Addition of Han Chinese to 0AD

[Stan`]

Matrix and Xmpp (Used for the lobby) are nice but they aren't gamer friendly. Same with Rocket Chat.

We're at the edge of the Foss world and the Gaming world. Keeping the foss world usually gets more developpers, and doing commercial things brings more gamers so it's a balance that has to be found.

[Lion.Kanzen]

45 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Matrix and Xmpp (Used for the lobby) are nice but they aren't gamer friendly. Same with Rocket Chat.

We're at the edge of the Foss world and the Gaming world. Keeping the foss world usually gets more developpers, and doing commercial things brings more gamers so it's a balance that has to be found.

as censorship continues, they will move to those platforms.

[seeh]

I would like to correct one more thing. I don't know if it's bad to advertise on platforms that I don't like. sometimes it is better to use multiple platforms. it is not always clear what long-term effect a thing will have or what you will miss if you neglect something. I'm not entirely consistent in many things, but I don't have a bad conscience because of it.
in other words: maybe its very good to be present in discord, but i think never forget what you want in the future. maybe to drive well motorized if you use it to transport bicycles.

[clavz]

13 hours ago, Stan` said:

We're at the edge of the Foss world and the Gaming world. Keeping the foss world usually gets more developpers, and doing commercial things brings more gamers so it's a balance that has to be found.

Thank you for your explanation, and sorry for the OT.
btw, sure it would be nice to have more civs! And I hope some differentiation between civs will be back as well, after this balancing phase.

[Yekaterina]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_siege_weapons

Here is a Wikipedia article on Chinese siege weapons. I think some of their siege techs might be way too OP for 0ad. 

[ymming]

Hi everyone, I am in a great addiction to the game recently (start playing from A23) and started to read the forum until I found this  topic. I read through all the post and I found this game is not only working on each civilization balance but also on the historical accuracy (which surprised me and like to pay great respect to the development team).
I have great interest on the Chinese history especially on the Zhou dynasty (which splits to the "spring and autumn" and “Warring state” period) then united by "Qin" and overthrown by "Han".
For the militaries unit maybe could get some reference from the "Trrracotta Army"  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terracotta_Army
which may be more accuracy to the history, since they were built on that time and preserved till date. A whole standard unify army was made include infantry(spear, sword, halberd, gagger-axe"ge", bow and crossbow), calvary, armored warrior, chariot, militaries officer etc. 

Compared to Han army, will not be that unified as most of their war are against the Xiong Nu which have differ from the mainland army and other regions (which could be seen during the "three kingdom" period). 

[Yekaterina]

@Stan` @Langbart There is only 1 bug left with Han: this .dae file does not have the prop points for 'garrisoned'.  I have tried to add it myself but it instead produced more errors. Can you help me add the prop points please? Thanks. 

So far there are no other bugs found. 

 

han_civic_center_no_towers.dae

[Stan`]

I don't know why you touched the buildings at all they were totally working before XD.

I restored the original ones who have their garrison flags

There is still quite some work to be done for the hans

- Remove all history strings, not any other civs have them and it might be weird

- Use correct variants for building destruction eg.

https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP24878

- Use correct variant for building projectiles

https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP24907#change-QDyUhFFifgGT

- Check units have approaching variants and animations are not broken.

 

[Yekaterina]

23 hours ago, Stan` said:

I don't know why you touched the buildings at all they were totally working before XD.

I restored the original ones who have their garrison flags

There is still quite some work to be done for the hans

- Remove all history strings, not any other civs have them and it might be weird

- Use correct variants for building destruction eg.

https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP24878

- Use correct variant for building projectiles

https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP24907#change-QDyUhFFifgGT

- Check units have approaching variants and animations are not broken.

I just cloned the latest version from git. Don't worry, I haven't pushed anything new to git yet. 

23 hours ago, Stan` said:

- Use correct variants for building destruction eg.

https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP24878

- Use correct variant for building projectiles

https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP24907#change-QDyUhFFifgGT

- Check units have approaching variants and animations are not broken.

