Jeru

Forgive me for prying but I am interested in learning what attracts people to 0 A.D. and how to get more people interested in it. What did you search for and why?

You know I could provide you with the username & password for the play0ad YouTube account and then it could be there.

Welcome, Austin! Great to have you. How did you learn about 0 A.D. and what do you like most about it?

Thanks, I favorited the first one on the official 0 A.D. YouTube channel. I linked to the second in a thread of mine, but now I added it to the favorites. It's kind of cute how he pronounces "Wildfire" weeld-fee-reh.

Come to think of it, Australia is a pretty cool place to live. Probably would suit me better than the UK.

Welcome and good luck! I wouldn't worry about it.

Welcome, Major Blunder! What have you been doing on your gap year?

I really like them

We got a raving review by John Knight at Linux Journal! <blockquote>What becomes inescapable are the gorgeous graphics, with beautiful 3-D rendering, especially when you scroll around the map. In particular, I noticed some photographically mapped rocks, and trees are lush and green, rendered in a very tasteful and intricate 3-D. [...] Oceans move around dynamically with rippling water, beaches graduate from pebbles to sand and move gently on to the seemingly random but convincing beach vegetation, which itself graduates into thicker inland bush. Everything's just so organic. [... T]his is the first RTS I'm actually enthused about, and I'll keep a close eye on it in the future. The graphics are easily on par with commercial efforts (and even better than quite a few). Hopefully, the gameplay dynamics are just as solid as development continues. My keen hope is that the free 0 A.D. one day dominates LAN parties and cafés, outdoing its commercial rivals and becoming a free software gaming classic.</blockquote> The print version is from November 2010, so this is sort of old news, but the online version is still cool!

Hey, are oryxes planned for the savannah biome?

Hi, a computer opponent doesn't exist yet. We are only in early planning phases in this area, and we expect to make some progress over the next few months.

Welcome, Jack! We used to have a very prominent contributor who was also a retired person. So you can feel right at home. How did you hear about 0 A.D.?

0 A.D. modding team Scion Development has announced that it is debuting a mod for 0 A.D. based on China under the Han dynasty. <blockquote>The Rise of the East is a modification that strives to bring China as a civilization into the game, meticulously researched to be as historically accurate as possible. In addition to the civilization, we plan to implement a full campaign, featuring recreations of famous historical moments, new random maps, and more. As development progresses, we will periodically update the fans with the latest news, and release promotional media although it will take some time before the entire modification is finished. To commemorate our debut, we've released a small unit pack to give the fans a preview of what is to come, which can be downloaded below.</blockquote> Way to go and here's hoping this is just the first of many!

Thanks, Ruben!

Thanks! Next time you can get help from native English speakers to make sure everything you write is in correct English.

We got an honorable mention in IndieDB's Indie of the Year contest, in the players' choice category for the Best Upcoming Indie. First, a big thanks to all our fans! We really appreciate your votes and they mean the world for us. Next, if you thought 2010 was awesome for 0 A.D., just wait for 2011. We're in a much better position than we were a year ago to keep developing the game to completion. Last but not least, Merry Christmas and a happy new year from all of us at Wildfire Games. See you in 2011!

Thanks! Will post this up in all the relevant places.

Me, when I have time. I could use a hand.

I love the Sparta Siege screenshot. Can I share them on our website & Facebook page? Could you take more screenshots of that map and some bigger ones? And could you please release them under cc-by or cc-by-sa? Thanks.

Check out this interview we gave to Ubuntu Gamer:<blockquote>If 0 A.D is hugely successful, would you consider taking the game commercial, either through some sort of fork or an entirely new project… or are you 100% focused on simply making an excellent cross-platform, open source RTS? The latter. We have very tentative plans for an expansion pack covering 1 A.D. – 500 A.D., but otherwise we have no commercial aspirations as a team at the moment. Free software doesn’t necessarily mean no money is exchanged, though, and so we are certainly open to hear ideas for business models based on 0 A.D. or the Pyrogenesis engine. Likewise, we don’t mind giving other people the opportunity to make a living too. The beauty of free software is that anyone can provide support for 0 A.D., sell proprietary art and sounds for the game and more. So for the meantime, we hope a lot of people tinker with 0 A.D. and the business it could spur.</blockquote> (This was posted on the 0 A.D. Facebook fan page and Twitter feed a few days ago, but regretfully I've been late to post this up on the official 0 A.D. news feed.) In other news, we're got over 20% of our target sum on our One-Month 0 A.D. Development Pledge in about 8 days. At this rate we should be able to collect the whole sum within the next 32 days. Thanks to everyone who contributed and keep it coming!

