
0 A.D., an Open-Source Strategy Game - dgellow
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/support-0-a-d-an-open-source-strategy-game/
======
InAnEmergency
0AD is the most polished, beautiful open source game I have ever played. This
campaign is not about building a new game: the game already exists as shown in
the video and is even in an enjoyable-to-play state. Definitely check it out
if you haven't already (and it's cross-platform!):
[http://play0ad.com/](http://play0ad.com/)

~~~
buro9
Totally this.

I've put a lot of hours into playing 0AD and it's a joy. Very polished, really
good gameplay, addictive, and engaging.

The bots can be ruthless at times, others you can figure out and trump. If you
need them, then there are cheats to help whilst you learn.

I just went and tried to give money, and it's going to take me a while,
incredibly all my disposable cash is in PayPal and my debit card is linked to
an empty account, so I have to do the PayPal > bank shuffle, but I'll be
supporting this as soon as I can.

~~~
buro9
PayPal mess!

The campaign comment page points you to the 0AD site, where they tell you
that:

"Donations via PayPal go to a a private bank account in the US, that is a
legacy of the time before we became affiliated with SPI."

But don't explain whether that money actually ends up with them.

They've made it such a problem, all I want is a PayPal address that will get
the money into their hands. "Shut up and take my money.".

~~~
Jeru
Thanks for your comment, I have fixed the donation page. I hope it is clearer
now.

------
niuzeta
This is probably not the most constructive comment here, but it's more correct
to say _open source RTS game_ than _RTS open source game_ because open source
in this case is used as an attributive adjective(pre-nominal modifier) and RTS
as a noun-string nominative adjective which modifies 'game'.

Also, your title tries a call to action, that is, the first _Help_ is a
intransitive verb rather than a noun. So _to_ is unnecessary there. In which
case, _Help founding_ would be a better writing. Of course, if we're to use
gerund then the word founding could be better replaced with.

Ah, the pedantry!

~~~
Florin_Andrei
Seems like a typical misplacement for a non-native speaker.

~~~
niuzeta
I am a non-native speaker myself. That's why I didn't go _this sentence is
wrong and use < >_ and used more grammatical jargon, so that it may be looked
up.(someone once did it for me, correcting my sentences part by part, with all
grammatical terms, which I looked up later.)

Honestly I don't understand the upvotes. It's pedantry at its worst. I was
satisfied with the changed title.

~~~
dnautics
Not totally the worst - since this is constructive (the title changed to
something clearer), if you correct the title to something easier to
understand, it is likely that more eyes will see it.

------
tlarkworthy
I love RTSs. Total Annihilation (TA) was an early favourite.

SpringRTS is an open source game engine that improved beyond TA and actually
had UI features that Supreme Commander has drawn inspiration from.

The multilayer is epic, its totally LUA scriptable. People have re-purposed
that engine for all manor of weird RTS type games. I sincerely hope this
project is going to use that battle hardened, cross platform, actively
developed, open source RTS engine rather than roll their own.

[http://springrts.com/wiki/Games](http://springrts.com/wiki/Games)

~~~
unimpressive
They already have an engine. And art, and a game. You can go download it. This
is money to make it better. (Don't let that fool you though, what they have
now is very impressive. I'm pretty sure those are actual screenshots.)

[http://play0ad.com/](http://play0ad.com/)

~~~
Pxtl
SpringRTS has an engine, and art. There are multiple games on the SpringRTS
engine that don't use poached Total Annihilation content - sadly, only one of
them has a real playerbase (Zero-K).

The engine launched back in '06 and has changed developers a bunch of times,
which means the code is heavily rotted and it needs a lot of love. It has
legacy issues and tooling issues out the wazoo, so it _really_ needs some love
from a charity or a google-summer-of-code-style project. The problem is they
suck at the organizational stuff so they've never managed to put together
anything like that.

~~~
Kiro
0ad is already a finished game so not sure what you're arguing about.

------
willvarfar
0ad and Megaglest are two great RTS games!

I particularly recall the good stuff re path-finding that came out of
sponsored hacking on 0ad last time:

Jump Point Search (A*JPS) goodness e.g.
[http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=15270...](http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=15270&st=160#entry233998)

------
B-Con
I've been a long time fan of Age Of Empires II. 0AD looks like a clone of it,
more or less.

I think I last checked in on 0AD 2 years ago, before there was AI. Back then
AOE II had poor performance issues that I really wanted addressed, like wrong
colors (fixable by a user patch), only low resolution support (also fixable by
a user patch? I forget), and horrible network management on busy LAN games (6
teams with 150 population each? Players will get dropped once battles start).

Then AOE II got picked up by a contracted company for the pure purpose of
bringing an old game into the modern world, and HD got released with lots of
fixes. It wasn't perfect, but there was much rejoicing.

Anyone played both 0AD and AOE II HD? Any comparison points?

