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Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of "0 A.D. Alpha 7 Geronium", the seventh alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. This alpha debuts Carthage, a mighty, versatile naval civilization, includes a dynamic border game mechanic, a new main menu and several new music tracks featuring live performances by professional musicians. 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 "freemium" model, no in-game advertising, no catch. Top new features in this release: All-new dynamic territory design. Territories change throughout the game based upon the structures built by the players. Each structure has a "weight" given to it and a radius within which this weight has an effect based on the importance of that building, and these values affect borders proportionally. If one of a player's buildings falls into enemy territory due to shifting borders, then that building is planned to slowly lose loyalty until finally converting over to the enemy's side. (In the meantime, in 0 A.D. Alpha 7 it loses health instead, until it is destroyed.) This can be stopped and slowly reversed if the border shifts and the building comes back to the player's side. Screenshot of Hellenes (red) engaging in combat with Carthaginians (blue) across a dynamically rendered border. CC BY SA Wildfire Games. An all-new and unique Carthaginian civilization, including: Revamped and rebalanced units. A completely remodeled navy from the ground up. New docks, Iberian, Celt, and Italian embassies, walls, and civic center. Dozens of new shields, helmets, and props. New Easter Egg objects, including a Tophet structure, Samnite warriors, and the Sacred Band of Ba'al. First from top left: 1. Civic Center; 2. Temple; 3. Farmstead; 4. Corral; 5. Fortress; 6. Outpost/Scout Tower; 7. Houses; 8. Mill; 9. Italic Embassy; 10. Iberian Embassy; 11. Celtic Embassy; 12. Barracks; 13. Tophet (An "Easter Egg" structure for the Carthaginians) 14. Market, 15. Commercial Port, 16. Naval Shipyard. Second picture: Another shot of a Carthaginian city in 0 A.D. Third picture: Hellenic (blue stars on sails, rowboat) and Carthaginian ships (all the rest). Fourth picture: Carthaginian land units. All works CC BY SA Wildfire Games. [*] A brand new main menu design with new dynamic background, depicting the Spartan tradition of mothers sending off their sons to battle, telling them to come back either with their shield or on it. (Thanks, dashinvaine!). The menu and UI graphics have all been converted to the new style. The new 0 A.D. main menu screen. CC BY SA Wildfire Games. [*] Music and Sound: Several new tracks, all composed and directed by Omri Lahav, most featuring live percussion and flute segments (Thanks, percussionist Dror Parker and flutist Marta Mc'cave!): Brand new 0 A.D. main theme, "Honor Bound", to go with our new menu. Carthaginian peace tracks "Peaks of Atlas" and "Mediterranean Waves", featuring live percussion with a North African feel. "Dried Tears" defeat music track. Re-done Hellenic peace track, "Forging a City-State", with awesome flute improvisation segment. [*] 100+ new sound effects from the DynamiteSoundBytes team, dozens of them audible in-game. <iframe width="300" height="410" style="position: relative; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; display: block; width: 300px; height: 410px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/album=3237142056/size=grande3/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0"><a href="http://play0ad.bandcamp.com/album/0-a-d-soundtrack">0 A.D. Soundtrack by Omri Lahav</a></iframe> [*] New maps: Carthaginians Sandbox (Demo Map); Siwa Oasis; Cycladic Archipelago IV; Gallic Fields; Migration (Thanks, SMST, NOXAS1, and Yodaspirine!) Screenshot of the Siwa Oasis map. CC BY SA Wildfire Games. [*] Miscellaneous: New Palisade objects, including wall segments, gates, towers, and spikes; Lion, Lioness, Infant Giraffe, and Giraffe death animations (Thanks, Athos!); A new "Islands" Random Map Script (Thanks, howlingflute!); An all-new Roman Triumphal Arch Easter Egg object (Thank you, Brightgalrs!); A LOTR-like Elven ship Easter Egg object (Thanks, Shield Bearer!). Elven ship Easter Egg object. CC BY SA Wildfire Games. Please contribute! (REPORTERS/BLOGGERS, PLEASE MENTION THIS! We need your help to finish the game. Thanks.) We are seeking contributors in programming, art, sound, web design, taking YouTube videos and more. These roles on the 0 A.D. development team are great if you want to brush up on your skills and update your portfolio, if you're seeking a project for school with real-life applications, or if you care about the cause of free culture and software and are willing to work pro bono with a group of dedicated volunteers from all over the world. Interested? Please register on our forums and start a new topic introducing yourself in the applications and contributions forum following these instructions. Who were the Carthaginians? The Carthaginians, or Punics, were an ancient civilization centered on the Phoenician city-state of Carthage, located outside what is now Tunis, Tunisia. The Carthaginian culture is one of the most mysterious of ancient times. Little remains of the Punics' literature and none of their history, except what was recorded by their bitter enemies the Greeks and Romans. From these sources we deduce that Carthage was originally founded by Phoenician nobility from Tyre, a city in modern-day Lebanon, and it gained independence around 650 BC. Carthage soon became a formidable force in the western Mediterranean, eventually taking over much of North Africa and modern-day Spain. Over time, Carthage established a network of some 300 colonies and many tributary states, and forged exclusive trading rights agreements with various partners, effectively turning it into an economic powerhouse. First picture: Bilingual Latin and Punic inscription in Leptis Magna, modern-day Libya. CC BY NC SA Sebastia Giralt. Second picture: Punic inscription, modern-day Tunisia. CC BY NC SA cons. maximus. Carthage was remarkable in other respects as well: Its political system was a mix of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, which relied on a system of checks and balances and ensured a form of public accountability; It had a pantheon of several interesting gods, including Ba'al, Ishtar and Tanit; And it posed a formidable military force, with several great differences between its ground forces and its navy. Carthaginian ruins with Tanit symbol in modern-day Tunisia. CC BY Neil Rickards. Carthage's ground forces were primarily made up of allied peoples and mercenaries, including Libyans, Numidians, Iberians and sometimes Greeks. Carthaginian citizens served in the ground forces almost exclusively as officers, and were only required to serve as infantry in special cases. This ethnic divide led to a deep suspicion of the ground forces among the Carthaginian elite. The Carthaginian navy was quite a different matter, though, as sailors were often recruited from the lower classes of Punic citizenry, which provided them with a stable income and career. No doubt, this contributed to Carthage going down in history as having one of the largest and strongest navies of ancient times. Carthage went to war several times with Rome in a series of events that came to be called the Punic Wars. The First Punic War was a clash with Greeks and Romans over control of Sicily. By its end in 241 BC, however, Carthage had lost Sicily to Rome. Corsica and Sardinia soon followed. Later, Carthage conquered Hispania, sparking what would come to be known as the the Second Punic War (218 BC – 201 BC). By the end of the war, Hannibal had crossed the Alps in attempt to invade Italy from the north, and he had resoundingly defeated the Roman army in several battles, but never achieved the ultimate goal of causing a political break between Rome and its allies. Eventually, the war was taken to Africa, where Carthage was defeated at the Battle of Zama by Roman general Scipio Africanus. The end of the war saw Carthage's control reduced to the city itself. Carthage's vast area of influence was gone. Carthaginian dependencies and protectorates through the Punic Wars. In the fifty years since the Second Punic War, Carthage visibly restored some of its wealth and martial power, yet was still a client state of Rome. A weak Carthage was arm-twisted by Rome to go to war and undergo an extended siege, ending in the city's thorough destruction, in a conflict now known as Third Punic War (149–146 BC). All remaining Carthaginian territory was annexed by Rome, and over 50,000 people of Carthage were captured and enslaved. Thus, the Third Punic War ended Carthage's independent existence. The Punic language and ethnicity continued in other Punic cities, however. Records of people speaking Punic date as late as the days of Christian theologian St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), suggesting that Punic cultural identity survived centuries of foreign conquest. In 0 A.D. the Carthaginians will have many bonuses that match their historic strengths. These include: The widest selection of units - Because Carthage always relied on mercenaries to make up the bulk of their forces. The Carthaginians can build Iberian, Celtic, and Italian embassies, which are specialized barracks for mercenaries of these tribes. The strongest walls - Because of Carthage's famous triple walls. The strongest navy - Because of the historical dominance of Carthage on the sea-lanes. More profitable trading - Because of the stranglehold Carthage had over trade in the western Mediterranean. (Sources: Israel Shatzman: A History of the Roman Republic (Hebrew); English Wikipedia: Ancient Carthage; English Wikipedia: Punic Wars, English Wikipedia: Punics. Thanks, Dor Ben-Ari!) Why "Geronium"? 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 honor of the release of the Carthaginian faction, we decided to dub Alpha 7 "Geronium". (Thanks, mrjeremister!) Geronium was the site of a battle in the Second Punic War, in which Carthage, led by Hannibal, won a small tactical victory against Rome in 217 BC. The Carthaginians had cut a swath of destruction in their southward march from the Alps throughout the Italian peninsula, ravaging farms and property, and collecting provisions and prisoners as they moved. They were followed by a Roman army that mostly avoided open confrontation in pitched battles in favor of a war of attrition designed to wear the Punic army down. (This tactic was highly unpopular in Roman political circles.) Location of the Molise region in modern-day Italy. Geronium was a village within this area. By 217 BC, Hannibal reached near the modern-day village of Casacalenda, in what is now the Molise region in Italy, and took over a town named Geronium, using it as the Carthaginian winter quarters, while setting up a forward camp next to the Roman forces. As the Roman general was summoned to Rome to defend his tactics under the guise of a religious obligation, his army was left under the command of his deputy. Under the deputy's command, Rome managed to kill many Carthaginian foragers trying to stock up for winter, leading to a Carthaginian retreat from their forward camp. This was rewarded in Rome by promoting the deputy to an equal rank to that of his general, which caused an internal division within the Roman army. In the Battle of Geronium, Hannibal and his forces laid an elaborate trap and successfully attacked one part of the Roman army, mauling it severely. The Roman forces, however, promptly received reinforcements from the other part. Both Romans and Carthaginians retreated, and only small skirmishes between the sides followed throughout the winter. As for the remainder of the war, this battle had less significance than the subsequent resounding defeat of the Romans in the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC, one of the greatest tactical feats in military history. (Source: English Wikipedia: Battle of Geronium. Thanks, Nicola Albanese!) For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter H. Keep it original and within the 0 A.D. time-frame (appx. 500 BC - 1 BC)! Long Time, No Siege Wildfire Games will keep releasing new versions of 0 A.D. from time to time. Watch our news feed to get updates, 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. Contact info for press, bloggers, etc.: aviv@wildfirePHALANXgames.com without the name of the ancient Greek military formation written in all caps.

In Alpha 26 due lack of Atlas testers we have a minor bug (doesn't affect you if you don't paint terrain in Atlas). The bug is terrain textures previews are blurried: To fix that you need to download and install the attached mod. Note: you need to put the mod before the public mod in the enabled mods list to make the fix working: a26-fix-atlas.1.pyromod Reported only after release here:

https://play0ad.com/new-release-0-a-d-alpha-26-zhuangzi/

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, is happy to announce the re-release of 0 A.D. Alpha 25 “Yaunā”, the twenty-fifth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source real-time strategy game of ancient warfare. This version is a maintenance release. Gameplay remains untouched and both versions of Alpha 25 remain multiplayer-compatible. We strongly advise you however to upgrade to benefit of the following fixes: Ranked matches did not longer grant points in the lobby. Mod installation no longer require restart. Mod installation no longer prints errors when installing mods by double-clicking Mod installation now overwrites the existing mods to allow for easier updates. Fishes are now easier to spot on lowest settings with the addition of seagulls. The team wishes to apologize for the inconvenience and hopes you will be enjoying your time playing 0 A.D: Empires Ascendant.

