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Zero-k: A libre sci-fi RTS game, with an economy based on metal and energy
- vladms 3y agoThis is a great game that I play for many years. I tried various other RTS-es but none had the right combination of crazy strategies, good balance, lots of use of physics (not perfect but at last tries and mostly succeeds to make you feel like those units are real objects and not icons on the screen) and mostly enjoyable PvP I definitely would recommend although can have a steeper learning curve than others.
- JCharante 3y agolinux support but no macos support? Aww
- v3ss0n 3y agoCan you build from scratch?
- palmfacehn 3y agoI didn't see a source link on the download page.
- fao_ 3y ago> https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/index.php?title=Zero-K:Developing https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/index.php?title=Zero-K:Develop...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- badosu 3y agoGames have their own distribution method, but you can download the source and the engine will handle it. In ZeroKs case (https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K/ https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K/). The most straightforward method to compile the engine reliably I'd say is with the docker container: https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/spring/wiki/SpringRTS-Build-Environment-(Docker) https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/spring/wiki/SpringRTS-B... Edit: spelling,links
- _flux 3y agoSeems the support would be a realistic feature, though, because it's based on https://springrts.com/ https://springrts.com/ that does support MacOS X.
- white_dragon88 3y agoNoise about macOS died down back in 2018, and seems the linux port is riddled with bugs. This project is basically dead in the water.
- badosu 3y agomacOS dropped when Apple stopped supporting more advanced OpenGL features. > linux port is riddled with bugs That's... interesting... as many of the engine and game devs also play on linux (and a considerable part of the playerbase) If you're looking for the codebase Zero-K and most previously spring mods are based upon you should look at: https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/spring https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/spring
- TheHumanist 3y agoI'm 41, gamed since all the way back... but feel silly for asking... what sort of macros would you use in games like this?
- moribvndvs 3y agoMacOS not macros
- LordShredda 3y agoYou can program your own widgets and have them run commands client side
- BlueTemplar 3y agoThey said Macintosh Operating System, not macRos, but in Spring-Recoil games like these, you can basically program whatever you want using Lua widgets, and there's a fairly easy scripting for commands allowing for things like «when I press button X select half of the currently selected units, in a radius of Y around my mouse cursor, picking only the ground combat ones with more than Z% health».
- fodkodrasz 3y agoIn Supreme Commander you could have build templates for building layouts, eg. fortifications (point defence, shields, artillery, properly aligned, rotatable, etc), I relied on it extensively in multiplayer to quickly get foothold. (SC was successor of TA, these games started as clones of TA). Just tried BAR, and the build templates would be really handy.
- badosu 3y agoThe engine heavily relies on OpenGL features Apple dropped support for. The best bet would be to await for a decent translation layer (Zink, MoltenVK, idk). Edit: clarity
- liotier 3y agoIs Zero-k still popular now that its cousin https://www.beyondallreason.info https://www.beyondallreason.info has matured ?
- dmos62 3y agoWasn't aware there's a successor. Screenshots make it seem very similar. Anyone played it?
- jadbox 3y agoThey are similar but different. BAR is more of a unique game (for better or worse), while ZeroK is much closer to an HD remake of Total Annihilation.
- killerstorm 3y agoAre you sure? BAR units are generally similar to TA units. It captures the feel of "what TA would be if it was full 3D and high resolution". Of course, balance is different, but TA balance was very odd. ZeroK seems to have terrain modification mechanics which is not present in TA. In BAR terrain can be damaged by big explosions, but it's very limited. FWIW I never played ZeroK but based on their intro video BAR seems to be closer to TA visually.
- BlueTemplar 3y agoIt's pretty much the inverse : http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/29067 http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/29067 BAR used to stand for "Balanced Annihilation Reloaded" - so it's sticking very close to TA, while Zero-K has been experimenting much more freely with what is possible in the Spring/Recoil engine. It's also probably a factor that BAR has spent a decade in development hell (under a different team than now ?), so it just didn't have the velocity to fork away sufficiently, even if it wanted to.
