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0 A.D. Alpha 24: Xšayāršā

375 points by shakow 6y ago

zibbity-rw 6y ago
This game looks so much better than it did a few years ago! I wish people used open source games like this for AI competitions. So much more open and also what a great community effort.
Bakary 6y ago
This is such a great project
henearkr 6y ago
Wow!! I thought it was pretty much dead after their fork. I'm happy to see it's not the case!! ^^ I love this game and its music.
- rambojazz 6y ago
  Sorry, what fork? What happened?
  - henearkr 6y ago
    Here, they said that the development was slowed down because of disagreements, and a sizable part of the development team announced their fork: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/25134-fork-ad/ https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/25134-fork-ad/
    - spijdar 6y ago
      With the benefit of hindsight, this sounds more like personal drama than a real fork. I'm not super familiar with 0AD beyond playing sometimes, dunno what their org structure is like or anything, but this doesn't look like there was ever really a threat to 0AD. Again, benefit of hindsight, but 0AD's releases have always been pretty slow, and it doesn't look like this was really out of the ordinary? It's hard to have good faith on the part of the forkers when it sounds like they took issue with how closed/"iron fisted" the development of 0AD was, and then ... made a fully private fork with 3 people?
      - ezekiel68 6y ago
        Well, I mean, "personal drama" is likely the chief cause of most forks. So it's not as if this didn't create a real fork (I'm pretty sure the other guys have their own repo).
        play0ad 6y ago
        They do, they even have their own website. Their repo is closed source so we can't take any patch from them though. https://fork-ad.gitlab.io/ https://fork-ad.gitlab.io/
  - teruakohatu 6y ago
    Three guys left to create a fork back in 2018. They argued that they would be able to iterate faster because they trusted each other. They also said they would only release the source once they made a release. By mid 2020 they posted some screen shots and some graphs showing that they slightly increasesed the speed of map generation. So far they have not yet released any source code. Since the fork happened, the original project has released two new versions.
    - Dunedan 6y ago
      > By mid 2020 they posted some screen shots and some graphs showing that they slightly increasesed the speed of map generation. Fun fact: Map generation was significantly faster before alpha 23. With alpha 23 map generation got reworked to be more procedural, which decreased its generation time, but enabled features like choosing between different biomes per map or the nomad game mode on all random maps.
sebyx07 6y ago
age of empires 4 open source
BariumBlue 6y ago
Congrats on a new release! I think it's a good project, and I too thought it was dead. ===== Personal experience: A few-ish months ago, I tried to get into 0AD (more than an exploratory 1-2 matches vs an AI). I like to watch videos of folks playing Age Of Empires 2, and I looked for a similar experience on youtube, to better understand the game, the meta, and standard tactics. But the videos just don't look nice. The units are hard to distinguish. The graphics are serviceable. It looks nice when you actually play, but personally it is not enjoyable to watch a video of it in the same way that AOE2 is.
- littlestymaar 6y ago
  > But the videos just don't look nice. The units are hard to distinguish. The graphics are serviceable. It looks nice when you actually play, but personally it is not enjoyable to watch a video of it in the same way that AOE2 is. Having played to a lot of RTS when I was younger, the main difference between AOE2 and the rest[1] is 3D vs isometric-2D. 3D tends to make games a lot messier. The comparison between AOE2 and AOE3 is a pretty good example of this phenomenon for instance. [1] : Stacraft 2 being the outlier here, it has really “clean” graphics, while being 3D.
  - dmos62 6y ago
    > Stacraft 2 being the outlier here Not a huge outlier. I find Starcraft 1 graphics more pleasing than Starcraft 2 for the isometric-2d reason.
axaxs 6y ago
I'm explicitly and admittedly just not a PC gamer, but this is the one exception to the rule. Probably because I'm a longtime Linux on the desktop user, and there just wasn't much in the past. If you enjoyed AoE2, or just want to kill some time messing around, I highly suggest giving it a spin. Careful, time can disappear quickly.
programd 6y ago
The buried the more interesting lead: 0 A.D. now has an API for reinforcement learning. You can train AI to control the units in game https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GettingStartedReinforcementLearning https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GettingStartedReinforcem...
- cl42 6y ago
  Thanks for sharing this. THAT IS SO COOL.
  - play0ad 6y ago
    Brian Broll will be taking about 0 A.D. today between 11:10 and AM–12:25 PM PCT for Microsoft 's AI and Gaming Research Summit. They seem to still accept attendance registrations. https://lnkd.in/d5y5Y37 https://lnkd.in/d5y5Y37
- lettergram 6y ago
  That’s honestly what I’ve been waiting for from this game. Game is decent enough, but the AI needed work. I was looking to build my own for years, just never had a decent interface for it.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  Someone needs to start a Kaggle competition for training AI agents on 0 A.D.
