12 ms·

0 A.D. Alpha 15 - Osiris

201 points by intull 13y ago

mladenkovacevic 13y ago
Thank you for this game. I especially love the music and the 2 new tracks definitely don't disappoint. Keep up the great work.
cpeterso 13y ago
btw, 0 A.D. embeds Mozilla's SpiderMonkey JS engine for scripting: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_A.D._(video_game) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_A.D._(video_game)
isaacdl 13y ago
How does this compare to other (commercial) games in this genre?
- zarriak 13y ago
  This is a very hard question to answer, because this genre tends to one game per player, just because the games take forever (a civilization 5 multiplayer game tends towards 10 hours), and this nature leads to a lack of game changing.
  - lbotos 13y ago
    This game is an RTS (like Starcraft/Warcraft). It's not a Simulation like SimCity or Civ. Matches are meant to be played with 2 or more players and can last a few hours max depending on the map. With that said, my brother and I love it. RTSes for Mac have been lacking and this one is really solid even in Alpha. We can't wait until it gets more mature and modders get a chance to make mods on top of the already great core.
- oddshocks 13y ago
  Well, it's an alpha, so it's not really comparable yet. It's safe to say that it lacks some "probably expected" featured. I don't know about now, but when I tried it a month ago, it lacked an options menu. Clicking "options" on the main menu opened a dialog with placeholder text. Maybe they've added one now, but I didn't see one skimming the updates list.
  - zaporozhets 13y ago
    There is now a neat options menu with all kinds of the obvious settings you would want to change. even some graphics things, though most of them seem to be for water haha.
- amerika_blog 13y ago
  I consider it an impressive contribution, and I checked it out a year ago. It lacks many of the refined features that happen with a paid staff, but art, sound and gameplay are amazing. It's also totally addictive. Stay away, if you value your free time.
mml 13y ago
Would be cool if they distributed via torrent (though their d/l speeds are pretty impressive anyway).
mholt 13y ago
Heard the hype about it so I thought I'd check it out. Pretty cool for open source. If you have trouble using this release on Macbook Pro with Retina display (OS X 10.8+), the following worked for me: 1. In Displays preferences, scale down the resolution (so text is bigger) by one setting. 2. Run the game. For me, it appeared, full-screen, in a small portion of the screen on the bottom-left side. When I moved my mouse above that portion a few inches, I figured out how to get the game to think my mouse was over the buttons (fortunately they have hover effects). I had to move the mouse to a Y-position a few inches up on the screen from where the button actually appears (but the X-coordinate was correct). 3. Adjust the settings so the game runs in Windowed mode. Save setting and close the game entirely. 4. Return resolution to normal. 5. Re-run the game. Worked fine then.
- alxndr 13y ago
  Retina MBP here, had to have my mouse cursor about an inch and a half below the button I was aiming for. However even after doing the steps you laid out, pointing is still off in full-screen mode (only).
  - mholt 13y ago
    Yep. I keep mine windowed. Oh well.
sown 13y ago
I like it. I went into it completely blind, not knowing what I would get. The display felt like it was making the units, buildings and scenery seem too small and I was often squinting. This caused tension to build up in my neck and head, which caused some frustration. Although it feels low-energy, it's fast paced. I had 1 wave that I could repel but they almost wiped out all of my units. The 2nd wave sure did. It wasn't totally obvious that I could upgrade units through buildings, but I got that much eventually. The resources are up in the upper left hand. I guess I need 3 resource types? Not quite sure what the elephants were for or how to get them to offload. Couldn't tell if there was advantage to one race over another. Over all it was kind of fun. I think i'll play again.
- ultimoo 13y ago
  I believe you can scroll up and down to zoom in and out so that the world and the units appear bigger and smaller. I am not sure about this, but it had worked when I had played the game a few months ago.
  - sown 13y ago
    True. It seems that when you're far out, scrolling is kind of slow. It's like watching Robbie Robot play NES. :) Zooming in scales up the speed because you're closer to the ground But it's fun. It seems like it's kind of complicated but not in a way that is overwhelming.
alexnking 13y ago
Wow, very impressive.
lowglow 13y ago
You should toss this up on http://itch.io http://itch.io
gprasanth 13y ago
This is written using an OOP language - C++ I was always fascinated at games like this one as to how perfectly they are a use case to OOP paradigm. All objects are sharing a common object, and the player can create, destroy objects, do stuff on the objects ( call their methods ). Objects can upgrade to different versions. Objects exchange information with themselves or even battle among themselves! Really cool perspective, isn't it?
- maaku 13y ago
  Yes, but to really exploit that perspective you need the features of dynamic languages which C++ is lacking. Which is why it's not uncommon that the actual game objects are represented in a dynamic scripting language, Javascript in this case.
