8 ms·
0 A.D. Alpha 26: Zhuangzi
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- a1371 4y agoThe sound tracks of this game are beautiful. 26 new tracks in this version is such a treat!
- play0ad 4y agoGlad you like them :)
- evolve2k 4y agoHuge congratulations to all the volunteers and core team at Wildfire Games. As an old school Age of Empires/Age of Mythology fan, I've bought my kids up on 0ad. With the roughly annual release, I always book a LAN gaming session with my kids and we gather resources, build historically acurate armys and battle! So many good memories. The new Han civilization looks amazing and also really excited to see there is new music. Im not part of the project but I encourage everyone to download the game and play some local LAN games.
- tomashertus 4y agoHow would you compare the 0AD's gameplay to Age of Empires/Mythology? Is that faster pacing than AoE?
- pelasaco 4y agojust play it. It is open source and free.
- ookdatnog 4y agoIt's been a while since I played 0AD so perhaps not everything I say is up-to-date. In my opinion it's very fun for casual play but not nearly as tuned as the Age series for competitive play. I think the biggest departure is the citizen-soldier feature. AoE for the most part has pure eco units (villagers, trade carts, etc) and pure military units with nothing in between (barring a few unique units or techs). 0AD has citizen-soldiers which can both fight and gather resources, and professional/elite units which can only fight and are only available later in the game. This sounds nice on paper but IMO the system doesn't work very well. Essentially it heavily discourages early game raiding: there is very little early-game trade-off between developing your eco and developing your military, so you can't really catch your enemy unprepared (such as in AoE if they were going for a greedy eco boom with no military backup). On top of that, since your soldiers are also workers, you cut into your own eco if your citizen-soldiers go on the offensive. So you have to do massive damage to make a raid worth the cost and risk. On top of that, your eco grows too fast because every military building (which are cheap) can produce workers. In all Age games, you need to age up to build additional Town Centers, and TCs are really expensive, so it takes a while before your worker production can really take off. Building a TC costs so much that doing it creates an opportunity for your opponent to do a timing push: if they invest the same amount of resources in military, they have an advantage in the field while you are waiting for your TC investment to pay off. In 0AD you can build new barracks straight off the bat and they're not expensive, so you can produce workers from multiple buildings from the very start of the game with no risk. The result of this is that in the games I've played with friends, your main base is safe for most of the early game and players just slowly mass up huge armies. The action really only begins when the resources in your base start to run out and you need to fight for control of the resources in the center of the map. But it turns out that's how people like playing RTS casually anyway. So for casual play with people with different levels of RTS experience, I'd almost say it's better than AoE because the one player in your friend group that can pull off a rush build order can't wipe the floor with everyone, and every player can contribute at least a little bit. But for competitive play between experienced players I expect it to be stale compared to AoE. But perhaps a more experienced player would contradict me on that.
- tomashertus 4y ago
- pbhjpbhj 4y ago>we gather resources, build historically acurate armys and battle! // There used to be a UK television program (https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0386245/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0386245/ Time Commanders )with this basis, they had historians to describe the actual battle and the positions of the two sides, their armour, tactics, etc. And, two teams to fight the actual battle (in a modified Rome: Total War). Anyway, 0ad with scenarios of realistic geography and armies sounds awesome!
- eklavya 4y ago0 A.D. team amazes me. They keep churning release after release with such quality. There is even M1 support for this one. Keep up the great work team. Very grateful for your gifts :)
- 29athrowaway 4y agoThey should take the engine and repurpose it for Freeciv.
- play0ad 4y agoWell it's open source, so it's up to them :)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- evolve2k 4y ago> Why Alpha after 26 releases? AFAIK the main reason the game is in Alpha is that their code for internet based multi-player needs an overhaul. If anyone here has expertise to contribute to internet based multi-player that could be pretty useful to help them finally get out of alpha after all these years.
- kjeetgill 4y agoIs the any public notice like a blog post or a github issue that that's what they're waiting on and are looking for help with?
- play0ad 4y agoSee https://trac.wildfiregames.com/roadmap https://trac.wildfiregames.com/roadmap But basically more threading and optimizations. We're looking for experienced C++ programmers mainly. Javascript experience is mostly needed for gameplay, ai, random map generation and GUI layout.
- evolve2k 4y agoHere’s the list of open ‘networking’ related task if anyones interested. https://trac.wildfiregames.com/query?group=status&component=Network&milestone=Backlog https://trac.wildfiregames.com/query?group=status&component=...