- jdxcode 6y ago
  It’s “buried the lede”
  - frankzinger 6y ago
    Yes, but "lead" is not completely wrong either: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/bury-the-lede-versus-lead https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/bury-the-lede-...
shakow 6y ago
I'm really happy to see that the project is still alive and kicking!
max0563 6y ago
I have been following this game for many years. What you all have made is amazing. Thank you for continuing to work on and improve 0 A.D. Very inspiring!
tomxor 6y ago
Similarly I've been playing OpenRA recently, which is basically an open source recreation of the old C&C games Dune, Tiberian Sun and Red Alert (the later being the most popular). It's a very honest recreation that feels close to the originals, both in terms of graphics and game play. However the key thing that keeps it fun for me and holds my attention is being online multiplayer, the diversity and challenge other human players brings cannot be replaced with AI so far... Anyway, the last time I tried 0 A.D it didn't seem to have multiplayer capability yet, but it seems to now!
- phkahler 6y ago
  >> However the key thing that keeps it fun for me and holds my attention is being online multiplayer I had a long spell of BZflag. The humans are so much better to play against. Highly recommended game for casual play BTW.
  - spijdar 6y ago
    The last time I tried bzflag online I got beaten non-stop. It was honestly a little disheartening, the skill level of the human opponents seemed comically good. Lots of practice I guess I love bzflag though, I used to play locally with friends, sometimes all night when I was a teen. Good times :)
    - tomxor 6y ago
      I had the same issue with openRA at first, some games take a lot more skill investment at the start but this pays off later in genuinely rewarding gameplay, much like mastering a sport.
d33 6y ago
Just to save somebody some searching, here's what the release name refers to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerxes_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerxes_II
- kowlo 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerxes_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerxes_I
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  The first paragraph on the page specifies that the release is named in honor of Xerxes I, not Xerxes II.
  - Ar-Curunir 6y ago
    Kind of sad how awfully mangled the Greek version of the name is...
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      It's not that far off; the Greeks have Xerxes where you might expect Xiarsa from the cuneiform. Greek has no "sh" sound, so you can't blame them for not using it. Compare Greek Dareios / Persian Darayavauš.
    - yorwba 6y ago
      Still better than Ahasuerus, descended from the same Old Persian name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahasuerus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahasuerus
    - tomcooks 6y ago
      If it consoles you I feel the same, daily, with how anglophones refuse to write even basic Italian, Spanish, French, or Portuguese sentences. No matter how hard me and other non-anglophones work to pronounce and spell English words correctly, double checking and investing money in getting the right pronunciation.
crazypython 6y ago
I find the choice of business model very strange. The free software philosophy allows game art to be proprietary. They could sell DRM-free copies on their site that license the game art but keep the code free. I'm not sure why they don't do this.
- blendergeek 6y ago
  > I find the choice of business model very strange. I don't see much of a business model. > The free software philosophy allows game art to be proprietary. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this. The Free Software Definition does not allow this. If code is contributed to 0AD under the GPL, they could not combine it with proprietary graphics. The GNU Free System Distribution guidelines allows for the inclusion of game art that is under a license that does not permit modification. However any such art must be redistributable for commercial and noncommercial purposes at no charge. > They could sell DRM-free copies on their site that license the game art but keep the code free. This violates the spirit of free software. > I'm not sure why they don't do this. I think they want the game to be free.
  - ampdepolymerase 6y ago
    If you are the author (and every other contributor signed relevant CLAs) then you can distribute the code however you want. You do not have to include game assets in the code distribution.
    - blendergeek 6y ago
      I do realize that. However, in the case of 0ad, they do not require such a CLA. Rather their website has this to say: > By sending in a patch, you agree that it is your own work (or else make it clear where it came from) and agree to licensing any code as GPL 2+ (or in some cases MIT, especially for code in lib/ - check the existing copyright headers on the source files you edit) and data files as CC-BY-SA 3.0.
  - chungy 6y ago
