Leaderboard

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of "0 A.D. Alpha 19 Syllepsis", the nineteenth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. This alpha features building and siege engine capture, a new pathfinder, visual replay and more! Easy Download and InstallDownload and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. 0 A.D. is free of charge and always will be. Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to download 0 A.D. completely gratis, directly from the developers. Moreover, you can redistribute the game and modify it freely 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. New Gameplay Features in This ReleaseBuilding and Siege Engine Capture: Non-siege units can now capture buildings and siege engines. When you hover your mouse over an entity that can be captured, two crossed flags appear so you can issue a "capture" order. If you do, you will start gaining some of that entity's "capture points" at a certain rate. (On screen, you will see your color taking up a greater proportion of the width of the entity's capture bar.) Once you gain all of these points, you capture the entity, and it is yours! (Note: You can still specify a regular attack on buildings and siege engines by holding CTRL when right-clicking on a target.) There is currently no animation for the units which are capturing, that will be added in a later version.New Victory Modes: "Conquest Structures" (destroy or capture all enemy structures to win) and "Conquest Units" (destroy all enemy units to win).Ceasefire Game Mode: The game can be set so that all players are completely unable to attack their enemies for a predetermined time at the start of a game.Attack Coordination: Players can request allies (including bots) to attack a specific enemy by clicking a button next to the player name in the diplomacy window. Also, Petra AI now supports attack coordination.Petra AI now warns its allies when it needs a tribute and lets them know when it advances to a new phase.The Ptolemaic lighthouse now has its special feature implemented: It reveals the shore on the entire map.New Skirmish Maps: Tuscan Acropolis (for 4 players; map preview), Northern Island (for 2 players; map preview), and Alpine Mountains (for 3 players; map preview). Graphics and User InterfaceIncreased Maximum Map Height: The engine now supports an eight times greater range of terrain heights, allowing for the creation of maps with more diverse and impressive landscapes.Visual Replay: Re-run a game and understand what took place in real time.Aura Visualization: Units affected by an aura are now marked with an icon when the aura giver is selected.New animals: New mastiff and wolfhound units have been added as well as a new rhinoceros.The Roman units now have voices in Latin. Voice actors and people with knowledge in ancient languages are invited to contribute more voices to the game! Under the HoodNew Pathfinder: The pathfinder is the component of the game engine that picks a route for a unit to move along from its current location to its target location, so that it does not collide with other units or with structures or with impassable terrain. The new pathfinder improves performance, but at the same time, it also introduces some new bugs. We have done as much as we could to ensure it was bug-free, but please report anything unusual!XML Validation: In 0 A.D., the behavior of units, buildings and other world objects is defined by their components, such as cost, health and more. All of these are described in XML files. The "grammar" of the XML files is now checked for correctness before being used by the game engine, which helps prevent technical problems.The generic Hellenic and Celtic factions have been removed.Linux users, please be advised that SDL2 is now enabled by default on Linux. Getting SupportPlease see the "Get Support" page on our website to find ways to get help from the active and friendly 0 A.D. community. We are well aware there is some room for improvement in 0 A.D. Some known issues are: Lag, visual glitches or textures not loaded, missing animations and more. When you provide feedback, we would ask you to focus on some of the other points that could be improved. Thanks. Please Contribute!We are seeking volunteer contributors in programming, art, sound, documentation and more. Programmers are especially welcome and can get started immediately. Interested? Log onto #0ad-dev on QuakeNet on IRC and meet the developers. Also, you are invited to register on our forums and start participating! Why "Syllepsis"?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, ...). "Syllepsis" relates to 0 A.D. as it means "capture" in Greek, and refers to the building and siege engine capture feature implemented in this version (Thanks, bouke!). For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter T. Keep it original and related to the time frame portrayed in 0 A.D. (appx. 500 BC - 1 BC)! Subscribe to 0 A.D. Development NewsContact info for press, bloggers, etc.: aviv@wildfireATHENSgames.com without the capitalized name of a Greek city.

