Age of Mythology

[Spatzimaus]

How are you planning on graphically representing all this? God headshots?

Generally, yes, although that's not really an option for certain pantheons (like the Sumerians). The Greek, Norse, and Egyptian gods had nice artwork from the AoM game, and there are plenty of illustrations available for the Hindu and maybe Shinto. The Aztecs are a bit tougher but there are plenty of statues for these guys.

I'm more concerned about the 21 Foci themselves. I need simple, recognizable icons for each, sort of like unit flags. I'm looking to cannibalize other graphics from AoM for this, but I'm not sure I can get all of them that way.

 

[Sneaks]

I can give you a hand with some of that, if you'd like.

 

[dinobot386]

Heres an image you can use for Quetzelcoatl I found

 

[Spatzimaus]

Heres an image you can use for Quetzelcoatl I found

Very nice. Can you find images in a similar quality and style for the other Aztec gods? At least for the three other Major gods? (I'm trying to make the icons for major gods be 80 pixels and minors be 64, but that might have to drop to 64 and 45 if I run out of room.)

For the Greeks, Egyptians, and Norse, I'm just taking the images directly from AoM, but there's one minor quirk: AoM used 12 gods per pantheon, and I'm using 13. That means one god in each pantheon that I can't keep in the same artistic style as the others. The missing ones are Hermes, Geb, and Frigg, if I remember right; Hermes is definitely not hard to find artwork for, but Frigg is one of the major gods in that pantheon.

But that still leaves the Sumerian, Shinto, Hindu, and Aztec pantheons that I have to find full sets of images for, so if anyone has a source for one of these that has nice artwork for all 13 gods, then that'd be great. And remember, whatever you find has to be readable down to a 64-pixel scale. (Maybe even 45.)

In the meantime, I'm using placeholders for everyone. I'm really trying to get a working base version done by this weekend; it's not looking good for a Friday release (although I should be able to get the older mods updated a bit by then), but I'll spend all of Saturday on it if need be.

For the Foci, I'm trying to model it on the Policy icons or unit flags: greyscale images that may or may not get tinted based on other variables. Actually, that's something I'd like feedback on; if I were to tint the Focus symbols during your game, would you prefer it to be:
1> Colored by your choice of Pantheon (so Egyptian get tinted yellow, Norse blue, Aztec orange, Sumerian green, etc.). I want to have a UI showing which gods the other players follow, and this'd make it easier to identify at a glance which players follow the same pantheon as you (important if this has some future diplomacy bias). Of course, I can just put the Pantheon icon on that UI instead...
2> Colored by the axial bias of the Focus (Chaotic ones are colored red, Material green, Ephemeral blue, Lawful yellow, with the elemental foci being a mix of two colors). Since this wouldn't change during a game, it'd be much easier to implement and it'd be easier to see which Foci are more appropriate for the direction you're going.
3> Colored by availability. Like Policies, which are dark gray if you can't take it, light gray if you can, yellow if you have them already, except with more interesting colors (say, red if you can't ever take them, blue if you could take them but aren't in the right position to, green if they're available now, and yellow if you have them already).

It's possible to mix these approaches. If you prefer options 1 or 2, the availability can just be handled through a box around the Focus icon, like how the tech tree colors tech boxes. Or I can make a colored "ring" around each focus' picture and tint THAT based on different factors than I use for the focus picture itself.

And there's a conceptual issue there, too. Think of the Unit Panel; you see the picture of the unit, and there's a small circle in the lower-left corner that shows the civ symbol and colors for the unit's owner (generally you, of course). So I'm still trying to decide: should the Mandala show the actual gods, and have their foci be some small symbol in the corner of the icon? Or should the Mandala show the Foci themselves, and have the god's picture just pop up when you mouse over a focus?

 

[Sneaks]

For the Mandala, I am putting together a very quick mock up.

The idea I am working with is that each Foci will be sans god pictures, and will require several overalys: Base image, Mouseover highlight, Available Foci, Selected Foci, and Unavailable Foci.

Clicking on a Foci might bring up a popup saying which god is associated with said foci and the list of bonuses.

 

[CivOasis]

Heres an image you can use for Quetzelcoatl I found

I don't think he's supposed to have wings. At leas,t I've never heard of him represented as such (and, he's normally red and either green or black, at least in the pictures of the codices I've seen).

 

[CivOasis]

For possible myth units from the Aztecs:
Ahuizotl
Cipactli
Cihuateteo
Nahual (sort of)
Tlaltecuhtli

Admittedly, the ahuizotl is the best on that list, but still.