Ingame testing shows these are fine. I noticed no errors with detroying buildings etc. 

[Stan`]

16 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

I just cloned the latest version from git. Don't worry, I haven't pushed anything new to git yet. 

Ingame testing shows these are fine. I noticed no errors with detroying buildings etc. 

Yes but no errors != Fine. We need to keep actor files consistent for variants. This allows for instance a mod to replace all projectiles at once by changing one file not 300.

[Ceres]

On 02/09/2021 at 7:16 PM, Stan` said:

There is still quite some work to be done for the hans

- Remove all history strings, not any other civs have them and it might be weird

Is this an easy task? (for me) Where can I find more info about it? Thank you!

[maroder]

On 21/04/2021 at 6:44 AM, Freagarach said:

Keep in mind the history department needs to give their "go" as well

I was going through the tread again and I would again like to discuss or at least understand why rice fields would be historically inaccurate.

@Nescio @Genava55 @Thorfinn the Shallow Minded

From every source I find from my not very scientific research

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301949120_Rice_in_China

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_dynasty#Metallurgy_and_agriculture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_and_culture_of_the_Han_dynasty#Clothing_and_cuisine

http://www.china.org.cn/english/2002/Oct/44854.htm

It reads the rice was of course more cultivated in the southern parts of the china, but that it still was a staple food during that period. So it doesn't seem wrong to me to include rice fields, even when it wasn't grown in all parts of the country to the same extent.

My reasoning is than the models looked really great and unique as far as I remember. Unfortunately now, neither DE nor the Han mod include them, so I can't have a quick look at them again.

If it is so extremely historically inaccurate, because rice was not the "main" crop, would it at least be possible to include them as a second type of field? Maybe in P2 with different stats?

[Edit]  Just as an idea: It doesn't look like the city layout/ fields around the CC thing is going to change towards more realism, so we might as well really lean into that and even give the rice fields a small aura that slows down units that walk over them (cause it's harder to walk through muddy/ flooded fields). Then you can have an extra small defense around your CC through rice fields.

Edited September 11, 2021 by maroder

[Genava55]

1 hour ago, maroder said:

I was going through the tread again and I would again like to discuss or at least understand why rice fields would be historically inaccurate.

What, when and where? I mean what were the arguments, when the debate happened and where on the forum?

[Ceres]

2 hours ago, maroder said:

[Edit]  Just as an idea: It doesn't look like the city layout/ fields around the CC thing is going to change towards more realism, so we might as well really lean into that and even give the rice fields a small aura that slows down units that walk over them (cause it's harder to walk through muddy/ flooded fields). Then you can have an extra small defense around your CC through rice fields.

I like this idea very much. However, if I remember correctly, a similar question about certain terrain (e.g. marshland) could slowdown units was answered that it was not possible or with lots of complexity, only. I'm not sure whether this applies for ground with e.g. rice fields as well. Still, I like the idea.

And I would like to brind this up once more (sorry):

On 02/09/2021 at 7:16 PM, Stan` said:

There is still quite some work to be done for the hans

- Remove all history strings, not any other civs have them and it might be weird

Is this an easy task? (for me) Where can I find more info about it? I mean "history strings". Thank you!

[maroder]

15 minutes ago, Genava55 said:

What, when and where? I mean what were the arguments, when the debate happened and where on the forum?

That is is exactly my question.

@Stan` showed this message? from @Nescio

* (Sorry, I cant figure out how to quote from multiple pages, so no quote preview here)

Edited September 11, 2021 by maroder

[maroder]

13 minutes ago, Ceres said:

Is this an easy task? (for me) Where can I find more info about it? I mean "history strings". Thank you!