- wereHamster 13y ago
  Many games use Entity-Component-System pattern, which doesn't necessarily require an OOP language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity_component_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity_component_system
  - copx 13y ago
    That is a new trend though, primarily pushed by the fact that the popular Unity game engine uses this model I think. OOP is a perfectly serviceable model for developing games like this, especially if you use modern OOP i.e. heavy on composition and interfaces as opposed to the byzantine inheritance hierarchies of the 1990s. The pro-ECS propaganda always contrasts ECS with said 1990s Java style OO, correctly pointing out that inheritance (alone) does not allow clean modelling of certain game world entities.
    - tinco 13y ago
      No, it's primarily pushed by the complexity of modern games. The game industry is notoriously introvert about their development practices, but the popularity of ECS surely precedes the popularity of Unity. (i.e. games like Tony Hawk Pro Skater and World of Warcraft use ECS architecture). Its use is obfuscated further because the architecture is called many different names, and is implemented in many different ways (i.e. I think many programmers find the 'systems' part weird and mix parts into components and other parts into 'engines' and such) That being said, I think it's hard/unproductive/awkward to implement ECS in a non-OOP language. ECS is basically composition taken to the max, OOP languages give it much needed structure.
the_french 13y ago
I tried this alpha out with a friend, it seems like the multiplayer is completely broken, each time we start a match we get out-of-sync errors and can't play. I wonder if this has to do with trying to play using linux and OS X
frik 13y ago
It's a open source RTS (real time strategy) game similar to the Age of Empires game series. It's great that 0 A.D. is coming along fine :) Microsoft closed Ensemble Studios (the maker of Age of Empires). And EA canceled "Command & Conquer: Generals 2" as of October 29, 2013. Sadly, beside Star Craft 2 (its SciFi theme is not for everyone) no triple-A RTS games are in active development :( Back in 2000 there was the last RTS hype and one had troubles to find a new roleplaying game. As more and more players are moving back to PC/notebooks and tablets that all have better navigation interfaces than the bad controllers, I hope RTS games come back :)
- cclogg 13y ago
  Yeah I miss that RTS golden age haha. SC/War3 custom maps too man! You'd think there'd be way more awesome RTS's for tablets, given the controls can work so well. The situation right now seems to be kind of stuck between the Farmville/Clans type stuff from the Facebook world, and tower defenses.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    Also considering connectivity is so much better - people could set up local networks really easily now.
  - etherealG 13y ago
    the sc2 custom map thing is pretty big these days. they have a whole 'arcade' section of the game designed around customisation, you should try it out :)
    - cclogg 13y ago
      Has it changed much since the first year or so? I was pretty big in that community but the reality was the editor was too difficult for most people and the popularity system ended up creating a cyclical loop of the same maps (ie similar to the app store problem). The brilliance of WC3 was the named-game system that allowed people to host whatever and fill games instantly. Battle.net was much more social-friendly too, and the editor itself provided a lot of power, but was not insanely difficult to figure out. I found the custom games in SC2 were of quite low quality just because of how much work it took to do anything.
pyrrhotech 13y ago
Any time I start looking through the source code of one of these games, I wonder how I get paid in the same realm (sometimes even more) as a meager UI developer than these guys doing "real" engineering. Makes me feel dumb, but also intrigued and intellectually stimulated. I'd like to become a better programmer someday, so I could understand this code.
- JoshuaJB 13y ago
  I'm one of the developers for 0AD, and I have to say it's really not that hard to get started. I began checking out the source code and developing patches only about eight months ago (I didn't know /any/ C++ when I started, only some JS and Python), and in the mean time I'm gotten very familiar with the codebase and joined the official team. In fact, the multiplayer lobby in this release was primarily developed by myself. Feel free to join us on #0ad or #0ad-dev on quakenet if you have any questions.
clarry 13y ago
It looks neat, but the performance was bad enough that I couldn't play it. To mention another decent open source strategy game project, I'd say Widelands is to Settlers what 0 A.D. is to Age of Empires. https://wl.widelands.org/ https://wl.widelands.org/
- ohmygeek 13y ago
  thanks for widelands. never knew about it :D
gorhill 13y ago
That really look great on video, I definitely will have to check this. I started playing the first Age of Empires such a long time ago. After Age of Titans (my favorite of all -- the God powers added a lot of fun), I didn't like as much the new ones. Being an average player, I got the most fun watching recorded games from top notch players, so I hope this will be a feature if not in there already.