- DayDollar 3y agoEh, no? Zero-k was there first, and gathered vital info. The original setup for spring rollout of games was thoroughly inadequat to supporting large number of gamers. Fuck, the first lobby server wrote match infos into a freaking textfile. The first indicator of that popped up, when valve ended greenlight, and just greenlit all the things. Which propped Evolution RTS upon the steam front page for half a day, flooding the original lobby system and showing how inadequat the whole ecosystem was for that. The original Evo dev Forb learned from the whole mess after he returned from his day job. Zero-k then learned the lessons, developed a ingui lobby, started the whole matchmaking and better server deployment, detached from the whole "one central server" thing of the spring eco system. BAR did some graphical overhaul, with Floris, Beherith, Sprung and the whole original crew supported by new faces like Teifion and on and on. They optimized the Spring engine into a new version- more tailored to BARs needs and reworked alot of the stuff. Its gpl open source, so the project order and who invented what is pretty flowy.. everybody copies from everybody, one progress is everyones progress..
- ewy1 3y agoSo happy to see this here! I used to play this a lot with my boyfriend - we were pretty evenly matched, and the game allowed for so much freedom which made every game wild. The most impressive feature is - in my opinion - the wide variety of commands you can provide to your units and how their AI interacts with them. For example, if you build a crowd of fast and agile grunts and make them match speed with a slower tank, they will still avoid enemy projectiles with their superior speed.
- BlueTemplar 3y agoIndeed ! https://youtu.be/7qEGJlBLJSg https://youtu.be/7qEGJlBLJSg (Most, but not all of these are shared with other Spring-Recoil games.)
- fho 3y agoOne of the features I used the most was the "distributed move/fight" command. That just made it so easy to deploy e.g. a line of heavy tanks in front of a line of artillery. Or mines that were actually useful. I played a game were my opponent got super paranoid after running into the first mine field. Good times :-)
- poisonborz 3y agoIt's fascinating that this grew out of a project that was originally a 3D map viewer for Total Annihilation.
- emsimot 3y agoCustom games? :D I miss playing "tree tag" on Warcraft3 Battle.net
- BlueTemplar 3y agoKind of : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr3RVDMJsEY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr3RVDMJsEY Though in WC3 (and SC1/SC2) IMHO this was enabled by a very easy to use «map» editor, combined with a tremendous popularity of the base game. So if even, in theory, you can do even more (libre software), in practice what you see is not as ebulliently diverse. You can also compare it to the Spring lobby games - Zero-K has improved on the presentation, but something has been lost by not being able to easily fork the game yourself, build on it, and then just put up whatever the resulting mess is, start a game, and it being listed in the list of games : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8by5C6dJDA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8by5C6dJDA Including «Com Shooter» FPS using the built-in «possess unit and use FPS controls» showcased here : https://youtu.be/MpKqQxTURik?t=107 https://youtu.be/MpKqQxTURik?t=107 Which shows another tension in game development : more recent Spring-Recoil games disable that feature outright, because of the balance headaches it causes, and potential modders can't use what they are not aware exists ! But modding scene does exist in ZK : http://zero-k.info/Mods http://zero-k.info/Mods (In addition to the game setup itself being typically WAY more open than what you find in other RTS.)
- wheelerof4te 3y agoThese types of RTSs are way less "arcadey" than Warcraft 3 or Starcraft, so I don't think supporting custom games is on the devs radar. What you're usually after in these games are huge battles on massive worlds with thousands of explosions leaving craters and debris everywhere.
- chaps 3y agoWhat? Custom game modes is ABSOLUTELY on their radar. Less so than the main game for sure, but to say ZK doesn't support custom game modes is flat out wrong.
- b0rsuk 3y ago[dead]
- szundi 3y agoBest game ever, other favorite is BA. Nothing to conpare these to.
- EamonnMR 3y agoI wish people were slightly more up front about their games being Spring Engine mods.