Wildfire Games proudly announces the release of 0AD Alpha 25: “Yaunã,” the twenty-fifth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source real-time strategy game of ancient warfare. Yaunã is an old Persian word for Ionians (Greeks). Trailers YouTube: New Features in Alpha 25 Pathfinding And Netcode Improvements – Improved Pathfinding, Performance And Reduced Game Lag Order Restructuring – Players Can Now Push New Orders To The Front Of Their Production Queues Improved Unit AI New Biomes Incorporating New 2k Textures And Normal/Specular Maps Initial Implementation Of Single Player Campaigns GUI Improvements Extended Graphics Options Improved Mod Support And Game Filtering In The Multiplayer Lobby Ongoing Civilization Balancing Various Other Game Stability Bug Fixes And Speedups Easy download and install Download and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux and macOS. 0 A.D. is free software. This means you are free to download, redistribute, modify and contribute to the application under the same licences: GNU Public Licence version 2 (GPL v2) for code and Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 (CC-BY-SA 3.0) for artwork. Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to download 0 A.D. completely gratis, directly from the developers. No “freemium” model, no in-game advertising, no catch. See https://play0ad.com/new-release-0-a-d-alpha-25-yauna/ for full details and downloads

The wait is almost over! 0 A.D. Alpha 25 “Yaunã," will officially be released tomorrow, Sunday 8th August 2021. The release of various versions and distributions will be staggered throughout the course of the day and the official release announcement will appear on the main 0 A.D. website and then echoed out through the 0AD forum and social media channels shortly afterwards. play0ad.com/ *Be aware, some distributions may not be available immediately, full release may occur over the subsequent days.*

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of 0 A.D. Alpha 24: “Xšayāršā” (pronounced: Khsha-ya-ṛsha), the twenty-fourth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source real-time strategy game of ancient warfare. The release is named after Xerxes the Great, ruler of the Achaemenid Empire from 485 to 465 BC. Youtube: PeerTube:  Easy download and install Download and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux and macOS. 0 A.D. is free software. This means you are free to download, redistribute, modify and contribute to the application under the same licences: GNU Public Licence version 2 (GPL v2) for code and Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 (CC-BY-SA 3.0) for artwork. Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to download 0 A.D. completely gratis, directly from the developers. No “freemium” model, no in-game advertising, no catch. Top new features Balancing adjustments Building snapping Renderer improvements Hotkey editor Formation improvements Status effects (and modifiers) World population setting Lobby improvements In-game user interface (GUI) improvements Unit behaviour improvements Reinforcement-learning interface Art: new models New Skirmish maps Under the hood Balancing adjustments With the help of several of the top-ranked players in the A23 lobby, hundreds of balance tweaks have been made in the past year and almost all units and structures have been adjusted. The end result is a sleeker, more balanced gameplay experience in A24: Civilisations have been rebalanced, giving players more viable choices. Late-game has been reworked substantially, with less snowballing and more viable champions, which means more variety. Heroes can only be trained once per game, so you’ll have to know when to use them. All civilisations now have a stable, for training cavalry and chariots, and an arsenal, for constructing siege engines. Fortresses can no longer train soldiers but have a territory root, making them more defensive structures and better at protecting your base. Female Citizens and Citizen Soldiers can now place the foundations of all structures. Many, many other small tweaks and corrections. Building snapping City-building fans will enjoy this new option: you can now easily place buildings next to each other with snapping! This functionality can be toggled with Ctrl, and you can choose whether you want it on or off by default, so it is, as always, up to you. Renderer improvements This release introduces anti-aliasing in the renderer: you can choose between no anti-aliasing, FXAA and various levels of MSAA, if you have the GPU power for it. A Contrast Adaptive Sharpening filter has also been added to the engine. For using these options we recommend your system supports OpenGL 3.3 or later versions. The ocean shader also received some tweaks, most importantly near the edges of the map, which now looks better Hotkey editor This new in-game editor will make it much more accessible to change your hotkeys. Further, the hotkeys have been reworked to use scancodes, so the default hotkeys will be compatible with any keyboard layout! Formation improvements Alpha 24 gives you new tools to work with formations: you can now pick a default formation to put your units in when given “Walk” and “Patrol” orders, and you can also choose to automatically disband formations when your units are ordered to Attack or Gather, etc. Status effects (and modifiers) Modders will like this one: you can now give status effects to your units, changing their stats in various ways. Stat modifiers can also be applied directly by triggers and in other ways, without having to hack around auras or technologies. 0 A.D. does not yet use them much, but this really gives you more power to make new custom maps and custom game-modes without having to create a lot of new templates, e.g., tower defence mods. World population setting Despite our best efforts, the game can still lag when there are a lot of units on the map. World Pop (Population) gives you one way to still have epic fights but good performance: choose a maximum total pop which. When one player is defeated, their share is distributed among the remaining players. Start a 4v4 with 150 pop-limit each, and the last 2 players can have 600 pop between them! Will you keep that poor enemy alive to hinder your opponent or can you use the extra population capacity? Lobby improvements This was requested a lot: you can now host password-protected games in the lobby! This makes it easy to play with your friends without having to find your external IP or setting up your router. Further, we’ve also improved your security by hiding the host IP until players have successfully joined your game, which drastically reduces the risk of DDOS by hostile players. In-game user interface (GUI) improvements We strive to make the game more accessible and easier to use, and this release is no different: You can easily see your number of active gatherers under the resource count. An overlay with ceasefire time has been added so you don’t get caught out. Tooltips in general have been significantly improved, in particular the resource gathering rates. Map browser For those looking for an alternate way of picking a map to play, Alpha 24 introduces the "Map Browser". Accessible from a button in the Match Setup interface, users can navigate through maps a little more intuitively than using a dropdown menu. Catafalque overview Those who play the “Relic Capture” gamemode will no doubt be aware that the "relics" in question are Catafalques - reliquaries of dead heroes encapsulated within wheeled carts - and each of these has a small selection of beneficial auras. Alpha 24 introduces a "Catafalque Overview" screen, accessible from the "Learn to Play" submenu of the Main Menu, which makes it easy to learn their different characteristics. Civilization overview The long-existing “Civilization Overview” screen has had some background improvements. Because most of the information is now pulled from the game files, it is now considerably more accurate than in previous Alphas. Game set-up There have been a few added capabilities to the game setup, such as choosing the landscape of random maps when several are available, and a more obvious indicator that the game will be Rated for Online Play. Unit behaviour improvements This alpha improves on many small things: Ship pickup has been improved and should require less micromanagement. Units no longer ‘slide’ at the end of their movement, and movement in general has been improved, with far fewer cases of units being stuck. Cheering has been reworked: instead of cheering when receiving a promotion, units now cheer when all enemy units in sight have been defeated. If you’ve played MP, you might have seen an annoying strategy called ‘Dancing’ where enemy units would easily avoid arrow fire and force you to micromanage your archers. This is no longer possible, making the game more fun for all players. Packing/Unpacking behaviour has been improved. Reinforcement-learning interface Reinforcement learning is a Machine Learning technique that can be used to train AI to play games, and now 0 A.D. has one. We’re excited about this new possibility, because the extensive and easy moddability of the game means you could set up many kinds of complex environments and RL agents without having to recode everything from scratch. We invite any AI developers, researchers or anybody else to help with our AI. More could be found in here. Art: new models The new art developments are too numerous to list individually, and include reworked meshes, animations (including new idle, attack, defence and gather animations), textures and materials for a large number of units, as well as new models, including new horse models, textures and animations, new shield models and designs, new helmet models and variants, especially for the Romans, Gauls, Britons and Greek civs. Many new and improved unit textures, weapons and props for a number of civs including, among others, the Persians, Iberians and Carthaginians. The Ptolemies now have a few more historically accurate Hellenized building models and the Britons have a new blacksmith, while the Gauls have a new, more historically accurate wonder and an assembly building that can train trumpeters to intimidate the enemy. New scaffolding, dirt and decal textures for buildings have been added. Many of the ships in-game have been entirely remodeled from the ground up. Siege artillery has been completely remodeled as well, including considerably improved animations. There is also a lot of new and improved flora, including trees, bushes and grasses. We have new cliffs, new particle actors for snow and clouds and a few new terrain textures, as well as new sounds, and voices. There is a brand new welcome screen, and there are also many improved icons, and unit portraits for the GUI. This is in addition to a myriad of smaller fixes, corrections and optimizations. For more screenshots and details on the new art in this release, see our last two development reports here and here. New maps 0 A.D. Alpha 24 has been enriched with 7 new skirmish maps. Atlas Valleys, Farmland, Obedska Bog (day/night), Oceanside, Sahyadri Buttes, Temperate Roadway, Vesuvius Under the hood New Requirements: Windows XP, Windows Vista, and anything below macOS 10.12 are no longer supported. The game also now requires SSE2. Furthermore, while ARM macs are supported, unfortunately the code running on them isn’t native yet, so users on this platform should expect a performance loss. Several modules of the game have been partly rewritten or extensively modified for Alpha 24, which will make them work better and make it easier to extend them in the future. Notable examples include the GUI GameSetup pages, the UnitMotion component, and the renderer has seen plenty of changes with the removal of the OpenGL 1.0, 90’s style “Fixed-Point” pipeline. Which in turn raised the lowest supported version to OpenGL 2.0. In addition, we started to fully use the ARB shader pipeline.(Modders, all of this means you will also find there are plenty of new cool things you can do!) Alpha 24 sees the adoption of Visual Studio 2017 as the main Windows compiler (Alpha 23B had Visual Studio 2013) , and we have upgraded our version of C++ standard from C++11 to C++17, allowing us to write faster and cleaner code. This release also saw major upgrades to many core libraries we use. Alpha 23 was released with Spidermonkey 38, released alongside Firefox 38 in May 2015. This time, we’ve upgraded to the last “ESR” version, Spidermonkey 78, released in June 2020! This means we can use newer Javascript syntax, and the engine bindings have been upgraded. Other libraries have been updated on macOS and Windows, which let us support more platforms but also required us to drop some. The name Xšayāršā Xšayāršā (pronounced Khsha-ya-ṛsha; IPA: /xʃajaːr̩ʃaː/) is a transcription of the Old Persian name (x-š-y-a-r-š-a), better known by its Greek spelling: Xerxēs. Xerxes I the Great was the ruler of the Achaemenid Empire from 485 to 465 BC. We decided to name Alpha 24 after this inspiring ancient ruler to celebrate the ancient Persian civilisation, and to reflect upcoming changes in the internal governance structure of 0 A.D. The Persian Empire was considerably larger than any preceding state anywhere in the world, and its administration system would have a long-lasting impact. It consisted of about two dozen satrapies (provinces), which were former kingdoms or conquered peoples. Each satrapy was headed by a satrap (governor or viceroy) and supplied the Persian King of Kings (emperor) with a yearly tribute and troops, but were internally largely autonomous. This organisation outlived the Achaemenids and was continued under the Macedonians, Seleucids, and Arsacids (Parthians). Xerxes inherited the empire from his father Darius I the Great. He continued his father’s reforms and expanded the imperial building programmes. Early in his reign, he led an ultimately unsuccessful invasion of Greece, with victories at Thermopylae, Artemisium, and Athens in 480 BC, but defeats at Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale in 479 BC. The rest of his reign was largely peaceful. The Persian Empire arguably reached its zenith under Xerxes. What’s next? This release cycle is the longest we’ve ever had as you no doubt noticed, and it was a bumpy ride. Despite this, we’re hoping to get back to a more regular schedule now. As usual, for the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter Y. Keep it original and related to the time frame portrayed in 0 A.D. (c. 500 BC – 1 BC). Post your proposal here ! For press/media inquiries, please DM @play0ad on Twitter.