    > I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this. The Free Software Definition does not allow this. If code is contributed to 0AD under the GPL, they could not combine it with proprietary graphics. > The GNU Free System Distribution guidelines allows for the inclusion of game art that is under a license that does not permit modification. However any such art must be redistributable for commercial and noncommercial purposes at no charge. The free software definition only really applies to software, not art. There is nothing that would be in conflict for having a free game engine paired with proprietary artwork. There even exists plenty of examples of such; most prominently, the Doom and Quake games. > This violates the spirit of free software. The spirit of free software is not "free stuff", but rather the freedom to run and modify programs. A free engine paired with proprietary art doesn't violate anything. > I think they want the game to be free. This is the main thing and the primary factor in all of the conversation. While the 0 AD authors _could_ make a proprietary-art game and maybe make a profit doing so, their intention is clearly to have free (as in freedom) artwork as well as to have the game spread as wide as possible. There is nothing wrong with this, just as there would be nothing wrong with making a commercial game. It is a choice and one that can be taken admirably. The short of it, there probably isn't a business model to speak of. While it does appear there exists a corporation (Wildfire Games) to cover legal concerns, it's doubtful they're doing it for profit.
crazypython 6y ago
The GUI isn't starting on Mac for me. Edit: Had to wait several minutes, but it started.
- reddotX 6y ago
  works great on linux
planb 6y ago
For a moment I thought Elon Musk had another child...
- keyle 6y ago
  Oh man, I had the exact same thought.
evolve2k 6y ago
Every year over my summer break me and my teens have a tradition of locking ourselves in for a few days of Playing Zero AD which loosely aligns with at least one update for the year. We truly love this game and invite a few friends around also for a epic LAN party. We’ve waiting a long time for this release. Lots of great improvements in there, can’t wait to play.
evolve2k 6y ago
I’m not sure about others but the game is in quite a playable state and has been playable for many years. Anyone have context on why it’s still labelled Alpha. What’s the key criteria for it to jump to Beta and 1.0?
- Dunedan 6y ago
  What's still completely missing is a single player campaign, which at least some people consider a requirement for an non-alpha release. Also 0ad still has severe performance problems for various reasons. One of them is that nearly all code runs single-threaded. Also the multiplayer code is all but efficient, so in a multiplayer game all players are essentially limited to the FPS of the player with the least capable hardware.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    > Also 0ad still has severe performance problems for various reasons. One of them is that nearly all code runs single-threaded. Also the multiplayer code is all but efficient, so in a multiplayer game all players are essentially limited to the FPS of the player with the least capable hardware. Is there an issue tracker for these problems? edit: play0ad, I cannot respond to your comment because it's dead. You might want to reach out to dang if you'd like other people to be able to read and respond to your comments.
    - play0ad 6y ago
      There is on trac.wildfiregames.com One of the biggest but sadly not the only problem is pathfinder threading https://code.wildfiregames.com/D14 https://code.wildfiregames.com/D14 Other things like the messaging system could probably be threaded. Rendering needs to run in another thread than simulation too. Feel free to reach out to us on quakenet.org #0ad-dev. We're usually there on CET.
pierrec 6y ago
"We decided to name Alpha 24 after this inspiring ancient ruler to celebrate the ancient Persian civilisation, and to reflect upcoming changes in the internal governance structure of 0 A.D." This is presented a bit mysteriously. Does than mean 0 A.D. devs and contributors are going to have an emperor?
heavyset_go 6y ago
Anyone have links to Linux binaries?
- etrevino 6y ago
  https://play0ad.com/download/linux/ https://play0ad.com/download/linux/
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    That links to distro and community repositories, and the ones that I checked out didn't have v0.24 binaries yet. edit: The development PPA has v0.24 alphas that were compiled in November[1], though. [1] https://launchpad.net/~wfg/+archive/ubuntu/0ad.dev https://launchpad.net/~wfg/+archive/ubuntu/0ad.dev
atum47 6y ago
Yeah, I used to play with my friends back in college the whole night. Old school lan party.
cinquemb 6y ago
> New Requirements: Windows XP, Windows Vista, and anything below macOS 10.12 are no longer supported. Anyone tried compiling it on any of these systems yet, will it still compile?
- Dunedan 6y ago
  I guess that'd be pretty challenging now with all the new requirements noted in the "Under the hood" section of the release notes.
- play0ad 6y ago
  The problem is Spidermonkey for windows, as their build is pretty opaque, and they started calling some Windows APIs breaking compatibility. You get a nasty error if you try to run something there about a missing Kernel32 function For macOS, you can actually build for > 10.12 BUT the build will only be compatible with this. See https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2827 https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2827 for more info about why the SDL2 broke stuff.
  - cinquemb 6y ago
    Thanks for the detailed response!