For heroes, maybe Popcatepetl could work?
Admittedly, most of those are a stretch, but, its a start...

 

[Spatzimaus]

For possible myth units from the Aztecs:

One of the questions I've been pondering is related to this: should the events you're offered, and the Heroes you're given, depend on the specific mythology of the Pantheon you've chosen?

This goes back to an earlier discussion of Myth units in the old thread. Besides the fact that it'd just be hard to come up with enough Myth units for certain pantheons, there are major balance headaches with trying to come up with seven equivalent-but-not-identical choices for everything. So the solution I'm intending to go with, for now, is just to make Myth units universal; if you reach Animals 2 then you can build a Manticore or a Basilisk, regardless of whether those creatures fit into your Pantheon. I'll shift the themes a bit; since the only god with Animals as a primary is Ra, I'll make Animals be a bit heavy on Egyptian-themed units. Since the only god with Water as a primary is Poseidon, the few UUs in the Water focus would have a Greek theme. And so on.
It's not really a problem coming up with about a dozen pantheon-themed myth units each for the Greeks, Egyptians, and Norse; Age of Mythology already did that for me. And there are some creatures (Sphinx, Chimaera, Dragon) that appear in many myths. But it'd be quite a bit of work to do the same level of detail for the others.

So now back to the events. I could, in theory, make seven sets of events and have them tie explicitly to your choice of Pantheons; it'd take a lot more work, but it wouldn't be difficult to implement mechanically. The question is whether this is a good idea; if I pool the events together, it allows a larger variety to choose from in a specific game.

I'll give an example of what I mean.

Event: a ship carrying a foreign noble arrives in one of your ports. He's on his way home from a distant war, but his ship has been blown completely off course by a hostile sea god. Do you:
A> Give him good directions, supplies, and additional crew in hopes of establishing trade relations with his nation (+1 Gold per turn in each coastal city, +1 Law)
B> Give him bad directions, because he's a follower of heathen gods (gain 100 Favor, +1 Ephemeral)
C> Offer he and his crew luxurious residences in your capital and use their expertise to your advantage (Gain a Hero, +1 Material)
D> Capture them, to be sacrificed in gladiatorial games for the amusement of your population (+1 Happiness, +1 Chaos)

Now, you can guess that this was inspired by the Odyssey, but it's a generic enough situation that you could justify something like this happening for pretty much any pantheon. So should I limit this purely to the Greeks, and make the Hero gained in C be explicitly Odysseus, or should all civs get this scenario and maybe just have the exact Hero gained depend on your pantheon? The latter option would allow me to put more effort into adding new events, without having to worry about things like whether the Aztec pantheon is getting shortchanged in its event rewards.

 

[CivOasis]

It should be largely universal, but every pantheon should get *some* representation, too.

 

[Sneaks]

Mandala Concept

Spoiler :

Obviously a very rough draft at this point. Also, let me know if you like the Foci

 

[OrsonM]

Really eye catching, unify the visual language on the icons though.

 

[Sneaks]

Yeah, there are a few that are a bit clip-arty, which is not surprising as that is what a lot of them are.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Mandala Concept

VERY nice, although you're missing the Balance focus (right in the middle). But ideally I'd want the 21 foci to be handled as an overlay, so that I can potentially remove the seven that are banned through your choice of pantheon and major god. It'd be okay to still have them imprinted on the background as well, but I need to be able to use the 21 Focus symbols in other windows so I've got to put them into a standard icon atlas somehow, preferably with lines thick enough to handle rescaling well.

Also, I'll need a version of the backdrop that includes the lines I'd shown on the previous image, or at least I'll have to create a transparent overlay that adds them. The mathematical equations for the six region groups, for anyone who cares:

Group 1: 3*(x+y) - ABS(x-y) > 9 for the +x,+y case. (So the positive-x, negative-y one is 3*(x-y) - ABS(x+y) > 9, and so on.)
Red lines, starting at (1.5,1.5) and radiating outward.

Group 2: 2*y + ABS(x) > 9. (That's the +y axial case. Rotates like you'd expect.)
Blue lines, starting at (0,4.5) and going slightly downward to either side.

Group 3: y + 2*ABS(x) < 4.5.
The orange lines in the old plot, basically four narrow V-shapes that bracket the origin. They'll overlap with the red lines for part of their length, which is why the coloring's a bit off in the plots I provided.

Group 4: x > 0 and y > 0. (And the four rotations, obviously)
Green lines on the axes.
This was previously an axial set, with an X-shape defining it, but I've changed it for balance reasons.