Mario fixed it right now. Thanks.

I'm kind of tired of Greek names. We already did 3 in a row. If we're doing something non-Iberian I suggest to do something Celtic, especially since Celts and Iberians are not mutually exclusive.

I'm not sure the new pines are the Mediterranean kind(s) like Pinus halepensis.

For release names and such we are sticking with Anglicized & Latinized corruptions. The Carthaginians didn't call themselves Carthage either.

Wildfire Games proudly announces the release of "0 A.D. Alpha 3 Cerberus", the third alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. Now you can play on a round map, garrison units in buildings, watch units shuttle resources to a dropsite, set up games more easily, look at game statistics when they're over and more! Plus: This holiday season, we're fundraising to get a one of our developers paid to do 1 month of work on 0 A.D. Look below for more details. Easy Download and Install Download and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. 0 A.D. is free of charge and always will be. You can redistribute it and modify it 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 registration, no advertising, no catch. New features in this release: Gameplay: Added garrisoning; Added resource shuttling; Added circular maps; Improved pathfinding; Improved LOS computation performance; Rebalanced units. Multiplayer: Slightly improved multiplayer latency; Allow multiplayer matches to continue when a player leaves. Art: Hellenic and Celtic ships; Greek buildings (gymnasion, house, resource mill, fortress and gate building, or propylaea, as eye candy); Desert plants and pine trees; Treasure eye candy. GUI: Improved game setup screen; Redesigned loading screen; Added summary screen. Other UI aspects: Added double-click/triple-click selection of all units of a certain kind; Fixed hotkey bugs. Multiple new maps to play: Acropolis, Belgian Bog, Cycladic Archipelago, Death Canyon, Median Oasis, Miletus, Resource Demo, Saharan Oases, Savana Ravine, Ship Attacks Demo, Tower Attacks Demo, We are Legion Demo. Room for improvement: There is no computer opponent AI yet. In single-player games the enemy does nothing. There is no random map generation yet. Many unit stats are still unbalanced. Many planned gameplay features are not added yet: There is no research, no auras, no rank upgrades, no settlements and territories, etc. Many bugs and small missing features. There is no multiplayer matchmaking service. You have to connect by IP address. (More convenient ways may be implemented in the future). An overview of the gameplay feature status is on our wiki, and as you can see, there is still a lot of work to be done. If you want to be part of this effort too, you're welcome to get involved! Why "Cerberus"? 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, ...). In Greek and Roman mythology, Cerberus (pronounced SUR-buh-ruhs) is the multi-headed hound that guarded the gates of Hades, the ancient Greek underworld. The deceased entered the underworld by crossing the river Styx ferried across by Charon, who charged an obolus, a small coin, as a fee. Cerberus was stationed on the far side of the river and prevented those who had crossed it from ever escaping. (Source: Wikipedia articles on Cerberus and the Greek underworld). According to our records, "Cerberus" was first suggested on our forums by 0 A.D. fan SMST. Thanks! For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter D. We will prefer words related to the civilizations of ancient Iberia. Keep it original and within the 0 A.D. timeframe (appx. 500 BC - 1 BC). The One-Month 0 A.D. Development Pledge We've been making some significant and steady progress since 0 A.D. became an open-source effort in July 2009. We've had releases come out in almost regular installments, each with new features, bringing us, slowly but surely, closer to a finished game. All of this was accomplished by volunteers in their spare time, away from school, university and real life jobs. Just think what we could accomplish with one month's solid work of one of our developers! To that end, we are raising $3,000 via Pledgie. That's like 150 people donating $20 each. The funds will go to compensating a developer of the team's choice for 160 hours of work. If we don’t achieve the amount we need for a full month, we’ll round it to the nearest week, and put the remainder aside to help with maintaining the website and the SVN servers we use for developers. Thanks in advance! <a href='http://www.pledgie.com/campaigns/14160'><img alt='Click here to lend your support to: Sponsor a Developer on 0 A.D. and make a donation at www.pledgie.com !' src='http://www.pledgie.com/campaigns/14160.png?skin_name=chrome' border='0' /></a> Long Time, No Siege Wildfire Games will continue releasing new versions of 0 A.D. periodically. Watch our news feed to keep updated, or follow us by e-mail, RSS, Facebook or Twitter. And you're always welcome to join the 0 A.D. community on our forums.