0 A.D.

We've completed another forum upgrade, and we hope you like it! This release didn't come without issues. There are two known issues at this time:The Pledgie and Paypal badges are missing. They will be added back in soon.Avatar images may have been ... [More] changed. If your avatar's been modified, feel free to change it back by going into your profile settings. If you have any issues or feedback, drop by our upgrade feedback thread. [Less]

Later today, Wildfire Games will be performing an upgrade to it's forum software. The upgrade will start around 7pm GMT. During this time, the forum will be unavailable. The wiki, Trac, and all of our other applications will still be running ... [More] normally. We expect for the upgrade to take only a few hours. If you spot any issues after the upgrade, feel free to stop on by and file a ticket. Thanks, everyone, for being patient! [Less]

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of "0 A.D. Alpha 9 Ides of March", the ninth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. This alpha debuts the Roman faction ... [More] , new combat and trade systems and more. Easy Download and Install Download and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. 0 A.D. is free of charge and always will be. You can redistribute it and modify it as long as you abide by the GPL. You can even use parts of the art and sound for your own projects as long as you abide by CC-BY-SA. No "freemium" model, no in-game advertising, no catch. Top new features in this release: The Roman Republic faction, playable on custom scenarios and random map scripts--in single player and multiplayer, complete with a new art set, including new buildings, units, and ships. A new combat system that adds bonuses and weaknesses to each unit, like rock-paper-scissors (e.g. spearmen defeat melee cavalry, but are countered by skirmishers and cavalry archers). A brand new trading system, over land with traders trained from markets, and over sea with merchant ships built at the dock. Establish a trade route between two markets or docks, and your traders will gain resources for every trip made. You can choose which resource will be gained by a trader. Over a dozen new random map scripts by Spahbod, wraitii, and mmayfield45. New animations: Rowing oars for ships, rams, some catapults, traders, some animals. AI improvements: 0 A.D.'s default AI, qBot, has had a performance increase and had a serious bug fixed with the attack code. All works CC BY SA Wildfire Games. Music and Sound: Four new tracks and one re-made track, all composed and directed by Omri Lahav, featuring Marta Mc'cave on the flute and Shir-Ran Yinon on the viola. Two of the tracks celebrate the Roman faction with a very Italian mandolin. An Old Warhorse Goes to Pasture - An Iberian early peace track Juno Protect You - A Roman early peace track Elysian Fields - A Roman peace track Highland Mist - A Celtic early peace track The Road Ahead - A remade, neutral (not faction-specific) peace track 0 A.D. Soundtrack by Omri Lahav Bug fixes and minor features: Outposts available for all factions. These are cheap and can be built quickly anywhere on the map except on enemy territory, but are weak and easily destroyed. Minimap colors have been adjusted to see player units more clearly Hunters now automatically continue hunting after they finish gathering from one animal Military-only bandboxing (Thanks, gerbilOFdoom) Improved Atlas selection behavior Garrisoning now has a range check (no more teleporting) Allies are now placed near each other in random maps Fixed OS X fullscreen mode (Thanks, Echelon9) Improved FreeBSD support Improved COLLADA importer Replaced most old 3D models with COLLADA versions Experimental Android/GLES/GLSL support. To be sure, 0 A.D. is not designed to run on smartphones. Please contribute! (REPORTERS/BLOGGERS, PLEASE MENTION THIS! We need your help to finish the game. Thanks.) We are seeking contributors in programming, art, sound, web design, taking YouTube videos and more. These roles on the 0 A.D. development team are great if you want to brush up on your skills and update your portfolio, if you're seeking a project for school with real-life applications, or if you care about the cause of free culture and software and are willing to work pro bono with a group of dedicated volunteers from all over the world. Interested? Please register on our forums and start a new topic introducing yourself in the applications and contributions forum following these instructions. Who were the Romans? The Romans controlled the largest empire of the ancient world. Rising from a group of villages to controlling an empire stretching from southern Scotland to the Sahara Desert, Rome remained one of the strongest nations on earth for almost 800 years, controlling over 60 million inhabitants, one quarter of the Earth's population at that time. Rome's regime changed over time from a republican system to an autocratic empire. While the politicians seemed to be in control, the real power lay with the army. Indeed, war was the heart and soul of the Roman political system, affecting everything that the government did. In fact, Romans reveled in combat and war so much so that one of their favorite forms of entertainment was gladiatorial combat. This resulted in a population that was eager to fight and support their military efforts. Rome produced not only effective generals but formidable engineers. Today we owe many technological advances to the Romans, who were the supreme builders of the ancient world. Roads, massive buildings, and large mining and water movement projects were common. These inventions and more served to spread the Roman legacy that endures to this day, from language to medicine, from literature to government, and from legal codes to art, architecture and beyond. The timeframe of 0 A.D., 500 B.C. - 1 B.C., coincides with Rome's rise to power from a small city-state to one of the greatest empires on earth. In following centuries, however, this massive empire soon became too large to control, and foreign peoples began swarming into the Empire. For centuries, Rome fought an ever-increasing flood of migrant "barbarians", until the western half of the empire fell in 476 A.D. The eastern half, however, lived on and evolved into a very different empire, called Byzantium. The Byzantines' religion was Christian, their language was Greek and their capital was in Constantinople, which is modern-day Istanbul. Rome's eastern successor, Byzantium, continued to be a powerhouse well into the middle ages. In 0 A.D. the Romans will have many bonuses that match their historic strengths. These include: Powerful infantry, Incredible siege equipment, Superior defensive construction and mining, And an excellent navy. While the Romans may not specialize extremely well in specific areas, they are one of the most well-rounded civilizations in 0 A.D. (Source: 0 A.D.: Romans) Why "Ides of March"? We name our releases according to development status ("Alpha" or "Beta"), successive release number (1, 2, 3, ...) and a word relating to the ancient world, in alphabetical order ("Argonaut" for A, "Bellerophon" for B, ...). In honor of the release of the Roman faction, we decided to dub Alpha 9 "Ides of March". The ides was a day in the Roman calendar that marked the approximate middle of the month, deriving from the Latin word "Idus" which means "half division". The ides was the 13th day of most months, but the 15th day of March, May, July, and October. The Ides of March was a festive day dedicated to the god Mars, and a military parade was usually held. In modern times, the term Ides of March is best known as the date on which Julius Caesar was killed in 44 B.C. (Sources: English Wikipedia articles Roman calendar and Ides of March) For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter J. Keep it original and within the 0 A.D. time-frame (appx. 500 BC - 1 BC)! Long Time, No Siege Wildfire Games will keep releasing new versions of 0 A.D. from time to time. Watch our news feed to get updates, or follow us by e-mail, RSS, Facebook or Twitter. And you're always welcome to join the 0 A.D. community on our forums. Contact info for press, bloggers, etc.: [email protected] without the name of Rome's legendary founder written in all caps. [Less]