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, is happy to announce the re-release of 0 A.D. Alpha 23 “Ken Wood”, the twenty-third alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source real-time strategy game of ancient warfare. This version is a maintenance release. Blocking bugs were fixed and security and legal issues were addressed. The gameplay remained untouched, and both versions of Alpha 23 are multiplayer-compatible; however we advise you to upgrade to benefit from the following fixes. The team wishes to apologize for the delay in re-releasing. We have addressed other issues whenever we couldn't make more progresses on the game itself, so the re-release has not been a completely negative procedure. Easy Download and Install Download and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. 0 A.D. is free software. This means you are free to download, redistribute, modify and contribute to the application under the same licenses (GPL v2 or a later version for code and Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 for artwork, see license). Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to download 0 A.D. completely gratis, directly from the developers. No “freemium” model, no in-game advertising, no catch. Improvements Multiplayer lobby Major fixes: Hosting and joining games on the lobby now works reliably on macOS. Lobby lag and freezes have been fixed. Measures have been taken to prevent lobby denial-of-service attacks. STUN cannot be abused to make clients crash anymore. Game start times have been improved (by up to 10s) when no AI players are present. This prevents disconnects on game starts. Quality of life: Lagging players can be reported at game start. Disconnects and quits are better handled during game loading. The "I'm Ready!" status can now be reverted by right-clicking the button. Hosts can no longer start games if some player is not ready. Auto-completion of chat messages in the game setup has been improved. Network synchronization Out-of-sync (OOS) issues arise when the clients of different players compute the simulation differently. Our OOS debunking work flow has been improved. Specific OOS issues on game rejoin have been resolved for the Danubius map and for square maps, as well as after double-clicking on the "Start game!" button. Kushites in-game text During the Alpha 23 release, Transifex (our translation platform) had not updated a few resources, resulting in some localized in-game text relating to the Kushites not appearing in the game, despite the hard work of our translators. The missing strings now appear in the game. GDPR compliance The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect on May 25th, 2018, just as we were releasing Alpha 23. We decided to take the bull by the horns and to continue working on the re-release by making 0 A.D. compliant and more secure. All the sub-services that collect personal data from you now feature a Privacy Policy and updated Terms of Service and of Use. To continue playing the game, you will have to accept all future modifications of those policies. In a few days, we will release the Privacy Policies of our websites to make them GDPR-compliant as well. New privacy policies For more information, now and in the future, please see the related wiki page: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/UserDataProtection Security The lobby server was upgraded to the latest versions of its distribution and software. The lobby client now supports the TLS cryptographic protocol. Lobby authentication is now required (new feature of A23). Secure HTTPS links are now used wherever possible in the game. Miscellaneous Lobby buddies are no longer printed in the main application log. A build issue on Arch Linux has been resolved. Support of biomes in map previews has been fixed. mod.io status update Alpha 23 saw the launch of mod.io, a platform for hosting and sharing mods, which allowed us to build a mod downloader inside 0 A.D. A few months later, we can say that this launch was a massive success! We went over the 10k downloads milestone, and at the time of writing, we are steadily headed towards the 50k one. We warmly thank the modders for their incredible work of making their mods work with A23, and uploading them to mod.io. It is thanks to them and the players that 0 A.D. is #1 on the platform! Don't hesitate to subscribe there if you want to receive notifications about new mods and secure our place on the platform. Support us The work is still in progress and can use every helping hand. We are looking for programmers, especially those interested in improving our game engine (written in C++), and most notably its graphics pipeline. Javascript programmers are also welcome to help develop the game mechanisms. Artists are always needed: in particular good animators and environment artists who could give our terrain textures a boost, and create more eye-candy. You can also help with translating the game in your language at Transifex, by donating, or simply by spreading the word around you. If you experience a technical problem with the game, please report it at trac.wildfiregames.com. This is also the first address to visit when you wish to dedicate some of your time to help patching the code. Got any further questions or suggestions? Discuss them with other players and developers at the forum or talk with us directly in the IRC chat. Subscribe Contact info for press, bloggers, etc.: aviv@wildfireAETHIOPIAgames.com without the capitalized name Herodotus used to designate the Kingdom of Kush.

New Release: 0 A.D. Alpha 23 Ken Wood Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of 0 A.D. Alpha 23 “Ken Wood”, the twenty-third alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source real-time strategy game of ancient warfare. Easy Download and Install Download and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. 0 A.D. is free software. This means you are free to download, redistribute, modify and contribute to the application under the same licenses (GPL v2 or a later version for code and Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 for artwork, see license). Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to download 0 A.D. completely gratis, directly from the developers. No “freemium” model, no in-game advertising, no catch. Top New Features New Civilization: Kushites Mod Downloader Cavalry and Spartan Building Models Combine Victory Conditions Attack Range Visualization Diplomacy Colors Destruction Damage Unit Information Dialog AI Behavior Lobby Authentication to prevent impersonation Nomad Mode on all Random Maps New Random Maps: Lower Nubia, Jebel Barkal, Elephantine, Fields of Meroë, Hellas, Dodecanese, Scythian Rivulet Civilization: Kushites The most prominent feature of the new release is the introduction of the Kushites. The Kingdom of Kush was a Middle Nile Valley civilization between 785 B.C. and 350 A.D. The region became known as Nubia and is located in present day Sudan. Steeped in pharaonic traditions, Kushites considered themselves the true heirs of the New Kingdom. They were fierce in the defense of their homeland, facing Persian, Ptolemaic and Roman invasions as well as constantly testing the strength of their northern neighbours. The armies of Kush are diverse, with contingents recruited from all across its vast domain. With a wide array of trainable units, they can adapt to almost any kind of opposing army. Boosted both economically and militarily by their monumental pyramids, ingenious leaders and special technologies, Kushites gain a variety of benefits. Lead the Nubian kingdom to bloody war and see the emergence of the mighty Kingdom of Kush. Learn more about ancient Kush here. Economic and religious Kushite sites (10MB 6k-HD) A nubian city in full bloom ( 6MB 6k-HD) Temple Of Amun Pyramids of Meroë, photograph by Fabrizio Demartis, CC-BY-SA 2.0 Nubian Pyramid Two Apedemak Champion Guards and a Blemmye Camp ( 4MB 6k-HD) Harsiotef, Kushite King of Meroë (404 B.C. to 369 B.C. ) Looted bust of the first Roman Emperor Augustus, found in Meroë, photograph by Steve F-E-Cameron CC-BY-SA 3.0 Mod Downloader Beginning this Alpha, players can install mod files just by opening them with 0 A.D. This new version also comes with a mod downloader, that allows you to connect to the new mod.io platform and fetch mods from inside the game. Wildfire Games and the mod.io team have worked together to bring you this feature, and 0 A.D. is one of the first games for which mods are available from this new and powerful platform. Please note that only mods that Wildfire Games has tested against blatant security issues will be available through mod.io. However, you are always free to install mods manually from other sources. 0 A.D. Mod Downloader Millenium A.D., a free mod featuring Anglo-Saxons, Byzantines, Carolingians and Norse civilization at the of Charlemagne and the Viking Age Terra Magna, a free mod featuring the Han Dynasty of China and pre-columbian Zapotecs New Models Similar to previous releases, meshes, animations, textures and materials for a number of units have been reworked. This time with a focus on helmets, shields and clothing. But 0 A.D. Alpha 23 also comes with many new artwork, as the Spartan faction has received an entirely new set of models. All Cavalry units have been replaced with much more realistically looking, more fluently animated high-poly models. New Spartan Buildings ( 9MB 6k-HD) New Helmets and Siege Firing Animations ( 7MB 6k-HD) New animal type Zebu and new Cavalry models ( 6MB 6k-HD) Combine Victory Conditions The addition of new victory conditions throughout the last releases, such as Wonder Victory, Regicide and Capture The Relic gamemode have made it reasonable to allow players to combine all these modes arbitrarily. So if you ever wanted to play a game where you can choose between defeating the enemy by taking out the hero or starting an ambush on the relics after building a citystate and assembling an army, now is the time! Two heroes fighting for victory ( 9MB 6k-HD) Attack Range Visualization Similar to the aura range visualization of the former release, fortifications and mobile towers now reveal the range they cover upon selection. Furthermore, the attack distance is also drawn when in the building placement preview, so that the player can find the best suitable location prior to settling the position. Attack Range Visualization during building preview mode ( 7MB 6k-HD) Diplomacy Colors Both in traditional games with two teams and in diplomacy teams with interactive alliance buildup, players could have often used a quick way to find out where the border to the enemy lies and which parts of the territory can be considered a safespace. With 0 A.D. Alpha 23 players are rewarded with a way to toggle between the player colors and team colors (one color per diplomatic stance), enabling them to react to every threat to their city instantly. Blue indicates the player, green allies and red opponents ( 12MB 6k-HD) Destruction Damage One of the new features that targets 0 A.D. (but also mods and other RTS that once might use the Pyrogenesis engine) is the ability of units to deal damage to surrounding enemies when they are destroyed. The effect is demonstrated by Fireships that can and will sink enemy ships if not taken care of by the enemy combatant. An Iberian Fireship sinks nearby fishing ships ( 4MB 6k-HD) Unit Information Dialog Players and observers can now open a dialog that displays all the game related details by rightclicking on a unit during a match. It is also designed to provide sufficient space for historic background information in future versions of the game. Everything you wanted to know about the Amun Temple AI Behaviors The Petra AI now supports configuration of different behaviors, such as Aggressive or Defensive. Although still in an early stage of development, it aims at more diverse singleplayer experience. AI Configuration Dialog Lobby Authentication To establish a safer multiplayer environment, the possibility of player impersonation was ruled out by an improved connect mechanism that requires lobby players to remain authenticated at the lobby server when joining games. The new match setup option Furthermore, the lobby chat was made accessible in the match setup, running games and the summary screen, so players can stay in tune with upcoming games without having to leave the party early. Nomad on all Random Maps Players have enjoyed the "Unknown Nomad" random map since years. It required players to scout the randomly generated map and find a suitable location to lay the foundation stone of their city. With 0 A.D. Alpha 23, this game mode is not restricted to this map anymore but can freely chosen on any of the random map scripts. A Persian player starting the city at the river ( 10MB 6k-HD) New Maps The entire random map generation code has been revamped. The results of this endeavor are many more possibilities and comfort for map authors to generate landscapes and a new quality standard in map design. With Alpha 23, 0 A.D. was enriched by seven random map scripts and three new skirmish maps. Six of these maps take place in the domain of the Kushites. New Random Maps Lower Nubia Lower Nubia is the area between the first and second cataract of the Nile and formed the traditional border region between Kush and Egypt. The hostile and merciless Sahara desert makes defending your position on the river and its steep banks an absolute necessity. This map, like most other realworld maps below was created using realworld elevation data from the NASA Blue Marble series. New random map "Lower Nubia" ( 10MB 6k-HD) Abu Simbel Temple of Ramesses II, photograph by Than217, Public Domain Jebel Barkal The "Jebel Barkal" is the holy mountain that was used as a landmark by traders crossing the Nile river, near its fourth cataract. It is located near the Nubian city of Napata, which later became the capital of ancient Kush. The remains of the Napatan temple complex and the nearby pyramids were declared a world heritage site in 2003. Stone Ruins and the famous Pinnacle of the Hill, photograph by Maria Gropa, UNESCO, CC BY-SA 3.0 "Jebel Barkal" is the first 0 A.D. map to present a vivid, procedurally generated cityscape combined with regularly spawned attackers of adjustable difficulty. City Walls of Napata ( 11MB 6k-HD) Procedural Generation of the City ( 10MB 6k-HD) Temple Guards patroling Napata ( 9MB 6k-HD) Players start near the fertile banks of the Nile river. In order to attain resources, players have to either establish a tradeline there or reach the mineral abundance in the shelterless desert. Contrary to the average map, players find complementary advantages and disadvantages depending on the starting location, making cooperative teamplay and strategic decisiontaking much more relevant. New random map "Jebel Barkal" ( 8MB 6k-HD) The Pyramids and the Hill, photograph by Ron Van Oers , UNESCO, CC-BY-SA 3.0 Elephantine Together with Philae, the fortified Island of Elephantine was situated on the Nile River at the first cataract and an important Egyptian city, often under Kushite control. As the border between Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia, Elephantine became an important way-station for the trade in ivory and other goods. It was considered to be the home of the god Khnum, guardian of the source of the Nile, and boasted an impressive temple complex whose remains can still be visited today. This map was created using OpenStreetMap data. New random map "Elephantine" ( 10MB 6k-HD) Temple of Isis on Philae Island, photograph by Olaf Tausch, CC-BY 3.0 Temple of Aswan on Philae Island, photograph by Osama Awny, CC-BY-SA 4.0 Goddess Hathor in the Satet Temple on Elephantine Island, photograph by David Stanley, CC-BY 2.0 Fields Of Meroë The "Island of Meroë" is a vast peninsula flanked by the Nile and Atbarah rivers and formed the heartland of ancient Kush. This map comes in two variants, one depicting the dry season and one for the rainy season. The map demonstrates the new possibility to select the map biome in the match setup. "Fields Of Meroë" - dry season ( 9MB 6k-HD) "Fields Of Meroë" - wet season ( 10MB 6k-HD) Temple of Amun in Naqa, photograph by Coordinamento delle organizzazioni per il servizio volontario, CC-BY-SA 3.0 Hellas This unique random map script choses a random area of Greece each time, yielding a much greater surprise effect each terrain generation. A "Hellas" map generation showing a part near the Aegean Sea ( 9MB 6k-HD) Dodecanese "Dodecanese" is greek and translates to "twelve islands". It names a group of 15 large and 150 small islands in the southern Aegean Sea . This is the first random map script placing little bridges. New random map "Dodecanese" ( 10MB 6k-HD) Scythian Rivulet This is a map focusing on the beauty of pristine winter, featuring crispy mounds of snow, shown under a not-too-bright sun. New random map "Scythian Rivulet" ( 8MB 6k-HD) New Skirmish Maps Alpha 23 "Ken Wood" comes with three new Skirmish maps: Egypt, Butana Steppe and Via Augusta: "Egypt" (6 players) comes with prebuilt cities of geographically accurate civs ( 10MB 6k-HD) "Butana Steppe" (2 players) ( 11MB 6k-HD) ""Via Augusta" (3 players) ( 14MB 6k-HD) Under The Hood This release consists of almost 1900 patches (r19923 to r21819), i.e. several hundred of bugfixes, commits restructuring of the engine code and small features that can barely be listed. It also includes solutions to prevalent crashes and performance bottlenecks. Finally, the Pyrogenesis engine can be compiled using Visual Studio 2015 and premake5. The name "Ken Wood" Ken Wood, also known as Phoenix-TheRealDeal or tonto_real, was one of the three original gameplay designers of 0 A.D, together with Wijitmaker and Acumen. He was a retiree in his 60’s from Arizona, but he sadly passed away in 2006 after a long fight with cancer. It is thanks to the amount of energy and passion he poured into the early stages of 0 A.D. that we are celebrating another great release of our favorite game! We managed to reach that symbolic letter W for our twenty-third Alpha, and we keep remembering him through the development of the project. Ken Wood was instrumental in conceptualizing some of the core concepts of 0 A.D. Most notably, he laid the foundations of the citizen-soldier concept, and its female villager counterpart. He was also fascinated by Celtiberian civilizations and designed the Iberian and Carthaginian factions. He designed a Rock-Paper-Scissors counter system for units of the game, biomes for maps, and had big ideas for naval combat and realistic ship movement. If you want to know more about the story behind 0 A.D., see this article. We have also re-published an interview from the old website here. And let us not forget his famous quote, which gives us all the motivation we can need: For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter X. Keep it original and related to the time frame portrayed in 0 A.D. (appx. 500 B.C. – 0 A.D.) and post your proposal here! Support Us The work is still in progress and can use every helping hand. You can support us by translating the game in your language at transifex, contributing art or code or simply by donating. If you experience a technical problem with the game, please report it at trac.wildfiregames.com. This is also the first address to visit when you wish to dedicate some of your time to help patching the code. Got any further questions or suggestions? Discuss them with other players and developers at the forum or talk with us directly in the irc chat. Subscribe Contact info for press, bloggers, etc.: aviv@wildfireTROYgames.com without the capitalized name of a city Ulysses spent some time in.

