Jeru

Those are very good ideas, mattmill30, and I intend to implement them in the next version of the website, hopefully within the next few weeks/months. Thanks and keep the ideas coming!

Thanks to your loyal support, 0 A.D. has made it to ModDB's Top 100 Indie Games of 2009! This is the second time in a row this has happened, as we made the 8th place in 2008, and it shows that lots of people share our enthusiasm about 0 A.D., which is great news. But we don't want to settle for the top 100. We want to win! Or at least reach one of the top 3 places in our category. This is important, because projects that win these awards usually get more contributor applications. That means more developers working to finish the game you can't wait for, which means you get to play the game sooner! So we'd like to ask you to take one more step to contribute to spreading the word about 0 A.D. and vote again. Here's how you can help: 1. Register for an account with ModDB if you don't have one yet. Not only does this benefit us, but grants you access to one of the most active indie development communities on the internet. Remember: Your vote doesn't count unless you have an account! 2. Open this page, scroll down to "Best Upcoming Mods and Indies" and click on "Indie Games": Then, next to 0 A.D., click on "Vote": We're counting on you guys. Together we can make it happen. Thanks in advance!

We made it to the top 100, guys! Now let's shoot for the top 3. If you have a ModDB account, please open this page, scroll down to "Best Upcoming Mods and Indies", click on "Indie Games", then next to 0 A.D. click "Vote".

Thanks for your enthusiasm, jd823592! We're glad other people are as excited about this project as we are. We are currently focused on releasing the "first part", which is essentially the big bulk of the work. The "second part" was planned many years ago and is mostly comprised of extra bells and whistles, like new civs and gameplay features. Personally I'm not sure we'll get around to it, but I think if we finish the first part, many user-contributed mods will cover that. 0 A.D. is still in pre-alpha stage. We have been making a great deal of progress under the hood over the last few months, but the engine is by no means complete.

Hi remaxim, Thanks for your interest. Someone from the music dept. will be in touch shortly.

That's interesting. Way to go. Thanks for the compliments, it's very nice to hear the kind words from someone who has so much familiarity with how games are like when they're still in development.

C++ and JavaScript

Thanks for your heartfelt message, Lysimachus. I realize you are disappointed. In a limited sense, so are we. I can practically guarantee that nobody knew it was going to take this long when the project was started. But look at the bright side. Most other projects die by this stage; Instead, we've managed to be a continuously developed project and we're still generating interest in gaming websites and new applicants even though most of the people who led the project at the get-go have either left the team entirely, handed over the keys in favor of lower-level work or are long deceased. Also, as you pointed out, it's not fair to compare us to proprietary, commercial projects. Instead, compare us to other free, open source projects. When are those "done"? Well, never. If you think there's a missing feature, or that the code can be applied for something else, there's a new version of that software, and so on, ad infinitum. In that sense, 0 A.D. isn't any less "done" than Linux or OpenOffice. And once it is "done", it can essentially live forever, so with any luck, there will be an active modding and support community and you'll never get any of those stupid general networking errors. Last but not least, instead of just complaining, think of how you can help matters. Can you help with any of our openings? Do you know anyone who might be interested in joining the team? Can you reach out to those people? Even putting up a poster at a local university or sending e-mails to local FOSS mailing list could make a world of difference. Help us get the game done and you'll get to play with it sooner.

Registered and voted. Thanks for the heads up.

Thanks for the interest, jocamar. I'll just expand a little bit on feneur's last answer: We've been working on this game for years and have absolutely no clue when this game will be finished. The more developers we have on board, the faster it will be.

I never had to compile pyrogenesis

I'm as big of a fan of a good story as the next guy, but I reiterate, the central consideration behind the tutorial campaign will be learning. Everything else is secondary. Of course everyone will be welcome to make their own campaigns - just as the AoE editor has been used for creating many visual effects, puzzle games etc. Also - re: "we can't expect the programmers to be able to do all of this" - programmers won't be insomuch the bottleneck for implementing this scenario or that campaign, as they deal with more important, overarching features of the game in general.

There was a big, big argument about Lua vs. Python at the time. JavaScript was chosen as sort of a compromise, AFAIK.

Norway is a petroleum exporter. Not everyone is so lucky.

Indefinitely on hold. 0 A.D. will be some years off, and activity on TLA has been next to nothing for a while. In the meantime, the content is free to use for whatever purpose, and everyone is invited to contribute.

I think so. We've had some new contributors to the project, and even one bug fix here and there brings us closer to a finished game. None of these "lite" contributors could ever have got a look at the code, much less suggest how to improve it, when it was closed source. I think 0 A.D.'s graphics speak for themselves. I'm not exactly an expert on PC games, but for an indie project I'm guessing 0 A.D.'s graphics are relatively off the charts and probably will be for a while.

Probably still more 1-3 years. The more staffers we have, the sooner the game will be done, so spread the word!

Glad you had a nice road trip, ZeZar. The only reason Europeans have symbols on their signs is because they want them to be readable even for foreigners. In Israel, signs are trilingual (Hebrew-Arabic-English) but translating each sign to the 15+ official languages of the EU is impractical.

Probable system requirements can be found here?. We hope going open-source will hasten the completion of the game and it was part of the reason that was done. However, it is just one contributing factor out of many.

Mine? It's fake, I just drew it as a concept in Photoshop.

Yep, I grabbed the article about the Hellenes and made my own variations

I agree with almost everything. (Fonts and colors should be uniform IMHO). Just wanted to remark there's more to this than just art, it's supposed to be a design that people find easy to understand and useful. I think users are not likely to refer often to the history of each civ but they may very well want to double-check one of the civ bonuses. Hence I took away from the "screen real estate" for the history section and placed it at the bottom.

BadassTester, I have read a little bit about this but I am eager to learn more. Could you write a little further explanation and direct me to some resources on this topic? Thanks.

Just wanted to suggest these changes: Hovering with the mouse over "i" should enable a tooltip, like I tried to show with the Oracle of Delphi technology.

My only comment is usability-related. This is nothing less than great for new players but after a few games there should be an opt-out option. Also there is a big difference between historical background, which is pure education/entertainment, and the civ bonuses, which is important info for decision-making that new players may want at their fingertips even when they become experienced players. So maybe some sort of three-tiered system is worth thinking about - One that's fastest but least informative (like the current version), one that's most complete (like what you're proposing) and one that provides quick reference, or a cheat sheet. (Think the cheat sheet that shows up in Google Reader when you hit the question mark).