~~~
shire
Big fan of AOE also this looks much better been waiting for something like
this for years.

~~~
VonGuard
If you like Age of Empires, GameRanger is a service that lets you host old
games online. There are probably about 10,000+ games of Age of Empires 2 going
on there right now, not to mention FIFA and about 1000 other old PC games that
only worked via LAN. [http://www.gameranger.com](http://www.gameranger.com)

Plus, Gameranger is a 1-man operation. And he's a really cool man.

------
phaemon
When I first heard of a crowd-funded game, I assumed it would be open source
and was surprised to find it wasn't. Glad to see it's starting to happen and
hope they meet their target. I'll definitely be throwing a few dollars their
way!

~~~
dbaupp
I assume your first sentence isn't referring to 0AD, since it is open source:
[http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GettingStartedProgrammers](http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GettingStartedProgrammers)

~~~
pilom
It didn't use to be when they first started.

------
akg
Now only if Dwarf Fortress would be open sourced and combined with the amazing
effort presented here -- that would make for an epic game.

------
alexlarsson
Hmm, i wonder if its possible to port this to asm.js + WebGL. That would make
it very easy to start playing...

~~~
cobrophy
Interestingly one of the most well known figures in the Starcraft scene, Sean
'Day[9]' Plott, yesterday announced that he was working with a browser based
game company on a new RTS.

------
Aardwolf
This looks super cool!

Ideal would be if an online multiplayer community evolves around this game.
Does the game feature the ability to track multiplayer win/losses and keep
some kind of ELO rating or similar on a server? Is it reasonably safe against
cheating in multiplayer? Does it allow setting a handicap for less good
players?

Thanks :)

~~~
pilom
As of right now the multiplayer has very limited support and isn't even
supported in the basic packaged build you can download. Running multiplayer
currently involves building it yourself with a specific patch. As for what
they get done if they get the funding, we can only hope.

~~~
InAnEmergency
The latest release appears to have multiplayer enabled.

~~~
quantumstate
To clarify, there has been support for multiplayer games for a long time.
Currently you connect to other players by entering the host player's ip
address.

What is currently being worked on is a lobby system so you can create an
account and view listings of what games are being hosted. The work is probably
going to be added to the game soon, then further improvements like a ranking
system can be added in the future.

------
shire
I've been waiting for a game similar to Age of Empires to come but this just
completely destroys Age of Empires, Thanks for this awesome game I will
support.

------
shire
I was absolutely shocked when I saw this, this is so awesome in so many ways.
It resembles Age of Empires but much better graphics.

Age of Empires has this thing where you can upgrade your empire to the Castle
age or Imperial Age I wonder if this game has that?

~~~
TsiCClawOfLight
This game also features a similar system, but it's more sophisticated.

~~~
shire
Really? where can I read about it. AOE has the in game advance empire thing
going where you can upgrade your entire empire to the next level I thought it
was pretty cool.

~~~
quantumstate
I'm not sure I would call the system more sophisticated than AoE, it is very
similar. There are three phases; Village, Town and City which work similarly
to the AoE series, unlocking units, buildings and technologies. The idea
behind only having three is that the first age in AoE tended to be quite
limited so in 0 A.D. the aim is to make the village phase more significant
with it being more like the second age in AoE2/AoM in terms of available
units.

------
bfish510
I've been playing RTS games for ages and the one thing that concerns me is
balance. With so many different factions I can imagine this is going to be
rather hard to do without a large amount of overlap between them. Best of
luck!

~~~
willvarfar
You should play 0ad and comment in their forums giving concise feedback!

------
pothibo
This really looks like Age of Empires 2. It's not a bad thing I was a fan.

~~~
_delirium
It definitely has roots in AoE2: [http://play0ad.com/about/the-story-
of-0-a-d/](http://play0ad.com/about/the-story-of-0-a-d/)

------
alifaziz
Beautiful soundtracks too,
[http://play0ad.bandcamp.com/](http://play0ad.bandcamp.com/)

~~~
chris_mahan
Most excellent!. See composer's site and blog at
[http://www.omrilahav.com/composers-
blog.html](http://www.omrilahav.com/composers-blog.html)

Oh, and by the way, not just electronics, there are real instruments... Blends
beautifully.

