A24 feedback.

[a 0ad player]

14 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Do you use a custom zoom?

 

Not that I am aware. The unit volume / action volume is currently set to 1.2

[Stan`]

10 minutes ago, a 0ad player said:

Not that I am aware. The unit volume / action volume is currently set to 1.2

The sound attenuation is made for the current max zoom of 200 which might be overriden by mods. It was tested by @Samulis a sound artist, which assured me it was fine, so it would be interesting to know in which situation it's different. Note also that most of the sounds were changed to remove the 1998' AOE feeling of them, reducing clipping and trying to harmonize them.

The bow sounds are lower than normal to match those of other games like AOE3

[Samulis]

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

The sound attenuation is made for the current max zoom of 200 which might be overriden by mods. It was tested by @Samulis a sound artist, which assured me it was fine, so it would be interesting to know in which situation it's different. Note also that most of the sounds were changed to remove the 1998' AOE feeling of them, reducing clipping and trying to harmonize them.

The bow sounds are lower than normal to match those of other games like AOE3

Sound attenuates with distance like real life. The further you zoom out, the quieter things become.

Pre-A24 this was not done; 0 A.D. behaved like a 2D game, with all sounds of equal loudness no matter where they were on the screen. This was a basic flaw with 0 A.D. which meant that at far zoom, people mining on the other side of the map would be audible at 100% volume. Not only was this acoustically completely wrong, it caused sound to be extremely cluttered, with a sheer overload of equally loud sounds. You hear mining, but is it the miners right in front of you, or the miners on the other side of the map? Is it the tower in front of you shooting arrows or the enemy TC 1000m away?

Now sounds at the top of the screen which are more distant will sound more distant and quieter, which creates a clean and enjoyable separation. The distance attenuation we are using is a fraction of real life, so sounds are audible much further away than they would be in real life, but it is still audible at normal zooms.

[[Edit- A quick aside: we could redo the sound attenuation so it attenuates sounds farther from the camera more than closer by the same amount regardless of camera height, meaning the overall sound level would be the same regardless of zoom, but this isn't something we've discussed or explored yet, so I have no idea how good or bad this would be; just a thought.]]

Now, I should note we are still working to balance the sounds a bit. There was a major audio bug where certain sounds where playing several duplicate times, which causes them to become greatly amplified (and massively wasted sound channels). This has been fixed, but as a result the balance of audio from before was completely broken. I spent a few hours tweaking sounds to be closer to a good balance, but it will need more work, and that is what a25 and the SoundsMod project is for. My goal with a24 was just to fix the most outdated or flawed sounds and then try to get the balance of sounds at least reasonable, even if not perfect, and I accept that there are sounds that are not quite balanced right yet.

One other result is that battles will have a much larger dynamic range. Before the sounds would run out of channels so they would self-limit with more than ~50-60 combatants. Now each unit on each attack should only use one sound so larger battles should be even louder.

Here are the old battle sounds, with the same fixed audio engine (i.e. what 0 A.D. would sound like if we kept the sounds the same):

Now here are the new battle sounds:

Not only are the new sounds to me audibly louder overall, they are also much clearer and less muffled without being irritating.

If you want a battle to be immersive, zoom in a bit! Battles cannot be immersive at 500 m... that would be silly. You would not expect a concert to be immersive if you sit in the very back row... you would not expect a TV to be immersive if you're sitting two rooms away. When you play a city builder, you would not expect to hear people chatting on the streets when you zoom out 100's of meters, so I don't get why you expect a battle to be immersive if you zoom out a bunch here...

The bow sounds are the same volume as other games, compared to their combat sounds. I compared the sounds to original AoE I-III, the AoE DE's, and a number of my favorite, more obscure historical RTS (Celtic Kings TPW, Empire Earth, Cossacks, etc.) and found that the bow sounds are appropriately less loud than melee weapon sounds. Many games have even quieter bows (like AoE III as Stan said, as well as AoM, which accurately depicts bow impacts as louder than bow shots), while others are about on par with these.