est 6y ago
Off topic, can anyone recommend a good strategy game with a logistics system? I mean in realistic terms a battle unit can not just sit in a remote place for ages and survive without food and gears support.
- neverminder 6y ago
  I like Total War Three Kingdoms, it has one of the best AI and campaign dynamics I've ever seen.
- mmanfrin 6y ago
  The Hegemony series features supply range heavily, in how you build/connect your cities and with armies: https://longbowgames.com/hegemony3/ https://longbowgames.com/hegemony3/ It's also just a generally fun strategy game that went largely unnoticed and they're still plucking away on DLC years later.
- rntksi 6y ago
  Hearts of Iron 4 and 3
  - dmos62 6y ago
    I liked Crusader Kings. Same studio (right?). It's more RPG focused. Having an army mustered is expensive. There's also Europa Universalis, same studio again. Some people swear by it, but I've not played it.
    - rntksi 6y ago
      Great :-) Yes, those are Paradox games. Hearts of Iron - HOI(4,3) is more of a modern warfare game: you manage supply, manpower, combat lines. Crusader Kings - CK(3,2) is more of a roleplaying game: you manage your family, dynasty, vassals, religion, personal traits, and personal/family scheming. Europa Universalis - EU(4,3) is a game that combines a bit of everything: you've got internal affairs, foreign affairs, bit of warfare, technology, colonization, discovery, market trading, ... Stellaris is like EU but in space. With scifi tech, federation, diplomacy and mythical/intriguing events Victoria is more of an economy management game along with a bit of warfare and political fun. They're all good games that can take a few couple of hours to have fun with. People usually joke that it's like playing with a map and some coloured paintbrush ... Paradox has some other nice titles too. I think "Tyranny" and "Pillars of Eternity" is Paradox too but might be wrong. Those are RPGs (think Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, ... kind of RPGs)
happyconcepts 6y ago
For anyone still playing Alpha 23 be sure to try my Aye Pirates mod. Further updates are still planned through the rest of this year.
geokon 6y ago
Neither Ubuntu packages haven't been updated nor the official PPA. The latest version of Ubuntu mentioned is .. 19.04 .. so I think the page hasn't been updated in ages. I guess maybe it works if you build from source? But last I checked it was a hairball with build scripts
- AntiImperialist 6y ago
  The snap was updated on the 10th of December 2020, so expect the latwst version to show up there.
- play0ad 6y ago
  It will totally work if you build from source ^^ I use this https://code.wildfiregames.com/P241 https://code.wildfiregames.com/P241 but basically you need only this after cloning and installing deps cd build/workspaces && sh update-workspaces.sh -j4 cd gcc && make -j4 See also https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/BuildInstructions https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/BuildInstructions
  - geokon 6y ago
    There is no rush. I will wait for the AppImage to get published. It's just the release links to Linux downloads are broken and I thought someone in charge will see it Btw am I reading it correctly - you guys are still on Subversion? and no CMake? but you're using C++17. What a weird combo of old and new :)
    - play0ad 6y ago
      We use Arcanist + Phabricator, but main repo is SVN yes. We also have two git mirrors. We use Premake5 instead of CMake, for historical reasons. an attempt was made at Meson but it was too messy on Windows. We only switched to C++17 because Mozilla's SpiderMonkey headers required us to. Else we'd still be at C++11
bdowling 6y ago
A small piece of esoteric knowledge: There is no year 0 A.D. The year before 1 A.D. was 1 B.C.
- dmos62 6y ago
  So... Year 2021 A.D. is actually year 2020. You could say that this year indexing scheme is 1-based. Btw, I'm sure you meant to say 0 C.E. \s
  - TobTobXX 6y ago
    Yes but actually no. Calendars are horribly complicated. IIRC Christ's birth year is about 6 years off. This because the year as we know it was fixated around 300 years Christ's death and by then nobody had (or really cared about) the exact offset.
- TobTobXX 6y ago
  Historic knowledge: There was none of the tree. People only started counting years relative to Christ's birth at about 300 A.D.
- play0ad 6y ago
  Fun fact that's the point, so we can "justify" artistic license for some things :D
pelasaco 6y ago
One of my favorite games. I play it quite often since years now. Thank you for this new release. I normally see it being compared with AoE 2, but 0 A.D is much more dynamic, than AoE 2. I just wish there were more online games going on.
tragomaskhalos 6y ago
Something I've always loved about the ancient Greeks is how they'd hear a foreign name, go "yeah, I can't even pronounce that, never mind decline it" and come up with their own totally and shamelessly mangled variant. See also: their names for the Egyptian gods.
- _nalply 6y ago
  Sounds interesting. Do you have direct links?
beeforpork 6y ago
> “Xšayāršā” (pronounced: Khsha-ya-ṛsha) Wow, that's helpful. Seriously, IPA and a translation and/or explanation would be greatly appreciated. Edit: 'IPA': not the beer, but 'International Phonetic Alphabet'
- thrtythreeforty 6y ago
  Both kinds of IPA are greatly appreciated
- play0ad 6y ago
  Actually it's there Xšayāršā (pronounced Khsha-ya-ṛsha; IPA: /xʃajaːr̩ʃaː/) :)