- _the_inflator 4y agoMaybe they just stay with the "alpha release" icon like a brand. As you said, 26 releases mean that there took some hardening place.
- Gigachad 4y agoThe term alpha here doesn’t really mean anything at all. It kind of makes sense when you are talking about unreleased software or limited previews (like a beta channel) but when the software has been released publicly for over a decade, it’s not an alpha anymore.
- a1371 4y ago0AD gave me an insight about how exponential systems work. The game's bot difficulty is essentially a multiplier on the resources the bot harvests. Most people find the bot very hard to beat when they start playing, even at the lowest difficultly. Everything starts out evenly but all of a sudden the bot becomes impossible to beat. The key is to take a risk early in the game to break the bot's exponential growth with an attack. Then even the hardest difficultly becomes easy. It's interesting how sudden and aggressive that growth is.
- sweettea 4y agoPersonally my experience is opposite: I've always found success in expanding quickly and throwing up defense towers and later fortresses, thereby draining the enemy's strength when they launch a poorly-considered attack. To me, the game seems strongly favoring defensive strategies, and I'm fascinated to find someone who describes attacking early as key.
- buro9 4y agoI've found defense doesn't help a great deal once they've got battering rams. A nice tweak will be to make them more effective against gates but less effective against a fortress wall.
- pabs3 4y agoMy favorite strategy is to race to tech level 3, start building as many champion cavalry as possible plus enough temples to heal them and then bleed off the enemy army/buildings with quick raids. Eventually you can beat any number of siege/elephant units that might come your way. Full towers, fortresses and upgrades are essential though. Building a new civic center near the enemy territory early is a good way to bleed off enemy workers. Same for ships on level with some water.
- CameronNemo 4y agoThat is why you need your own rams or non-ranged warriors to destroy their rams. Also if you can deny your enemy's access to metal, perhaps with towers or guerrilla attacks, then they won't be able to build (more) rams.
- MrJagil 4y agoI love these fan-reincarnations. I spend a lot of time playing KeeperFX. A group of enthusiasts are rebuilding Dungeon Keeper from the DLL (https://github.com/dkfans https://github.com/dkfans). It's super cool to report a bug or feature on the discord and then have it fixed a few hours afterwards. (https://discord.gg/TeUREpV6N3 https://discord.gg/TeUREpV6N3) There's of course also OpenRA https://www.openra.net https://www.openra.net
- liotier 4y agoAnother free software fan reincarnation is Beyond All Reason, spiritual successor to Total Annihilation... It is everything we ever wished Total Annihilation to be ! https://www.beyondallreason.info/ https://www.beyondallreason.info/
- est 4y ago0ad is a fun game, but it only burns 100% cpu0 last time I tried. Has the situation been improved?
- rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 4y agoIf you're looking for another open source real time stragery game that is good I would like to suggest Beyond All Reason. While 0AD is more similar to Age of Empires , BAR is akin to Total Annihilation.
- dmos62 4y agoAnd, another good one is Zero-K. Its content was initially based on Total Annihilation too. I find its AI challenging in late game.
- no_time 4y ago>BAR is akin to Total Annihilation. The mantra "us RTS players are the hardest crowd to please in gaming" is probably true. I've tried BAR. It has all the ingredients that in theory, that should make it superior to TA but in reality it just feels "less grandiose" and less fun as a result. When a late game attack commences in TA, your radar turns a different color from all the units moving into position. The sound of an all out aerial assault goes from a cacophony of explosions to a crackling mess as you can hardly see from all the units amidst the pure chaos unfolding on the frontlines. After all these years it still makes me go "holy shit, that was brutal". I have a couple theories as to why it feels better. I think it has to something with the fact that there is no zoom in TA. The contrast between a tiny robot and massive ear splitting explosion is ever present, whereas in post SupCom RTSes you have the luxury to distance yourself from the battle with the scrollwheel. Same goes for audio, the raw (and admittedly pretty coarse) sound of expensive late game turrets immediately strike fear into your enemy's heart.
- bobowzki 4y agoIs there a game similar to 0 A.D. that takes place during the cold war?
- Aromasin 4y agoThe Cold War is a time period lacking in almost all real-time strategy games - hell, I can't think of any in actual fact, in any genre. The closest you ever get is Soviet based WW2 games. Company of Heroes is great, albeit not quite what you're looking for.
- DaedPsyker 4y agoThere is one I remember, world in conflict, that was fun. Another that I've heard of but not played is the wargame series, which I think is set a bit further back in the cold war than world in conflict. Both alt-history obviously.
