2128 replies to this topic

[Pedro Falcão]

Caravan roads are featured in rise of nations just for aesthetic purposes, save for handing over the caravans' postions. In RoN, only buildings and caravan can create roads, though (and automatically, manual road building is impossible). It would be nice to have roads featured in 0 AD, even cooler to have speed bonus from them.

[Gen.Kenobi]

I think the main issue would be blending the roads well with the maps, so it don't look out-placed or uggly - like in EEII, in RON they were made in a quite good way, however their gameplay and maps were quite different from what we have now at 0ad...

[Pedro Falcão]

In real life, the romans preferred to use the roads to travel, the army in a long straight line for everyone to have a spot on the road.

[oshron]

well depending on what civ built the roads, presumably they could be designed differently. unfortunately, i dont know much about what roads way back then looked like or if there was any real difference between them. do we even know what iron age roads looked like?

maybe the player could start out only being able to build dirt roads which they cant upgrade individually, but later be able to upgrade so that new roads are more professional looking ones like stone and tile

Edited by oshron, 03 February 2012 - 01:14 AM.

[oshron]

afeder, on 02 February 2012 - 09:42 PM, said:

Also, if there is a speed bonus, how would formations be handled? If one side of the formation is on the road and the other side is off, would one side just sprint off with the other falling behind, thus breaking the formation?

That being said, a band of Romans marching in formation on a road to reach the enemy fast would be pretty cool.

theoretically, wouldnt a formation or other group of soldiers only move as fast as their slowest member? thats how it was in AOM, for instance, so if a group of hoplites had a siege tower with them, they would be slowed down dramatically

that being the case, maybe there could be a hotkey option or button going with all units that can go into formations called "Loose" which means that they would break formation and just move as fast as they can of their own accord. if any of you have ever played the first Empire Earth game, every unit in that game moves like that, which admittedly can be troublesome if your fewer but faster cavalry arrive to the battle sooner and they arent equipped as well as your slower infantry are to fight approaching soldiers. however, if youre just trying to get from Point A to Point B, then traveling loose would be better

[Geek377]

I was just going for it because it would look nice with the Romans
And the trade bonuses and speed increases count, I guess.

[Pedro Falcão]

Forgetting the roads, i thought about Queues of orders and pre-orders. The idea between them is quite simple: about the queues (featured both in Starcraft 2 and Rise of Nations), the player can select a unit and give it a sequence of commands to be done in the exact same order by holding shift button while giving the orders; About the pre-orders, i didn't see it in any game, but i thought it would be nice to program a set of orders to various units to be executed at the same time.
For example, a player wants two armies to attack at the same time, but from two different sides, so the player can "shift + (the button of pre-orders) + click" to program the first army to do something and, still holding the pre-orders' button, program the set of orders for the other army (the same way as the first) and then release the pre-orders button to start the sets of orders for both armies.
Since the queues are already featured in games and they don't seem to harm the playability, the "pre-orders" (just delaying the set of orders) won't cause much harm to it too, while adding the possibility of more strategies (specially if/when the bonuses of attacking by behind are implemented).

[feneur]

Pedro Falcão, on 03 February 2012 - 01:30 PM, said:

Forgetting the roads, i thought about Queues of orders and pre-orders. The idea between them is quite simple: about the queues (featured both in Starcraft 2 and Rise of Nations), the player can select a unit and give it a sequence of commands to be done in the exact same order by holding shift button while giving the orders; About the pre-orders, i didn't see it in any game, but i thought it would be nice to program a set of orders to various units to be executed at the same time.
For example, a player wants two armies to attack at the same time, but from two different sides, so the player can "shift + (the button of pre-orders) + click" to program the first army to do something and, still holding the pre-orders' button, program the set of orders for the other army (the same way as the first) and then release the pre-orders button to start the sets of orders for both armies.
Since the queues are already featured in games and they don't seem to harm the playability, the "pre-orders" (just delaying the set of orders) won't cause much harm to it too, while adding the possibility of more strategies (specially if/when the bonuses of attacking by behind are implemented).

Order queues already exists, and have for quite a while now. There are issues with groups and order queues though, but for individual units it works fine.