375 points by shakow 6y ago

This game looks so much better than it did a few years ago! I wish people used open source games like this for AI competitions. So much more open and also what a great community effort.

Bakary 6y ago

This is such a great project

henearkr 6y ago

Wow!! I thought it was pretty much dead after their fork. I'm happy to see it's not the case!! ^^ I love this game and its music.

rambojazz 6y ago
Sorry, what fork? What happened?
- henearkr 6y ago
  Here, they said that the development was slowed down because of disagreements, and a sizable part of the development team announced their fork: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/25134-fork-ad/ https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/25134-fork-ad/
  - spijdar 6y ago
    With the benefit of hindsight, this sounds more like personal drama than a real fork. I'm not super familiar with 0AD beyond playing sometimes, dunno what their org structure is like or anything, but this doesn't look like there was ever really a threat to 0AD. Again, benefit of hindsight, but 0AD's releases have always been pretty slow, and it doesn't look like this was really out of the ordinary? It's hard to have good faith on the part of the forkers when it sounds like they took issue with how closed/"iron fisted" the development of 0AD was, and then ... made a fully private fork with 3 people?
    - ezekiel68 6y ago
      Well, I mean, "personal drama" is likely the chief cause of most forks. So it's not as if this didn't create a real fork (I'm pretty sure the other guys have their own repo).
      - play0ad 6y ago
        They do, they even have their own website. Their repo is closed source so we can't take any patch from them though. https://fork-ad.gitlab.io/ https://fork-ad.gitlab.io/
- teruakohatu 6y ago
  Three guys left to create a fork back in 2018. They argued that they would be able to iterate faster because they trusted each other. They also said they would only release the source once they made a release. By mid 2020 they posted some screen shots and some graphs showing that they slightly increasesed the speed of map generation. So far they have not yet released any source code. Since the fork happened, the original project has released two new versions.
  - Dunedan 6y ago
    > By mid 2020 they posted some screen shots and some graphs showing that they slightly increasesed the speed of map generation. Fun fact: Map generation was significantly faster before alpha 23. With alpha 23 map generation got reworked to be more procedural, which decreased its generation time, but enabled features like choosing between different biomes per map or the nomad game mode on all random maps.

sebyx07 6y ago

age of empires 4 open source

BariumBlue 6y ago

Congrats on a new release! I think it's a good project, and I too thought it was dead. ===== Personal experience: A few-ish months ago, I tried to get into 0AD (more than an exploratory 1-2 matches vs an AI). I like to watch videos of folks playing Age Of Empires 2, and I looked for a similar experience on youtube, to better understand the game, the meta, and standard tactics. But the videos just don't look nice. The units are hard to distinguish. The graphics are serviceable. It looks nice when you actually play, but personally it is not enjoyable to watch a video of it in the same way that AOE2 is.

littlestymaar 6y ago
> But the videos just don't look nice. The units are hard to distinguish. The graphics are serviceable. It looks nice when you actually play, but personally it is not enjoyable to watch a video of it in the same way that AOE2 is. Having played to a lot of RTS when I was younger, the main difference between AOE2 and the rest[1] is 3D vs isometric-2D. 3D tends to make games a lot messier. The comparison between AOE2 and AOE3 is a pretty good example of this phenomenon for instance. [1] : Stacraft 2 being the outlier here, it has really “clean” graphics, while being 3D.
- dmos62 6y ago
  > Stacraft 2 being the outlier here Not a huge outlier. I find Starcraft 1 graphics more pleasing than Starcraft 2 for the isometric-2d reason.

axaxs 6y ago

I'm explicitly and admittedly just not a PC gamer, but this is the one exception to the rule. Probably because I'm a longtime Linux on the desktop user, and there just wasn't much in the past. If you enjoyed AoE2, or just want to kill some time messing around, I highly suggest giving it a spin. Careful, time can disappear quickly.

programd 6y ago

The buried the more interesting lead: 0 A.D. now has an API for reinforcement learning. You can train AI to control the units in game https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GettingStartedReinforcementLearning https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GettingStartedReinforcem...

cl42 6y ago
Thanks for sharing this. THAT IS SO COOL.
- play0ad 6y ago
  Brian Broll will be taking about 0 A.D. today between 11:10 and AM–12:25 PM PCT for Microsoft 's AI and Gaming Research Summit. They seem to still accept attendance registrations. https://lnkd.in/d5y5Y37 https://lnkd.in/d5y5Y37
lettergram 6y ago
That’s honestly what I’ve been waiting for from this game. Game is decent enough, but the AI needed work. I was looking to build my own for years, just never had a decent interface for it.
heavyset_go 6y ago
Someone needs to start a Kaggle competition for training AI agents on 0 A.D.
jdxcode 6y ago
It’s “buried the lede”
- frankzinger 6y ago
  Yes, but "lead" is not completely wrong either: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/bury-the-lede-versus-lead https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/bury-the-lede-...