- badosu 3y agoFrom https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K/ https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K/: > About > > Open source RTS game running on the Spring engine In the place where code is present, things pertaining to code are present. You don't need to throw technical details to potential players at your front page.
- LordShredda 3y agoCalling this a mod would be like calling Dota a mod.
- remram 3y agoIf Spring is an engine, then this is a game not a mod. What game does it MODify?
- concordDance 3y agoWould you call a game that used Unreal Engine an Unreal Engine mod?
- ekianjo 3y agothat looks like it's heavily inspired by Total Annihilation
- LegibleCrimson 3y agoThat's an understatement. They're effectively family.
- russnewcomer 3y agoZero-k is based on Spring Engine, that started as a community project to be a 3D engine for TA. So you are very correct.
- wheelerof4te 3y agoWould I need a fairly powerful machine to run this? I can run Starcraft 2, is that enough? I've toyed with Total Annihilation, but the graphics were too old, even for Brood War fan such as myself.
- notahacker 3y agoI always liked the Total Annihilation graphics and think they passed the test of time quite well for a game that's 25 years old. A lot of the maps were downright pretty (especially when I modded them ;-) and the top down perspective was a better "3D" than isometric (or much of the low poly full 3D of the time). The lasers and build nanobots and explosions were a bit cheesy I guess...
- wheelerof4te 3y agoYes, I like the terrain. But the unit designs really show their age.
- notahacker 3y agoTbf the unit designs (those solar panels!) were pretty weird at the time, looks like this has a similarly odd-looking ships and factories and the same penchant for big coloured panels on everything Looks like the big advantage of this is that the unit AI is supposed to be quite clever rather than really stupid at how it carries out the tasks you give it...
- wheelerof4te 3y agoThey are bragging about having a challenging AI. We will see, I've just downloaded the game. Hopefully, the AI is better than Blizzard's 98's Brood War brain-dead computer :)
- BlueTemplar 3y agoProjects like these tend to attract AI programmers, compare SC1's native AI with what Brood War API users came up with : https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/01/skynet-meets-the-swarm-how-the-berkeley-overmind-won-the-2010-starcraft-ai-competition/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/01/skynet-meets-the-swar... Speaking of which, you might be in luck, this just happened this weekend, and in my on-and-off experience with Spring games, I don't remember seeing AI exhibition matches very often compared to regular human competitions : https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1981220857 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1981220857 http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/36943 http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/36943 P.S.: Don't confuse unit AI (that even players have direct access to) with general AI.
- white_dragon88 3y agoStill no Mac support... I know the technical reason why so not upset, just sad.
- indie_rok 3y agoJust get a steam deck and connect mouse to it. It's the best solution to anyone with Mac and wants to game
- shoggouth 3y agoDoes Zero-k or another SpringRTS game support "strategic zoom" or building structures/units with real-time debt (as in you can construct a unit that requires 10000 mineral when you are only making 600 a minute) such as Supreme Commander?
- Pet_Ant 3y agoI mean Total Annihilation pioneered that concept and Spring RTS started as an open source clone of Total Annihilation so definitely some Spring RTS mods do, and Zero-K almost certainly does.
- remram 3y agoThey all do (Zero-K, BAR, and most of the games built on the engine). You can also reclaim metal from dead units and structures.
- fho 3y agoI feel old now :-) SpringRTS is actually older than the first Supreme Commander game.
- tomca32 3y agoI think pretty much all Spring games support that. Zero-K and BAR both do anyway. Both strategic zoom and real time “streaming” building came from Total Annihilation and Spring games are TA based.
- LordShredda 3y agoThis game is absolutely insane. There's so many tricks and plays possible with the selection of units available. Ever seen a commander rocket jump and shoot down a bomber plane mid air?
