Aeros

Regarding the drama, I'd like to point out that 0 A.D. has never officially gone on a public press release. We have put up some humble snippets and the general gist of what we are doing to the public but never gone on an all out marketing campaign to attract fans that want to play a quality RTS game for free. Why? Because we don't actually have the game we are promising them yet.... you see... .... , it takes time to throw 500,000 lines of code together (and make it work!), as well as time to create an estimated 2,000 textures and 1,000 models for the game (more if we can muster it), time to compose hours of music and hundreds of sound effects, not to mention one of the hardest tasks in the world to manage this efficiently over the internet, type up 600 pages of design document with many thousands of more pages of discussion online, and then distribute all the tasks among members, work around their schedule - forget the meaning of a deadline (the laws of the 0 A.D. universe make deadlines an impossibility without working full time) All the people on this forum have picked up on 0AD from very discrete hearsay and "word of mouth" on the internet. We can bring in thousands of fans into these forums, the reason why we haven't yet is because there is no point in getting everyone hyped up just so we can tell them "well we're still working on it and it takes a long time because no one has ever done this before, not even us, so please wait until its done." We know this All I'm trying to say is, is it that unreasonable what we're trying to accomplish? This isn't easy. Every single person who joined this team with the intent of finishing this project will agree that this is the hardest undertaking they have ever attempted, and are still attempting. Its not like we're just sitting around luring people with an elaborate hoax just so we can slander them with images of calculator programs on our forums. I believe this subject of debate is finished but I simply want to chip in saying that we never sought out a fan-base, that would be one of the worst moves in PR ever if we went public with a press release when we have 4 more years of development time to dish out. We know fully well that people will become disappointed for waiting so long, I don't blame you Achilles, infact this response was one of the most predictable from a devoted fan, if anything it can be seen as a compliment that we have managed (without doing anything but news updates) to gain an immense amount of respect from someone, to the point where they start to forget exactly who we are and why we are doing this. I understand what you mean fully, its frustrating, its annoying, its even seen as inconsiderate of us to not release an update for a month...it makes it seem like we just twiddle our thumbs and play minesweeper all day long because. Trust us, we know what our fans think more than you imagine. We're glad you are so interested and are waiting so long to play this game. But... Try to imagine how much we want to play it too. If you want to take a break from the forums by all means do so, this is a very quiet place either way, but it is after all available to our supporters who are here to help in whatever way they can, down to the simple yet vital action of giving feedback on progress and sharing their ideas with us. Believe it or not but in this way you take part of the development of the game too, there are many ideas from fans that we have seriously considered or planned to implement...yet at the same time, many ideas people give we've actually already thought of years ago and have elaborated on much more...this phenomonen is much more common and it always makes me smile knowing we really have thought this all through so well... When it comes time for playing....when 0ad gets closer to the door, you won't have any trouble at all hearing about it, don't worry about that! 6 months before we release and it starts looking like we're nearly there thats when we'll go full out letting everyone know about our game, where to get it, why its free, and just exactly what we were doing for 6 years, and how we did it (I want to write some literature after the game is done how we all managed to pull this off, I've been collected images of production since I joined, I've got 300 or so :-P). Now don't go saying you've been waiting 4 years for this game, thats not true. You've been minding your own business living your life day to day, playing a few video games, hanging out with friends, going to school, wasting time doing math homework, seeing movies occasionally, and so on. You don't actually sit on your computer connected in IRC, MSN, SVNs and forums with a group of people contributing 20-30 hours a week thinking that maybe if you work 2,000 to 3,000 more hours the game will be nearly complete. We are the ones who know there is no such thing as 0AD unless we maintain this discipline and work ethic. Now 15 to 30 hours is alot... in reality it can waver from 5 hours a week to up to 40 hours for some members - but I want to point out that this 15 to 30 hours is the equivalent of a part time job. A part time job to people who have full time jobs, full time school, and full time relationships. The only people who trully have been waiting this long for the game is us, on a daily basis we're reminded of how much is left to do, and better yet, how much we've already passed. We understand your dissapointment, I mean its downright outrageous that two dozen people are working daily for 3 years without any compensation to make a free game for you and they won't even tell you how long it'll take because they don't know... but I won't hesitate to tell you personally, [from me, not my association with WFG] that it wouldn't be a bad thing if you were abit more modest towards this team's efforts and vision Gaging from the personal responses from nearly half the development team I think it shows just how much we care to try to ease the mind of one understandably disgruntled fan, and might I say a notably enthusiastic one at that. Don't think for one second that this team doesn't know what you guys are feeling, everyone here watches and values the feedback you fans provide, and I already know you guys are well aware of that judging from our responses and discussions all done on very short notice. We know how much you anticipate the game, and if you've been here for more than 6 months we very likely know your opinions and ideas/expectations too. But when some weird feelings like this show up and someone doesn't have the same amount of respect for us, we just remind them that all we need is to understand eachother. We understand where the fans are comming from, but we ask our fans to understand where we're comming from too, I for one am just an 18 year old highschool student coming from a small suburban city in the mountains north of Los Angeles sitting in a little black chair facing my desk next to my bed, currently being pestered on the phone by my girlfriend to finish up what "work" I'm doing so I can talk to her and say goodnight at around 12:00AM this friday night, 2 hours after I came back from a 6 hour work day and an 8 hour school day ...To exclusively spend an hour to address you, Achilles You can't forget we're real people too, man And with that I think this debate is concluded, if there are more issues kindly send a PM or try and catch one of us on MSN messenger.