shakow 6y ago

I'm really happy to see that the project is still alive and kicking!

max0563 6y ago

I have been following this game for many years. What you all have made is amazing. Thank you for continuing to work on and improve 0 A.D. Very inspiring!

tomxor 6y ago

Similarly I've been playing OpenRA recently, which is basically an open source recreation of the old C&C games Dune, Tiberian Sun and Red Alert (the later being the most popular). It's a very honest recreation that feels close to the originals, both in terms of graphics and game play. However the key thing that keeps it fun for me and holds my attention is being online multiplayer, the diversity and challenge other human players brings cannot be replaced with AI so far... Anyway, the last time I tried 0 A.D it didn't seem to have multiplayer capability yet, but it seems to now!

phkahler 6y ago
>> However the key thing that keeps it fun for me and holds my attention is being online multiplayer I had a long spell of BZflag. The humans are so much better to play against. Highly recommended game for casual play BTW.
- spijdar 6y ago
  The last time I tried bzflag online I got beaten non-stop. It was honestly a little disheartening, the skill level of the human opponents seemed comically good. Lots of practice I guess I love bzflag though, I used to play locally with friends, sometimes all night when I was a teen. Good times :)
  - tomxor 6y ago
    I had the same issue with openRA at first, some games take a lot more skill investment at the start but this pays off later in genuinely rewarding gameplay, much like mastering a sport.

d33 6y ago

Just to save somebody some searching, here's what the release name refers to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerxes_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerxes_II

kowlo 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerxes_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerxes_I
thaumasiotes 6y ago
The first paragraph on the page specifies that the release is named in honor of Xerxes I, not Xerxes II.
- Ar-Curunir 6y ago
  Kind of sad how awfully mangled the Greek version of the name is...
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    It's not that far off; the Greeks have Xerxes where you might expect Xiarsa from the cuneiform. Greek has no "sh" sound, so you can't blame them for not using it. Compare Greek Dareios / Persian Darayavauš.
  - yorwba 6y ago
    Still better than Ahasuerus, descended from the same Old Persian name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahasuerus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahasuerus
  - tomcooks 6y ago
    If it consoles you I feel the same, daily, with how anglophones refuse to write even basic Italian, Spanish, French, or Portuguese sentences. No matter how hard me and other non-anglophones work to pronounce and spell English words correctly, double checking and investing money in getting the right pronunciation.

crazypython 6y ago

I find the choice of business model very strange. The free software philosophy allows game art to be proprietary. They could sell DRM-free copies on their site that license the game art but keep the code free. I'm not sure why they don't do this.

blendergeek 6y ago
> I find the choice of business model very strange. I don't see much of a business model. > The free software philosophy allows game art to be proprietary. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this. The Free Software Definition does not allow this. If code is contributed to 0AD under the GPL, they could not combine it with proprietary graphics. The GNU Free System Distribution guidelines allows for the inclusion of game art that is under a license that does not permit modification. However any such art must be redistributable for commercial and noncommercial purposes at no charge. > They could sell DRM-free copies on their site that license the game art but keep the code free. This violates the spirit of free software. > I'm not sure why they don't do this. I think they want the game to be free.
- ampdepolymerase 6y ago
  If you are the author (and every other contributor signed relevant CLAs) then you can distribute the code however you want. You do not have to include game assets in the code distribution.
  - blendergeek 6y ago
    I do realize that. However, in the case of 0ad, they do not require such a CLA. Rather their website has this to say: > By sending in a patch, you agree that it is your own work (or else make it clear where it came from) and agree to licensing any code as GPL 2+ (or in some cases MIT, especially for code in lib/ - check the existing copyright headers on the source files you edit) and data files as CC-BY-SA 3.0.
- chungy 6y ago
  > I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this. The Free Software Definition does not allow this. If code is contributed to 0AD under the GPL, they could not combine it with proprietary graphics. > The GNU Free System Distribution guidelines allows for the inclusion of game art that is under a license that does not permit modification. However any such art must be redistributable for commercial and noncommercial purposes at no charge. The free software definition only really applies to software, not art. There is nothing that would be in conflict for having a free game engine paired with proprietary artwork. There even exists plenty of examples of such; most prominently, the Doom and Quake games. > This violates the spirit of free software. The spirit of free software is not "free stuff", but rather the freedom to run and modify programs. A free engine paired with proprietary art doesn't violate anything. > I think they want the game to be free. This is the main thing and the primary factor in all of the conversation. While the 0 AD authors _could_ make a proprietary-art game and maybe make a profit doing so, their intention is clearly to have free (as in freedom) artwork as well as to have the game spread as wide as possible. There is nothing wrong with this, just as there would be nothing wrong with making a commercial game. It is a choice and one that can be taken admirably. The short of it, there probably isn't a business model to speak of. While it does appear there exists a corporation (Wildfire Games) to cover legal concerns, it's doubtful they're doing it for profit.