In real life, bows are almost silent. They are designed that way intentionally and have been since their invention, because it is a hunting tool first and weapon second. We already are massively exaggerating the sound of bows to make it appeal to the Hollywood idea that bows make some massive whoosh when you fire them, and of course to make it easy to hear them when enemies are attacking which is an essential gameplay mechanic of the sound.

I hope this answers some of the questions you have had about the sounds. They are still a work in progress, but the whole point is to improve them. Feedback is definitely welcome but we also have to make sure we are designing the sound without holding onto existing conceptions. It is easy to become stuck in Confirmation Bias, where the more familiar seems better, even when objectively it may not be.

Edited February 25, 2021 by Samulis

[a 0ad player]

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

The sound attenuation is made for the current max zoom of 200 which might be overriden by mods. It was tested by @Samulis a sound artist, which assured me it was fine, so it would be interesting to know in which situation it's different. Note also that most of the sounds were changed to remove the 1998' AOE feeling of them, reducing clipping and trying to harmonize them.

The bow sounds are lower than normal to match those of other games like AOE3

 

I have now set the action sound to 2.00 and no mods. This helps, ty.

 

I noticed that I hardly notice javelin throwers, bows and stone throwers. When a near by a mine is being mined (loudest) or wood is being felled, the sounds of the fight are secondary. Close combat with spear and sword is still ok, could be clearer.

It seems that the clipping helped me to bring the situation (quickly) into consciousness (especially important for towers, CC fort and ship (area damage).

Furthermore, the game feels quieter. I think the new sound for the logging is mainly responsible for this (less dense, less atmosphere of work, creating something). If chickens are attacked now, they simply fall over without the clipping, which currently still takes getting used to.

[a 0ad player]

1 hour ago, Samulis said:

Sound attenuates with distance like real life. The further you zoom out, the quieter things become.

Pre-A24 this was not done; 0 A.D. behaved like a 2D game, with all sounds of equal loudness no matter where they were on the screen. This was a basic flaw with 0 A.D. which meant that at far zoom, people mining on the other side of the map would be audible at 100% volume. Not only was this acoustically completely wrong, it caused sound to be extremely cluttered, with a sheer overload of equally loud sounds. You hear mining, but is it the miners right in front of you, or the miners on the other side of the map? Is it the tower in front of you shooting arrows or the enemy TC 1000m away?

Now sounds at the top of the screen which are more distant will sound more distant and quieter, which creates a clean and enjoyable separation. The distance attenuation we are using is a fraction of real life, so sounds are audible much further away than they would be in real life, but it is still audible at normal zooms.

[[Edit- A quick aside: we could redo the sound attenuation so it attenuates sounds farther from the camera more than closer by the same amount regardless of camera height, meaning the overall sound level would be the same regardless of zoom, but this isn't something we've discussed or explored yet, so I have no idea how good or bad this would be; just a thought.]]

Now, I should note we are still working to balance the sounds a bit. There was a major audio bug where certain sounds where playing several duplicate times, which causes them to become greatly amplified (and massively wasted sound channels). This has been fixed, but as a result the balance of audio from before was completely broken. I spent a few hours tweaking sounds to be closer to a good balance, but it will need more work, and that is what a25 and the SoundsMod project is for. My goal with a24 was just to fix the most outdated or flawed sounds and then try to get the balance of sounds at least reasonable, even if not perfect, and I accept that there are sounds that are not quite balanced right yet.

One other result is that battles will have a much larger dynamic range. Before the sounds would run out of channels so they would self-limit with more than ~50-60 combatants. Now each unit on each attack should only use one sound so larger battles should be even louder.

Here are the old battle sounds, with the same fixed audio engine (i.e. what 0 A.D. would sound like if we kept the sounds the same):

Now here are the new battle sounds:

Not only are the new sounds to me audibly louder overall, they are also much clearer and less muffled without being irritating.