It's time for the third part in the series where we take a closer look at some of the people working on creating 0 A.D. This time the honor goes to two people who have distinguished themselves by doing great work, in part in November, but as with the ... [More] first month it's just as much their overall contribution that we want to highlight. The Member of the Month is Omri Lahav (OmriLahav at the forums), who has been and continues to be, composing the stellar music that will make the game so much more enjoyable. OS Contributor of the Month is Rico Tzschichholz (ricotz in the IRC channels), who is maintaining the 0 A.D. PPAs for Ubuntu, both the release and the development one. It's thanks to his work that Ubuntu users are able to enjoy not only an easy way to install the release version of the game, but also have an easy way to follow the development via the development versions he makes available regularly. Omri Tell us the basics about yourself Well, I'm 26, I live in Israel and work as a composer. Mostly for theater, but recently I've been getting into film and video game music, which has always been my true passion. I play in several bands and generally spend most of my day making music, one way or another! What do you find motivating about contributing to 0 A.D.? Quite a few things, but above all I have to say, the players' responses and comments on the score. It's extremely satisfying to know that the players (and team members!) are enjoying the music, and as a gamer myself, it's a unique experience to play a game with my own music. Other then being plain fun - it allows me to put down the mantle of "composer" and evaluate my own work as a listener. When did you join the team? Not so long ago actually - I think it was around March 2011. What made you interested in joining the team? Obviously the game itself, it looks and feels much better then many other independent games I've seen, and I am an RTS fan, so I was instantly sold when I saw it! Also, in the brief discussions before I came on board, I came to see that the team is made up of great, like-minded people, so much so that I found myself reading and posting on the forums for hours on end. What has contributing to 0 A.D. meant for you? Musically, it has driven me to explore certain types of music I've never experienced before. Indeed, there have been challenges (and I suspect there are more of those yet), but overall it's been a complete delight. The team was very good at creating a supportive and open-minded working environment, in which it was possible for me to experiment and receive valuable, constructive criticism. It's been a great learning experience for me as a composer, plus the "fun factor" of working on a game... what more could I ask for? What do you find best about being a part of the team? Well, just that - being a part of the team. Being a composer is one of the most isolated jobs on the planet, it's a very nice change to have teammates who are involved and interested, and offer usable feedback. On a side note (if I may), I'd like to thank the musicians who participated in the recordings, they truly bring the music to life, and elevate it to heights that would otherwise be unimaginable. Marta Mc'Cave, Yotam Ronen, Bar Guzi and Dror Parker. Rico What do you find motivating about contributing to 0 A.D.? As I am very familiar with generating packages for Debian/Ubuntu maintaining the PPA for several Ubuntu versions gave me the chance to give people an easy way to test and play with 0 A.D. which is the spirit of open source. So while adding the PPA to their system and install it is quite easy! What has contributing to 0 A.D. meant for you? This is quite fun to see such a project evolving over several year. It is nice to see new ideas and additions to the game. I am also quite aware of the technologies behind the scene it is really interesting. So it is nice helping you guys distributing this great software! [Less]

