Jeru

I vote in favor of the proposal.

Great job on the upgrade. The new forums are very good looking, but how do I see a list of new threads / threads with new posts (since my last visit)?

Update: The perks ended up costing USD 5,611.10. Many thanks to Erik for taking on the perk fulfillment project, paying for the perks out of pocket and waiting patiently to be reimbursed. Your commitment to the project is nothing less than admirable. Big hug!

In the interest of transparency, the Wildfire Games team would like to report on the finances of the project as of 2015-11-25. 0 A.D. has funds in three places: Funds earmarked for the project and held in trust by US-based non-profit organization Software in the Public Interest, Inc. (hereafter "SPI"); A private account in the US, under the name of former project leader, Jason Bishop (Wijitmaker). This account is a legacy of the time before we became affiliated with SPI; Flattr, a Sweden-based microdonation provider. SPI Earmark for 0 A.D. As of 2015-10-31, the 0 A.D. earmark is USD 34,410.05. Web hosting costs about USD 85-90 per month, or about USD 1,000 a year, and are paid directly from these funds. Some of these funds (approximately USD 5,200) will soon go towards reimbursing Erik Johansson (feneur) who has bought the perks we promised our donors. Edit (2016-01-08): The perks ended up costing USD 5,611.10. We know donors have been waiting for their perks for a long time. We sincerely apologize for the long delay in perk fulfillment. Other Accounts In our "legacy" US bank account, we have USD 332.82. On Flattr, we have EUR 619.75 available, which are approximately USD 662.27. Total In total, we have approximately 35,405.14 USD in all three accounts. Concluding Remarks The 0 A.D. project finances are managed by the Treasury Committee: Erik (“feneur”), Adarash ("MishFTW") and Aviv (“Jeru”). We welcome your comments and suggestions.

I have asked the SPI treasurer to use the SPI credit card to make this purchase.

Update: Thankfully, we are now we are paying for hosting directly from our SPI funds using an SPI credit card. The first installment of 157.98 EUR (appx. 171.33 USD) came out of my credit card on 18/01/2015. I am asking the rest of the Treasury Committee for permission to ask SPI for a reimbursement, plus wire transfer charges, which, according to my records, are 22 USD. Total: 193 USD. Thanks.

I am in favor.

I love statistics! Population mean (as opposed to sample mean) (And as a rule of thumb, it's better to do statistics with a sample size of at least n = 30.)

I added "Council of Modders" to the title for clarity.

SPI writes: Generally, SPI prefers that someone from member projects makes the purchase and gets reimbursed. However, if there is specific cause for SPI to make the purchase directly, we have a credit card we use for that. In that case, we would prefer to pay for a year in advance instead of doing monthly billing, just to cut down on our overhead.

SPI says: This reimbursement request has been entered into SPI's international payment service. Jan should receive the funds in approximately one week.

I wrote the SPI treasurer on this topic once on June 4th and once again today.

Paid EUR 96 from the Flattr account.

Thanks, Christo! Progress bars are great when we are conducting a fundraising drive. It's just that right now we have enough money and we don't need a a fundraising drive.

I can't believe how tasteless and non-sequitur the beginning was. I want that 1 minute & 15 seconds back.

I will try to get the funds transferred from the legacy PayPal account, where we have USD 383.54, according to my latest records. If that proves to be difficult, I will pursue the SPI option.

