Gaia: Animals

[Mythos_Ruler]

i get the American and Australian animals, but "bison" can technically refer to a European species. or would you prefer to use the term "wisent"?

Oh! Excellent suggestion, then. I'll add it for Temperate and Steppe biomes.

EDIT: Looks like the list settling on 52 total animals. WFG will need lots of help to model, texture, and animate them all!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AgXkx2Fjag5hdHZDV08zeVpqQ3ZKVDBYekV5UTJ4eVE&output=html

[Iskandar]

Hi! For the animals I propose to insert an A.I as in AOE; in this game, if a villager or a soldier passed near to a lion or an alligator, the animal attacked him! Besides during the game, if a gazella was found near to a lion, the lion attacked her! Why not to introduce this in 0 A.D.? Still, if the animal is killed, its quantity of food must be reduced alone during the time. In Aoe series is so, this simulates the decomposition. What do you think of it?Sorry for my english, but i'm italian and I'm not speak english wery well.

[zoot]

Hi! For the animals I propose to insert an A.I as in AOE; in this game, if a villager or a soldier passed near to a lion or an alligator, the animal attacked him! Besides during the game, if a gazella was found near to a lion, the lion attacked her! Why not to introduce this in 0 A.D.? Still, if the animal is killed, its quantity of food must be reduced alone during the time. In Aoe series is so, this simulates the decomposition. What do you think of it?Sorry for my english, but i'm italian and I'm not speak english wery well.

Lions already do attack player units. I also suggested that if a unit attacks a child elephant, nearby adult elephants should retaliate to simulate herd behavior. But it was not well-received

Edited September 22, 2012 by zoot

[Mythos_Ruler]

I also suggested that if a unit attacks a child elephant, nearby adult elephants should retaliate to simulate herd behavior. But it was not well-received

Sounds brilliant to me.

[serveurix]

I also suggested that if a unit attacks a child elephant, nearby adult elephants should retaliate to simulate herd behavior.

I like that too. If my memory is good, in AoM and AoE III , when a villager is attacked by an enemy or a beast, he fights back, and all the villagers that are close to him (who can see the scene in their field of vision, I guess) stop their work to help him. When the danger is gone they all get back to their respective work. I've noticed that it was not (yet ?) the case in 0AD, but it would be cool if fighting herd animals (like elephants) had the same behavior.

[oshron]

I like that too. If my memory is good, in AoM and AoE III , when a villager is attacked by an enemy or a beast, he fights back, and all the villagers that are close to him (who can see the scene in their field of vision, I guess) stop their work to help him. When the danger is gone they all get back to their respective work. I've noticed that it was not (yet ?) the case in 0AD, but it would be cool if fighting herd animals (like elephants) had the same behavior.

i agree; it would add to the realism of the game, though i'd say elephants would be one of the few occasions where that happens. an idea i had was that chimpanzees or gorillas could be in the game and will normally ignore the player, but on occasion will attack unprovoked, and when they are attacked, their entire troop joins in for a miniature human vs ape battle

[Zaggy1024]

It would be really nice to see animals acting in groups instead of each animal just separating from the others when a hunter comes in range of them, too.

[Khopesh]

What about domesticated dogs - can be used for hunting/scouting?

And any chance of them being able to carry (retreive) smaller animals such as fowl?

[Loki1950]

The Briton's one of the Celtic factions have War dogs,after you build the dog house.

Enjoy the Choice

[Khopesh]

Yeah, I found just found that out after reading some stuff. Maybe I should learn more before making suggestions

In my defence I didn't find it on the animal list. So assumed it wasn't in the game.

[Loki1950]

I did notice that you where a newbie so was not too sarcastic

Enjoy the Choice

[Khopesh]

Haha, thanks for that

[AllenY]

Your idea Khopesh is very similiar to Praetorians units, use animals to explore. all Factions have a 2 kind explorer with a dog or with a owl

the owl flighs and let see around, and dog send it to spy with long time the enemy.

I played that, could never kill a single scout.

Anyway, I think pack animal behaviour would be great!

Have apes fight humans, like Battle for the Planet of the Apes!

The prehsitroic animals idea isn't bad too, altoguht wouldn't that many be a bit overboard for an easter egg? maybe just a few recognisable ones, triceratops, brachiosaurus and tyrannosaurus (rex).

