Showing posts with label 0ad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 0ad. Show all posts

Saturday, October 17, 2015

Free Ancient Warfare Game `0 A.D.` Alpha 16 Released

Wildfire Games has released the sixteenth alpha version of 0 A.D., an open source, historical real-time strategy game which features excellent graphics and sound. The new alpha brings an improved AI, a new GUI along with big changes under the hood and more.

0 ad alpha 16


Improvements in 0 A.D. alpha 16 "PataƱjali":
  • New GUI, new font: The new GUI style seen in the multiplayer lobby in Alpha 15 is now used nearly everywhere. The GUI font has also been changed to Biolinum, a free font created by the Libertine Open Fonts Project;
  • New AI - Petra: Petra features more aggressive expansion and combat and builds defence towers and fortresses as a human would. Petra manages resources better in late game than the previous AI, Aegis, and is more robust to external conditions. It will also trade over land with allied markets, if there are any;
  • A Multiplayer "Ready" button was added: In a multiplayer game, all users must confirm game settings before host can start game. When the host changes a setting, players are set to “not ready” again. This is to avoid sneaky behaviour amongst some hosts, who would change the settings right before starting;
  • Formation Updates: The Testudo formation (for Roman melee infantry) and the Syntagma formation (for Macedonian, Ptolemaic and Seleucid pikemen) have received new animations, and their movement has improved further over the previous version. The formations are also more moddable, which sets the stage for further developments in formations;
  • Town Bell: Click on the new "town bell" button to sound an alarm and make your citizens garrison in the nearest structure until the enemy is gone. Once you sound the bell again, your units will ungarrison and go back to work;
  • New Global Resource Trading Settings: You now set the chance a trader will trade a certain resource, rather than selecting it per trader. This gives you a better overview of your trade, and makes it easier to manage;
  • The "Wonder" Victory Condition was added: If you set "Wonder" as victory condition, a counter counting down 5 minutes appears after you build a wonder. If the enemy can’t destroy the wonder in this time, you win;
  • New "Explored Map" game setting, in which the entire map is covered with the Fog of War. This is an option that gives something between the "revealed map", where there are no secrets, and the default "dark map";
  • New art assets: Animated flying hawks, Ptolemaic ships, Eurasian Wolf, Nile Crocodile, Ptolemaic buildings: Military settlement, Docks, Market, and quite a few new animations, e.g. a new seeding animation for farming units;
  • New music track: "Water’s Edge";
  • A new version of the JavaScript engine "SpiderMonkey" was implemented;
  • 0 A.D. is now available by default in 12 different languages: Catalan, Czech, Dutch, English (United Kingdom), French, Galician, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Scottish Gaelic, and Spanish (Spain). Japanese is also available but its available as a separate downloadable mod due to large font files.

Check out these changes in the 0 A.D. alpha 16 video below:


(direct video link)


If you can contribute to 0 A.D. (programming, art, sound, documentation and more), see the programmers getting started page and join #0ad-dev on QuakeNet on IRC.


Download 0 A.D.


Ubuntu users can install  the latest 0 A.D. by using a PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wfg/0ad
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install 0ad

Download 0 A.D. (for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX).
Read more »

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Free RTS Game `0 A.D.` Alpha 17 Available For Download

Wildfire Games has released the seventeenth alpha version of 0 A.D., which includes some important changes, such as a major gameplay rebalance, units on wall, improved mod support and more.

0 A.D. alpha 17

For those not familiar with 0 A.D., this is an open source, historical war and economy RTS game developed by Wildfire Games which features several ancient civilizations at their prime, from Greece and Rome to Carthage and Persia. The game is available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.

While it features great sound and graphics and has both single-player and multi-player functionality, the game still lacks some features, such as no matchmaking service (multi-player uses peer-to-peer networking, without a central server), that's why the game is still considered "alpha".

Notable changes in 0 A.D. Alpha 17 "Quercus":
  • Major Core Combat Rebalance:
    • if you send only one unit type to battle, it fares poorly against regiments of the same size that mix more than one type, e.g. melee and ranged units;
    • technologies as a whole have been made more expensive and unrelated technologies have been "unpaired";
    • some stats have been adjusted to make training some units viable
    • buildings are now a bit easier to destroy;
    • formations were removed temporarily, but they will be reimplemented again some point, in a more balanced way.
  • Naval map support: the computer opponent now uses transport ships to colonize other islands and attack enemy bases, but naval combat (i.e. ships against ships) is not yet implemented;
  • Units On Walls: Units can be garrisoned in wall segments, and appear on the walls at predefined prop points;
  • Users can now view profiles of other players from within the lobby;
  • 2 new maps: a Oasis (skirmish map) and Schwarzwald (random map);
  • Implemented triggers: A "trigger" makes an action occur in the game if a specified event takes place;
  • A new Mod Selector allows users to enable or disable mods, save them or just restart into them to test them out. This way, it is a lot easier to test and play mods. This can be reached at: Main Menu -> Tools & Options -> Mod Selection. Also, modders can now easily make small changes to the game without having to copy and modify many files.


Those are just the most important changes in the latest 0 A.D. alpha 17 but there were many other improvements added with this release, such as better performance, improved fog of war, better AI as well as various graphical and user interface improvements like new Hellenistic ranged siege animations, replaced Iberian barracks, new Iberian tower models (screenshot above) and much more.

Below you can watch the 0 A.D. Alpha 17 trailer, which presents some of these changes:


(direct video link)

If you can contribute to 0 A.D. (programming, art, sound, documentation and more), see the programmers getting started page and join #0ad-dev on QuakeNet on IRC.

It's also worth mentioning that the Council of Modders are hosting a map making contest. Check out THIS forum post for details.


Install 0 A.D. in Ubuntu / Linux Mint


0 A.D. is available in the official Debian / Ubuntu / Linux Mint repositories however, if you want to play the latest version, you must use a PPA. To add the official 0 A.D. PPA and install the latest 0 A.D. in Ubuntu / Linux Mint, use the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wfg/0ad
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install 0ad


Download 0 A.D.


Download 0 A.D. (binaries available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X and source code)
Read more »