If you want a battle to be immersive, zoom in a bit! Battles cannot be immersive at 500 m... that would be silly. You would not expect a concert to be immersive if you sit in the very back row... you would not expect a TV to be immersive if you're sitting two rooms away. When you play a city builder, you would not expect to hear people chatting on the streets when you zoom out 100's of meters, so I don't get why you expect a battle to be immersive if you zoom out a bunch here...

The bow sounds are the same volume as other games, compared to their combat sounds. I compared the sounds to original AoE I-III, the AoE DE's, and a number of my favorite, more obscure historical RTS (Celtic Kings TPW, Empire Earth, Cossacks, etc.) and found that the bow sounds are appropriately less loud than melee weapon sounds. Many games have even quieter bows (like AoE III as Stan said, as well as AoM, which accurately depicts bow impacts as louder than bow shots), while others are about on par with these.

In real life, bows are almost silent. They are designed that way intentionally and have been since their invention, because it is a hunting tool first and weapon second. We already are massively exaggerating the sound of bows to make it appeal to the Hollywood idea that bows make some massive whoosh when you fire them, and of course to make it easy to hear them when enemies are attacking which is an essential gameplay mechanic of the sound.

I hope this answers some of the questions you have had about the sounds. They are still a work in progress, but the whole point is to improve them. Feedback is definitely welcome but we also have to make sure we are designing the sound without holding onto existing conceptions. It is easy to become stuck in Confirmation Bias, where the more familiar seems better, even when objectively it may not be.

 

That answers a lot, thanks for the insight Samulis. I agree the sounds are more diverse and differentiated now. I think that's particularly good for late game and cattle breeding (which was very irritating).

The javelin, bow and stone thrower sound more realistic now. In the game itself, I would find the faster and clearer perception of ranged fighters important. Why? Because I don't notice that a fight is taking place in town and need my attention. I lose more units and that's frustrating. Here the gameplay aspect would be more important to me. Especially for area damage.

Furthermore, the sound is new. That takes time to get used to. Simply as current feedback, the atmosphere now feels less direct, less dense. For me, the sound and the atmosphere are very important to be able to experience.

At the moment the game feels indirect and distant instead of being in the middle and experiencing it. At the moment I can see the long-range fighting noises on the one hand, and the sound of the logging that was previously denser on the other.

And first of all, thank you for your work.

[Samulis]

7 hours ago, a 0ad player said:

That answers a lot, thanks for the insight Samulis. I agree the sounds are more diverse and differentiated now. I think that's particularly good for late game and cattle breeding (which was very irritating).

The javelin, bow and stone thrower sound more realistic now. In the game itself, I would find the faster and clearer perception of ranged fighters important. Why? Because I don't notice that a fight is taking place in town and need my attention. I lose more units and that's frustrating. Here the gameplay aspect would be more important to me. Especially for area damage.

Furthermore, the sound is new. That takes time to get used to. Simply as current feedback, the atmosphere now feels less direct, less dense. For me, the sound and the atmosphere are very important to be able to experience.

At the moment the game feels indirect and distant instead of being in the middle and experiencing it. At the moment I can see the long-range fighting noises on the one hand, and the sound of the logging that was previously denser on the other.

And first of all, thank you for your work.

It's going to sound a lot less dense because the original sounds used lower-fidelity recordings that were centered heavily in mid frequencies. The new sounds were recorded from scratch using professional equipment and so make use of a larger range of human hearing. By definition, it is going to sound less dense.

Compromises between authenticity and convenience are important. In the bronze age, sword-on-sword combat was not technically possible due to how poorly bronze holds an edge (it would quickly dull or damage the blade to strike them against metal), so the 'shing' cutting sound is totally unrealistic... however, it does do a very good job making the swords sound different from spears and everyone knows that is the "sword sound", so I added it back into my 2nd draft sounds for a24. Javelins too do not really make such whooshing noises, but it again serves the game.