- BlueTemplar 3y agoZero-K = Noita RTS : https://imgur.com/iCUnQy6 https://imgur.com/iCUnQy6
- fergal_reid 3y agoI used to play Total Annihilation online back when I was in secondary school in the late 90s We'd hang out on IRC, and people would host a game on their IP. Eventually I got into creating new units for the game. You had to animate them with a C-like language, and I was trying to teach myself C at the time so that was part of my programming journey. The 'Swedish Yankspankers' were a clan that had a channel on the IRC server, and my recollection, which may be wrong, is that they started building an app, 'TAreplay' that we could use to record and rewatch tournament games. People used to pass the exe around - not very secure, but those were the times! It's amazing to me that those players hacking little apps together for themselves, have spawned a lineage of RTS engines and games that are still going all this time later. A small but incredible example of hacker culture.
- jhoho 3y agoYou'll love what the community did with Supreme Commander, Chris Taylor's spiritual successor to Total Annihilation: https://www.faforever.com/ https://www.faforever.com/ They even created a Coop-Campaign and a completely new faction.
- willis936 3y agoI put a lot of hours into SupCom. It was always a buggy mess, but I do remember it quite fondly. Planetary Annihilation has felt like the right progression in the spiritual series. It was always a very smooth experience and fixed the technical issues with scaling up to massive scale combat while fixing the balance issues of turtling. The skill ceiling is immense and I could never beat high level bots. The nature of having one to many planets also means you can play cooperatively with up to several friends. It's a good time.
- rl3 3y agoSupreme Commander's getting its own spiritual successor: https://www.sanctuaryshatteredsun.com/ https://www.sanctuaryshatteredsun.com/
- disintegore 3y ago
- jader201 3y agoI hadn’t heard of this before, and was excited that a new RTS was being announced, given that RTSes seem like a fading genre. Of course it’s just a link to an older game. I guess the days of the RTS really are behind us. :(
- rollcat 3y agoThere's a lot of promising RTSs currently in development, that can trace their roots to Blizzard and/or SC2. As wheelerof4te suggests, I'd keep my eyes on Stormgate. It's being developed by the ex-Blizzard team that worked on SC2 and WC3. More big names involved than I care to drop. <https://playstormgate.com/ https://playstormgate.com/>, <https://store.steampowered.com/app/2012510/Stormgate/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2012510/Stormgate/> ZeroSpace came out of the blue a couple months ago with pre-alpha gameplay videos, kickstarter, tournaments, etc. They have several SC2 pros and community figures involved in development (Scarlett, CatZ, PiG, GiantGrant, Maguro). Their kickstarter just raised over half a million dollars. <https://www.playzerospace.com/ https://www.playzerospace.com/>, <https://store.steampowered.com/app/1605850/ZeroSpace/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1605850/ZeroSpace/>. There's also Immortal, which has been in development for a longer while. The team has previously built some great SC2 mods, and the pre-alpha got some attention from SC2 pros. <https://sunspeargames.com/ https://sunspeargames.com/> The big "problem" with RTS is that the genre in general is not very accessible. SC1 is clunky (1998), SC2 is extremely lethal (splash damage vs glass cannons), team modes like 2v2 are not considered seriously (people want to play with their friends), getting good at the game requires learning all the rock-paper-scissors of dozens of units per faction that make Pokemon type charts pale in comparison. The 1v1 ladder is designed to give you an average 50% winrate, hence it demands that you consistently play at your best or deal emotionally with a giant lose streak. The team making Stormgate is aware of these (and many other) problems, and takes a lot of input from the community on Reddit. It's gonna boil down to execution, but I have faith that they can make a fun game that's gonna be appealing to a much broader crowd than the hardcore RTS fans.
- good_lord_dang 3y ago[dead]
- thinkingtoilet 3y agoAs someone who still watches the Korean Broodwar scene, how are the mechanics in this game? Is there micro? Or is it more sc2 style where you put all your units in a single control group and then death ball them into the other death ball?