New Release: 0 A.D. Alpha 22 Venustas Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of 0 A.D. Alpha 22 “Venustas”, the twenty-second alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source real-time strategy game of ancient warfare. 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. Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to download 0 A.D. completely gratis, directly from the developers. Moreover, you can redistribute the game and modify it freely 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 “freemium” model, no in-game advertising, no catch. Top New Features Remake of many models, animations and textures, two new music tracks Configuration-free Multiplayer Hosting Capture the Relic Gamemode Aura and Heal Range Visualization Twelve new maps, including scripted enemies, rising water and a tutorial Espionage Technology, Team Bonuses and Hero Auras Petra AI Diplomacy and Attack Strategies Summary Screen Graphs Cinema Path Editing Buddy System A complete list of user-relevant changes can be found in the changelog at https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Alpha22. Capture the Relic Mode A relic is a wagon that holds the sacred remains of a great leader. Like to have your armies boosted or construct buildings with a discount? Venture into the unknown and secure these priceless items before they fall into the hands of the enemy! The team that manages to keep all relics for a manually set amount of time wins the match. Spartans guarding a captured relic A Catafalque captured by three enemies (10MB Super-HD) New Graphics Hundreds of models, animations and textures were handcrafted to replace the lower quality art. Together with the improved icons and new main menu backgrounds, both new and experienced players can (re)discover 0 A.D.. Damage Variants and Scaffolding present (only) Carthaginian buildings in new variety: Scaffolding at construction sites (21MB Super-HD) The new unit models bring both visual and gameplay balancing improvements. Here we present the never-seen-before Ptolemian Infantry Champion Pikeman: New Ptolemian Infantry Champion Pikeman (11MB Super-HD) New Music The original soundtrack was extended by the songs "Tale of Warriors" and "Sunrise". You can hear the former in the trailer. Listen to or download the entire 0 A.D. soundtrack at: https://play0ad.com/media/music/ . Lossless quality versions can be found at https://trac.wildfiregames.com/browser/audio/trunk/music/. Configuration-Free Multiplayer Hosting This release of 0 A.D. brings hosting multiplayer matches to the mass of players. It features a new "STUN" option that enables most players to start a match without any prior internet router configuration. STUN option when hosting a lobby match Aura and Heal Range Visualization Mauryan Hero Healer Chanakya (23MB Super HD) Finally players can judge the effect range of aura bonuses and healing abilities of their fighters and supporters. A solid line indicates an aura, while the plus-symbols indicate the heal radius. New Maps Players of the new release will be able to enjoy the game in twelve new worlds! New Tutorial A new tutorial, that can be started from the "Learn to Play" option in the main menu, was put in place to help beginners find their way into the game mechanics. New Economic Walkthrough New Scripted Maps Three new maps come with scripted events that shape the story of each match. On Danubius, teams are separated by the Danube river, which is defended by reoccurring Gallic ships that focus the players fleet and land invasion forces. Each side of the river comes with a Gallic stronghold that spawns attackers until it is wiped out by the players. Danubius (9MB Super HD) On Extinct Volcano, players have about twenty minutes to rush their enemies until the water starts to rise. Attacks and marches will become risky as the water level can rise suddenly anytime. Units below the sea level will drown and buildings become unusable, so you better get the ships ready to evacuate! Extinct Volcano (9MB Super HD) On Polar Sea, there is virtually no vegetation, so players have to use their initial wood treasures and market wisely. Wolf packs reappear from time to time and look for meat. Any kind of meat! Polar Sea (11MB Super HD) Notice that these maps have not been optimized for computer players. New Regular Maps Wild Lake (15MB Super HD) Corinthian Isthmus (4) (8MB Super HD) African Plains (15MB Super HD) River Archipelago (15MB Super HD) India (12MB Super HD) Arctic Summer (13MB Super HD) The Botswanan Haven and Cinema Demo map are not depicted here. To live up to its title, the unique "Survival of the Fittest" map was reworked to spawn heroes, some never-seen units and to become exponentially more difficult in later stages of the game. Espionage Technology After having researched the Espionage technology, players are able to bribe a random trader of a selected enemy, letting it share its vision and thus supply potentially invaluable insights into the enemy's home base. The diplomacy dialog is used to select an enemy and initiate the conspiracy. Team Bonuses Each alliance between players now confers bonuses upon the allies, depending entirely on their choice of civilizations. For example, if you choose to be an ally of the Macedonians civilization, you get 20% more sales when bartering resources at the market. The exact team bonuses can be found in the History section of the "Learn to Play" menu and in the changelog at https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Alpha22#TeamBonuses. Hero Auras Many heroes' auras were added and rebalanced that require players to decide more wisely which leader to announce. Wish to see what our "Swag" aura can do? Play Iberians and have a great experience discovering new additions at every corner! The details are revealed in the Structure Tree of the game and in the changelog at https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Alpha22#Heroes. Petra Diplomacy and Attack Strategies Like to play single-player games with bots? The AI bot, Petra, became much smarter this release. It can strategically plan attack and defense strategies depending on the different types of victory conditions (Conquest, Regicide, Capture the Relic, Wonder Victory). It also fully takes capturing into consideration. The economy of the AI was improved as well. Petra now avoids establishing trade routes that cross enemy territory and researches economic technologies sooner. Find a complete list of changes at https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Alpha22#PetraAI. Team Notifications To improve the cooperation between players, chat notifications have been added that inform allies of tributed resources and researched phases. Summary Screen Graphics The chronology of all military and economic game statistics is now visualized in the summary screen. Track your and your team's progress throughout the game on a graph and derive factors that decided the winner of the game. Summary Graphs Buddy System Keep up with your friends and locate them in-game with this feature. As a host, you can optionally prefer buddies to become players in the match setup and allow only buddies to join running games as observers. Cinema Path Editing With Alpha 22, our map editor Atlas has received new controls to create and edit cinematic camera paths (like the ones seen in the release trailer). Try the Cinema Demo scenario map in the game and in the Atlas to see an example. Consult the Atlas manual for further instructions: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Atlas_Manual_Cinematics_Tab. Cinema Path Editor Under the Hood Creating a custom mod of 0 A.D. has become easier. Hobby developers can now add new resource types and match options with a few keystrokes or debug AI matches by simulating many games in a row. The Windows and macOS helper libraries have been updated to resolve security issues. Several ways to cheat in multiplayer games were plugged. If you couldn't play the game before due to a crash, try this release! Make sure to checkout the options page and hotkeys, since new entries were added there as well. Why "Venustas"? "Venustas" is latin for "attractiveness" and was picked to match both the foremost feature of the release (the new models and animations) and the release numbering (V being the twenty second letter in the alphabet). This time we will not ask the community to find a name for the next release, Alpha 23. We have decided that we will name it after Ken Wood, one of the founders, who passed away in 2006. Support Us The work is still in progress and can use every helping hand. You can support us by translating the game into your language on Transifex, contributing art or code or simply by donating. If you experience a technical problem with the game, please report it at trac.wildfiregames.com. This is also the first address to visit when you wish to dedicate some of your time to help patching the code. Got any further questions or suggestions? Discuss them with other players and developers at the forum or talk with us directly over IRC. (The "C" stands for "chat") . Subscribe Contact info for press, bloggers, etc.: aviv@wildfireCAESARgames.com without the capitalized name of a well-known Roman dictator, whose family claimed to be the descendants of Venus.