We will probably be increasing the volume of many of these sounds you have commented about for a25. The problem is, the actual sound files themselves are not at a consistent volume level now, so we need to go back and re-process all of the sound files consistently before we start tweaking everything. a24's sound balance was done by ear over the course of a few games I played to get a playable, workable balance, even (and especially) when there are 200 units in a single battle, which can get quite loud.

Changes were made to logging/lumbering to ensure it was slightly more consistent and also remained sufficiently different enough from new, much better building sounds. I liked the original lumber sounds too but some of them were very strange sounding; I might go with a hybrid approach, layering the two sets of sounds together, like I did with the sword attack sounds as discussed in the paragraph above. Here are some comparison videos of the lumber and build sounds:

 

Edited February 26, 2021 by Samulis

[badosu]

Thanks @Samulis for your hard work, even though I feel it's not comfortable the new sounds indeed are way more realistic and show more refinement.

[Feldfeld]

34 minutes ago, seeh said:

Presumably the Rams have always been like that? At this point I don't understand why 4 rams don't come through to this  house wall? Maybe the Rams were given a wrong target?
https://youtu.be/8mphSKH2K_E?t=2108 

 

2021-02-26_0007rams.zip 168 kB · 0 downloads

They were probably tasked to attack the civic center, but couldn't find a path as it was completely surrounded by buildings, so they end up stuck.

[wraitii]

1 hour ago, seeh said:

Presumably the Rams have always been like that? At this point I don't understand why 4 rams don't come through to this  house wall? Maybe the Rams were given a wrong target?

The rams auto-targeted the tower near the houses, it seems, and then since there was no path there, went to the 'closest reachable point", i.e. the corner.

The thing is that since they fail to move, they should switch to another target... But that new target is again the tower  . Yeah, bit of an edge case here.

It's fixable, but has performance implications, so not sure we'll do it now.

[ColinMcRae]

I noticed that the max health of units such as slingers/skirmishers does not increase when you reach town and city phase; is this the expected behavior? Such troops tend to become pretty useless with their 50 max health in phase 2 already.

Cheers!

Colin

Edited February 27, 2021 by ColinMcRae

[Stan`]

@Nescio wasn't it done via tech or something?

[chrstgtr]

On 23/02/2021 at 10:13 AM, ValihrAnt said:

4) Unit rotation times have an unintended consequence that reduces incentive for early aggression. So, while food gather rates remain about the same wood gather rate is considerably slowed down, which leads to players creating far fewer farms and also requiring fewer units gathering extra berries. That makes it much more difficult to find value in an early rush as the woodline will be more reinforced and the smaller food economy is easier to protect with the Civic center or house garrisoning. (Not sure what's the best way to go about this one)

 

A relatively straight forward fix could be to only slow rotations on the units where dance is abusive (e.g. slow rotations for heros and maybe for cav). Most players that dance don't do so with regular inf and those that they fail. So why make whole rotation system slow to fix a problem that only applies to 1 type of unit? 

[wraitii]

5 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

A relatively straight forward fix could be to only slow rotations on the units where dance is abusive (e.g. slow rotations for heros and maybe for cav). Most players that dance don't do so with regular inf and those that they fail. So why make whole rotation system slow to fix a problem that only applies to 1 type of unit? 

The fact is that it's possible to dance with infantry too, using fancier methods. That being said, there was a lot of disagreement and debate about turn rates, as the dev that originally proposed this change wanted even slower values.

You might noticed that cavalry turn rate _is_ lower than infantry turn rate, though heroes haven't been particularly singled out.

I think we might increase global turn rates slightly, but there might be other changes in A25 that make these concerns irrelevant.

----

Edit: and to be clear, from my personal perspective, I would prefer higher turn rates overall. I did grow accustomed to them after a bit, but I'd rather have found another solution to fix Dancing. The problem is after months of brainstorming and so on, we have not found a better solution : /

[chrstgtr]

On 22/02/2021 at 11:02 AM, wraitii said:

They do search for resources near the rally point (that hasn't changed).

