feneur

I've kinda guessed that from your reply to this and the Vista thread I use Linux fairly often too, so I'm also waiting for this game to be finished to have a great game to play natively on Linux

The linux beta should be around the same time the Windows and Mac versions are Might take a bit longer before there is a version for your favourite flavor due to the different ways some things are handled between distributions, but in general we'll try to make all available at roughly the same time. And I guess you mean "expect" (Unless you are against linux of course )

Thanks for the encouragement and welcome to the community! Hope you'll find it as interesting as we do

Congratulations. Hope you'll enjoy your subscriptions (And of course that you'll stay with us and follow the progress )

And your age? You need to enter your age as you need to be above 18 to enter this drawing due to legal reasons.

A better place to ask computer related questions is in the "Computer Desk" forum: http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showforum=116

Yes, unfortunately it is It would sure be easier if things wouldn't take a long time to get done and be good, but Im afraid we'll have to accept that they do, we're doing what we can to get things done though, so hopefully it won't take "forever". (It feels like that at times though, it's not exactly funny when you don't have all the time you'd like to put into a project like this, knowing that people are eagerly waiting and not being able to find more time to get things done. It's a great motivation to have an interested community though, so it's not like we're disappointed that you're interested )

As we are not near the release date yet I'd say maybe if I have to say anything (but I'd rather not say anything at all yet ). Not that we are against it in principle, but rather that we'd like to be closer to the release before making any decisions of this kind.

True, but if there are a lot of people who've registered in the last few days I'm sure we'll look closer into that, don't think I've seen that many newly registered though, most have been registered at least some months. And I guess you're right about the IP-addresses, it was just an assumption

I have two things to say : I hope that most people are honest While there might be ways to cheat I doubt that someone would spend the time it would take to creat a large number of accounts. (Especially since one would probably be able to earn the amount of money a one-year subscription costs in about that time AFAIK one can't register more than one account from the same IP-number (I might be wrong though), one needs a different email address for each and one also needs to activate the account by clicking a link in an email (unless I'm wrong, it has been some months since I registered now) and finally one needs to reply in that topic.)

I leave it to the Head of the Scenario Design to answer it definitely, but I'm almost 100% sure we'll be looking for scenario designers at some point in the future. We'll need some great scenarios to make the game as good as we want

That's nice Really cool given the limited space/frames

While I haven't really got more knowledge about it than what I learned from his lecture I'd be a bit boring and say that it most likely depended on a lot of reasons. You seem to have more knowledge about it than I do, but I'd guess at least both those theories you mention would have some truth in them. But at least from what I learned from his lecture it was not because local/germanic pottery etc was becoming more common, but rather that the quality got poorer and that less was produced which would suggest that things got worse in one way or another. If that was the skilled people moving to the Eastern Empire, or the distractions (mildly speaking) of a lot of smaller factions rather than a big empire or something else I don't have an idea, but as I said I'd suppose that it was a combination. And they're most likely connected, if the Western part of the empire is instabilized while the Eastern is getting more stabilized I'd move to the Eastern part if I'd been skilled and able to move. While I don't know that much about economy I'm not surprised that the distribution of produced goods got lower when the whole was divided into smaller parts, as each kingdom would try to do what's best for itself rather than for the common good in most cases. Even when that means less prosperity. And one thing which was clear from his lecture was that the decline in the amount of pottery produced/the length it was distributed was more obvious in parts like Britain, while it wasn't as noticeable in the Mediterranean area.

That's a lot of smoke. On that satellite image it looks as if the smoke reaches far out over the Pacific, so it's gotta be a lot. I hope things get better soon.