~~~
chris_mahan
Come to think of it, I don't know whether there are much electronics. The
sound is so organic.

------
biehl
Awesome. $20 to them. (And finally got around to renewing my FSFE support
too!)

------
akg
This is excellent!

Out of curiosity, how do developers "stay in business"? Is Wildfire making
enough off of donations and kickstarter-like campaigns to keep development
going strong?

~~~
Jayschwa
The game has been developed by volunteers for years. It sounds like they want
to pay some of the devs so they can be devoted to it full-time.

------
microcolonel
0 A.D. Has made enormous progress toward the 14th Alpha, it's already
incredibly engaging. They have my buck, and hopefully they can get consistent
gloss on this gem.

------
bloodorange
While working fulltime, I find it hard to make time for free software projects
and I would love to see something like this succeed. I have contributed to
this project and encourage anyone who loves games to do so. We want free
software games of all kinds to be out there!

------
ibudiallo
> This isn’t your daddy’s Age of Empires.

Yes it is. It looks exactly like it. But no complAint. I will gladly back up
this project cause I feel like AoE decided to take another route, while this
game takes you back :)

~~~
saraid216
> It looks exactly like it.

That's kind of unfair.

------
caiob
Crowdfund all the things!

------
kephra
I fear the price tag is much to high. A tag around $10k or $20k would be much
better, as payout is only done for successful campaigns, iirc.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I fear the price tag is much to high. A tag around $10k or $20k would be
> much better, as payout is only done for successful campaigns, iirc.

I think that's Kickstarter's rule, but this is Indiegogo; right under the
funding progressbar it has this note "This campaign will receive all funds
raised even if it does not reach its goal."

~~~
kephra
A nice, thats good to know, that my money wont bounce back!

------
fry_the_guy
Looks like fun, I am excited to try it out tonight

~~~
wwilson
Yeah. You should also check out this open-source RTS game engine:

[http://springrts.com](http://springrts.com)

------
dwaltrip
Looks cool, commenting to come check it out again later. HN doesn't have a
"save" feature right?

------
shire
So when 0 A.D will be released is unpredictable? I was looking forward to the
campaign.

~~~
fireprog
It's already released, you can download it at their website. The latest alpha
release featured a pretty big boost in performance.

------
dariopy
0 A.D. is in development, if memory serves well, since at least 10 years ago.
Maybe more. I doubt it will ever be completed.

~~~
TsiCClawOfLight
Don't be so negative. If you look around, you will see that the game is _very_
playable at this point!

------
iron77
Bitcoin donation address please!

------
Tomis02
Do units fire while moving?

~~~
quantumstate
No, the game is set in the period from 500 B.C. to 1 B.C. and during that
period firing while moving was not common. It could possibly be added for some
types of high quality horse archers but isn't a high priority.

~~~
Scriptor
It was certainly common in the east. The Battle of Carrhae
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carrhae](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carrhae))
was at 56 B.C. and is one of the most famous examples of an engagement with
horse archers who could fire while moving from that era.

Even well before then the Scythians were known for their horse archer armies
and were tricky to defeat.

I know it doesn't seem like a big thing, but if Romans can form testudos while
moving, then it seems only fair to have true horse archers. Both so that
players can accurately recreate the tactics (horse archers + heavy cavalry
were the mainstay of several eastern factions which people might want to mod
in) and just because they're more interesting that way. Otherwise the game's
horse archers are little more than fast moving foot archers, which doesn't
allow for much more creativity.

~~~
chm
I'm pretty sure that your comment would be well received in their forums. They
seem like nice guys.

------
atjoslin
Supported. Go wildfire!

------
educating
Played this game and it really sucked. :(

------
ddorian43
Every fan of RTS games needs to play Metal Fatigue. One of the greatest/unique
game ever.

------
PaulAJ
Has anyone pointed out that there was no year 0 A.D. 1 BC was followed by 1
AD.

~~~
binxbolling
From the IndieGoGo page:

"Importantly, “0 A.D.” is a time period that never actually existed: In the
usual calendar, one goes from 1 B.C. to 1 A.D. and skips zero.

This reflects the historical fiction in the game: Who would have won if all
the factions were pitted against each other when each of them was at its
prime?"

~~~
Millennium
So it's deliberate. Good. I'd been worried that it was just an epoch fail.

~~~
jordan0day
That's the best use of that phrase I think I've ever seen. Well done,
madam/sir.

~~~
m_myers
As usual, xkcd did it first: [http://xkcd.com/376/](http://xkcd.com/376/)