Group 5: ABS(x)+ABS(y) < 9, and also y>=0. (Only that last part rotates.)
Purple diamond from (9,0) to (0,9) and so on, but also with lines along the X and Y axes.

Group 6: ABS(x) < 4.5, and ABS(y) < 4.5.
This one's simple, a box with corners at +/- 4.5, +/- 4.5.

 

[sukritact]

The missing ones are Hermes, Geb, and Frigg

Hermes is in Aom, the missing god is Demeter

 

[Sneaks]

Well, my initial thought was that each icon will not be part of the actual image, but added as a button on top. That will allow for you to add per tree. The overlays I figure could be done fully through Lua, and appear on mouseover. or with some manner of control box in a corner.

I put them all on the background as a flat jpg just for ease of display, but I have separate psd layers for each element. In fact, the circle size for each Foci is identical to that of a 256 icon atlas.

I just need you to decide exactly how large you want this sucker. 64x64 icons seem to be the best bet for fitting everything, but any resolution smaller than 1900x1280 would need vertical scrolling most likely. I'll see what I can do.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Hermes is in Aom, the missing god is Demeter

Okay, it's been a little while since I played it through. Same basic point: one god missing artwork within the style used for the other twelve within the pantheon. It shouldn't be too hard to find something useful for Demeter.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Well, my initial thought was that each icon will not be part of the actual image, but added as a button on top. That will allow for you to add per tree. The overlays I figure could be done fully through Lua, and appear on mouseover. or with some manner of control box in a corner.

That's basically what I've got now (my version's about half-coded). It won't actually RUN yet, but it's been getting closer.

I just need you to decide exactly how large you want this sucker. 64x64 icons seem to be the best bet for fitting everything, but any resolution smaller than 1900x1280 would need vertical scrolling most likely. I'll see what I can do.

I'd prefer not to bring scroll bars into it if it can be avoided, because I really want the player to see at a glance where everything is. I was originally aiming for the Mandala's playable area to be 600x600, to fit into a 1024x768 window with most of the right-hand side being filled with numbers and buttons. There'd be no need for scrollbars, then; 1024x768 is the size of the Policy window in vanilla, and the game assumes that you can't play on anything below that. But that really wasn't enough, so I was looking to up that by 20% to 720x720, especially since I want the x and y values to range to +/-9 if possible and it'd make the math smoother. That'd still leave me with a nice 300x720ish area on the side for buttons and such.

64-pixel icons would be a bit cramped on that, as you can probably guess, but it's barely workable since there'd be 9 icons along each axis. 45s would work better, if the icons are legible at that size, or else I'd need to go to 900x900 and require a minimum resolution of 1280x1024 or 1680x1050 (which also happens to be my screen's size). But I'd prefer not to alienate the people who'd play this on lower settings, say on a laptop, so I'm trying to see if 1024x768 is possible to work with.

Another possibility, simply put, would be to change my design a bit. If I picked one of the lower sets of four and changed it from an axial arrangement to a diagonal one (like the four elemental foci use), it'd reduce the congestion quite a bit since you'd only need 7 icons along each axis instead of 9. So if, say, the Plant-Animal-Travel-Art set were rotated 45 degrees, to where Plants are LM, Animals are CM, Travel is CE, and Art is LE, it'd be much easier to fit all the icons in. I'd have to go back and make sure everything else still balances, though, and it'd change several other things, but it could work. It's actually something I'd already been considering for gameplay reasons; it was just a little too powerful to stay on one axis.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Another possibility, simply put, would be to change my design a bit.

Okay, after a bit of number-crunching, it looks like this is in fact the best way to do it. I'm going to double-check a bit with my spreadsheets when I get home tonight, but for now assume that Plants will be LM, Animals will be CM, Travel CE, and Art LE. This'll make these sort of like the elements, although the equation for them is simple: x>0 and y>0, and so on. So they're a bit "inward" of the elemental ones. If the spreadsheets agree I'll update the earlier posts, including pictures.

So now there'll only be three sets of four on the axes: group 2 as the outermost, group 3 a bit inward of that, and group 5 as the innermost set. (Plus Balance at 0,0.)

One aspect of this is that the axial optima get a bit fuzzier; the area around 0,0 is a bit smoother, and for the outer axes you're encouraged to deviate a little more.

 

[dinobot386]

Ok, heres the pictures I could find for the Aztec pantheon, Theres a few I really like (the 4 major gods), and then theres a few that I really couldent find better and are sort of meh (several minor gods)

 

[dinobot386]

last 2