crazypython 6y ago

The GUI isn't starting on Mac for me. Edit: Had to wait several minutes, but it started.

reddotX 6y ago
works great on linux

planb 6y ago

For a moment I thought Elon Musk had another child...

keyle 6y ago
Oh man, I had the exact same thought.

evolve2k 6y ago

Every year over my summer break me and my teens have a tradition of locking ourselves in for a few days of Playing Zero AD which loosely aligns with at least one update for the year. We truly love this game and invite a few friends around also for a epic LAN party. We’ve waiting a long time for this release. Lots of great improvements in there, can’t wait to play.

evolve2k 6y ago

I’m not sure about others but the game is in quite a playable state and has been playable for many years. Anyone have context on why it’s still labelled Alpha. What’s the key criteria for it to jump to Beta and 1.0?

Dunedan 6y ago
What's still completely missing is a single player campaign, which at least some people consider a requirement for an non-alpha release. Also 0ad still has severe performance problems for various reasons. One of them is that nearly all code runs single-threaded. Also the multiplayer code is all but efficient, so in a multiplayer game all players are essentially limited to the FPS of the player with the least capable hardware.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  > Also 0ad still has severe performance problems for various reasons. One of them is that nearly all code runs single-threaded. Also the multiplayer code is all but efficient, so in a multiplayer game all players are essentially limited to the FPS of the player with the least capable hardware. Is there an issue tracker for these problems? edit: play0ad, I cannot respond to your comment because it's dead. You might want to reach out to dang if you'd like other people to be able to read and respond to your comments.
  - play0ad 6y ago
    There is on trac.wildfiregames.com One of the biggest but sadly not the only problem is pathfinder threading https://code.wildfiregames.com/D14 https://code.wildfiregames.com/D14 Other things like the messaging system could probably be threaded. Rendering needs to run in another thread than simulation too. Feel free to reach out to us on quakenet.org #0ad-dev. We're usually there on CET.

pierrec 6y ago

"We decided to name Alpha 24 after this inspiring ancient ruler to celebrate the ancient Persian civilisation, and to reflect upcoming changes in the internal governance structure of 0 A.D." This is presented a bit mysteriously. Does than mean 0 A.D. devs and contributors are going to have an emperor?

heavyset_go 6y ago

Anyone have links to Linux binaries?

etrevino 6y ago
https://play0ad.com/download/linux/ https://play0ad.com/download/linux/
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  That links to distro and community repositories, and the ones that I checked out didn't have v0.24 binaries yet. edit: The development PPA has v0.24 alphas that were compiled in November[1], though. [1] https://launchpad.net/~wfg/+archive/ubuntu/0ad.dev https://launchpad.net/~wfg/+archive/ubuntu/0ad.dev

atum47 6y ago

Yeah, I used to play with my friends back in college the whole night. Old school lan party.

cinquemb 6y ago

> New Requirements: Windows XP, Windows Vista, and anything below macOS 10.12 are no longer supported. Anyone tried compiling it on any of these systems yet, will it still compile?

Dunedan 6y ago
I guess that'd be pretty challenging now with all the new requirements noted in the "Under the hood" section of the release notes.
play0ad 6y ago
The problem is Spidermonkey for windows, as their build is pretty opaque, and they started calling some Windows APIs breaking compatibility. You get a nasty error if you try to run something there about a missing Kernel32 function For macOS, you can actually build for > 10.12 BUT the build will only be compatible with this. See https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2827 https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2827 for more info about why the SDL2 broke stuff.
- cinquemb 6y ago
  Thanks for the detailed response!

est 6y ago

Off topic, can anyone recommend a good strategy game with a logistics system? I mean in realistic terms a battle unit can not just sit in a remote place for ages and survive without food and gears support.