201 points by intull 13y ago

Thank you for this game. I especially love the music and the 2 new tracks definitely don't disappoint. Keep up the great work.

cpeterso 13y ago

btw, 0 A.D. embeds Mozilla's SpiderMonkey JS engine for scripting: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_A.D._(video_game) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_A.D._(video_game)

isaacdl 13y ago

How does this compare to other (commercial) games in this genre?

zarriak 13y ago
This is a very hard question to answer, because this genre tends to one game per player, just because the games take forever (a civilization 5 multiplayer game tends towards 10 hours), and this nature leads to a lack of game changing.
- lbotos 13y ago
  This game is an RTS (like Starcraft/Warcraft). It's not a Simulation like SimCity or Civ. Matches are meant to be played with 2 or more players and can last a few hours max depending on the map. With that said, my brother and I love it. RTSes for Mac have been lacking and this one is really solid even in Alpha. We can't wait until it gets more mature and modders get a chance to make mods on top of the already great core.
oddshocks 13y ago
Well, it's an alpha, so it's not really comparable yet. It's safe to say that it lacks some "probably expected" featured. I don't know about now, but when I tried it a month ago, it lacked an options menu. Clicking "options" on the main menu opened a dialog with placeholder text. Maybe they've added one now, but I didn't see one skimming the updates list.
- zaporozhets 13y ago
  There is now a neat options menu with all kinds of the obvious settings you would want to change. even some graphics things, though most of them seem to be for water haha.
amerika_blog 13y ago
I consider it an impressive contribution, and I checked it out a year ago. It lacks many of the refined features that happen with a paid staff, but art, sound and gameplay are amazing. It's also totally addictive. Stay away, if you value your free time.

mml 13y ago

Would be cool if they distributed via torrent (though their d/l speeds are pretty impressive anyway).

mholt 13y ago

Heard the hype about it so I thought I'd check it out. Pretty cool for open source. If you have trouble using this release on Macbook Pro with Retina display (OS X 10.8+), the following worked for me: 1. In Displays preferences, scale down the resolution (so text is bigger) by one setting. 2. Run the game. For me, it appeared, full-screen, in a small portion of the screen on the bottom-left side. When I moved my mouse above that portion a few inches, I figured out how to get the game to think my mouse was over the buttons (fortunately they have hover effects). I had to move the mouse to a Y-position a few inches up on the screen from where the button actually appears (but the X-coordinate was correct). 3. Adjust the settings so the game runs in Windowed mode. Save setting and close the game entirely. 4. Return resolution to normal. 5. Re-run the game. Worked fine then.

alxndr 13y ago
Retina MBP here, had to have my mouse cursor about an inch and a half below the button I was aiming for. However even after doing the steps you laid out, pointing is still off in full-screen mode (only).
- mholt 13y ago
  Yep. I keep mine windowed. Oh well.

sown 13y ago

I like it. I went into it completely blind, not knowing what I would get. The display felt like it was making the units, buildings and scenery seem too small and I was often squinting. This caused tension to build up in my neck and head, which caused some frustration. Although it feels low-energy, it's fast paced. I had 1 wave that I could repel but they almost wiped out all of my units. The 2nd wave sure did. It wasn't totally obvious that I could upgrade units through buildings, but I got that much eventually. The resources are up in the upper left hand. I guess I need 3 resource types? Not quite sure what the elephants were for or how to get them to offload. Couldn't tell if there was advantage to one race over another. Over all it was kind of fun. I think i'll play again.

ultimoo 13y ago
I believe you can scroll up and down to zoom in and out so that the world and the units appear bigger and smaller. I am not sure about this, but it had worked when I had played the game a few months ago.
- sown 13y ago
  True. It seems that when you're far out, scrolling is kind of slow. It's like watching Robbie Robot play NES. :) Zooming in scales up the speed because you're closer to the ground But it's fun. It seems like it's kind of complicated but not in a way that is overwhelming.

alexnking 13y ago

Wow, very impressive.

lowglow 13y ago

You should toss this up on http://itch.io http://itch.io

gprasanth 13y ago

This is written using an OOP language - C++ I was always fascinated at games like this one as to how perfectly they are a use case to OOP paradigm. All objects are sharing a common object, and the player can create, destroy objects, do stuff on the objects ( call their methods ). Objects can upgrade to different versions. Objects exchange information with themselves or even battle among themselves! Really cool perspective, isn't it?