- Jorge1o1 4y agoTake a look at Wargame: Red Dragon. Might scratch the itch. In fact, the whole Wargame series by Eugen systems is set in the Cold War I believe.
- Ancapistani 4y ago"Harpoon" was amazing, but is quite dated at this point, and I've not been able to get it to run on a modern PC in many years.
- gattilorenz 4y agoIsn't that a DOS game? It should easily run on DosBox, or Boxer on macOS
- HeckFeck 4y agoThe Command & Conquer: Red Alert series? It's an alt-history but pits the West against the Soviets.
- gattilorenz 4y ago
- qikInNdOutReply 4y agoStupid question, the unit scripting language used is javascript? So in theory, all units script execution can be outsourced to a part of the gpu? https://gpu.rocks/#/ https://gpu.rocks/#/ Sorry, this is barely gameplay related, just interested if that could be kept synced.
- play0ad 4y agoIt is although I'm not sure Spidermonkey (The js engine) has support for that.
- KaoruAoiShiho 4y agoWhy choose spidermonkey over V8?
- play0ad 4y agoObviously history plays a part there but V8 integration was not particularly better and mostly the high number of Nix users contributors over the years made it hard to use things made by GAFAMs.
- looperhacks 4y agoLooking at the code, spidermonkey was added 2009, mayber earlier (stopped looking at around 2009). V8 was released in 2008, so the decision probably made sense back then, considering V8 wasn't nearly as big as it is today.
- pelasaco 4y agoI downloaded it on Sunday night and it was great. Graphics really polished. Just waiting all the mods to catch up with that, to be able to play with the other civilizations..
- zasdffaa 4y agoI'd love to play something like this (given time... always short these days) but all these seem to be real-time (why?). I just prefer turn-based. Any suggestions?
- turnbased 4y agoI guess you already know about https://wesnoth.org/ https://wesnoth.org/ It is probably the most well-known free and open source turn-based game.
- zasdffaa 4y agoYeah, tried it. Every move has to be given explicitly, just a little jump each time, again and again. It got mega frustrating if you had more than a few PCs so I got so far into it then gave up. Edit: I think I misremember. You can set a waypoint and PCs will go there, but I there was still a lot of micromanagement that slowed things up too much for me.
- tasuki 4y agoWesnoth is great. If you don't want to move your units, what do you want? There's Globulation, in which you set the tasks/goals and your units strive to achieve them the best they can.
- zasdffaa 4y agoObviously you need to move units in wesnoth, it's the level of detail you had to put in on some screens that put me off - micromanagement. Never heard of Globulation (& Globulation2 it seems) but they appear to be not turn based but RTS. Still, got good reviews, thanks...
- eadmund 4y agoLittle-known (nowadays) fact: A.D. properly goes before the year. Also, there was no A.D. 0 — the calendar goes straight from 1 B.C. to A.D. 1.
- rob74 4y agoYeah, but if it wouldn't be called "0 A.D." it would lose the strategic advantage of being listed first by all Linux package managers...
- yakubin 4y agoWhen I invoke "apt search", the first thing I'm going to see is the last thing printed. The first thing is lost to scrollback history.
- rob74 4y agoAm I really the only one using GUI tools for package management :) ?
- yakubin 4y agoI used to use Synaptic around 2010. It was great. I've never come to like things like GNOME Software Center though. They were buggy and gimped, when I tried them. Also the UI was awful (and still is from what I saw from the screenshots). However, I've since moved to a Mac, so when I use a Linux, it's remotely over a terminal. Running remote GUI Linux applications isn't as smooth.
- pbhjpbhj 4y agoxxx-0ad-mod package needed then! I think there a xxv command line app, so anything after that should be fine??
- vlmutolo 4y agoThe game is called 0AD specifically because there's no such thing.
- ransom1538 4y agoI have a seven year old son. This is the only game he is allowed to play. It's great for kids his age: resource management, strategy, learning history, etc. We play as a family, the LAN play is super fun and works on older macbook pros. WE join forces and take on very hard AI players. He is starting to ask super exciting questions, now, 'how do games work, can we modify this, can we change that'. As he gets older we are going to dig into the source and start making our own patches. He is at school now but heard about the new release. I bet he can't wait to get home and try it! THANKS TEAM!
- NewJazz 4y agoYou can extend 0ad with javascript I believe. I know you can write your own bots.
- blagie 4y agoFor people who have played this and who know Chinese history: How historically-accurate is this game? Will a child learn Chinese history? There's a scale of realism, and I'm not quite sure where this falls.