neverminder 6y ago
I like Total War Three Kingdoms, it has one of the best AI and campaign dynamics I've ever seen.
mmanfrin 6y ago
The Hegemony series features supply range heavily, in how you build/connect your cities and with armies: https://longbowgames.com/hegemony3/ https://longbowgames.com/hegemony3/ It's also just a generally fun strategy game that went largely unnoticed and they're still plucking away on DLC years later.
rntksi 6y ago
Hearts of Iron 4 and 3
- dmos62 6y ago
  I liked Crusader Kings. Same studio (right?). It's more RPG focused. Having an army mustered is expensive. There's also Europa Universalis, same studio again. Some people swear by it, but I've not played it.
  - rntksi 6y ago
    Great :-) Yes, those are Paradox games. Hearts of Iron - HOI(4,3) is more of a modern warfare game: you manage supply, manpower, combat lines. Crusader Kings - CK(3,2) is more of a roleplaying game: you manage your family, dynasty, vassals, religion, personal traits, and personal/family scheming. Europa Universalis - EU(4,3) is a game that combines a bit of everything: you've got internal affairs, foreign affairs, bit of warfare, technology, colonization, discovery, market trading, ... Stellaris is like EU but in space. With scifi tech, federation, diplomacy and mythical/intriguing events Victoria is more of an economy management game along with a bit of warfare and political fun. They're all good games that can take a few couple of hours to have fun with. People usually joke that it's like playing with a map and some coloured paintbrush ... Paradox has some other nice titles too. I think "Tyranny" and "Pillars of Eternity" is Paradox too but might be wrong. Those are RPGs (think Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, ... kind of RPGs)

happyconcepts 6y ago

For anyone still playing Alpha 23 be sure to try my Aye Pirates mod. Further updates are still planned through the rest of this year.

geokon 6y ago

Neither Ubuntu packages haven't been updated nor the official PPA. The latest version of Ubuntu mentioned is .. 19.04 .. so I think the page hasn't been updated in ages. I guess maybe it works if you build from source? But last I checked it was a hairball with build scripts

AntiImperialist 6y ago
The snap was updated on the 10th of December 2020, so expect the latwst version to show up there.
play0ad 6y ago
It will totally work if you build from source ^^ I use this https://code.wildfiregames.com/P241 https://code.wildfiregames.com/P241 but basically you need only this after cloning and installing deps cd build/workspaces && sh update-workspaces.sh -j4 cd gcc && make -j4 See also https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/BuildInstructions https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/BuildInstructions
- geokon 6y ago
  There is no rush. I will wait for the AppImage to get published. It's just the release links to Linux downloads are broken and I thought someone in charge will see it Btw am I reading it correctly - you guys are still on Subversion? and no CMake? but you're using C++17. What a weird combo of old and new :)
  - play0ad 6y ago
    We use Arcanist + Phabricator, but main repo is SVN yes. We also have two git mirrors. We use Premake5 instead of CMake, for historical reasons. an attempt was made at Meson but it was too messy on Windows. We only switched to C++17 because Mozilla's SpiderMonkey headers required us to. Else we'd still be at C++11

bdowling 6y ago

A small piece of esoteric knowledge: There is no year 0 A.D. The year before 1 A.D. was 1 B.C.

dmos62 6y ago
So... Year 2021 A.D. is actually year 2020. You could say that this year indexing scheme is 1-based. Btw, I'm sure you meant to say 0 C.E. \s
- TobTobXX 6y ago
  Yes but actually no. Calendars are horribly complicated. IIRC Christ's birth year is about 6 years off. This because the year as we know it was fixated around 300 years Christ's death and by then nobody had (or really cared about) the exact offset.
TobTobXX 6y ago
Historic knowledge: There was none of the tree. People only started counting years relative to Christ's birth at about 300 A.D.
play0ad 6y ago
Fun fact that's the point, so we can "justify" artistic license for some things :D

pelasaco 6y ago

One of my favorite games. I play it quite often since years now. Thank you for this new release. I normally see it being compared with AoE 2, but 0 A.D is much more dynamic, than AoE 2. I just wish there were more online games going on.

tragomaskhalos 6y ago

Something I've always loved about the ancient Greeks is how they'd hear a foreign name, go "yeah, I can't even pronounce that, never mind decline it" and come up with their own totally and shamelessly mangled variant. See also: their names for the Egyptian gods.

_nalply 6y ago
Sounds interesting. Do you have direct links?

beeforpork 6y ago

> “Xšayāršā” (pronounced: Khsha-ya-ṛsha) Wow, that's helpful. Seriously, IPA and a translation and/or explanation would be greatly appreciated. Edit: 'IPA': not the beer, but 'International Phonetic Alphabet'

thrtythreeforty 6y ago
Both kinds of IPA are greatly appreciated
play0ad 6y ago
Actually it's there Xšayāršā (pronounced Khsha-ya-ṛsha; IPA: /xʃajaːr̩ʃaː/) :)