maaku 13y ago
Yes, but to really exploit that perspective you need the features of dynamic languages which C++ is lacking. Which is why it's not uncommon that the actual game objects are represented in a dynamic scripting language, Javascript in this case.
wereHamster 13y ago
Many games use Entity-Component-System pattern, which doesn't necessarily require an OOP language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity_component_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity_component_system
- copx 13y ago
  That is a new trend though, primarily pushed by the fact that the popular Unity game engine uses this model I think. OOP is a perfectly serviceable model for developing games like this, especially if you use modern OOP i.e. heavy on composition and interfaces as opposed to the byzantine inheritance hierarchies of the 1990s. The pro-ECS propaganda always contrasts ECS with said 1990s Java style OO, correctly pointing out that inheritance (alone) does not allow clean modelling of certain game world entities.
  - tinco 13y ago
    No, it's primarily pushed by the complexity of modern games. The game industry is notoriously introvert about their development practices, but the popularity of ECS surely precedes the popularity of Unity. (i.e. games like Tony Hawk Pro Skater and World of Warcraft use ECS architecture). Its use is obfuscated further because the architecture is called many different names, and is implemented in many different ways (i.e. I think many programmers find the 'systems' part weird and mix parts into components and other parts into 'engines' and such) That being said, I think it's hard/unproductive/awkward to implement ECS in a non-OOP language. ECS is basically composition taken to the max, OOP languages give it much needed structure.

the_french 13y ago

I tried this alpha out with a friend, it seems like the multiplayer is completely broken, each time we start a match we get out-of-sync errors and can't play. I wonder if this has to do with trying to play using linux and OS X

frik 13y ago

It's a open source RTS (real time strategy) game similar to the Age of Empires game series. It's great that 0 A.D. is coming along fine :) Microsoft closed Ensemble Studios (the maker of Age of Empires). And EA canceled "Command & Conquer: Generals 2" as of October 29, 2013. Sadly, beside Star Craft 2 (its SciFi theme is not for everyone) no triple-A RTS games are in active development :( Back in 2000 there was the last RTS hype and one had troubles to find a new roleplaying game. As more and more players are moving back to PC/notebooks and tablets that all have better navigation interfaces than the bad controllers, I hope RTS games come back :)

cclogg 13y ago
Yeah I miss that RTS golden age haha. SC/War3 custom maps too man! You'd think there'd be way more awesome RTS's for tablets, given the controls can work so well. The situation right now seems to be kind of stuck between the Farmville/Clans type stuff from the Facebook world, and tower defenses.
- DanBC 13y ago
  Also considering connectivity is so much better - people could set up local networks really easily now.
- etherealG 13y ago
  the sc2 custom map thing is pretty big these days. they have a whole 'arcade' section of the game designed around customisation, you should try it out :)
  - cclogg 13y ago
    Has it changed much since the first year or so? I was pretty big in that community but the reality was the editor was too difficult for most people and the popularity system ended up creating a cyclical loop of the same maps (ie similar to the app store problem). The brilliance of WC3 was the named-game system that allowed people to host whatever and fill games instantly. Battle.net was much more social-friendly too, and the editor itself provided a lot of power, but was not insanely difficult to figure out. I found the custom games in SC2 were of quite low quality just because of how much work it took to do anything.

pyrrhotech 13y ago

Any time I start looking through the source code of one of these games, I wonder how I get paid in the same realm (sometimes even more) as a meager UI developer than these guys doing "real" engineering. Makes me feel dumb, but also intrigued and intellectually stimulated. I'd like to become a better programmer someday, so I could understand this code.

JoshuaJB 13y ago
I'm one of the developers for 0AD, and I have to say it's really not that hard to get started. I began checking out the source code and developing patches only about eight months ago (I didn't know /any/ C++ when I started, only some JS and Python), and in the mean time I'm gotten very familiar with the codebase and joined the official team. In fact, the multiplayer lobby in this release was primarily developed by myself. Feel free to join us on #0ad or #0ad-dev on quakenet if you have any questions.

clarry 13y ago

It looks neat, but the performance was bad enough that I couldn't play it. To mention another decent open source strategy game project, I'd say Widelands is to Settlers what 0 A.D. is to Age of Empires. https://wl.widelands.org/ https://wl.widelands.org/

ohmygeek 13y ago
thanks for widelands. never knew about it :D

gorhill 13y ago

That really look great on video, I definitely will have to check this. I started playing the first Age of Empires such a long time ago. After Age of Titans (my favorite of all -- the God powers added a lot of fun), I didn't like as much the new ones. Being an average player, I got the most fun watching recorded games from top notch players, so I hope this will be a feature if not in there already.