I guess it should be doable for you. here is an example of such an history string:

https://github.com/0ADMods/han_china/blob/927c2d48d352868092685c74dcf4cb2d19a65ff2/simulation/templates/units/han/siege_tower.xml#L6

[maroder]

15 minutes ago, Ceres said:

I like this idea very much. However, if I remember correctly, a similar question about certain terrain (e.g. marshland) could slowdown units was answered that it was not possible or with lots of complexity, only.

Yeah, but it should be straightforward in this case. The Problem is that "marshland" would be part of the terrain, while the fields are are just actors placed on top of the terrain. So no problem adding an aura.

[Ceres]

@maroder So the task is to "mass-remove" all those <History>...</History> strings throughout the complete 0ad code base? I could do this, I guess, i.e. do it on my SVN version, create a patch, and let it reviewed.

True, if a rice field as an entity of its own is known and addressable, it could be coded to slow down units. Shall this become an extra thread maybe? (as in principle, it could be other things as well, maybe?)

Edited September 11, 2021 by Ceres

[Stan`]

@Genava55 Indeed it's hard to keep track of everything. My biggest problems with civ design when it comes to art has always been the lack of cohesion of information. 60 threads of pictures everywhere with random discussion happening in the middle of them. I think @Sundiata managed to get it organised the best for the Kushites probably because there have been little other voices talking about it.

Of course there are the civ wiki pages but those only describe units accurately most of the time.

I think it could be beneficial to have an organised place to all of this, publicly editable but with reviews so people could make suggestions without it being a complete mess.

2 minutes ago, Ceres said:

@maroder So the task is to "mass-remove" all those <History>...</History> strings throughout the complete 0ad code base? I could do this, I guess, i.e. do it on my SVN version, create a patch, and let it reviewed.

They have to be removed from the han_china mod on Github before they are even included in the game.

[Ceres]

@Stan` Sorry, I should have paid more attention to this - of course, it's still a separate mod. Am I correct that I can nevertheless work with svn instead of git to remove those strings and create a patch? Or do I have to use git? Should the patch be a patch file that I shall attach here when done? In case I do have to use git (as the mod is in GitHub), shall I fork it in GitHub and apply the patch there? As I'm not so familiar with git (maybe a bit more with svn), I would prefer svn, if that's possible. Sorry that my questions are a bit too "technical" here for public discussion. Anyway, thanks for your help.

Edited September 11, 2021 by Ceres

[Yekaterina]

@Ceres please apply the patch to the git. I would like to perfect all of the elements before making a final patch. I have convinced @KKaslana to work on this as well.

Right now I am not sure how to balance the civ with respect to the other vanilla civs; we also need to take account of any changes in mechanics between A25 and A26.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

7 hours ago, maroder said:

neither DE nor the Han mod include them

DE has them for Han. They're the Cash Crop.

[maroder]

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

DE has them for Han. They're the Cash Crop.

Ah my bad, just tested the standard field.

Alright, found them and yes they still look very nice. Only thing is that the water effect is a bit strong.

Edited September 11, 2021 by maroder

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

11 minutes ago, maroder said:

Alright, found them and yes they still look very nice. Only thing is that the water effect is a bit strong.

Agreed. I think the water textures should be re-rendered to be more still and brown.

[Genava55]

21 hours ago, Stan&#x60; said:

@Genava55 Indeed it's hard to keep track of everything. My biggest problems with civ design when it comes to art has always been the lack of cohesion of information. 60 threads of pictures everywhere with random discussion happening in the middle of them. I think @Sundiata managed to get it organised the best for the Kushites probably because there have been little other voices talking about it.

Of course there are the civ wiki pages but those only describe units accurately most of the time.

I think it could be beneficial to have an organised place to all of this, publicly editable but with reviews so people could make suggestions without it being a complete mess.

They have to be removed from the han_china mod on Github before they are even included in the game.

Ok, for what I saw it doesn't seem there was an issue on the historical accuracy but on the water level of the rice field. Ancient Chineses didn't rely exclusively on rice farming, there was millet notably, but I don't see issues in having rice fields for a faction based on Han dynasty.