0abc mod

[Lion.Kanzen]

Just now, Nescio said:

Unfortunately I'm mystified by your answer.

Most portraits are 128×128 pixels. The GUI displays them as 64×64 portraits in the tooltip and 32×32 icons on the right selection panel. One quadrant is 16×16 pixels. In the  I guess the `gui.scale = 2.0` is applied afterwards, i.e. 128→16→32.

Anyway, the numeral with shadow (viii) actually looks worse in the tech tree than the simple one I made initially (iii):

  Reveal hidden contents

So I suppose I should keep it simple and leave making portraits with shadows to more experienced people.

In simple words, the numerals: you are going to have to try several times because the original icons were not designed to have them, many will not fit well, others if and others perhaps.

[Lion.Kanzen]

For example, this, your own numeral covers the wheat icon, why put the wheat if you're going to cover it?

[Nescio]

12 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

For example, this, your own numeral covers the wheat icon, why put the wheat if you're going to cover it?

Well, I didn't design those technology portraits, I simply took farming_training.png and overlayed the numeral icon over the top right quadrant.

Anyway, I reproduced those numerals in svg:

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Very simple version:

<svg height="16" width="16">
  <text font-family="Linux Libertine Display" font-size="16" letter-spacing="-2" x="8" y="13" text-anchor="middle" alignment-baseline="middle" fill="gold">I</text>
</svg>

The slightly more complicated version I actually used:

<svg height="128" width="128">
  <text font-family="Linux Libertine Display" font-size="128" letter-spacing="-10" x="65" y="106" text-anchor="middle" alignment-baseline="middle" fill="gold">IV</text>
</svg>

And a taller, narrower version I tried out, which looks nice on its own but poor in game:

<svg height="128" width="128">
  <g transform="scale(1 2)">
    <text font-family="Linux Libertine Display" font-size="96" letter-spacing="-10" x="65" y="63" text-anchor="middle" alignment-baseline="middle" fill="gold">VIII</text>
  </g>
</svg>

 

You can then export to png with e.g.:

inkscape -z -w 1024 -h 1024 in.svg -e out.png

Then you get:

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Subsequently I applied the steps described by @Alexandermb in GIMP and shrunk them to 128×128:

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Although those certainly look better on their own, they actually look worse in game when shrunk by the GUI.

As @wowgetoffyourcellphone pointed out, they could use a black border, but it has to remain visible when displayed as small as 16×16. In other words, adding fancy shadows was a nice experiment, but not really an improvement in this case.

While the simple numerals I first posted are not perfect, they're good enough for me as placeholders.

Besides, I don't really want to create art; modding the gui and simulation files is already more than enough work for me. Let's leave art to the artists.

PS I'm still hoping someone would be kind enough to remove the background from range.png for me.

[sphyrth]

lol - And I thought we should also put wheat on the other upgrades.

[Nescio]

Also, any opinions on using chess pieces for unit type ranks?

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support, infantry, cavalry, elephant, siege, ship, hero, catafalque:

I don't have a camel or chariot yet, but I did find a giraffe, unicorn, and zebra:

 

[Nescio]

Like this:

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[Stan`]

That's interesting. I wish we had a UX expert around

[Lion.Kanzen]

13 minutes ago, Stan` said:

That's interesting. I wish we had a UX expert around

Gaming UX expert. You mean.

[azayrahmad]

2 hours ago, Nescio said:

Also, any opinions on using chess pieces for unit type ranks?

  Hide contents

support, infantry, cavalry, elephant, siege, ship, hero, catafalque:

I don't have a camel or chariot yet, but I did find a giraffe, unicorn, and zebra:

 

This is a great idea! Although in my opinion the unit icon picture should have already conveyed its type. I think weapon type is the one that is often hard to infer from unit icon only.

[Nescio]

23 minutes ago, azayrahmad said:

This is a great idea! Although in my opinion the unit icon picture should have already conveyed its type. I think weapon type is the one that is often hard to infer from unit icon only.

Yeah, that's the idea, like this:

To do it properly I need to have a set of decent weapon icons.

[Lion.Kanzen]

2 hours ago, azayrahmad said:

This is a great idea! Although in my opinion the unit icon picture should have already conveyed its type. I think weapon type is the one that is often hard to infer from unit icon only.

I suggested some similar in other context.

 

 

Edited August 22, 2019 by Lion.Kanzen

[Alexandermb]

@Nescio have you consider adding as upgrade for towers, fortress a technology wich increases the fired arrow amount half or similar to having garrisoned archers inside, but this as the cost of half of the archer cost but also adding population cost to the formula.

[Nescio]

2 hours ago, Alexandermb said:

@Nescio have you consider adding as upgrade for towers, fortress a technology wich increases the fired arrow amount half or similar to having garrisoned archers inside, but this as the cost of half of the archer cost but also adding population cost to the formula.

Do you mean a global technology (like how one can improve worker gather rates) or an individual upgrade (like how one can replace a small tower with a large tower)?

