Jeru

Thanks, Freedom2!

After making meaningful contributions to the 0 A.D. codebase over time, three of our OS contributors were inducted as official Wildfire Games team members this week. Please welcome Alexander Olkhovskiy (fcxSanya), Ben Brian (historic_bruno) and Evans Sam Thomas (evanssthomas). This is our humble way of saying: Thanks for contributing, guys, and keep up the good work! Interested in getting involved? We're still seeking more contributors in programming: Computer graphics: Examples include decals, reflection/wave water effects, environment lighting and dynamic shadows, vertex animation, terrain blending, Fog of War / Shroud of Darkness, skyboxes, vertex/pixel shader material framework, and a particle weather system. AI programming: Examples include everything from pathfinding, through basic unit AI (chickens running away when attacked, bears attacking spontaneously) to high-level opponent modeling - gathering resources, laying out a city, building an army and more. Gameplay programming: Implementing the mechanics behind trade, and construction of structures, creating various unit formations, writing random map scripts. If any of these programming challenges appeal to you, just get started. Likewise, we're still seeking sound effects specialists, texture artists, illustrators/GUI designers, 3d artists, animators and video editors. If any of these non-programming endeavors catches your fancy, you're welcome to apply.

Just installed it from here, and ran without getting the warning again, but it is still excruciatingly laggy. I suspect it just has to do with the laptop's weak hardware and will seek better options. Thanks.

Tried to install 0 A.D. on Ubuntu on another laptop. Got an error message pointing to CompressedTextures. Needless to say, performance is laggy in the extreme. I downloaded the tar.gz. and extracted, then tried to install with sudo make install and got this: cc -Wall -pedantic -fPIC -O3 -c -o txc_compress_dxtn.o txc_compress_dxtn.c In file included from txc_compress_dxtn.c:27: txc_dxtn.h:25: fatal error: GL/gl.h: No such file or directory compilation terminated. make: *** [txc_compress_dxtn.o] Error 1 A friend said I'm missing a header that belongs to "mesa", but I have a hard time installing anything that's not just a click through the software center. Can anyone walk me through installing this? Also I was told that installing mesa will impair performance anyway, is this true?

Thanks, Nicolas!

Welcome, Pharaoh! Thanks for the kind words.

I'm with k776.

I would definitely tame the colors and try to restrict them to like a square on the left and a bottom border or something.

*ahem* ObamaCare *ahem*

If I was forced not to live in Israel, I would probably live in the USA. I was born there and I have family there. Of all the cultures and mindsets outside Israel, I understand the American mentality the best. Would probably want to live next to my relatives in NY, or next to some good research universities in Boston, or in a Mediterranean climate like southern California (like going to grad school at Stanford). If not the US, I would probably live in Canada, though Canada can be very cold in winter and that would suck. But at least most places speak English and I have some family there too. If not the US and Canada, I suppose I would live in the UK, I guess, just for the language. Wouldn't want to live in countries like France or Italy because I would always be a foreigner there and I would never really pick up on a lot of language and cultural subtleties. Plus, I can never understand the European work ethic. The Italians don't really manufacture a lot of things and they are pretty laid-back about, you know, working for a living. You know all those Italian men in their 30's and 40's who still live with their moms. I know someone who spent some time there and she says the Italians are pretty happy about bringing the renaissance to the world, and they feel that by that they have paid their dues to society. Also I think it is crazy that the French are taking to the streets and essentially bringing the country to a screeching halt for raising the retirement age from 60 to 62. I'm all for enjoying life and taking it easy, but, y'know, jeez.

We'd like to take this opportunity to say thanks for the coverage of 0 A.D. to some bloggers and websites who spread the word. First, something cool that gets extra points for being on video: Alpha 2 Bellerophon (3:05). (Evidently, without us noticing. Whoops).Next, in English: Phoronix, The H Open Source, Unixmen and more. In other languages: Usemos Linux (Spanish), OSSblog.it (Italian), ubuntuusers.de (German), ZenuX.ru (Russian), Red System (Russian), Somlói Richárd blogja (Hungarian) and more. Thanks!