We had talked about making one a while ago, but it all comes down to finding someone who wants to do it

Maxxdark we can do that sure, just will you be willing to buy a geforce 8800 for $650 to play the game, just so you can see individual fingers and facial features?

http://www.wontonway.com/microwave/microwave.html

Nano particles are now availible for purchase at http://www.nanoamor.com/nanoparticles. 1 micrometer starting, up to 200 micrometers.

I know, I saw 15 replies and decided to check it because I thought some crazy discussion was going on in here. But nah, just font piracy

What kind of snide remark was that, I've been away from this project for 3 months exactly because of school, 30 hour work weeks, a girlfriend, and getting signed with a label to release my music. I miss 0AD

Well, just to be devil's advocate - most of our donors and potential donors are people in our own team. Its like we pay money to make this free game for you . I'm actually gonna drop about $100 soon, as soon as I open up a paypal. But no trust us, we all know exactly how you feel. Don't worry guys

Bruno movie?! Linkz plz

If people are interested at this stage in modding for 0ad, we instead strongly urge these people to continue their practices and to get start expiramenting with 3d modelling software, and then to apply to join the team as an artist It is not impossible to learn to do this art, I'm just about 18 years old and have done (or did ) a large majority of the terrains and natural art for the game, and when I joined at age 15 I had no art skills whatsoever besides some small-scale modding with Age of Mythology. All I had was the persistance and an unsane desire to see this game finished - I was definately a fan before I joined, being aware of the project since its 2001 AoK mod days. Interested modders would be much happier joining the game and contributing to it at this stage. Any people interested in making other mods - my estimate is the best time for that will be when we aproach beta and the gameplay and technical aspects of 0AD will start to be secured and finalized.

I'm of the same opinion as HistoryGuy (you can see why we've had alot of debate now, hehe) The conclusion we settled on is that this is a good idea but its not a good investment of time. We have to take the time to strip down the engine and slap it back together in minimal form enough to render units other tidbits...which in all honesty is not going to be that impressive or powerful. Additioanlly people will then demand support for this tool and demand updates which will take more time away from the important development of the game and ultimately I think people will be happier with something more feature complete. Now thats not to say that a unit viewer or a tech demo for modders won't be released down the line That in itself is a good idea, just not at this exact current time.