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of 0 A.D. Alpha 21 "Ulysses", the twenty-first alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. This alpha features new game modes, plenty of new maps, the official introduction of the final civilization: The Seleucid Empire and more! 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. Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to download 0 A.D. completely gratis, directly from the developers. Moreover, you can redistribute the game and modify it freely 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 "freemium" model, no in-game advertising, no catch. Top New Gameplay Features In This Release Herocide/Regicide: You start with a hero and are defeated when he or she dies. Wonder Victory: Now you can change the time from when the wonder is built to when you win. Either set it to 0 so you win as soon as the wonder is built or to anywhere between 1 and 120 minutes for a chance for the opponents to destroy it before the match is won. Last Man Standing: Only one player can win the game. Form temporary alliances to eliminate common competitors. But be careful: as the remaining players struggle for victory, allies are forced to turn against you. This mode can be played with every victory condition. New buildings and champions The Persian Hall and Hellenic Royal Stoa can train new Infantry Champions in town and city phase. The Briton Crannog acts as a civic center and dock, providing economic stability on both land and water. Romans and Persians benefit from the new Temple of Vesta and Gate of Ishtar, making buildings harder to capture. The Temple of Vesta, Thracian Black Cloak Champions and the Crannog Patrolling: When clicking the button or pressing the hotkey (P + Right Click), units move along the path you set for them and attack enemy units they encounter along the way, then return to the beginning and continue doing so until you give them another order. Tech Cost Modifiers and Team Bonuses: The costs of technologies can now be modified by Auras and Technologies, demonstrated by faster and cheaper research when a Library was built. Players get a bonus if they are on a team with a player of a certain civilization. For example allies of Iberians have 20% cheaper skirmishers, allies of Seleucids have 20% cheaper civic centers. Stackable Auras: Capturing further Wonders, Libraries or Theatrons increases the building bonus proportionally. Losing a wonder means losing the population bonus, capturing a wonder means further increasing the maximum population, making the Wonder a crucial part of the empire. New Balancing: The aim of the new balancing is to stop players from destroying buildings with infantry and cavalry, enforce the use of siege engines, reduce the spamming of champions by making them more expensive and slower to train. With the addition of town phase champions and the lessening of attack damage of defensive buildings, early attacks are more feasible. Capturing of buildings is only feasible if they are heavily damaged or left unguarded. More details are found in the Balancing section of the changelog. Upgrading System: Buildings and units can now be upgraded. For example the new Sentry Towers can be upgraded to Defense Towers. Sentry Towers New Maps Alpha 21 adds no less than eleven random map scripts and two skirmish maps. Nine of these random maps teleport players to actual geographical regions: Amazon, Mediterranean, Red Sea, Marmara, Pompeii , Bahrain, Howe Sound, Ngorongoro and Rouen. The Mediterranean Rouen Red Sea Howe Sound On the random map Caledonian Meadows, wide grasslands, deep forests and seas lie between opposing teams which are yet connected by paths. The map demonstrates realistic terrain generation, distributing resources by height. Caledonian Meadows The Skirmish map Dueling Cliffs uses the new height limit, that was introduced in Alpha 19: Dueling Cliffs New Models The Seleucid faction was completed by adding the models for the Colonnade, Barracks, Wonder, Market, Corral, Blacksmith, Dock, Library, Military Colony and City Walls. Seleucid buildings (from the top left): Walls, Wonder, Market, Military Colony, Blacksmith, Corral, Library, and the Dock New Fields and Oak trees beautify the landscape. The Gaul Fortress, Tavern and the Ptolemaic Military Colony received new models as well. New fields, the Gaul Fortress, taverns on the left and right, and Sentry Towers, Defense Towers, and the new oak trees in the background. User Interface The new Objectives dialog reveals the chosen matchsettings in running games: Objectives Dialog New Tooltips lift some secrets, like the loot that attackers are rewarded with when killing enemy units or destroying their buildings, the garrisoning- and arrow limit of buildings, healing statistics and assigned hotkeys: Loot Tooltips Resources of allies are now visible in the tooltip of the top panel and in the summary screen after having researched cartography: Allied Resource Tooltips Finally a Multiplayer Pause Screen indicates who took a break: Pause Screen An in-game chat history dialog and acoustical chat notifications ease communication: Chat History More Multiplayer Lobby Match Details help to coordinate upcoming matches: Multiplayer Lobby Match Details Under the hood The Javascript engine was updated to Spider Monkey 38. Windows binaries can now use more than 2GB of RAM, which should fix crashing on Windows. The game now supports hosting on arbitrary UDP ports, which can be useful if your ISP blocks the default port. And many more smaller additions and bug fixes, if you want to read a more detailed list see the full Alpha 21 Changelog. Getting Support Please see the "Get Support" page on our website to find ways to get help from the active and friendly 0 A.D. community. We are well aware there is some room for improvement in 0 A.D. Some known issues are: Lag, visual glitches or textures not loaded, missing animations and more. When you provide feedback, we would ask you to focus on some of the other points that could be improved. Thanks. Please Contribute! We are seeking volunteer contributors in programming, art, sound, documentation and more. Programmers are especially welcome and can get started immediately. Interested? Log onto #0ad-dev on QuakeNet on IRC and meet the developers. Also, you are invited to register on our forums and start participating! Why "Ulysses"? 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, ...). "Ulysses" is the Latinized name for the Greek mythological figure Odysseus. This name is relevant for the release because we added the Herocide game mode, and Odysseus is one of the most well known heroes of all time. For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter V. Keep it original and related to the time frame portrayed in 0 A.D. (appx. 500 BC - 1 BC)!

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of “0 A.D. Alpha 20 Timosthenes”, the twentieth Alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. This Alpha features 10 new maps, core functionality for a cinematic in-game camera, the ability to share dropsites with your allies, and more! The skirmish map “Golden Island”, new in Alpha 20 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. Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to download 0 A.D. completely gratis, directly from the developers. Moreover, you can redistribute the game and modify it freely 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 “freemium” model, no in-game advertising, no catch. New Gameplay Features in This Release New Random Maps: “Ambush”, “Empire“, “Flood”, “Frontier“, “Hell’s Pass“, “Island Stronghold“, “Lions Den” and “Stronghold“. New Skirmish maps: A 4-player skirmish map named “Forest Battle” and a 2-player skirmish map named “Golden Island“. Use allied drop sites: After researching a technology you can use your ally’s storehouses, farmsteads, docks, CCs, but not Mauryan elephants, to drop off resources your units have gathered. The ally needs to allow it for each drop site, so it can’t be used to “steal” all the resources in the area. Murder Holes: Research a technology to let towers attack units standing underneath the tower. New technologies for fishing: Research technologies to improve the gathering efficiency of your ships. Loot resources that killed enemies carried: Now you will automatically get the resources that were carried by units killed by your armies, in other words: kill wood workers to get wood, farmers to get food, etc. This is in addition to the normal loot you get when killing units. The “Ambush” random map added in Alpha 20 Graphics and User Interface Improvements to game options menu: New graphics quality setting, which allows you to easily change the quality of graphics from within the game (previously you had to use config files), as well as some cleanups and bug fixes. Higher quality graphical effects enabled by default on higher-end computers. If your computer should be able to handle higher quality graphical effects they are now enabled by default. You can of course change to a lower setting manually if you want to improve performance or prefer not to use them for some other reason. Idle worker button is now disabled when there are no idle workers, so you don’t have to press it just to check whether or not you have any idle workers. Credits screen: Check out who contributed to the game, everyone from managers to programmers, from artists to donators, from translators to composers. We have tried to include everyone, but many have contributed over the years, so if you have contributed but don’t see your name in the list please let us know. New trees and variations: There has been new models and textures for the acacia tree, Aleppo pine, oaks, dead oaks, generic dead trees. Plenty of improvements for observer mode and replays: Among other things you can now watch the match from the perspective of a player, see the Summary screen during the match, and now the fog of war is shown in observer mode. Matches also support up to 16 observers now. More information about players in a multiplayer match: Show who lags or has a network timeout. New Seleucid barracks: Under the Hood Cinematic camera for rendering cut scenes: The ground-work has been done to make it possible to control the camera for cut scenes. There is still some work needed to make it easy to use (for now camera paths has to be set by entering coordinates), but it’s a solid foundation to build on for the future. Plus many smaller changes, for a list of all the interesting ones, please read through the changelog. Getting Support Please see the “Get Support” page on our website to find ways to get help from the active and friendly 0 A.D. community. We are well aware there is some room for improvement in 0 A.D. Some known issues are: Lag, visual glitches or textures not loaded, missing animations and more. When you provide feedback, we would ask you to focus on some of the other points that could be improved. Thanks. Please Contribute! We are seeking volunteer contributors in programming, art, sound, documentation and more. Programmers are especially welcome and can get started immediately. Interested? Log onto #0ad-dev on QuakeNet on IRC and meet the developers. Also, you are invited to register on our forums and start participating! Why “Timosthenes”? 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, …). “Timosthenes” relates to 0 A.D. as it is the name of an Ancient Greek cartographer, and this release adds a lot of new maps. For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter U. Keep it original and related to the time frame portrayed in 0 A.D. (appx. 500 BC – 1 BC)!