Thanks Bob for doing my job =) And while I haven't read your application yet I'm sure it's all well. If there are things which are unclear we can after all ask you

Wow I agree with PPE, that was truly a great introduction Keep it up While we of course can't take everything into account as the game has been some time into development and we have to simplify things for the sake of gameplay (and of course to be able to get the game finished ) we're sure interested in your thoughts. If nothing else for the sake of getting to know more about the Celts

OK, great, then my summary was good for something at least And, while I don't think he's that worried about titles and stuff it's Dr. Ward-Perkins

I'll start with saying that while I've had a general interest in history for most of my life I don't think I would have attended this lecture unless I'd been a part of WFG and thus are almost "required" to be interested in this time period So, thanks. As I said before it was a pleasure to listen to Dr. Ward-Perkins, and even though it was aimed at archeology students I didn't have much trouble understanding what he said. Now that doesn't have to mean much as I'm a bit odd and interested and I guess I am relatively good at English, but if I put it this way: He talked about pottery and it was interesting. Not necessarily in itself, but as a part of the bigger picture he was giving us. The first lecture was about the fall (and while there is quite some debate on whether it was a fall or a smooth transition, he was of the opinion that it wasn't a smooth transition, so because of that, and because I guess that's the way most people refer to it, I'll call it that) of Rome and he started by describing some of the ideas that exist on what happened and why he thinks that the change from Roman Empire wasn't a smooth transition barely noticeable, nor having any great impact on, those who lived in those days. He continued by explaining some general stuff about research and those days, but believe it or nor, the most interesting part of the lecture was when he talked about pottery. Ordinary pottery There is an explanation to that though: Few things are as easy to date, available in great quantities and also something which was used by everyone, from the society to the peasants. And as to the enormous amounts he showed us a picture of a large hill outside Rome consisting of, yeah, you guessed it: pots. Ok, so now you know that he talked about pottery, but I guess you ask what's that got to do with the fall of Rome? Well, I wish I could tell it as interestingly and convincingly as he did, but I can't, and don't remember all of it for that matter. To summarize though: According to Dr. Ward-Perkins the way pottery was produced showed a relatively dramatic difference between how it was before and after the fall of Rome. Before the fall pottery was manufactured and distributed over large distances (which might be surprising since pottery isn't exactly the most durable kind of ware), but soon (at least in archaeological terms ) after the fall the manufacture and distribution of pottery began to slow down. In some parts it was really quick, like in Britain, but around the Mediterranean it took a while longer. He talked about a lot more, but I don't remember everything, and I doubt you'd like to read too much for that matter. After all he's written a book which you can read in case you're interested. I'm seriously thinking about buying it after having heard him, not only was he interesting to listen to, but he was also “aware” if you know what I mean. He didn't just think that he knew everything or that things were easy, which I'm afraid far too many people do. And speaking about the book, which is called “The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization”, he told an interesting anecdote: The title was initially supposed to be “The Fall of Rome and the End of a Civilization”. Obviously his publisher thought that “The End of Civilization” sounded a bit more catchy, literally: as in something that makes people catch the book (ok, I admit that that was a bit lame, but please forgive as it's late when I'm writing this ). One of the more interesting things he said at the end was that, at least for areas like Britain, things were actually worse after having been part of the Roman Empire than they were before. He described how they before the Romans came along had been beginning to manufacture and distribute pottery, and had begun minting coins etc, but that it took quite a lot of time to “recover”. Which of course isn't a very revolutionary thought, if you're used to having someone else make your pottery and then that production is disrupted you'll have to begin with learning how to do things before you can continue on to more advanced stuff. I've got some more in my head, so please ask if there's something that's unclear/you'd like to know if he talked about. And while I found his second lecture interesting I guess I'll summarize it in a few lines: The first thing about comparing Rome and Constantinople is that the former has been excavated to a far greater and thus more is known about Rome than about Constantinople. It was of course more detailed than this, but in short the summary said that in terms of architecture and monuments etc it was a story about a new city trying to catch up with an old imperial city. And while Constantinople produced some great monuments and public buildings most didn't quite compare to the ones in Rome. With one major exception though, the Hagia Sofia was comparable to a lot of the old buildings in Rome, and was greater than any of similar kind i.e. churches. Also, while there really weren't any major building projects in Rome in the 4th and 5th centuries, Constantinople was full of them, so in that aspect it was “winning”. So, hope anyone found this interesting, and please understand that if things sounds strange it's most likely due to me not remembering what said as I'm sure he knows what he's talking about

Well, unfortunately you'll have to look for it some more time. I've started to write some thoughts down, but decided that right now sleep has to be a higher priority, so you'll have wait until tomorrow.

