307 replies to this topic

[Pureon]

------------------------------------------------------------------ Original post:


Initially I just want to say the Alpha is great, congrats to the entire team behind it.

I installed the Alpha on my 32bit XP SP3 machine, and this is what I'd created an hour later:


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A few houses after that screenshot was taken 0 A.D. became completely unresponsive and I had to force quit. Overall though I was very impressed by user interfaces, the buildings, the units, the animations, the water, the trees, and lots more. On to constructive criticism:

1) On default settings the shadows looked choppy
2) Only the selection circle is selectable when using the selection box.
3) The obstruction radius prevented walls and towers being connected to one another
4) Can't build on chickens - Animals prevent placement of buildings

Those are my initial thoughts - hope they are helpful!

Edited by Pureon, 01 February 2011 - 09:36 AM.

[Mythos_Ruler]

@shadows: What graphics card do you have?

[Jeru]

Holy cow! Do you mind if I put this screenshot in the news?

Are you willing to release it as cc-by-sa so maybe we can put it in our screenshot gallery? You will get credit, of course.

Edited by Jeru, 22 August 2010 - 06:24 PM.

[Pureon]

@Mythos_Ruler: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS
@Jeru: All yours, no need for credit or anything!

[Jeru]

The walls and towers thing is going to be fixed soon, btw

[Pureon]

That'll help if I decide to build any more fortified cities.

Any news on having units on walls?

[Pureon]

Does anyone know why the shadows are choppy? Is there a computer setting I might have changed which is causing it?


Full size

[Ykkrosh]

Looks like it's drawing shadows for transparent textures as if they were fully opaque. I've no idea why, and don't have any suggestions other than updating graphics drivers.

[Kirtash1197]

I can not do these things so nice because I can not catch when I'm out in full screen and it is very difficult to build walls. Should implement a system of construction as other games like imperium that you are clicking and placing towers where you do it.

[emperor77]

Kirtash1197, on Aug 24 2010, 02:43 AM, said:

I can not do these things so nice because I can not catch when I'm out in full screen and it is very difficult to build walls. Should implement a system of construction as other games like imperium that you are clicking and placing towers where you do it.

I'm pretty sure something like that is on the ''to do'' list.

[feneur]

Indeed it is, might take a while though. That said I'm pretty sure the scene above is created in Atlas (our scenario/map editor, see: http://trac.wildfire...ser%2527s_Guide for more info) which allows greater freedom in placing the buildings .

[Pureon]

Ykkrosh, on Aug 23 2010, 10:27 PM, said:

Looks like it's drawing shadows for transparent textures as if they were fully opaque. I've no idea why, and don't have any suggestions other than updating graphics drivers.

@Ykkrosh: I remember your name from all the great work you did for the AOE community many years ago. Huge thanks to you mate! Anyway, I updated DirectX and NVIDIA Display drivers and that fixed it (whatever it was).

No more choppy shadows:

Full size

Edit: Spoke too soon, now the editor hangs on startup - no blank map loads in the display window, and it's completely unresponsive. A single player scenario starts without any problems. A reinstall of 0AD didn't fix it either.

Edit2: Still haven't worked out why the atlas editor has stopped working since I updated my display drivers, the logs don't show anything worrying apart from maybe these 2 lines:

Cannot find config file "config/local.cfg" - ignoring
Cannot find config file "config/profiles/default/settings/user.cfg" - ignoring

But I assume there is no log specifically for the editor?

Edited by Pureon, 24 August 2010 - 10:46 PM.

[Mythos_Ruler]

Errr, I am pretty sure u need those files. lol Maybe I'm wrong.

[Pureon]

I didn't delete them, honest

[Ykkrosh]

Those .cfg files are optional (and not present by default) and won't hurt. The editor runs as part of the game engine, so it uses the same log files. I don't have any ideas as to why it'd stop working . Maybe it'd be useful to run the game in a debugger to see what's going on, but unless you've got Visual Studio installed that's a pain - I guess we should figure out some instructions on how to use WinDbg to help with this kind of thing.

[Pureon]

I do have Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition installed, but it' not registered (as in I didn't go through the registration process). That probably doesn't help.

During the 0AD uninstall process, do all files related to 0AD get deleted? The reinstall didn't fix the Atlas Editor, so doesn't that suggest it's my system and not 0AD?

Edited by Pureon, 25 August 2010 - 12:28 AM.

[Ykkrosh]

Hmm, I think 2005 is probably too old to read the debug information files. I'll see if I can look into this debugging thing some time tomorrow (if not for this case then for future debugging).

The uninstall should delete everything except local .cfg files and screenshots, so it sounds like a system thing. Did Atlas stop working immediately when you updated the drivers? What exactly does it display on the screen when you start it?

[Pureon]

It looks like this.

The menu has gone white because I clicked on the move button - same happens whenever any buttons are pressed after Atlas starts. Some parts of the screen go white, or all of it (edit:like this), and it doesn't respond to anything.

Yes Atlas stopped working after I updated DirectX and then NVIDIA Display drivers (both to latest versions).

Perhaps I can follow this tomorrow evening:

Edited by Pureon, 25 August 2010 - 12:59 AM.

[Ykkrosh]

I tried to write some instructions here, which might possibly give some indication of where it's hanging.

[Pureon]

Your instructions were spot on, thanks. Here's the output