Congrats everyone!

I put most of my models on opengameart.org as CC0, so i don't know if they are used elsewhere. It's just a bit of future proofing from my side. Since I've made a halfdecent selection of animals now, with similar polycount, it could probably find some use in mobile games and whatnot.

Woooo! Well done!

Guys, I experiment with the local.cfg settings and come up with some good settings to try out isometric view. ; Isometric View view.zoom.min = 2500.0 ; Zoom needs to be this far because of low fovview.zoom.max = 2500.0 ; Zoom needs to be this far because of low fovview.zoom.default = 2500.0 ; Zoom needs to be this far because of low fovview.rotate.y.speed = 0.0 ; This prevents camera rotationview.rotate.x.speed = 0.0 ; This prevents camera tiltingview.fov = 2.0 ; This is what gives the nearly isometric viewview.near = 32.0 ; Near plane distance increased to prevent z-fighting Result: Compare with 45 fov: The isometric view is very easy to see when moving camera, but harder to tell difference in static screenshot. Guys it is like night and day. These setting disable rotating and zooming for real classic feel. I personally think the true 3D 45 degree FOV is better (everything to me in iso games look like they are sliding down the screen, and I think game world in 45 fov look more expansive), but maybe have this for game option in Alpga 20? Should be simple to add and could be fun to showcase when release. Some pros: Some people like this view and might find it easier. I get +15fps in this view. Could help player with low rig spec. Would be even better perf gain if game had alternative asset optimized for this view (back faces remove etc). A couple of problem: Action sounds cannot be heard. Camera zoom is too far away. Distance fog very heavy (again because zoom is very far). Clouds need to be disable in this view too. Anyway can be fun to add for Alpha 20 and maybe capture some of aok audience attention.

For my mod I might redo unit actor for visual improvement (linothorax -> bronze cuirass, etc.).This would take a lot of modding for the technologies too (actor swap is a feature of technology json). Rank promotions changes would show with head gear and shield textures while body textures show tech armor upgrade. I suspect if I do this I will have to abandon the rank upgrade visual differences. If only techs could swap prop actor too.

Hello, I recently found this game and I love what you guys are doing with it. I was not aware of you guys when you had the 2013 fundraiser, but is there anyway I can still support?

If you want to reduce the "straight line" effect, wouldn't it be better to just make it circular? I mean, instead of setting a trader from one point to another, make it go around many markets, with bonuses for number of markets and extra for number of foreign markets, or something like that. And instead of a market every X squares, why not a single market per nearby Civic Center (like in Rise of Nations)? The idea of workers in the market is cool, could be used as yet another bonus. And maybe for each of these bonuses you had to research a tech (having in mind that trading is an investment for late game, here)?

Well, about the shape itself, i would simply rely on a lot of reference materials. I always put in a background image of a good profile picture, then try to figure out the 3d shape from the outlines. It might sound boring, or like cheating, but noone really knows what animals actually look like unless you go through a myriad of references, meassuring all the relative sizes. If I were to draw even a common animal unprepared, like a cat or a bird, I would completely mess up it's anatomy. Now, I don't know exactly what species you were aiming for, and from hunting references I've come to appreciate the wide range of anatomy of animals within the same species, but i'd say you overdid the changes to the skull. A quick comparison with some reference off google search Had this been a model of a human, we would all be able to tell if something is off, like a huge nose, tiny eyes, enormous chin.. but in most animals, our memory alone is insufficient. For animation, there is some more practical things to try and sort out (and they are not that easy). The biggest challenge i find are the legs relative movement to the body, and here, legs are merged into the body. For quadrapeds, the stomach kind of "tucks in" behind the thigh. The font legs also needs to have something cut in in-between the leg and torso (up into the "arm pit"), to allow some relative movement there. Still, with lowpoly, and furry animals, you kind of have to find a good middle ground. Also, are you working on this without a mirror modifier? that has to be a huge inconvenience.

Out of curiosity, did you also contributed to other games, which ones, if this is shareable?