• If the former (technologies that increase default arrow count and resource cost but decrease population or garrison capacity), I actually had a few of those, one for towers, four for centres. However, increased structure cost has undesirable consequences:
  • you can place a dozen foundations, research the technology, then delete those foundations, you get more resources back than you paid
  • even without using the abovementioned exploit, it encourages players to build more turrets and postpone researching the technology (it ought to be the other way around: do I research an improvement or instead spend the resources on training more units?)
  • players with many towers benefit the most, making already hard-to-defeat players even more difficult, aiding those who're already at an advantage, thus further widening the gap

If there were a mechanic to increase a technology cost based on the number of entities of a certain class (e.g. technology cost 100 food + 50 food * number of towers), then I would consider reimplementing default arrow count technologies.

• If the latter (individual upgrades), that's something I've thought of several times and would actually be quite easy to implement. Unfortunately the AI doesn't know to upgrade entities, thus giving human players another advantage, which is why I haven't implemented it; this mod is designed for single-player.

If the AI were able to upgrade entities, it would open up a many possibilities. E.g. centres would only train unarmed workers, which you can subsequently upgrade individually to archer, javelineer, slinger, spearman, or swordsman; Romans would have worker→hastatus→princeps→triarius; unarmoured Greek spearmen could be given a linothorax (cheap), scale armour (in between), chainmail (expensive), breastplate (slow); etc.

• Another idea would be to let towers and fortresses gain experience and advance ranks (which could decrease ranged attack spread or reload time). However, structures are capturable and it isn't realistic a capture structure would keep top-notch archers after you wipe out its garrison.

If captured entities would lose all experience and revert to default rank, that could work.

[Nescio]

And I've been playing around with svg again, creating more selection textures, including some with non-square dimensions, as suggested by @wowgetoffyourcellphone at D889 about two years ago.

1:2 shapes, for cavalry, elephants, and traders:

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1:3 shapes, for completeness:

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1:4 shapes, for warships:

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Some polygons I already added earlier:

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Some polygrams in circles, perhaps useful for a magic mod:

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And a complete K12 graph in a circle:

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(Creating weapon icons (pike, spear, sword, sabre, axe, mace; and throwing axe, javelin, bow, crossbow, sling, staff sling) is too difficult for me, though.)

Edited August 24, 2019 by Nescio
K12

[Nescio]

0abc updated again:

• women, slaves, and fishing boats use rhombus selection shape, traders and merchant ships hexagon
• all factions can train cavalry javelineers at the stable in the village phase
• each civilization gets a discount on some technologies:
  • Carthage: Market technologies −30% resource costs and research time
  • Gauls: House technologies −40% resource costs and research time
  • Kushites: Temple technologies −10% resource costs and research time
  • Macedon: Forge technologies −10% resource costs and research time
  • Mauryas: Palace technologies −10% resource costs and research time
  • Ptolemies: Naval technologies −25% resource costs and research time
  • Rome: Arsenal technologies −50% resource costs and research time
  • Seleucids: Stable technologies −20% resource costs and research time
• Libraries now give structures −10% build time (instead of technology discount)
• updated {civ}.json data files
• various minor updates and corrections
• [EDIT] also let the history window use bullets (which was surprisingly easy to do: D2221):
  Spoiler

  

Edited August 24, 2019 by Nescio
civ history gui

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

On 8/22/2019 at 2:37 PM, Nescio said:

If there were a mechanic to increase a technology cost based on the number of entities of a certain class (e.g. technology cost 100 food + 50 food * number of towers), then I would consider reimplementing default arrow count technologies

I could imagine a lot of use for this tech mechanic. 

[winnerswithoutlosers]

Quote

If there were a mechanic to increase a technology cost based on the number of entities of a certain class (e.g. technology cost 100 food + 50 food * number of towers)

This, but with unit costs.

[Nescio]

0abc updated again, numerous internal changes, simplified hero auras, replaced Kushite pikemen with axemen.

[balduin]

@Nescio Try to use Inkscape and make a black border around your yellow Roman numerals. I think the fancy shadow effect does not look that create scaled down to 128x128, 64x64 or 32x32. You can create the black border in Inkscape and export the image to PNG from within Inkscape.

[Alexandermb]

just an idea if a different kind of icons is desired: 

Use a helmet dedicated to that infantry as reference and place just right to the side a weapon or the weapon tip. kinda like AoE Logo considering our new and high amount of helmets.

For example:

Roman_Spearman_E:

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Roman_Spearman_A:

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Roman_Spearman_B:

Spoiler

athen/spart spearman_e:

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athen/spart_spearman_a:

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and the basic:

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I belive you can get the idea with this. A good background could also help.

Even maybe as background use the civ emblem or any good shield you find suittable for the infantry kind.

[Nescio]

Something else: currently most units have a status bar width of 2.0. Do you think it would be an improvement if different units would have different values, to make it easier to differentiate them? E.g. support 1.0, infantry 2.0, cavalry 3.0:

[Stan`]

Star craft seems to do this. I wonder though if it's really sustainable and also doesn't make it harder to process the information.

[Nescio]

Yeah, I'm not convinced it's a good idea, hence my question.

It is already present in game, though (most units have a width of 2.0, siege 4.0, ships and structures 6.0).

[Stan`]

Also now we have the experience bar below haven't we ?

[Nescio]

3 hours ago, Stan` said:

Also now we have the experience bar below haven't we ?

?