We're quite flexible and we make up the rules as we go along.

Wildfire Games proudly announces the release of "0 A.D. Alpha 2 Bellerophon", the second alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. This release comes with victory conditions, fog of war, formations, a new in-game GUI and many other features that make 0 A.D. feel more like a real RTS than ever before. Who will emerge as the victor? Download and play to find out! 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. No registration, no advertising, no catch. New features in this release: Gameplay: Added fog of war; group movement and basic formations; victory conditions; health bars; hunting and fishing; population limits; repair command. Performance: Improved pathfinder performance greatly. Moved data files into a zip file for faster loading. Added automatic texture compression; Added streaming music decompression. GUI: Completely new in-game GUI. Improved minimap, added unit-following camera mode, added building rotation keys. Art: Savanna biome (terrain set, flora and fauna such as baobab and giraffes); All Celtic buildings revamped or remodeled; Greek fishing boat; Theban Sacred Band; Hellenistic Spartan Phalangite; Eyecandy such as broken and fallen columns, unfinished Greek temple, Royal Stoa, stone fence, etc. Multiple new maps and scenarios to play. 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, no resource dropsites, 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 "Bellerophon"? 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, ...). In Greek mythology, Bellerophon (pronounced buh-LEHR-uh-fun) was the hero who tamed Pegasus, a magical winged horse, and rode him, using a golden bridle given to him by the goddess Athena. Bellerophon also defeated the Amazons and slayed the Chimera, a monster with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail. As Bellerophon's fame grew, though, so did his hubris. Bellerophon felt that because of his victory over the Chimera he deserved to fly to Mount Olympus, the realm of the gods. However, this presumption angered Zeus and he sent a gad-fly to sting the horse, causing Bellerophon to fall all the way back to Earth. From then on, Pegasus would never let Bellerophon or anyone else ride him again. (Source: Wikipedia). To mark Alpha 2 Bellerophon, we included a Pegasus unit in the game. For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with C. As a loose guideline, they should have to do with at least one of the six civilizations set to be represented in the game. 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.

I would just allow a choice of different health bar color schemes, like a black and white one or a blue and yellow one or whatever.

On top of the existing openings, Wildfire Games is currently seeking volunteer contributors in two more areas: Illustrators/Graphic Designers: Draw, paint and design various parts of the game in 2d graphics within 0 A.D.'s established art direction. Please provide a portfolio - even a Photobucket slide show will do. As part of the interview process, you will have to complete a simple test project (most likely a 256x256 unit icon). Some experience with 3D modeling and animating is a plus, but not required. Video editors: Create several promotional, educational and other videos for 0 A.D.. These may include an intro scene for 0 A.D., a general promotional trailer about the basic features of the game, an ad targeted to OS developers to join the project, and videos that document the development as new releases come out, perhaps explaining how certain parts of the game mechanics work. Candidates should be able to demonstrate past work in a portfolio. 3d graphics capabilities are a plus, but most videos should be perfectly doable with 2d graphics and in-game recording. Interested? Follow these instructions to apply to join our team.

Screenie plz

The usability of these forms is terrible. (And they are usually ugly too).

I am in favor. Nimrod Mor or I can get someone to record Carthaginian sounds.

Welcome back, Anders! Please share some of your music scores or whatever else you feel can demonstrate how you can help 0 A.D.

narayanasparta, we need C++ and JavaScript.

Sounds good, give me a few days to find out what exactly we need and get back to you

Hi Andrey, I might take you up on the web dev offer. Can you tell me about some of your past work in web dev? Can you show me any of your past work?

Go for it.

I agree there's no point in having info icons if they don't work as tooltips. The red-on-grey is hard to read. Can someone implement something closer to my original mockup? (Zero margin between certain boxes, semi-transparencies closer to the mockup where the titles are a little darker and the content is much lighter). In a later stage I will gladly reproduce some images and we can keep working on this.