As for the pre-orders, not sure about how easy it would be to implement just that, but at least for single-player gameplay it should be possible to make you able to give orders while the game is paused, which is more or less the same, except you don't need to remember some keyboard combinations other than the "Pause" button =) That doesn't apply to multiplayer though, so there something like what you suggest can definitely be relevant

[Geek377]

Besides roads, I would also like to make the suggestion of a cool building placement system. I know its a game of ancient warfare, but whats wrong with building neatly? After all, many citys were neatly planned.
What I propose is a GUI option that displays the grid when the player selects a building to construct. This grid should correspond to the game engine's tiles already (no brainer) but also allow for building snapping. In my opinion, its a lot neater. But this doesn't have to be the primary focus of the game; its better suited for development after Part 1 is finished.
But on a side note: the terrain flattening issue should be addressed much sooner

[Pedro Falcão]

Geek377, on 15 February 2012 - 02:26 AM, said:

Besides roads, I would also like to make the suggestion of a cool building placement system. I know its a game of ancient warfare, but whats wrong with building neatly? After all, many citys were neatly planned.
What I propose is a GUI option that displays the grid when the player selects a building to construct. This grid should correspond to the game engine's tiles already (no brainer) but also allow for building snapping. In my opinion, its a lot neater. But this doesn't have to be the primary focus of the game; its better suited for development after Part 1 is finished.
But on a side note: the terrain flattening issue should be addressed much sooner

Starcraft 2 has such a feature.

[L'ethu]

I think we could consider adding taxation into the game when metal runs out and there are no potential trading partners in the game. By researching taxation, all working civilian or citizen soldier/town levy will generate a steady flow of metal for the player.

[hhyloc]

L, on 15 February 2012 - 12:40 PM, said:

I think we could consider adding taxation into the game when metal runs out and there are no potential trading partners in the game. By researching taxation, all working civilian or citizen soldier/town levy will generate a steady flow of metal for the player.

Wouldn't this mean infinite resource? Cause the metal generated can be traded for other resources via Market = infinite resources

[quantumstate]

Pedro Falcão, on 15 February 2012 - 11:15 AM, said:

Starcraft 2 has such a feature.

Starcraft 2 has all buildings locked to a grid system (confusingly this grid is at 45 degrees to how the graphics are drawn). This is pretty different from 0AD where buildings can be placed however you like. I am not sure quite how an optional grid system would work for 0AD.

[L'ethu]

hhyloc, on 15 February 2012 - 01:11 PM, said:

Wouldn't this mean infinite resource? Cause the metal generated can be traded for other resources via Market = infinite resources

That sounds logic, at least this reminds me this is not Command and Conquer: Generals.


Thank you.

[hhyloc]

L, on 16 February 2012 - 04:04 AM, said:

That sounds logic, at least this reminds me this is not Command and Conquer: Generals.


Thank you.

No need to thank me, I made the same mistakes every now and then.

Edited by hhyloc, 16 February 2012 - 06:03 AM.

[Pedro Falcão]

hhyloc, on 15 February 2012 - 01:11 PM, said:

Wouldn't this mean infinite resource? Cause the metal generated can be traded for other resources via Market = infinite resources

Yes, and what's so wrong about infinite resources if they come much slower than the gathering rate? Age of Empires 3 featured 2 buildings that produced infinite resources: Mill (food) and Plantations (gold). Also Rise of Nations's resources never exhausted.

[hhyloc]

Pedro Falcão, on 16 February 2012 - 01:01 PM, said:

Yes, and what's so wrong about infinite resources if they come much slower than the gathering rate? Age of Empires 3 featured 2 buildings that produced infinite resources: Mill (food) and Plantations (gold). Also Rise of Nations's resources never exhausted.

I think if the rate is slow, then it's probably ok. But I'm more concerned with what direction we are going to take, shall we follow AoE 3 and RoN or do it different? I'm still unsure whether infinite resource is really a bad thing or not, in my earlier post I didn't mean that infinite = bad but the idea may conflict with the existing system of finite resource we're having now.

[Kazu Kun]

:X considering the game is trying to follow a realistic timeline aspect, I think we should try to make in-game play at least sort of realistic, so infinite supplies, shouldn't be in this game.
Now a small income, (something like how they did with the relics ) WOULD be nice to have, and defiantly wouldn't hurt to have it in the game