Comments - radagastearendil

This is the road. Towards fauna and flora variation. And growth! And magic spells turning your units into giants.

HannibalAI can still be rescued via the compatibility layer now that the project has been split ;-)
Indiedb.com

Aiye Beren&Luthien;,

a huge world map will get into 0 B.C. which is more like Total War, Settlers & NeverWinterNights than Age of Empires.

It's a dynamic campaign mode.

Voice control of entities (something worlddevelopment also utilizes for its machines) will not make it into the capability system for now to reduce complexity.

* Entities now can convert their plans to real orders.
* Plan entities like treasure maps are support, too.
* An entity can store a plan in sheets of paper, disks, CDs or other storage media.

It was managed to increase the level of realism:

* Entities now personalize actions.
* Not only on a per civilization base, e.g. a Roman baker did create that cake differently than a Greek or Celt.
* Knowledge is contained within entities initially.
* Scholars et al. then transfer the knowledge.
* Entities create recipe variations and those successful can make it upstream.

Pretty fancy model of how the real world works. The design and especially implementation was mind twisting.

Finally there was succeess in compiling and launching the time machine again. This is big news after all the million changes made at different parts which had put the engine into a broken state for nearly 2 years now. Whew. There we go.

Current estimates forsee that entity goals make it into the capability system too.

Hybrid AI groups (called 'commands' in the past) also seem to make it.

The big unknown is still how quick we can succeed in debugging the capability system which also includes a user interface rework.

Re: Bagpipe capability
It might be like:
* scan for parts to operate on a thing (e.g. those that can be moved).
* if capability for the operating exists, i.e. it is known that e.g. keys can be pressed, pipes be air flown, ... then
* operation of the thing is possible.
* e.g. the bagpipe can be played, i.e. actions triggered from it (e.g. sounds).
* Which quality then is a matter of talent/skill.

"without any change to performance" is not correct, what is meant is without any significant change in performance or without any change in performance magnitude.

Did blender get enthusiasm going, comrade?

The non developer mailing list will be opened on the first release.

So one can't learn from history?

And philosphical questioning is not helping finding sensible solutions?

Everyone can decide for oneself.
We for our part are fighting for freedom and civil rights and an epic world.
Wouldn't - without people having encouraged and shown tremendous effort for freedom and civil rights (philosophers, enlightenment, french revolution, critics, ...) - the world still see many more of us in slavery or in bondage/serfdom or similar?

You still want to serve as slave having no rights and being fully and totally exploited?
Encouragement (thinking, actions) for a free, educated and epic world will always be required or it'll never be achieved. With taking action the world ship may be steered in always ever more epic waters if we really want it.

And if now this dry history lesson could be an adventurous game? Epic?

Absolutely, that's what we want the (virtual) time machine to be, the full set of strategy and realism (especially on the higher abstraction level, i.e. the unit personality, requirements and feelings won't be modeled in full detail, but the higher level interconnections will, e.g. people gain experience, grow in size and their beards get longer, and they'll influence policy of a civilization depending on complex interactions, skill and opinion - like it is in the real world).

Ruins sound great, they'll definitely be added, buildings must be kept in good shape (mostly the units/settlers/people will do this automatically but the player can intervene, help or whatever).

Of course you can give order to units to disassemble e.g. a windmill to use the wings, bricks, ... for other purposes, e.g. to block roads or to use the wings as temporary bridge to allow crossing a smaller river. The sky is the limit here.

It is planned that this takes some time, i.e. if the bridge is ordered to be destroyed, then it depends upon your level of technology how long it will take to take the bridge down.

Consider your civilization knows explosives, this will happen quickly, else it's manual work and you'll need lots of workers, and it's a risky manoever too, so not all workers may survive. The time machine will not lead the player to wrong conclusions by 'magically' destroying the bridge.

Standalone robber groups (artificially intelligent) - 'Robin Hood'-like - will also have the possibility to block roads, valleys, ...

The western period will also be covered, i.e. it's possible 'Calamity Jones' is met, though that needs more research for facts before it'll be added. Native indians or cowboy gangs might destroy, block/rob your bridges, roads/railways too.

Docs.google.com

Capabilities that are up to come.

Comrade, indeed only those that currently have this active profession can teach others. These then are apprentices (all coded already). Each apprentice learns by doing.

The alternate is university, also coded.

Of course predefined in entity templates is possible too (templates are templates, init data).