- Pannoniae 3y agoThe game is much less click-intensive, but you need really good situational awareness for it. It doesn't have "traditional" micro, you don't need to manually queue units or babysit every single unit so it doesn't die immediately, but to win, you need to micro in key areas and most importantly, manage your economy well.
- thinkingtoilet 3y agoInteresting. Does managing your economy mean being efficient and keeping resources low or are there more complex elements to it?
- chaps 3y agoBecause ZK doesn't have an exponential economy, each unit is important, even the cheap ones. There's also metal reclaim in battles, which tends to be about half of your econ. So fights become terf wars to make sure the enemy doesn't reclaim each battles' spoils.
- MauranKilom 3y agoSome basics (from someone who played the game a bunch a decade ago): There are two resources, metal and energy, neither can "mine out". To build something, you need equal amounts of both, and the thing building can only spend them at a certain rate ("buildpower"). Notably, metal income is effectively proportional to the amount of territory you control, whereas energy generation can be built anywhere. Buildpower is local to factories and builder units. Neither resource needs to be "moved around", it can be spent by builders anywhere. One important economy management aspect is matching your metal income with at least as much energy income and buildpower so you can actually spend it (excess energy is turned into a bit of extra metal). And then yes, you should spend it, but the factories support queues (including automatic re-queueing), and you can of course shift-queue buildings. Another important aspect is that dead units leave behind metal scraps. This can boost your metal income substantially (e.g. if a failed enemy attack leads to a bunch of dead units near your base). In short, balancing metal income (/territory expansion) with energy income and buildpower is the core economy management loop. But because units have pretty capable AI (e.g. auto-kite when applicable), you can devote a lot more of your attention to this aspect, as well as higher-level decision making.
- ordu 3y agoThe strange thing I cannot play war games any more. Not after Russia invaded Ukraine. War now seems Really Evil and playing with it doesn't seem appropriate. I wonder does anyone else feel like that?
- Arech 3y agosame.
- astrobe_ 3y agoI am OK with war games as long as there's no humans or human-likes in the game. ZK's sentient robots are fine for me, contrary to something like 0 A.D. (which even has female workers - maybe I'm old school, but that's even more a no-go for me).
- Nition 3y agoIn Total Annihilation, the Arm side had actual humans inside the robots. Has that lore changed in Zero-K? I feel like such a pedantic nerd asking this, but the debate over people vs. sentient robots was the whole reason for the war!
- BlueTemplar 3y agoWell, now I kind of feel obliged to share this reaction to (a) Zero-K story by... "Hitler" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IP1mp3cgRo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IP1mp3cgRo (I'm not exactly sure what the current official lore is - at some point it has been added to the campaign though, but also of note : both TA faction have been compressed into one and then split into 11+1+1 factories for gameplay reasons.)
- astrobe_ 3y agoIIRC the robots have won against humanity, but then the robots started to fight among themselves for resources. The player is one of those robots who has some sort of amnesia. Well, this matters as much as the details of the trees in a racing game, in my view.
- Centigonal 3y agoLovely to see Zero-K on the HN front page.
- nottorp 3y agoIt's multiplayer only right?
- BlueTemplar 3y agoNope, even has a campaign that can be played in coop (coop through Steam only) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfVdH02RUQ8&list=PLi9_tXwdXOlhIsydcYnOWYHWmSTDAQbz_ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfVdH02RUQ8&list=PLi9_tXwdXO... Don't expect an extraordinary story though, it's much more focused on being a series of puzzles showcasing various game features.
- astrobe_ 3y agoNope. There are various levels of AI that can serve as opponents, including an AI and game mode that sends waves after waves of enemies until you kill enough of its stuff that it sends the final boss you must defeat to win the game. There's also a campaign that introduces units progressively. I'd recommend to start there.
- aspyct 3y agoThis has a very strong Warzone 2100 vibe to it, I like it :)
- internetguy 3y agoWOAH! Did NOT expect to be here. I've been playing Zero-k for over a year and it is so. much. fun. I play BAR (Beyond All Reason) and Zero-k with some of my friends.