[HN Gopher] New Release: 0 A.D. Alpha 24: Xsayarsa ___________________________________________________________________ New Release: 0 A.D. Alpha 24: Xsayarsa Author : shakow Score : 164 points Date : 2021-02-20 19:50 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (play0ad.com) (TXT) w3m dump (play0ad.com) | planb wrote: | For a moment I thought Elon Musk had another child... | d33 wrote: | Just to save somebody some searching, here's what the release | name refers to: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerxes_II | kowlo wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerxes_I | thaumasiotes wrote: | The first paragraph on the page specifies that the release is | named in honor of Xerxes I, not Xerxes II. | zibbity-rw wrote: | This game looks so much better than it did a few years ago! I | wish people used open source games like this for AI competitions. | So much more open and also what a great community effort. | BariumBlue wrote: | Congrats on a new release! I think it's a good project, and I too | thought it was dead. | | ===== | | Personal experience: A few-ish months ago, I tried to get into | 0AD (more than an exploratory 1-2 matches vs an AI). I like to | watch videos of folks playing Age Of Empires 2, and I looked for | a similar experience on youtube, to better understand the game, | the meta, and standard tactics. | | But the videos just don't look nice. The units are hard to | distinguish. The graphics are serviceable. It looks nice when you | actually play, but personally it is not enjoyable to watch a | video of it in the same way that AOE2 is. | littlestymaar wrote: | > But the videos just don't look nice. The units are hard to | distinguish. The graphics are serviceable. It looks nice when | you actually play, but personally it is not enjoyable to watch | a video of it in the same way that AOE2 is. | | Having played to a lot of RTS when I was younger, the main | difference between AOE2 and the rest[1] is 3D vs isometric-2D. | 3D tends to make games a lot messier. The comparison between | AOE2 and AOE3 is a pretty good example of this phenomenon for | instance. | | [1] : Stacraft 2 being the outlier here, it has really "clean" | graphics, while being 3D. | crazypython wrote: | I find the choice of business model very strange. The free | software philosophy allows game art to be proprietary. They could | sell DRM-free copies on their site that license the game art but | keep the code free. I'm not sure why they don't do this. | blendergeek wrote: | > I find the choice of business model very strange. | | I don't see much of a business model. | | > The free software philosophy allows game art to be | proprietary. | | I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this. The Free Software | Definition does not allow this. If code is contributed to 0AD | under the GPL, they could not combine it with proprietary | graphics. | | The GNU Free System Distribution guidelines allows for the | inclusion of game art that is under a license that does not | permit modification. However any such art must be | redistributable for commercial and noncommercial purposes at no | charge. | | > They could sell DRM-free copies on their site that license | the game art but keep the code free. | | This violates the spirit of free software. | | > I'm not sure why they don't do this. | | I think they want the game to be free. | crazypython wrote: | The GUI isn't starting on Mac for me. | | Edit: Had to wait several minutes, but it started. | reddotX wrote: | works great on linux | henearkr wrote: | Wow!! I thought it was pretty much dead after their fork. | | I'm happy to see it's not the case!! ^^ | | I love this game and its music. | rambojazz wrote: | Sorry, what fork? What happened? | henearkr wrote: | Here, they said that the development was slowed down because | of disagreements, and a sizable part of the development team | announced their fork: | | https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/25134-fork-ad/ | spijdar wrote: | With the benefit of hindsight, this sounds more like | personal drama than a real fork. I'm not super familiar | with 0AD beyond playing sometimes, dunno what their org | structure is like or anything, but this doesn't look like | there was ever really a threat to 0AD. | | Again, benefit of hindsight, but 0AD's releases have always | been pretty slow, and it doesn't look like this was really | out of the ordinary? | | It's hard to have good faith on the part of the forkers | when it sounds like they took issue with how closed/"iron | fisted" the development of 0AD was, and then ... made a | fully private fork with 3 people? | teruakohatu wrote: | Three guys left to create a fork back in 2018. They argued | that they would be able to iterate faster because they | trusted each other. | | They also said they would only release the source once they | made a release. | | By mid 2020 they posted some screen shots and some graphs | showing that they slightly increasesed the speed of map | generation. | | So far they have not yet released any source code. Since the | fork happened, the original project has released two new | versions. | axaxs wrote: | I'm explicitly and admittedly just not a PC gamer, but this is | the one exception to the rule. Probably because I'm a longtime | Linux on the desktop user, and there just wasn't much in the | past. If you enjoyed AoE2, or just want to kill some time messing | around, I highly suggest giving it a spin. Careful, time can | disappear quickly. | programd wrote: | The buried the more interesting lead: | | 0 A.D. now has an API for reinforcement learning. You can train | AI to control the units in game | | https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GettingStartedReinforcem... | cl42 wrote: | Thanks for sharing this. THAT IS SO COOL. | shakow wrote: | I'm really happy to see that the project is still alive and | kicking! | max0563 wrote: | I have been following this game for many years. What you all have | made is amazing. Thank you for continuing to work on and improve | 0 A.D. | | Very inspiring! | tomxor wrote: | Similarly I've been playing OpenRA recently, which is basically | an open source recreation of the old C&C games Dune, Tiberian Sun | and Red Alert (the later being the most popular). It's a very | honest recreation that feels close to the originals, both in | terms of graphics and game play. | | However the key thing that keeps it fun for me and holds my | attention is being online multiplayer, the diversity and | challenge other human players brings cannot be replaced with AI | so far... Anyway, the last time I tried 0 A.D it didn't seem to | have multiplayer capability yet, but it seems to now! | phkahler wrote: | >> However the key thing that keeps it fun for me and holds my | attention is being online multiplayer | | I had a long spell of BZflag. The humans are so much better to | play against. Highly recommended game for casual play BTW. | sebyx07 wrote: | age of empires 4 open source | Bakary wrote: | This is such a great project ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-02-20 23:00 UTC)