Not sure if he's touring the world, but as he's written a book on the subject, and in my opinion is a great speaker, I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case. I'll post a short review/summary of what I remember from the lectures later today for anyone who's interested to read.

Well, I'm about to go to bed to be able to get up tomorrow to listen to him again, but I just thought I'd say something about it here as I guess there are "some" people here who might have a certain interest in that time period I'll post more tomorrow if people are interested, if nothing else a short review of the two lectures. Today he gave a short lecture on the fall of the Roman Empire and explained how archaeological evidence had influenced his ideas on what happened. Tomorrow the subject will be a comparison between Rome and Constantinople unless my memory plays tricks with me And yeah, almost forgot, you can read more about him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Ward-Perkins and here: http://www.history.ox.ac.uk/staff/posthold...dperkins_br.htm

Don't worry about being tired, I am too (And one can't really tell by the rest of the post, it's really well written for being written in such a condition know from experience that things might get strange when you're tired ) And we do also want it to be finished soon, but as getting it finished in itself doesn't give us much more than the satisfaction of having finished it we do prioritize making a good game

I'm not a programmer so I don't understand it very much, but there are ideas on how to make it difficult to cheat. Few things are of course impossible, but I trust them to make it difficult enough to encourage most people to try to break it. Well, while that is possible I can't see the value of doing so. Would have to be freaks then I guess Apart from being "more open source" the only (unless they'd add other things) difference between the two versions would be the possibility to cheat, or perhaps possibly less risk of cheating depending on how such individuals would think about it. True, there might be a risk that the community would split, but personally I don't think that the number of people who would prefer such a version is large enough to make an impact on the general community. Even in such a case it wouldn't be much of a problem to us. It might be negative to the community, but our goals with this game is more about creating a great game, and making people aware of the history of this time period, than getting as much attention to our own efforts as possible or anything like that That was said by a member of our Art team, so please forgive him for not knowing everything about the code. I don't know the exact details, but of course it's the engine that will be released as open source, just not all of it. True, and of course we will not wait until we consider the game "finished" before releasing a beta, or whatever we'll name it, but still there are things we want to have finished before doing so. And regardless of whether or not the game is finished enough to release as a beta we do want to have the system setup to make use of the all the good things that comes out of it. As you state it's good for testing etc, but if we just release a beta we need to be ready to receive bug reports etc I'm not 100% sure here, but it will most likely be restricted in one way or another. At least in that people are required to give due credit. And let me finish off by saying that I personally believe that on a theoretical level any kind of restriction in distribution/reuse of ideas or material is negative as it lowers the speed of creativity. But I do also realize that most people don't like the idea of spending a lot of their time creating Art or other things and then not getting credit/someone else getting money for what they've done. So in reality I guess we need at least some level of restrictions on use. The people who create things for 0 A.D. retain copyright AFAIK, so as long as that's true (and I can't see any reason why it wouldn't be, in fact I think I've read something along these lines somewhere here, but I'm too tired to check it up right now) it's not impossible for someone who's created stuff for us to release it under any license they choose regardless of what license the stuff released with the game itself carries. That does of course also mean that we can't release media under any kind of license without their consent as all they've agreed to IIRC is that we may release it with/and with the purpose of being a part of the game.

As PPE said it depends on so many things, and it could be next year it could be the year after that, and if things are really bad even worse. So we cannot promise, or not even give any estimates. There are simply too many unknown factors. There is one thing we can promise though, and that is that we'll do our best to get it done as good and as soon as we can under the circumstances we are under. It's nice to see all the enthusiasm though, and we appreciate that. And while we frankly might get a bit tired at answering questions we've heard many times and don't know the answer for we are very happy to notice that our efforts render this interest. (And your interest is sure very motivating )

Hello ozmichael! At the moment you can't play the game, we're still developing it. Be sure you'll find info on how to get the game the day it's released though. Until then there's a lot of things you can do on this site, not only can you watch screenshots and concept art, but also read a lot of interesting history articles on this period of time. Not to forget the forum where you can take part in the discussion and meet members of the team as well as the great community interested in the game and its development.