[HN Gopher] 0 A.D A free, open-source game of ancient warfare ___________________________________________________________________ 0 A.D A free, open-source game of ancient warfare Author : krisgenre Score : 222 points Date : 2021-03-23 18:09 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (play0ad.com) (TXT) w3m dump (play0ad.com) | j-wags wrote: | Some of my friends started a weekly gaming group when lockdown | began. We initially played 0 AD as a joke. One year in, we've had | stints of Starcraft 2, CS:GO, and Among Us. But at this point | we've settled into something of a rotation of 0 AD and Overwatch. | | It's a good game to play with friends and the jankiness is | actually pretty charming. Just stay away from naval combat. | Rendello wrote: | 0 AD naval stuff can be pretty brutal. I read that some of the | naval stuff was improves this last update. In any case, I don't | think I've ever enjoyed naval combat in an RTS! | yrrr wrote: | Puzzle Pirates has great naval combat, it's an MMO however | and requires a bit of investment before you can sail a ship | into battle. | selljamhere wrote: | I've been playing the new Civilization 6 Pirates multiplayer | mode. It's exactly as it sounds --- travel the seas building | an armada, burying treasure, and pillaging costal cities. | | It's much faster paced than a traditional Civ game, and only | takes a bit over an hour to finish. 10/10 would recommend | timvisee wrote: | Fun game! Actually very well made for something that's open and | free. Pretty great to play with some friends online during this | pandemic. | throwaway6734 wrote: | Anyone know how the gameplay compares to Age of Empires 2? | tomashertus wrote: | Because I'm life-long Age of Empires fan and want to hype | people about Age of Empires IV - the next month is a huge Fan | Preview event -> https://www.ageofempires.com/news/announcing- | age-fan-preview... | tasogare wrote: | I fell into the game again because of DE and a new friend | whose into it too. With Youtube videos (explanations and | competitive games, like Hidden Cup right now) and regular | updates it got another dimension to it. | | The DE of Age of I sucks though, the sprites generates from | 3D models being less good than in II DE. I would has | preferred they made a remaster like the C&C for this one. | eloff wrote: | Did you catch hidden cup 4? It was an amazing tournament. | tomashertus wrote: | Yeah I did; Hidden Cups are always peak for AoE2 e-sports | scene. Unbelievable matches! I think they hit 100k viewers | on Twitch, which is amazing for RTS game. | lostmsu wrote: | It's pretty similar, but 0 A.D. lacks polish. | | I played previous release with friends, it was quite enjoyable. | AI is super strong for newbies. | ht_th wrote: | I always loose in a couple of minutes in 0 A.D. :-( | | Then again, I am more interested in exploration and building | than fighting to the dead. I loved playing Age of Empires on | the easy setting and then go overboard with the civilization | building. | throwaway894345 wrote: | Me too. Same story on Factorio. Fortunately both games | allow you to control the difficulty of your adversaries. | lostmsu wrote: | We started 3v3 on normal difficulty, as some of us had AoE | experience, but quickly had to go down to 3v2 very easy | until we learned to win relatively consistently (this took | quite a bit of time). | jandrese wrote: | Hopefully it isn't like Supreme Commander or Total | Annihilation where the AI is more than happy to micromanage | you to death. | | "Ah, I see you can handle attacks, but can you handle little | groups of 3 attackers going after every resource | simultaneously and running away when you look at them; all | the time?" | | That crap is no fun to play against. Not unless your own | units can be programmed with some basic AI to counter it. | Igelau wrote: | > That crap is no fun to play against. | | Hannibal of Carthage agrees. | lostmsu wrote: | 0 A.D. AI does not micromanage. It wins by strategy. | heavyset_go wrote: | I think of it as Age of Empires 3 but actually good. It feels | like a nice compromise between AoE 2 and 3. | rasz wrote: | gallery: TypeError: m.get(...).style.removeAttribute is not a | function | | cant see more than 1 picture | jandrese wrote: | The front page makes it sound like the development is moving | along at a moderately slow pace and it's still a work in | progress. | | The screenshots are pretty impressive for an open source game | though. At least all of the buildings. They don't have many shots | of troops in there. | | > Currently, 0 A.D. is still in alpha phase, which means an early | experimental phase. It is playable, and you can already download | and test the game, but some features are still missing. When will | 0 A.D. be released? It is very hard to predict. Even after we are | done implementing all the features, we will want to conduct | extensive beta testing, which can take a while. Information about | release dates will be released at the appropriate time. | jacobolus wrote: | > _They don 't have many shots of troops in there._ | | Here's their most recent video trailer: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6scM-nwfhE | badosu wrote: | > They don't have many shots of troops in there | | You can see some gameplay in action here: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6SBLu3TYfg | | Keep in mind most competitive players play with graphical | settings turned down | marcodiego wrote: | I'd love to see a modern commercially successful open source game | with non-free art. | badosu wrote: | Great to see 0ad featured here! | | I collaborated on some mods and reviews so I have some context on | the high-level (scripting) part of the game, which comprises | mostly everything