Hello, I saw a few days ago that a feature freeze for Alpha 20 Milestone was due soon but now that I've come back to check the roadmap http://trac.wildfiregames.com/roadmap I see that the freeze was postponed 3 weeks ahead. Why is that so? I don't mean to put pressure for the Alpha 20 release, I am just curious about the reasons for this. Maybe there are not enough new features added to the game since Alpha 19? Thinking positively, this allows lybomirv and me to make the Bulgarian translation even better for Alpha 20

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of "0 A.D. Alpha 19 Syllepsis", the nineteenth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. This alpha features building and siege engine capture, a new pathfinder, visual replay and more! Easy Download and InstallDownload and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. 0 A.D. is free of charge and always will be. Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to download 0 A.D. completely gratis, directly from the developers. Moreover, you can redistribute the game and modify it freely 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 "freemium" model, no in-game advertising, no catch. New Gameplay Features in This ReleaseBuilding and Siege Engine Capture: Non-siege units can now capture buildings and siege engines. When you hover your mouse over an entity that can be captured, two crossed flags appear so you can issue a "capture" order. If you do, you will start gaining some of that entity's "capture points" at a certain rate. (On screen, you will see your color taking up a greater proportion of the width of the entity's capture bar.) Once you gain all of these points, you capture the entity, and it is yours! (Note: You can still specify a regular attack on buildings and siege engines by holding CTRL when right-clicking on a target.) There is currently no animation for the units which are capturing, that will be added in a later version.New Victory Modes: "Conquest Structures" (destroy or capture all enemy structures to win) and "Conquest Units" (destroy all enemy units to win).Ceasefire Game Mode: The game can be set so that all players are completely unable to attack their enemies for a predetermined time at the start of a game.Attack Coordination: Players can request allies (including bots) to attack a specific enemy by clicking a button next to the player name in the diplomacy window. Also, Petra AI now supports attack coordination.Petra AI now warns its allies when it needs a tribute and lets them know when it advances to a new phase.The Ptolemaic lighthouse now has its special feature implemented: It reveals the shore on the entire map.New Skirmish Maps: Tuscan Acropolis (for 4 players; map preview), Northern Island (for 2 players; map preview), and Alpine Mountains (for 3 players; map preview). Graphics and User InterfaceIncreased Maximum Map Height: The engine now supports an eight times greater range of terrain heights, allowing for the creation of maps with more diverse and impressive landscapes.Visual Replay: Re-run a game and understand what took place in real time.Aura Visualization: Units affected by an aura are now marked with an icon when the aura giver is selected.New animals: New mastiff and wolfhound units have been added as well as a new rhinoceros.The Roman units now have voices in Latin. Voice actors and people with knowledge in ancient languages are invited to contribute more voices to the game! Under the HoodNew Pathfinder: The pathfinder is the component of the game engine that picks a route for a unit to move along from its current location to its target location, so that it does not collide with other units or with structures or with impassable terrain. The new pathfinder improves performance, but at the same time, it also introduces some new bugs. We have done as much as we could to ensure it was bug-free, but please report anything unusual!XML Validation: In 0 A.D., the behavior of units, buildings and other world objects is defined by their components, such as cost, health and more. All of these are described in XML files. The "grammar" of the XML files is now checked for correctness before being used by the game engine, which helps prevent technical problems.The generic Hellenic and Celtic factions have been removed.Linux users, please be advised that SDL2 is now enabled by default on Linux. Getting SupportPlease see the "Get Support" page on our website to find ways to get help from the active and friendly 0 A.D. community. We are well aware there is some room for improvement in 0 A.D. Some known issues are: Lag, visual glitches or textures not loaded, missing animations and more. When you provide feedback, we would ask you to focus on some of the other points that could be improved. Thanks. Please Contribute!We are seeking volunteer contributors in programming, art, sound, documentation and more. Programmers are especially welcome and can get started immediately. Interested? Log onto #0ad-dev on QuakeNet on IRC and meet the developers. Also, you are invited to register on our forums and start participating! Why "Syllepsis"?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, ...). "Syllepsis" relates to 0 A.D. as it means "capture" in Greek, and refers to the building and siege engine capture feature implemented in this version (Thanks, bouke!). For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter T. Keep it original and related to the time frame portrayed in 0 A.D. (appx. 500 BC - 1 BC)! Subscribe to 0 A.D. Development NewsContact info for press, bloggers, etc.: aviv@wildfireATHENSgames.com without the capitalized name of a Greek city.

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of "0 A.D. Alpha 18 Rhododactylos", the eighteenth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. This alpha features improved performance, an in-game technology tree, a new map type ("Nomad") and more! Easy Download and InstallDownload and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. 0 A.D. is free of charge and always will be. Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to download 0 A.D. completely gratis, directly from the developers. Moreover, you can redistribute the game and modify it freely 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 "freemium" model, no in-game advertising, no catch. Top New Gameplay Features in This Release Nomad Game Mode: Players start with only some citizen soldiers and female citizens, and no civil center, and must build a base from scratch. In-Game Technology Tree: Allows players to see which faction can research what technologies, when and for how many resources. The default AI, Petra, now supports saved games. Toggle groups of units between marching in formation and breaking formation. New Seleucid buildings The new buildings are the house, storehouse, farmstead, towers and temple. The Civic Center is a placeholder for now and will be updated before the Seleucids are finished. Performance Improvements and Other Changes Under the Hood ​SpiderMonkey upgraded to ​v31: The Javascript engine SpiderMonkey has been upgraded to version 31. This greatly improves performance and reduces memory usage a bit. We have also adapted our code to support new and advanced memory management techniques and features of SpiderMonkey such as Exact Stack Rooting, Moving GC and Generational GC. In addition, this version of SpiderMonkey includes a new and improved version of the performance profiling tool called "Tracelogger", which has helped us identifying and fixing different problems and further improving performance. C++11 upgrade: C++ is the main programming language used for our Engine and we now support the C++11 standard, which was finalized by the ISO committee in 2011. It took a while until the standard was supported well enough by the third party tools we are using, mainly C++ compilers. Last but not least, we dropped support for older C++ compilers in order to move to the new version. As a consequence, we have also been able to remove some workarounds for bugs and missing features in these old compilers. C++11 brings many new and useful features our programmers can use and it was a requirement for the SpiderMonkey 31 upgrade. More Efficient Fogging and Visibility Calculations: These calculations keep track of what each player knows about all objects in the world. For example, you might see a tree with half of its resources remaining in the Fog of War. Another player might have more recent information because of scouting and knows that this tree has already been collected completely. This kind of information is now stored and processed more efficiently, which improves performance a lot. New Wildfire Games Server: The new Wildfire Games server hosts different services such as the multiplayer lobby, our IRC bot, the website and also the newly implemented autobuilder. The autobuilder builds 0 A.D. from source code for artists, players and other people who should not have to build it manually, and can now check itself with automated tests. (The payments for the hosting plan and server license are made possible thanks to our donors!) Selected other improvements: Several AI optimizations, reduced lag when selecting units, and more.Improvements to the Atlas Editor Right-Click Rotations of Multiple Objects: Normal behavior: Rotate objects in circle, Ctrl+Right-click: Rotate each of the objects individually in place, Shift+Right-click: Keep rotation but move in circle. Atlas now checks for unsaved changes when closing a map. Atlas now shows when objects are placed in invalid locations by highlighting them in red. Show template names of selected objects. Copy and paste added to Edit menu. Numerous bug fixes.Getting SupportPlease see the "Get Support" page on our website to find ways to get help from the active and friendly 0 A.D. community. We are well aware there is some room for improvement in 0 A.D. Some known issues are: Lag, visual glitches or textures not loaded, missing animations and more. When you provide feedback, we would ask you to focus on some of the other points that could be improved. Thanks. Please Contribute!We are seeking volunteer contributors in programming, art, sound, documentation and more. Programmers are especially welcome and can get started immediately. Interested? Log onto #0ad-dev on QuakeNet on IRC and meet the developers. Also, you are invited to register on our forums and start participating! Why "Rhododactylos"?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, ...). "Rhododactylos" means "rosy fingered" in Greek and is one of the poetical epithets of Eos, the ancient Greek goddess of the dawn. According to the legend, she would rise every morning from her home at the edge of the ocean and open the gates of heaven for the sun to rise with her "rosy fingers" or "rosy forearms". (Thanks, ltms!) For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter S. Keep it original and related to the time frame portrayed in 0 A.D. (appx. 500 BC - 1 BC)! Subscribe to 0 A.D. Development News Contact info for press, bloggers, etc.: aviv@wildfireLATINgames.com without the capitalized name of a language spoken in ancient Rome.

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of "0 A.D. Alpha 16 Patañjali", the sixteenth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. This alpha features localization into more than 10 different languages, an improved AI, a new GUI, big changes "under the hood" and more! Easy Download and InstallDownload and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. 0 A.D. is free of charge and always will be. Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to download 0 A.D. completely gratis, directly from the developers. Moreover, you can redistribute the game and modify it freely 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 "freemium" model, no in-game advertising, no catch. Top New Gameplay Features in This Release Localization: 0 A.D. is now available by default in 13 different locales, contributed by volunteers from all over the world: Catalan Czech Dutch English (United Kingdom) English (United States) French Galician German Italian Portuguese (Brazil) Portuguese (Portugal) Scottish Gaelic Spanish (Spain) The Japanese translation is also completed, but due to the large font files, it would cause a larger download for other players and it also requires a computer with higher specs. So, we offer the Japanese translation together with the font files as a separately downloadable mod. See installation instructions for East Asian locales on our Wiki. Many more languages are currently being worked on and are planned to be released in future alphas. You are welcome to contribute in this area. Formation Updates: The Testudo formation (for Roman melee infantry) and the Syntagma formation (for Macedonian, Ptolemaic and Seleucid pikemen) have received new animations, and their movement has improved further over the previous version. The formations are also more moddable, which sets the stage for further developments in formations. New AI - Petra: Petra features more aggressive expansion and combat and builds defence towers and fortresses as a human would. Petra manages resources better in late game than the previous AI, Aegis, and is more robust to external conditions. It will also trade over land with allied markets, if there are any. Town Bell: Click on the new "town bell" button to sound an alarm and make your citizens garrison in the nearest structure until the enemy is gone. Once you sound the bell again, your units will ungarrison and go back to work. Global Resource Trading Settings: You now set the chance a trader will trade a certain resource, rather than selecting it per trader. This gives you a better overview of your trade, and makes it easier to manage. The "Wonder" Victory Condition: If you set "Wonder" as victory condition, a counter counting down 5 minutes appears after you build a wonder. If the enemy can't destroy the wonder in this time, you win. We also have an "Explored Map" game setting now, in which the entire map is covered with the Fog of War. This is an option that gives something between the "revealed map", where there are no secrets, and the default "dark map".Graphics and User Interface New GUI, new font: The new GUI style seen in the multiplayer lobby in Alpha 15 is now used nearly everywhere. The GUI font has also been changed to Biolinum, a free font created by the Libertine Open Fonts Project. Multiplayer "Ready" button: In a multiplayer game, all users must confirm game settings before host can start game. When the host changes a setting, players are set to "not ready" again. This is to avoid sneaky behaviour amongst some hosts, who would change the settings right before starting. New art assets: Animated flying hawks, Ptolemaic ships, Eurasian Wolf, Nile Crocodile, Ptolemaic buildings: Military settlement, Docks, Market, and quite a few new animations, e.g. a new seeding animation for farming units.Music New music track: "Water's Edge" (click to listen). This beautiful track is assigned to the Britons and Gauls.0 A.D. Soundtrack by Omri Lahav SpiderMonkey Upgrade & Other Development Updates We have implemented a new version of the JavaScript engine "SpiderMonkey" in 0 A.D. It supports new features of JavaScript such as Map and Set objects. These two types, for example, have improved performance compared to normal objects when working with certain kinds of collections. Modders and developers who are used to working with the latest features of JavaScript are also happy about the new features which are now available. SpiderMonkey also brings improved Javascript profiling and analysis features which allow for producing graphs. These features are another useful tool for performance measurements and for finding performance problems. The version in Alpha 16 (v24) does not improve performance yet. But there will be improvements for the next version (v31) which should be included in Alpha 17. Most importantly, the upgrade from v1.8.5 (which was released in March 2011) to v24 was quite a big step and a lot of work. Being on a current version means we avoid writing code for an old API that doesn't exist any more and it saves us a lot of work compared to staying with v1.8.5 and upgrading years later. Last but not least, it's a "must have" from the security perspective, and it enables us to report bugs or even request new features from the SpiderMonkey developers. This release contains many more changes and bugfixes not mentioned here. In terms of tickets closed on the project management and bug tracking system we use, Trac, this was another record.Getting SupportPlease see the "Get Support" page on our website to find ways to get help from the active and friendly 0 A.D. community. We are well aware there is some room for improvement in 0 A.D. Some known issues are: Lag, visual glitches or textures not loaded, missing animations and more. When you provide feedback, we would ask you to focus on some of the other points that could be improved. Thanks. Please Contribute!We are seeking volunteer contributors in programming, art, sound, documentation and more. Programmers are especially welcome and can get started immediately. Interested? Log onto #0ad-dev on QuakeNet on IRC and meet the developers. Also, you are invited to register on our forums and start participating! Why "Patañjali"?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, ...). Patañjali was one of the three most famous Sanskrit grammarians of ancient India. In honor of languages everywhere, we have decided to dub Alpha 16 "Patañjali". For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter Q. Keep it original and related to the time frame portrayed in 0 A.D. (appx. 500 BC - 1 BC)! Subscribe to 0 A.D. Development News Contact info for press, bloggers, etc.: aviv@wildfireSANSKRITgames.com without the capitalized name of a language spoken in ancient India.