Really it's only annoying for trees on scarce maps, because units kinda move semi-randomly, but I wouldn't say it was great in a23 either - IMO 0 A.D. has annoyingly small forests on most maps.

Something is different now. I often have units that get very far away from storehouses when I never did in a23. Like the reference to the 2nd patch of chickens not getting auto-hunted in this alpha, something has clearly been changed. 

This is a problem for all maps because it will slow your economy considerably if a chunk of your workers have to walk 3x as far as intended.

And, building extra storehouses isn't a very good solution because that is very expensive early on. 

[wraitii]

6 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Something is different now.

Yes the difference is that units look near the resource they were gathering and not near their own position when the original resource is depleted.

This does lead to the issues you've noted. This change was introduced somewhat by accident a little over 2 years ago, to fix a much larger bug (introduced by unrelated changes), and basically (though I did notice the behaviour like 1.5 years later) neither I nor other people thought necessary to change it for A24. In hindsight, it's probably annoying enough that it should have happened. All I can say is "shame".

It adds a bit of micro to the economy, but to be honest I don't think it's _horrible_ in the early game, you have nothing else to do, and then later on you can plot storehouses as needed.

Regardless, it'll definitely be fixed in A25.

[chrstgtr]

2 minutes ago, wraitii said:

The fact is that it's possible to dance with infantry too, using fancier methods. That being said, there was a lot of disagreement and debate about turn rates, as the dev that originally proposed this change wanted even slower values.

You might noticed that cavalry turn rate _is_ lower than infantry turn rate, though heroes haven't been particularly singled out.

I think we might increase global turn rates slightly, but there might be other changes in A25 that make these concerns irrelevant.

Not really. I've never seen anyone dance effectively with non-hero infantry--they die too fast. So even when it does occur, it is a problem for 1s instead of 1m like it can be with hero.

Anyways, my point is that limiting the change to only heros will eliminate 95% of dancing without introducing any other unintended problems. And a second focus on cav would eliminate most of the remaining 5% of problems if it is deemed necessary. And, good to hear about other changes that make it irrelevant 

[ValihrAnt]

I'd also like to hear some thoughts on altering or removing the passive stance. The main problem is with units doing the weird run and thus avoiding shots and baiting the attacking units after them. Most noticable on healers and women with the loom upgrade as units will run straight into the enemy army to try and chase them. Then there's also players who put the hero on passive stance and position the hero in front of their army as an easy alternative to dancing.

Edit. Also with melee units becoming more usable and necessary, dancing should be far more difficult.

Edited February 28, 2021 by ValihrAnt

[Stan`]

There is a version on the forums.

[maroder]

16 minutes ago, seeh said:

look like my errors if i have autoCiv intalled in my last ubuntu ( i will try again today. but dont know how to get autoCiv anymore? )

 

[dpikt]

On 23/02/2021 at 1:50 AM, Stan` said:

Does the laptop where it lags have screen scaling ? Eg a 125*% zoom on windows. If so you need to disable scaling foe 0 A.D. by editing properties or disable it entirey

Thanks @Stan`, this fixed the problem


Unrelated note of something I discovered: if the a24 graphics seem sort of low contrast / greyed out for you compared to a23 - you can uncheck "fog" in settings to clear it out at higher zoom. Made a huge difference for me.

Also, it's a bit hidden (imo) but you can disable auto-formations by right clicking "no formation."

Edited March 2, 2021 by dpikt

[chrstgtr]

On 28/02/2021 at 5:32 AM, ValihrAnt said:

I'd also like to hear some thoughts on altering or removing the passive stance. The main problem is with units doing the weird run and thus avoiding shots and baiting the attacking units after them. Most noticable on healers and women with the loom upgrade as units will run straight into the enemy army to try and chase them. Then there's also players who put the hero on passive stance and position the hero in front of their army as an easy alternative to dancing.

