It’s been a long time….

[slopsbucket]

 

….since I last played 0AD. It has come a long way.

The engine is excellent and the artwork is truly stunning, beautiful. By far the prettiest of this genre of game I’ve ever played.

The amount of clever thought that has gone into the game overall is amazing, so many nice little features such as being able to use the I key to select idle workers out of the middle of a mob. And to be able to queue tasks for workers, that’s so handy.

Last time I played 0 AD there was only 3 civilizations and one of those didn’t have it’s own art yet. And there were 2 different AIs to choose from. I never play online, Petra Bot has become everything I could want in an AI, with all the different options available as well you can play whatever sort of game you feel like.

There’s still a few things that could use a little more work, but this game is turning into one of the all time great classics that people will play for decades to come.

My main computer had an industrial accident and I’m using a very low end laptop until it gets fixed, the game plays really well up until it starts to get a bit busy, then it can’t cope. So I’ve been practising different game start strategies instead, seeing how quickly I can get up to battle readiness. I like playing as the Mauryans, I love those worker elephants.

 

And my wish list of areas that could do with a little more attention:

The mini map could do with a bit of a tweak to it’s colours and shades, it’s not the easiest to read at a glance.

The path finding is a bit awkward. They find their destination unerringly but may wander considerably wide of a straight line to get there. This is unhelpful when you’re trying to flank an enemy without being seen. My memory might be playing tricks on me but I thought you used to be able to set waypoints when sending armies across the map. Or is that feature still there and I just haven’t found it again yet?

The current path finding also seems to cause formations to behave quite strangely at times, as well as creating situations where so many workers/soldiers are tripping over each other that the CPU becomes bogged down with continuously reassigning paths for them all.

And I wish there was one more option under the graphics section of the settings – to be able to alter the screen scroll speed, on some low end graphics cards scrolling the screen or rotating it jumps too quickly to have decent control over what you’re looking at.

The world editor seriously needs some more thought put into it. Did it used to be called Atlas? For a lot of people, making maps and scenarios is every bit as much fun as playing them, but the world editor is an awkward beast to use and lacking a lot of handy features such as being able to lock out buildings and technologies. If the same work went in to that as has gone into the main game it would be truly wonderful to use.

 

Cheers,

Andrew.

 

 

[Stan`]

Hey,

Welcome back, and thank you for the kind words.

4 hours ago, slopsbucket said:

The path finding is a bit awkward. They find their destination unerringly but may wander considerably wide of a straight line to get there. This is unhelpful when you’re trying to flank an enemy without being seen. My memory might be playing tricks on me but I thought you used to be able to set waypoints when sending armies across the map. Or is that feature still there and I just haven’t found it again yet?

Still there, you need to SHIFT+CLICK.

4 hours ago, slopsbucket said:

The current path finding also seems to cause formations to behave quite strangely at times, as well as creating situations where so many workers/soldiers are tripping over each other that the CPU becomes bogged down with continuously reassigning paths for them all.

As denoted by the first popup in the game formation are still WIP, although they will be better in the next alpha.

4 hours ago, slopsbucket said:

And I wish there was one more option under the graphics section of the settings – to be able to alter the screen scroll speed, on some low end graphics cards scrolling the screen or rotating it jumps too quickly to have decent control over what you’re looking at.

I'm not sure but there are some options that are not shown on the main menu. You need to edit the config file instead. See https://github.com/0ad/0ad/blob/b9cd44a3e1d317921102cb6035b455413d5fbe66/binaries/data/config/default.cfg

4 hours ago, slopsbucket said:

The world editor seriously needs some more thought put into it. Did it used to be called Atlas? For a lot of people, making maps and scenarios is every bit as much fun as playing them, but the world editor is an awkward beast to use and lacking a lot of handy features such as being able to lock out buildings and technologies. If the same work went in to that as has gone into the main game it would be truly wonderful to use.

It is still called Atlas. Scenario Editor is just easier to translate. There is a lot of things that could be better, yes. You are free to contribute on that front. I think that you might be able to do what you want using JavaScript scripting and triggers though.

 

[slopsbucket]

Hi Stan,

I got my main computer back today so I'm back in business.

Thanks for reminding me about waypoints.

Please don't take my wishlist as criticism, I've been watching 0AD develop and I think it's all going very well. The sort of development that can really only happen over an extended period of time where you don't have to rush due to commercial concerns. The difference in the quality of your programming shows.

I have made small contributions of code to open source projects over the years, C++, Python and LUA, but I'm no guru. I'm far better at testing than creating. If I can't break it then it can't be broke. :) Tweaking this game to how I like it (offline only) is just part of the game to me. My suggestions/wishlist were intended as considerations to be taken in to future releases heading towards a more polished package. They were not intended to be a complaint or a bug report. Except for the pathfinding, which according to other posts in the forums is something you're already well aware of.

 

Cheers,

Andrew.

[Sturm]

[Stan`]

Hey  @slopsbucket

No harm done was just making sure to answer all your questions

Best regards

[slopsbucket]

Just a tiny gift, a replay of my start strategy for Mauryans.

It's only a few minutes long, from start until what I consider to be "on the way". Might be a useful trainer for beginners.

 

Cheers,

Andrew.

2020-10-01_0001.zip