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of "0 A.D. Alpha 12 Loucetios", the twelfth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. This alpha features diplomacy, packing siege engines, super fancy water and more! Easy Download and InstallDownload and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. 0 A.D. is free of charge and always will be. Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to download 0 A.D. completely gratis, directly from the developers. Moreover, you can redistribute the game and modify it freely 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 "freemium" model, no in-game advertising, no catch. Please Vote for Us in the Indie of the Year 2012 Contest!If you care about 0 A.D., please vote for us in the second round of the Indie of the Year 2012 contest. Under “Upcoming games of 2012″, under “Real Time Strategy”, you need to click the word “VOTE” on the left of “0 A.D.” Voting continues until December 21st. Thanks in advance, from all of us in Wildfire Games. Top New Gameplay Features in This Release: Diplomacy: Determine if you and another human player are allies, enemies or neutral to each other, and change this relationship in mid-game as you see fit. If you downgrade the relationship, the change is automatically mutual (i.e., by turning someone into your enemy, you automatically become their enemy); But if you try to upgrade relations, as in forging an alliance, you need the other side to explicitly agree. (As of Alpha 12, AI players will not react to diplomacy changes at all. We hope to add this in the future.) (See screenshot below.)Packing Siege Engines: Certain siege engines need to be in a "packed" state to be moved from place to place, and in a stationary "unpacked" state to be able to fire. Moving a siege engine between these states is called "packing" and "unpacking", and takes time, during which the siege engine can neither move nor fire. (This is important for both realism and balance, as siege engines can inflict lots of damage.)Formation Order Queueing: Allows giving units several tasks to carry out in order, e.g.: (1) Build a house here, then (2) move near to the other player's territory, (3) build a army camp there and then (4) attack the fortress first and then (5) go straight for the civic center. All these orders can be given in one sequence by pressing "shift" and right-clicking the relevant parts of the map in order.Heroes are back, but now each player can have only up to one living hero at any time.Slaughter Attack: All domestic animals are killed with melee weapons, even by otherwise ranged units. This speeds up meat harvesting.Unit Training Hotkeys: If you select a building that can train units, and then hit "Z", it is as if you clicked the first unit training button on the left on the GUI; "X" for the second button from the left, "C" for the third, etc., up to the letter "M".New Match Setup Options: Choose the population cap and the amount of resources players will start out with.Five New Random Maps: Nomad, Syria, Corinthian Isthmus, Belgian Uplands, and English Channel. Graphics and User Interface Improvements:Improved Water Rendering: The new, "super-fancy" water includes the white foam of waves crashing onto the shore, it can be much wavier, and it casts surface and underwater shadows.Post-Processing Manager: Recent changes enable features such as distance fog, bloom and more. (See screenshots below. Top left is default. Effects on bottom right exaggerated for demonstration purposes.) No less importantly, the post-processing manager is extremely moddable, so from now on, developers can very easily add new visual effects to 0 A.D. using existing code from other projects. For an example, see the Bokeh Depth of Field effect shown below.Rubble appears when you destroy a building (see screenshots below).We have also added icons to the tooltips, instead of names of resources like "Food" and "Wood" and time units like "seconds" (see screenshot below). Music and Sound:New song: "Calm Before the Storm", meant to be played in menu screens. Recent changes to the audio improve the way music sounds, and ensure it is heard in stereo. Getting SupportPlease see the "Get Support" page on our website to find ways to get help from the active and friendly 0 A.D. community. We are well aware there is some room for improvement in 0 A.D. Some known issues are: Lag, visual glitches or textures not loaded, missing animations and more. When you provide feedback, we would ask you to focus on some of the other points that could be improved. Thanks. Please Contribute!We are seeking volunteer contributors in programming, art, sound, documentation and more. Programmers are especially welcome and can get started immediately. Interested? Log onto #0ad-dev on QuakeNet on IRC and meet the developers. Also, you are invited to register on our forums and start participating! Why "Loucetios"?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, ...). Loucetios was a Gallic god related to storms and lightning, that was identified with the Roman god of war, Mars. He is often found accompanied by the goddess Nemetona, as part of a divine couple. For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter M. Keep it original and related to the time frame portrayed in 0 A.D. (appx. 500 BC - 1 BC)! Happy Holiday Season!Just for fun, we've made up this character, who is like Santa Claus, except he is skinnier, he wears thick glasses and has a penchant for hiding in large crowds. Can you find him in this winter-themed screenshot? Long Time, No SiegeWildfire Games will keep releasing new versions of 0 A.D. from time to time. Watch our news feed to get updates, 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. Contact info for press, bloggers, etc.: aviv@wildfireODYSSEYgames.com without the name of Homer's ancient Greek epic written in all caps.

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of "0 A.D. Alpha 15 Osiris", the fifteenth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. This alpha features a multiplayer lobby, skirmish maps, auras and more! Easy Download and InstallDownload and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. 0 A.D. is free of charge and always will be. Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to download 0 A.D. completely gratis, directly from the developers. Moreover, you can redistribute the game and modify it freely 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 "freemium" model, no in-game advertising, no catch. Top New Gameplay Features in This Release Multiplayer Lobby: The new in-game multiplayer lobby is a place to meet other players and play games together. Meet the entire 0 A.D. community online and face the challenge of a multiplayer game!Auras: Units get a bonus when they are in range of a special building, like a wonder, or another unit, such as a hero. This feature adds a new layer of strategy to the game. So far, in Alpha 15, temples regenerate health for nearby units, and most heroes have auras. This feature is set for expansion and further refinement over the next few alphas.Debut of the Ptolemaic Egyptians: Alpha 15 debuts the Ptolemaic Egyptians as a new playable civilization. Some new buildings, units and unique gameplay features can already be tested, but it's not finished yet and still contains a lot of placeholders. The Ptolemies will be completed in the next alpha releases. A Ptolemaic Egyptian settlement along the Nile. Skirmish Maps: Skirmish maps are a new game mode in 0 A.D. They're similar to scenarios, but can be easily changed according to your preferences. Like scenarios, these are hand-crafted maps in which the terrain, starting positions and positions of resources on the map remain constant every game. However, unlike scenarios, other aspects can be changed every time you set up a game, like starting resources, factions and teams.Also, in skirmish maps the map creator also placed some generic entities on the map, which will change according to the factions players choose as soon as the game starts, such as generic Civil Centers that will immediately transform into Civil Centers specific to the faction chosen. Skirmish maps are another option available to the player, on top of scenarios and random maps. (Try the first skirmish map, "Alpine Valleys", bundled with Alpha 15!) The Alpine Valleys skirmish map. User InterfaceEscort / Guard Order: You can now order your troops to protect other units or buildings. When the guarded unit is attacked, whoever is guarding it will come to help, either by attacking the offender, or by healing or repairing the guarded unit.Attack Notification: Whenever you're attacked, you'll hear a sound and receive a chat message, and the minimap will shows some blinking pixels on the map so you can quickly see where the attack is happening.Auto-Garrison Units: When possible, you can ask your newly-produced units to garrison in the production building by setting the rally point in the building itself, using the Ctrl key.Automatic Naval Pickup: When units are asked to garrison into a ship, the ship will sail to the shoreline to pick them up."Back to Work" Button: The last civilian task a unit was doing (i.e., gathering, building, trading, ...) is remembered when ordering a unit to do some military task (i.e. attack, garrison, ...). After you're done defending yourself from an enemy attack, you can quickly send units back to their previous tasks using the back-to-work button. New tech icons. Music and SoundTwo special tracks have been composed for the Ptolemaic Egyptians: "Valley of the Nile" (feat. Shlomi Nogay on flutes and Jeff Willet on percussion) and "Ammon-Ra" (feat. Jeff Willet) (see YouTube videos below).A new generic peace track, "Tavern in the Mist", contributed by Mike Skalandunas."Celtica" and "Highland Mist" now feature an actual Celtic harp, played by Avital Rom."Eastern Dreams" and "Sands of Time" have been completely remade, and now feature Jeff Willet on percussion."Honor Bound" remixed and remastered.New selection sounds. GraphicsBetter Unit Movement in Formations: The units in formations run around less, and now know how to get to the closest available place in the formation. This way, the formation is formed faster, and the pathfinder doesn't have to compute long paths for big formations.New Asian elephant and tiger animations.Some new buildings were added to Brits and Gauls, complete with AO, normals and specularity.New terrain textures. Development Updates, Bug Fixes and Miscellaneous Features The new GUI design, modelled by the new Multiplayer Lobby. New GUI Design: Work on a new and improved user interface design has started a while ago. With Alpha 15 you can see it in action the first time! At the moment the new design is only used for the multiplayer lobby, but other menus will hopefully also benefit from the improvements in the future.Internationalization Work Started: For the next Alpha we intend to include a translation system, and work on such a system has already begun. Volunteers have begun translating 0 A.D. into dozens of languages. If you have the necessary skills to help localize 0 A.D., feel free to head over to the web-based translation platform Transifex!Multiplayer OOS Problems Fixed: Several causes of out-of-sync errors in multiplayer games have been fixed. These issues made multiplayer games with AI players nearly unplayable in Alpha 14 but should now be fixed.Increased Support for Multiplayer Hosting: If you were unable to host multiplayer games before because you couldn't manually setup port forwarding, now the game will try to automatically negotiate port forwarding with routers supporting UPnP. This should allow more people to host multiplayer games without connection issues.Some recent graphical changes make it possible to make particle jet trails and more realistic smoke in the future.Random map generation is now faster. Getting SupportPlease see the "Get Support" page on our website to find ways to get help from the active and friendly 0 A.D. community. We are well aware there is some room for improvement in 0 A.D. Some known issues are: Lag, visual glitches or textures not loaded, missing animations and more. When you provide feedback, we would ask you to focus on some of the other points that could be improved. Thanks. Please Contribute!We are seeking volunteer contributors in programming, art, sound, documentation and more. Programmers are especially welcome and can get started immediately. Interested? Log onto #0ad-dev on QuakeNet on IRC and meet the developers. Also, you are invited to register on our forums and start participating! Why "Osiris"?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, ...). Osiris was an ancient Egyptian god, usually identified as the god of the afterlife, the underworld and the dead. In honor of the release of the Ptolemies, we have decided to dub Alpha 15 "Osiris". For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter P. Keep it original and related to the time frame portrayed in 0 A.D. (appx. 500 BC - 1 BC)! Subscribe to 0 A.D. Development News Contact info for press, bloggers, etc.: aviv@wildfireNILEgames.com without the capitalized name of Egypt's most important river.