[oshron]

I played that, could never kill a single scout.

Anyway, I think pack animal behaviour would be great!

Have apes fight humans, like Battle for the Planet of the Apes!

The prehsitroic animals idea isn't bad too, altoguht wouldn't that many be a bit overboard for an easter egg? maybe just a few recognisable ones, triceratops, brachiosaurus and tyrannosaurus (rex).

TVTropes actually has several pretty good lists of stock prehistoric animals (particularly dinosaurs) though i would personally recommend basing it on public domain fiction like Doyle's original The Lost World species list, or the Crystal Palace dinosaurs alternatively, there could be a number of notable ones from each of the civilizations' main locales (such as Megalosaurus and Iguanodon for the Britons)

another possibility would be some straight-up fictional animals to be used situationally, ones just used for a few scenarios or random maps (like the dragon mentioned in some game designs) or for cheat codes

[idanwin]

I miss wolf herd behaviour as well. They just wander around aimlessly (and without their legs moving). They should stay together and attack together. I miss having my explorers get killed (really). Many explorers died in the wild, and I believe they should in 0AD as well.

Some dinosaurs could be nice (as easter eggs of course) and a dragon for scenarios.

Crocodiles, hippopotamuses, rhinos...

No having animals scout, I mean: can you imagine a owl drawing a map or reporting what he saw to his master? Dogs helping with hunting is nice though.

[Lion.Kanzen]

I Found this:

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,163533.930.html

Edited March 27, 2013 by Lion.Kanzen

[gab]

I miss wolf herd behaviour as well. They just wander around aimlessly (and without their legs moving). They should stay together and attack together

that's more Ai related than Art related but for such things, there is an algorithme named "steering behaviours" wich i believe could greatly improve the way animals interacts together and with the player in 0ad

(but that would certainly mean a lot of new stuff to code and tweak)

[DasBilligeAlien]

HI, all

is there a task list out there with everthing regardign animals. Wich one should be redone, wich one are missing etc. I would like to animate, retexture and if needed model some fauna.

wish you a happy day, Alban

[Loki1950]

You might retexture the tiger it has no stripes currently.

Enjoy the Choice

[Zaggy1024]

The tiger really just needs a whole new model, so if you could make that and a texture, that would be great. You might want to import the Asian elephant model to see how the joints are done.

[Shield Bearer]

Or you can try your hand at the horse textures

[Micket]

The other animal thread hadn't been updated in quite some time. I want to model something, which are the priority animals?

[historic_bruno]

The other animal thread hadn't been updated in quite some time. I want to model something, which are the priority animals?

According to the unofficial sample roadmap, priorities are:

1. Elephants

2. Huntables/Gatherables -- Wildebeests, Goats, Aurochs, etc.

3. Dangerous animals that attack the player's units, like tigers, crocodiles, hippos, etc.

4. Cosmetic animals, like hawks and rabbits.

If you want to work exclusively on assets not currently in the game, you could start modeling missing animals from categories 2-4. Elephants are already modeled AFAIK and only need to be animated. I would think also animals that appear in the most different biomes here, since they would be most generally useful.

[Micket]

Why isn't there a Trac for art development to keep track of what needs to be done? Seems like the obvious choice to keep track on who is working on what.

Tickets for each animal or building type. Meta tickets for regions, etc. An animal ticket could be closed when all its mesh, the texture and armature-rig + animation is all done. The tickets could specify which type of, e.g. tiger, it should be modeled after (possibly after one reaches an agreement on the forums).

Right now I have to look through year old threads. You mention Wildebeests and Goats, but both of these seem to be in data pack I downloaded (both in a dae.cached.pmd format which I'm unable to open). Maybe they are just placeholders, or it's just the animation that's missing? I have no idea.

[sanderd17]

As far as I see it, the trac is shared. You can create a trac ticket, and set the component to "Art & Animation" when you want to report a bug or enhancement there, or when you want to get a certain thing into the game. But it looks like most artists aren't used to a trac system, so it's mostly used by the developers.

And the source code is also shared. The original .dae files can be found in the source tree: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/browser/ps/trunk/binaries/data/mods/public/art

Or you could use SVN to check them all out at once (so you don't have to download each model separately).

That's about all I know.