I'd like to point out that you shouldn't expect anything more from the screenshots than what the game currently looks like. Take a look at this screenshot from when production started 2 years ago. (from the Journey into the Third Dimension article on our Team Diaries Section The art especially sees alot of change in the game, constantly being fine-tuned and updated until we get to a level of detail that we are happy with.

Quite abit General rule is if your computer is fairly modern, you can play it. We would like to support older cards as we promised, and the game is allegedly going to work on Linux so we are going to try and match older hardware, but generally speaking we've added alot of features to the graphics engine that require quite abit of power to run. Effectively you are seeing what we anticipate as what graphics will be like in 2007 or 2008, depending on how long we work we'll continue to update them to what pleases our eye and what our engine is capable of running. Its gone a long way since 2 years ago when the game looked like this http://www.wildfiregames.com/~art/cheezy/s..._screenshot.jpg <--- and that literally is 2 years ago when development had just started.

We fully expect devoted fans to become dissapointed at us not being able to meet certain expectations or deadlines, its flattering in a way. I would like to remind you of who we are though. Take you, yourself. Take your passion for history and your passion for RTS. Add Game devloping skills. Add college life, social life, school or work life. What does that equal? WFG Staff I'm sitting here on my 18 year old butt in the process for applying to colleges while browsing the internet, and, I sincerely and dearly appologize I'm not availible right now to work on this game without any sort of compensation to deliver it iin retail quality in time and for free into your hands for your own gaming pleasure We are happy with what we do and our progress and we understand how people can come to expect this title, but realistically I'm sitting here on my home computer on my desk, next to my textbooks, while on the phone with my girlfriend and while getting my bed ready and I know full well we aren't anywhere close to a proffesional game developer, we are nothing like that and its unrealistic to expect anything like that from us, we simply aren't that way. As for what separates me from you, Achillies, in terms of how I have access to the game and how I work on it...really all that separates me and you is some motivation and a few passwords and acquaintances. I log onto this same site in order to "work" on our beloved 0 A.D. We are simply a widley diverse group of people who are extremely passionate about our tallents and hobby and who have stuck with this for years and are detirmined to see through our vision for this game. Currently I am amazed with our flora art, its reached a state where it is equal to my vision for it years ago, its better than any natural art I've seen in any game to date. Yes, better than oblivion - atleast for our field of view in the game. I'm really proud of this team and our progress Its nothing short of amazing how this team even exists, let alone how it manages to work.

Thats kind of what we use them for too

Hiking in the mountains...day or night is fine Thats where you trully can feel alone and to yourself...thousands of feet up in the air above everyone else's BS

Try contacting the original artists...if its for personal use It might be fine...if you plan on using it for something public or anything else...not sure, we need details

Besides for 2 people, what is the interest in this?

This question gets asked very often, I wonder if we should make a sticky thread or put an FAQ somewhere answering this question? Its been discussed very thuroughly and right now there are no plans to make the game open sourced...if you are interested enough to want to see it, find a way to contribute to the programming department and join to work with it hands on

Many of us started out by first modding existing games. Wildfire Games used to be WildFire Studios before 2002 when it was a mere modding team for Age of Kings. Become interested in modding, make a few things, and you have the basic foundation for the skills you need to be able to contribute to this project in a more physical way.

Never say never, I was 15 when I joined almost 3 years ago and I do a majority of the natural art in the game

I had this idea long ago...that certain objects you could collect more than one resource from them. I was thinking of orchards...I'm not sure if this will be in direct gameplay but I still definately would like to have fruit trees and other multiple resource objects in the game. You can expect to see these in the campaign...definately a nice detail that I think people will enjoy to discover

On the main site, to the left and down abit we have selections of our revision log posts http://wildfiregames.com/0ad/ showing who has done what changes to the game...although its not been updating since we switched to a different server.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUaWRW0GI9Y...racked%20pepper Found these guys a while ago, check out more clips from their show over here, its a rate nice pie http://www.youtube.com/results?search=chas...e=search_videos