Edit. Also with melee units becoming more usable and necessary, dancing should be far more difficult.

I haven't seen anyone abuse it this alpha. With that said, I see little point to having it for fighting units, so I would limit it to only women/healers (units that aren't meant to ever fight and also die quickly) or eliminate it all together

Edited March 2, 2021 by chrstgtr

[Silier]

from my perspective passive should be just passive so do noting.

generally I do not see much use of violent stance since aggressive is good enough while frustrating at the same time because units generally move too far away and one needs to micro them back so I would like to redefine them at some point and then set non combat units to flee by nature (so they would not fight at all) or add them "new" flee stance. 

[faction02]

6 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

I haven't seen anyone abuse it this alpha. With that said, I see little point to having it for fighting units, so I would limit it to only women/healers (units that aren't meant to ever fight and also die quickly) or eliminate it all together

I have seen some spears set to passive before being sent to the battlefield in a24...

Passive can help save melee heroes that can be trained only once. I would guess that for an average player who have all his units in the same control group, having some form of security for his hero would be great.

About healers, I am not sure what is the best solution since it is has negative effects for both the owner of the healers that need to regroup them all the time with the rest of his army and the attackers who need to regroup his soldiers chasing them. 

Just thinking out loud, maybe removing the running part of the flee sequence for military units (and healer?) could reduce the issue and prevent the abuse.

 

4 hours ago, Angen said:

from my perspective passive should be just passive so do noting.

generally I do not see much use of violent stance since aggressive is good enough while frustrating at the same time because units generally move too far away and one needs to micro them back so I would like to redefine them at some point and then set non combat units to flee by nature (so they would not fight at all) or add them "new" flee stance. 

Just giving my own view: I like that it is currently possible to fight with women.

If 20 women are far from safety it seems desirable that they can fight one spear cavalry. Changing stance makes it easier to try to surround the cavalry. I only need to micro each women to their position around the cavalry, no need to click on it on top of it.

I have also changed the stance of women to target several unprotected rams. They would attack the one closer to them before moving to the next one.

This would be an important change to the overall gameplay since civic center and women would be much more vulnerable than they are now. Without testing it extensively, I am not sure if I would like it.

Edited March 2, 2021 by faction02
english corrections

[chrstgtr]

10 hours ago, faction02 said:

I have seen some spears set to passive before being sent to the battlefield in a24...

Passive can help save melee heroes that can be trained only once. I would guess that for an average player who have all his units in the same control group, having some form of security for his hero would be great.

About healers, I am not sure what is the best solution since it is has negative effects for both the owner of the healers that need to regroup them all the time with the rest of his army and the attackers who need to regroup his soldiers chasing them. 

Just thinking out loud, maybe removing the running part of the flee sequence for military units (and healer?) could reduce the issue and prevent the abuse.

I get that people don't want their heros to die. But the onus should be on that player to properly micro or place their hero behind the lines in stand ground instead of on the attacking player who is trying to kill the hero. And in the grand scheme of things, losing 1 hero is much less dangerous than losing an entire army.

Healers could also have reduced HP if they actually cause armies to chance in a way that causes armies to die while following. Their health could be something like women, which die quickly before a chasing army can get destroyed. 

But I agree changing the run/walk feature makes sense regardless. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

15 hours ago, Angen said:

generally I do not see much use of violent stance since aggressive is good enough while frustrating at the same time because units generally move too far away and one needs to micro them back

Can I advocate once again for an "aggression range" that is separate from vision range? It's the range by which a unit will actively attack another unit or structure. It can be a separate number or a percentage of vision range (kinda like the relationship between walk speed and run speed). Stances would then adjust this range. So, Aggressive would be at 90% of vision range, Defensive would be at 50% of vision range. Point would be to make units easier to control and act less maniacally.