During the last month we've had the joy of welcoming four new team members here at Wildfire Games. First we had the chance to reward three of our most diligent Open Source contributors: Jonathan, Jeroen, and Yves, who all have worked hard programming ... [More] for 0 A.D. and we thought it was time to recognize that. Jeroen (vts on the forums) has worked on fixing things, perhaps most notably making selecting units a lot easier (a more technical explanation: he's worked on making the bounding boxes correspond better to the actual models). He's also worked on adding rally point marker lines. In other words: the rally point you place to tell newly created (and ungarrisoned) units to go to a certain spot on the map can be a bit hard to find at times, but with this feature you get a line on the ground showing you the way to it. And also roughly the way the units will walk to get to it. It's probably easier to see how useful it can be from a screenshot though, so below you have one: Rally point marker line, the line going from the building to the rally point. Yves (Yves on the forums) has mostly been working on upgrading to premake4 and other compile related fixes (a less technical explanation: he's made it easier for people to build the game - the process of turning the code into an actual game that can then be played). Jonathan (quantumstate on the forums) has been (and still is) the leading force behind qbot, one of the AIs for 0 A.D. A video showing a match against one of the latest versions of qbot. Second, we've gotten a new artist on board: Enrique (Enrique on the forums), who has already created some marvelous Roman buildings which will help enhance the game world. New Roman temple (to the right, to the left is the Hellenic temple for reference). [Less]

We've decided to revive, though slightly changed, an old tradition. Starting now we're each month going to award one team member and one open source contributor (i.e. someone who contributes to the game without being an official member) the title of ... [More] Member/OS Contributor of the Month. This is both a way to say thanks (and to encourage everyone to keep up the good work of course ) and to give all the fans a chance to get to know the people working on the game. People will be chosen because of having done exceptional work the previous month, and will not be able to receive this award two months in a row. This first month though it's not necessarily work that's been done during the month of September, but rather two people who stepped up and did great work for the 0 A.D. Alpha 7 Geronium release: The Member of the Month September 2011 is Brian (WhiteTreePaladin on the forums, and a programmer) and the Open Source Contributor of the Month September 2011 is Athos (Athos, an animator). Brian because he spent a lot of time and energy implementing the new main menu and willingly accepted our input on needed changes. Athos because without him the game would feel far less alive, his animations have done wonders in making the game feel more immersive and interactive. Now for the "getting to know them" part, I asked them a couple of questions about who they are and what working on the game is like: Brian: Tell us the basics about you? I earn a living as a Java programmer, and am interested in things relating to technology, history, and art. I enjoy working with Blender 3D occasionally. When did you join the team? I joined this project (at end of 2008) because I wanted to help it get completed faster. Coming from an Age of Kings background, I saw the potential: three-dimensional graphics and absolutely complete modding support. It offered what I had wanted from AoK; it did not really matter to me whether it was free or not. What do you find best about being a part of the team? It is great fun working with this team. There are so many things I have learned here - information about technology and programming in general, but also fascinating things about different cultures. As for what I do? I work on the user interface with the occasional excursion into gameplay logic. Athos: 1) Tell us the basics about you? I'm Athos, I'm 19 and live in Brazil, currently I'm a student, I have always enjoyed creating 3d models and such, it's a hobby. 2) What do you find motivating about contributing to 0AD? 0 A.D. delivers the basic wish of an RTS fan - an Open-Source game - and that makes RTS fans want to help in some way, either by creating models, textures, complex c++ codes and scenarios. But what makes 0 A.D. different than the others? simple: 0 A.D. has a truly based historical events, imagine re-creating the ancient wars, it's absolutely amazing. If you take a look in the 0 A.D. forum you'll notice how much they research for real facts, real civilizations and how they were military prepared. 3) What has contributing to 0 A.D. meant for you? Contributing to 0 A.D. have brought me new skills and perspective how things can and should be done, specially in the animations part. Also, having a third person to look at your work and say things like "good job" or "I think you can improve your work by doing this..." really helps in creating and developing final results with a decent quality. Thanks guys for your work so far, looking forward to see what you can bring to the game in the future. [Less]

The 0 A.D. development team would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that we are always looking for volunteer contributors in various fields. Here we'll mention three: Web Designers: Design usable interfaces, effective website ... [More] layouts, and attractive 2d graphics, as well as write readable, standard-compliant code to help promote 0 A.D. We need to create uniform branding and, as much as possible, easy navigation across many websites (a Wordpress blog, a Trac wiki, an IPB forum, and profiles on ModDB/IndieDB, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Bandcamp). 3D Artists: Create 3D models and textures from concepts or reference images. You should have experience in a mainstream 3D application such as 3DS Max or Blender, be able to UV map a model with a given texture, and preferably know a little bit about animating. Scenario Designers: Use the Atlas scenario editor to create lifelike simulated worlds for empire-building and war. You will be expected to match the style of our existing maps and hopefully exceed them in visual appeal, authenticity and more. These roles on the 0 A.D. development team are great if you want to brush up on your skills and update your portfolio, if you're seeking a project for school with real-life applications, or if you care about the cause of free culture and software and are willing to work pro bono with a group of dedicated volunteers from all over the world. Instructions how to apply, and descriptions of other roles not mentioned here, are all available in the application form. Thanks in advance! [Less]