that is not engine related. Feel free to ask | any questions. | | It's a passion project with a lot of attention given to | historical acuity. | | This release saw a lot of balance fixes (that didn't get much | love in the trailer) and a process to release in faster | (6-months) cycles - compared to 2 years taken from a23-a24. | | It established a baseline for great improvements coming on the | next version, in particular faction (civ) differentiation and | faster gameplay. | gogopuppygogo wrote: | I hope they start to charge something to support this game. | | No reason not to offer a paid version of an open source | project. | | I know the donations are there but paying for a copy now that | it's so stable would open up support for paying customers and | further help legitimize the open source RTS game development | process IMHO. | Aeolun wrote: | I like the Mindustry way of doing this. Game can be | downloaded freely but costs a few bucks if you want to buy it | on Steam. | dgrin91 wrote: | Anyone know how 'Alpha' this game is? I'm looking at their news | archive and their first post is from 2003, then jumps to semi- | regular posts starting 2011. Is this a reasonably stable game? Is | this like Dwarf Fortress and will just forever be in some alpha | state? | joecot wrote: | The biggest problem in this game is the networking. It seems to | have the same sort of networking issues Age of Empires did | before the HD revamp, except worse. Once you hit a 100+ units | for each player, the gameplay slows down dramatically. If the | multiplayer desyncs, the game is over and there's no way to | continue. The unit pathfinding is pretty janky as well. | | I've played it, we liked it, but the multiplayer issues made it | a non-starter for us. And while other changes have been made, | it doesn't seem like any real networking optimizations have | been made in years. The only recent change that might help is | them adding a global population max in addition to a per player | one, so you can keep the lag from getting too bad but add more | units per player as other people get eliminated. But it's not | enough. | badosu wrote: | You can consider it indefinitely alpha at this point, unless | dev adoption gets traction, especially engine/graphics | specialists. | | That said, as a huge RTS and ancient history fan I can | definitely say its mechanics/art/units make it stand out from | other games - and have had lots of fun playing it continually | for years. | sixhobbits wrote: | many previous discussions for various releases over the years | | https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=play0ad.com | iameli wrote: | Hah, I'm only familiar with this because it always shows up | alphabetically at the start of a lot of Debian package lists e.g. | https://salsa.debian.org. Cool project though. | stolenmerch wrote: | While it's not as polished as AoE2 or other games for playing or | competition, the reinforcement learning interface is great fun in | and of itself. It's nice to practice on a "real" game that isn't | OpenAI Gym or similar teaching tool. | | https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GettingStartedReinforcem... | normaler wrote: | For me the biggest marketing factor for this game was shell | autocompletion for package managers. | | 0ad is the first package in archlinux. | Igelau wrote: | A modern version of the zzt trick! | vbtemp wrote: | I will wager that since development began in 2001, and this is | still in alpha stage, that this game will still not be ready by | the year 2041. See also: Lindy Effect | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect | Rendello wrote: | Myself and other have argued it should stop labeling itself as | Alpha for years, it's a completely awesome (if not totally | balanced) RTS | rkimb wrote: | I worked on this game when I was in High School and at the time | we were just entering the first alpha release (amazing to see | it grace HN!). Most of the team then and still today is | comprised of part-time volunteers, students - people who are | simply passionate about game development, art, history or some | combination thereof. Many of the contributors actually were | sourced from Age of Empires/Age of Mythology fans that wanted | to build something that paid proper homage to the things they | liked and overcame the things they didn't. Though my | contributions are quite distant at this point, I can say that | as this is our collective passion project they likely never | intend to "release" the game because they're simply having too | much fun making it. That would imply a finality that we can | instead avoid by passing the project to the next generation of | ambitious developers and artists as I once did to my | successors. The game is actually quite stable now, supported on | all three major OS's, and has a small but devoted modding | community. Even though it's free, I've felt that the limited | budget (exclusively donations) has always made marketing the | game its biggest challenge to finding a broader audience. | Hopefully landing at the top of HN will help! We just want | people to enjoy the game - if you're an RTS fan, give it a | shot! | | Big shout out to any of the current or past contributors | reading this post - you all deserve immense credit for your | work over the decades: | https://trac.wildfiregames.com/browser/ps/trunk/binaries/dat... | vbtemp wrote: | Fair points all, and I thank you for your illuminating | comments. | heavyset_go wrote: | I really enjoy 0 A.D., so thanks! | atum47 wrote: | Back in college we had lan parties aS much as we could. Some | fried chicken, some pizza, a lot of energy drinks and 0ad. Great | game. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-23 23:00 UTC)