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of "0 A.D. Alpha 16 Patañjali", the sixteenth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. This alpha features localization into more than 10 different languages, an improved AI, a new GUI, big changes "under the hood" 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. Top New Gameplay Features in This Release Localization: 0 A.D. is now available by default in 13 different locales, contributed by volunteers from all over the world: Catalan Czech Dutch English (United Kingdom) English (United States) French Galician German Italian Portuguese (Brazil) Portuguese (Portugal) Scottish Gaelic Spanish (Spain) The Japanese translation is also completed, but due to the large font files, it would cause a larger download for other players and it also requires a computer with higher specs. So, we offer the Japanese translation together with the font files as a separately downloadable mod. See installation instructions for East Asian locales on our Wiki. Many more languages are currently being worked on and are planned to be released in future alphas. You are welcome to contribute in this area. Formation Updates: The Testudo formation (for Roman melee infantry) and the Syntagma formation (for Macedonian, Ptolemaic and Seleucid pikemen) have received new animations, and their movement has improved further over the previous version. The formations are also more moddable, which sets the stage for further developments in formations. New AI - Petra: Petra features more aggressive expansion and combat and builds defence towers and fortresses as a human would. Petra manages resources better in late game than the previous AI, Aegis, and is more robust to external conditions. It will also trade over land with allied markets, if there are any. Town Bell: Click on the new "town bell" button to sound an alarm and make your citizens garrison in the nearest structure until the enemy is gone. Once you sound the bell again, your units will ungarrison and go back to work. Global Resource Trading Settings: You now set the chance a trader will trade a certain resource, rather than selecting it per trader. This gives you a better overview of your trade, and makes it easier to manage. The "Wonder" Victory Condition: If you set "Wonder" as victory condition, a counter counting down 5 minutes appears after you build a wonder. If the enemy can't destroy the wonder in this time, you win. We also have an "Explored Map" game setting now, in which the entire map is covered with the Fog of War. This is an option that gives something between the "revealed map", where there are no secrets, and the default "dark map".Graphics and User Interface New GUI, new font: The new GUI style seen in the multiplayer lobby in Alpha 15 is now used nearly everywhere. The GUI font has also been changed to Biolinum, a free font created by the Libertine Open Fonts Project. Multiplayer "Ready" button: In a multiplayer game, all users must confirm game settings before host can start game. When the host changes a setting, players are set to "not ready" again. This is to avoid sneaky behaviour amongst some hosts, who would change the settings right before starting. New art assets: Animated flying hawks, Ptolemaic ships, Eurasian Wolf, Nile Crocodile, Ptolemaic buildings: Military settlement, Docks, Market, and quite a few new animations, e.g. a new seeding animation for farming units.Music New music track: "Water's Edge" (click to listen). This beautiful track is assigned to the Britons and Gauls.0 A.D. Soundtrack by Omri Lahav SpiderMonkey Upgrade & Other Development Updates We have implemented a new version of the JavaScript engine "SpiderMonkey" in 0 A.D. It supports new features of JavaScript such as Map and Set objects. These two types, for example, have improved performance compared to normal objects when working with certain kinds of collections. Modders and developers who are used to working with the latest features of JavaScript are also happy about the new features which are now available. SpiderMonkey also brings improved Javascript profiling and analysis features which allow for producing graphs. These features are another useful tool for performance measurements and for finding performance problems. The version in Alpha 16 (v24) does not improve performance yet. But there will be improvements for the next version (v31) which should be included in Alpha 17. Most importantly, the upgrade from v1.8.5 (which was released in March 2011) to v24 was quite a big step and a lot of work. Being on a current version means we avoid writing code for an old API that doesn't exist any more and it saves us a lot of work compared to staying with v1.8.5 and upgrading years later. Last but not least, it's a "must have" from the security perspective, and it enables us to report bugs or even request new features from the SpiderMonkey developers. This release contains many more changes and bugfixes not mentioned here. In terms of tickets closed on the project management and bug tracking system we use, Trac, this was another record.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 "Patañjali"?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, ...). Patañjali was one of the three most famous Sanskrit grammarians of ancient India. In honor of languages everywhere, we have decided to dub Alpha 16 "Patañjali". For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter Q. 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 News Contact info for press, bloggers, etc.: aviv@wildfireSANSKRITgames.com without the capitalized name of a language spoken in ancient India.

What further information is needed? And could you get Philip on board for this?

I suggest covering the two 0 A.D.-related nights at the hotel and 40% of the flight costs (proportion of reported 0 A.D.-related hotel nights out of total). According to my calculations that is: Travel: 275 * 0.4 = EUR 110 Lodging: 2 * 60 + 10 = EUR 130 Total: EUR 240 which are about USD 330. --- Reference: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Travel_policy

In the interest of transparency, the Wildfire Games team would like to report on the finances of the project as of 2014-04-21. 0 A.D. has funds in three places: (1) Funds earmarked for the project and held in trust by US-based non-profit organization Software in the Public Interest, Inc. (hereafter “SPI”); (2) A private account in the US, under the name of former project leader, Jason Bishop (Wijitmaker). This account is a legacy of the time before we became affiliated with SPI; (3) Flattr, a Sweden-based microdonation provider. SPI Earmark for 0 A.D. As of 2014-04-21, the 0 A.D. earmark is USD 34,272.78. We had intended to start using these funds to pay a programmer to develop 0 A.D., but unfortunately, he has parted ways with Wildfire Games several months ago, and we wish him all the best. We are now planning to use the funds to pay other programmers, who may already be contributing to the project voluntarily, to work more intensively on core features and on improving the game’s performance, so that the game won’t lag so much. Part of these funds are planned to go towards buying the perks we promised our donors. We will be distributing surveys to our donors shortly to make sure which perks they want. Then we will budget accordingly. We know donors have been waiting for their perks for a long time. We sincerely apologize for the long delay in perk fulfillment. Other Accounts & Total In our “legacy” US bank account, we have USD 383.54. On Flattr, we have EUR 430.82 available, which are approximately USD 595.13. In total, we have USD 35,251.45 in all three accounts. Concluding Remarks A monthly report of funds held by SPI in trust for 0 A.D. is also available on the SPI website under “approved minutes of past meetings“. Currently, the latest report available on the SPI website is from November 30, 2013. We have obtained updated data from SPI through personal correspondence with its treasurer, Michael Schultheiss. The 0 A.D. project finances are managed by the Treasury Committee: Erik (“feneur”), Adarash (“MishFTW”) and Aviv (“Jeru”). We welcome your comments on this thread and elsewhere on the forums.

Anyone want to represent 0 A.D. at the RMLL in Montpellier, France in July?

Someone from the contact form writes:

We now have $383.54 in the legacy PayPal account.

Yet another spin-off of the AoE franchise:

Jan M. (implodedok) suggests we get a German hosting provider, Hetzner, for just under $130/month. Do we agree?