Number of apprentices is coded. If master has too many apprentices, then no entity must look for another entity that masters this profession.
Not yet tied to profession but we'll add it.

Yes, comrade, indeed hierarchies are already in. I mean the master knows its apprentices, it's all dynamic.

Unbelievable you know that it'll influence skill? Actually that's already coded, too. :)

If learning to bake an ice cream cake, you also learn baking. It can be specified in the capability template if it's allowed as profession or not. That's been required for aircraft pilot profession for example ...

GUI is dynamic now. We must to give up.
Just missing epic textures, 3d models and animations, art department needs our focus soon. Else our coded epicness won't be visible.

Having coded baker, need to add textures and anims, hunter also is an option, fighter also is a profession and more.

If leader ... or politician, everything's possible now with capabilities.

Almost there, professions come in soon too. Can't await watching citizen settlers learn from the blacksmith and acquire the blacksmithing capability themselves after finishing their apprentice!

Or having one recruit learn from a skilled hero how to fight special attack moves.

Working on the full conversion of 0 B.C. to capabilities.

That'll make the GUI code so much easier. It's easily underestimated, the capability system will replace the crazy 0 A.D. GUI code. It works, but so static! Thousands of lines of code and every new functionality further adds heaps to it.

The early-this-year problems relating to arguments between historic_bruno and mimo (both 0AD team) play a role (and this feature argument where the majority failed to convince the minority indicates how crazily stuck gameplaywise 0AD is with their hierarchies).

Let's get rid of this crazyness of codesize and add heaps of functionality like learning capabilities at the same time.

Don't give up hope, magic philosophers will do their best to make the time machine epic - 3 new render related features are in the pipeline too!

Every entity can have it. Micro is optional as entities handle it on their own. This goes in harmony with the Profession system that is being worked on.

Yeah, capabilities are in (huge scripting side + GUI rewrite). Some complications with the construction capability are yet to be resolved, else we're are fine to go. It'll allow for huge epicness like wizards and learning different songs to play on a guitar. Can hardly believe it myself. We must not give up.

Ok, I see this is complicated. No problem if you can't add it - you're new to 0 B.C. development - I'll do my best to add it myself as soon as possible (currently still working on professions - may it be that it's short before really becoming an epic realism time machine? :)).

Added basic season support too. (This, capturing, conversion & Co appears to be less complicated than adding capabilities and professions. Nevertheless won't give up. Already half done.)

You can throw any entities in 0 B.C. Time Machine (if your strength can lift the weight of the entity to be thrown of course).

In 0 A.D. all this is 'impossible'.

Indeed, that'd be epic - and it's possible already.

Talent/Skill != Capability in the languages I somewhat know.

That means we could make only those entities capable to play the bagpipe if they have the corresponding capability (the system we already discussed).

The skill will then determine the magnitude of the effect. e.g. you can know a magic spell (capability) and you might learn to use it better (skill/talent/stats).

The song capability actually should be a bagpipe capability combined with the unit's skill (as an effect multiplier.

That means each entity can play bagpipe music if they are equiped with a bagpipe, the quality might differ depending on entity stats though.

Unit skills/talents to be introduced still need to be discussed, perhaps:
- Learning,
- Wisdom,
- Artistic skill,
- Mechanic skill,
- ...

All integers to allow for mali.

Peformance is not affected at all. When my humble self had to rewrite the animation system, I realized the design flaws that stood in my way and just rewrote the majority of graphics classes. After some time fixing all regressions, we now have a system that allows for inventory without any change to performance.

Every unit has inventory - it's dynamic. Each entity will handle its inventory (backpack & active items) automatically unless you take control of it (the RPG part).

The reason is that the units now can look for goods to transport:
1) find e.g. a plank that is needed for some construction work.
2) go there,
3) pick it up (put into backpack either invisible or visible and/or attach it as active item to give it an effect e.g. show other units that you bear a cool armour such that their loyalty towards this unit increases).
4) go to the construction foundation,
5) hand the plank over to the builders.

One concept, pretty multipurpose, hopefully giving us the chance to achieve something epic.

Comrade, I'm not good enough to teach you - the master of bagpipers. Currently having severe render issues with the new PortraitRenderer, holy cow - need to make it as efficient as possible.

For your information, this all is multiplayer compatible.

true, I still hope it'll turn out epic, need to work more on it.

Absolutely, the time machine will give all the freedom like in the real world. If you don't have grenades at hand, then just make them throw planks, it might give you some more time. thanks man