one file. So no special installation needed there and you'd still be able to play online.

[dotDarkCloud]

How about this:

Modern famous buildings (eg. CN Tower, Eiffel Tower, Sydney Opera House, Empire State Building, etc.) redesigned as anchient buildings in the style of different civilizations.

i.e. Roman style Empire State Building.

This would take some thought and designing, but it'd be cool. If you ever want to take a break from the usual, this could be interesting.

[The_Vandhaal]

What I understood from previous statements is that mods can be shipped with a scenario. So the mod is incorperated into the scenario and all together it's just one file. So no special installation needed there and you'd still be able to play online.

He thats interesting Argalius

Well this would also do the job.........and basicly is a very very interesting feature

if oad would be able to wrap mods into a scenario/campaign and this mod would function like custom triggers in for example aom tt so not conflicting with the game on or off line then it would be a super feature

It would mean that any other commercial game out there is owned bigtime when it comes down on custom scenario design & custom mods

and it would mean that 0ad has virtual NO limits ............wow thinking about the possibilities already makes my mind go crazy

Can someone from the 0AD developer crew confirm this feature ?

Edited September 19, 2007 by The_Vandhaal

[Mythos_Ruler]

Confirmed: Feature planned. Not implemented yet.

[The_Vandhaal]

Confirmed: Feature planned. Not implemented yet.

great !! well then basicly if you guys add this feature then you do not need to add any custom units for the editor at all

lol it only means that I have to learn modding a little bit........maybe interesting also for me since i have not explored that field of hobby scenario design at all

basicly this feature means that anybody can create a sort of expansion for 0AD which does not mess up the main game.............so 0AD can grow and go to any place somebody wants and people do not have to remove or replace stuff when they mod they simply add it as a kind of expansion.....awesome !

[Mythos_Ruler]

Well, even if we do implement the idea as planned, we'll still pre-package some "custom" units and objects with the game. We already have a custom dragon in the game.

[The_Vandhaal]

yes i know...but you guys said that for sure you would not add myth units or myth creatures

Myth creatures would at least link the best to the theme of the 0ad game....... if you would for example add lotr units or like for example Godzilla which was added to rise & fall or the forkboy in aom these units would not be very useable in scenarios...at least they would be something if you would create a funny or lotr type of thing but aside from that not very handy in other scenarios which are more situated in the time frame or around the time frame of 0ad

in aom stuff like the lazerbear the forkboy are very funny but thats all they basicly are

in for example swgb you had cheat units like the death star or a star destroyer which where also very good for using in scenarios

but i am looking forward to the special units you guys will be cooking up for us.....maybe also some big crature models would be cool............so their models can be used for modding

oh yes and some females.......any of those es or other games lacks pretty females.......I always wonder why there are so few female units in those es games........ really miss the girls ( ofcourse regi does compensate a lot but still .... )

Edited September 20, 2007 by The_Vandhaal

[CaveTown]

.I always wonder why there are so few female units in those es games........ really miss the girls ( ofcourse regi does compensate a lot but still .... )

In aoe3 there is Amelia Black the railroad owner person and Lizzie the pirate captain. But I do think that it would be cool to have a lot of female units in an RTS game, unlike most other RTS games.

[Mythos_Ruler]

We'll definitely have at least 1 female hero (Boudicca for the Celtic Britons), and many variations of female citizens for each of the 6 civs. If we use the Sarmations in Part II we can possibly have random female variants of a few units.

[MrBlack103]

How about Amazons as an editor-only civ? I know it might not be that historically accurate but it would be pretty fun.

[saxguy]

im thinking there should be storms, thats to me the ultimate eyecandy, rain storms, snow stroms, sand storms and for misc. it should be fire storms you got to addmit it would be bad a$s the greeks versus the persians in the middle of a fire storm to death with the sky all red and stuff, not nesesiraly historically realistic (unless your fighting under a active volcano ) but it would make a great difference in eyecandy.

[saxguy]

oh, and lots and lots of ruins of diferent buildings that can all catch fire

[Justinian]

So you want Particle Effect Overload.

Purely Particle Effects.

[saxguy]

ummmmmmmmmmm yeah basicaly yes you got to admit it would be pretty cool

[Justinian]

When I got over the lag, yeah sure why not.