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, is raising $160,000 to support development of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. The announcement of the fundraiser coincides with the release of "0 A.D. Alpha 14 Naukratis", the fourteenth alpha version of 0 A.D. Easy Download and InstallDownload and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. 0 A.D. is free of charge and always will be. Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to download 0 A.D. completely gratis, directly from the developers. Moreover, you can redistribute the game and modify it freely 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 "freemium" model, no in-game advertising, no catch. Please Contribute to the 0 A.D. Fundraiser!We've been working on 0 A.D. as a free, open-source project for over 4 years now. We have made tremendous progress over the years. All of this was accomplished almost for free, depending almost entirely on volunteer work. 0 A.D. will always be 100% free, open-source, and without any in-game ads. We have established ourselves as a one-of-a-kind project, combining strategy gaming, the love of ancient history and a commitment to openness and freedom. But in order to complete the game soon, some of us will have to work on it as full-time contractors for the project. To support speedier development of 0 A.D., please help us raise $160,000 over the next 45 days.In exchange, you'll get some of our amazing perks, such as soundtrack CDs, posters, and even your face on a unit in the game! This is a limited-time offer, so act soon. For this fundraiser, your donations will be processed by one of the top crowdfunding websites, Indiegogo, and by the non-profit payments platform FirstGiving. Funds will be held for us by a US-based non-profit, Software in the Public Interest (SPI). SPI accepts donations and holds funds for many open source projects, including Debian, Drupal and LibreOffice, and also for 0 A.D. Importantly, SPI is a tax-exempt public charity described under section 501c3 of the US Internal Revenue Code. This means that for many US taxpayers, some or all of your donation towards this fundraiser may be tax-deductible. For details, please consult your tax advisor. If you enjoy playing 0 A.D. and believe that it matters, please help →Why "Naukratis"? Announcing the Ptolemies, the Seleucids and "0 A.D. – Empires Ascendant"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, ...). Naukratis (alternate spelling: "Naucratis") was a city in the Nile Delta of Lower Egypt, mainly inhabited by Greeks from the 6th century BC onwards. It also contained pottery that demonstrated the earliest known examples of the early Greek alphabet. Until the rise of Alexandria, Naukratis was the most important port city in Egypt. (Thanks, ImperiusDamian!) We chose "Naukratis" in honor of the Ptolemaic Kingdom, which we are proud to announce will be the eleventh faction in 0 A.D. Another Hellenistic state set to be included in 0 A.D. is the Seleucid Empire, which ruled the Near East after Alexander's empire fell apart. The Ptolemies and Seleucids are each set to be released in one of the next alphas, and they join the ten factions already portrayed in 0 A.D.: 3 Hellenic factions (Athens, Sparta, Macedonia), 2 Celtic factions (Britons and Gauls), Carthaginians, Iberians, Persians, Romans and Mauryan Indians. For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter O. Keep it original and related to the time frame portrayed in 0 A.D. (appx. 500 BC - 1 BC)! The Ptolemies and the Seleucids probably conclude the set of factions we intend to make for the first edition of 0 A.D., covering the period between 500 B.C. and 1 B.C. We have decided to call this first edition "0 A.D. – Empires Ascendant". In future editions of the game, we hope to represent notable civilizations from 1 A.D. to 500 A.D. The list will not be finalized until the first edition has gone gold, but some possible civilizations include Late Rome, Imperial Rome or Eastern Rome, the Germanics, Vandals, Sarmatians, Saxons, Parthians, Huns, Dacians, and the Goths. Top New Gameplay Features in This ReleaseNow that we've got all the big announcements out of the way, let's review what's new in Alpha 14. Blacksmiths: A brand new building type for the game, complete with models for all factions. Researches attack and armor upgrades. Infinite farms: A farm will now keep yielding food until the end of the match, without need to rebuild it, but with diminishing returns. Only up to 5 gatherers can work on each farm. (Veteran players will notice that more space is now required to produce the same amount of food.) Exponential armor and realistic health: Technologies now have the same effect on all units. Also, changes to the way units' health is calculated in the game allowed us to correct some unrealistic phenomena, like archer damage to buildings. Allies can now garrison in each other's buildings. Shared trade gain with allies: When you trade with an ally, there is a +25% bonus over trading with yourself, that is now split between you and your ally. Ranged units can hit farther from high places. Ranged units had to be within a minimum range from their targets to fire at them. This requirement has been removed.Graphics, Sound and User Interface Improvements Hero button: A persistent button in the top left appears when you train your one allowed hero(ine). Clicking it selects the hero(ine) wherever he or she is on the map. Game speed controls: In single-player games, change the game's speed whenever you want to. Location hotkeys: You can now mark camera positions and jump back to them later with hotkeys. GUI dropdowns support typing for quick selection. Sound manager improvements: The game now plays a list of multiple songs per match, instead of playing just one song in a loop. Also, the user interface now responds to the user with sounds. Terrain anchoring: Units now move more realistically on hills. Saved games can now be given descriptions and deleted or overwritten in-game. Several random maps were changed to be more beautiful and playable. Fancy water rendering is now faster and improved. Ships look better when sinking. The Atlas Scenario Editor, Bug Fixes and Miscellaneous Features Pike elevation tool in Atlas: Allows for making mountains and cliffs more easily. Mod improvements: Saving maps in Atlas will no longer make it crash. Fixed some common out-of-sync and out-of-memory errors. Alert sounds no longer heard by all players, off-screen sounds only heard when appropriate. Fixed crash with Nvidia Optimus graphics and some netbooks. Walls can be placed along shores. Improved hotkey support for non-QWERTY keyboards. Several performance improvements. Getting SupportPlease see the "Get Support" page on our website to find ways to get help from the active and friendly 0 A.D. community. We are well aware there is some room for improvement in 0 A.D. Some known issues are: Lag, visual glitches or textures not loaded, missing animations and more. When you provide feedback, we would ask you to focus on some of the other points that could be improved. Thanks. Please Contribute!We are seeking volunteer contributors in programming, art, sound, documentation and more. Programmers are especially welcome and can get started immediately. Interested? Log onto #0ad-dev on QuakeNet on IRC and meet the developers. Also, you are invited to register on our forums and start participating! Subscribe to 0 A.D. Development News Contact info for press, bloggers, etc.: aviv@wildfireORACLEgames.com without the capitalized name of an ancient priest or priestess whom people would consult for advice or predictions of the future.

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of "0 A.D. Alpha 13 Magadha", the thirteenth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. This alpha features the Mauryan Indians, AI improvements, six new songs and more! Easy Download and InstallDownload and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. 0 A.D. is free of charge and always will be. Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to download 0 A.D. completely gratis, directly from the developers. Moreover, you can redistribute the game and modify it freely 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 "freemium" model, no in-game advertising, no catch. Top New Gameplay Features in This Release All-new and unique Mauryan Indian civilization, including new units, from war elephants to Brahmin priests; and new buildings, reflecting this culture's original architectural style. (See screenshot below.) The default AI, Aegis bot, has been greatly improved, be it at defending, attacking, or building a strong economy. It now supports researching technologies and should work much more reliably than most other AIs before. (Known problem: Aegis now has some issues with saved games. Sorry, we hope to fix this in A14.) Aegis can now play at several different difficulty levels, so beginners can easily learn to play, and more experienced players can get more of a challenge. Attack/move command: If you select units and then Ctrl + right-click on a location, they will go to the location, but also stop to attack enemies they meet along the way. Graphics and User Interface Improvements Helpful messages appear when a building can't be placed somewhere. (See screenshots below.) When you select a place to build a building, the building preview always shows the precise final variation that will be built. When some buildings are built, they now rise from the ground, and some also have lifelike scaffolds surrounding them. Tribute stats added to the summary screen. Players are notified when any tributes are given to them. Music and SoundNew Celtic songs: "Cisalpine Gaul" and "Celtica" (the latter featuring Jeff Willet's percussion),New Hellenic song: "The Hellespont" (also featuring Jeff),Combat music featuring taiko drums "First Sighting" and "Elusive Predator" by Jeff.First Mauryan song: "Land Between the Two Seas."New and improved animal sounds for lions, tigers and bears.Development Updates and Miscellaneous FeaturesUser mod support: See our modding guide to learn how to create your own mods for 0 A.D.The new JavaScript Debugger supports the basic features of debuggers (breakpoints, continue, step calls...), and allows 0 A.D. developers and modders to debug JavaScript scripts used by the game, saving a lot of time to understand some unexpected behavior or issue. 0 A.D. uses JavaScript in many different areas like gameplay logic, UI, AI and random map scripts. Thanks to mmayfield45 for contributing the web GUI. (See screenshot below, and the documentation wiki for more details.) Improved OS X build process, without need for MacPorts or Homebrew. Getting SupportPlease see the "Get Support" page on our website to find ways to get help from the active and friendly 0 A.D. community. We are well aware there is some room for improvement in 0 A.D. Some known issues are: Lag, visual glitches or textures not loaded, missing animations and more. When you provide feedback, we would ask you to focus on some of the other points that could be improved. Thanks. Please Contribute!We are seeking volunteer contributors in programming, art, sound, documentation and more. Programmers are especially welcome and can get started immediately. Interested? Log onto #0ad-dev on QuakeNet on IRC and meet the developers. Also, you are invited to register on our forums and start participating! Why "Magadha"?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, ...). Magadha was an ancient kingdom in northern India from which the Mauryan empire originated. The empire was founded by exiled general Chandragupta Maurya, who overthrew the reigning king of Magadha and went on to conquer most of the Indian subcontinent, as well as parts of Persia and Central Asia. Years later, the third monarch of the dynasty, Ashoka, would become famous for renouncing all violence, converting to Buddhism, and spreading the faith throughout the empire. Ashoka is also remembered as one of the most exemplary rulers in world history for his advanced social and animal welfare programs. Magadha also happens to be the birthplace of Jainism and Buddhism, two of India's historically significant religions. These religions' shared belief in rebirth and karmic retribution most likely derives from the culture of Magadha in the last five centuries BC. In honor of the release of the Mauryan Indian faction, we have decided to dub Alpha 13 "Magadha". For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter N. Keep it original and related to the time frame portrayed in 0 A.D. (appx. 500 BC - 1 BC)! Subscribe to 0 A.D. Development News Contact info for press, bloggers, etc.: aviv@wildfireORACLEgames.com without the capitalized name of an ancient priest or priestess whom people would consult for advice or predictions of the future.

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of "0 A.D. Alpha 11 Kronos", the eleventh alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. This alpha features new Celtic factions, many improvements to the graphics, functional gates, a new sound system, improved AI and more! Easy download and installDownload and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. 0 A.D. is free of charge and always will be. Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D. on physical media, you will always have the option to download 0 A.D. from us over the internet, completely gratis. Moreover, you can redistribute the game and modify it freely, 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 "freemium" model, no in-game advertising, no catch. Top new gameplay features in this release:New Celtic Factions: Britons and Gauls will now replace the generic Celtic faction. Each faction features some unique characteristics, along with shared Celtic units and buildings:The Britons have chariots, longswordsmen and powerful melee soldiers. Their special building is the kennel, which can train war dogs. These are both inexpensive and great for hunting and combat. Also, their heroes include Boudicca, queen of the Iceni, who led a revolt against the Roman Empire.As experts of metalworking, the Gauls have heavy swordsmen and heavy cavalry. Special building: The Rotary Mill, which is available in Town Phase, and is set to increase the food production of nearby farms in mid- and late-game. (This feature has not been implemented yet.) One of the Gauls' heroes is Vercingetorix, chieftain of the Arverni tribe and enemy of Julius Caesar.[*]New AI script: Aegis Bot - Combining the best of two AI scripts, qBot and Marilyn, Aegis Bot is the toughest AI implemented to date in 0 A.D. It gathers resources efficiently and quickly spends them on training powerful military units. Also, it can discern when it is being attacked by a dangerous army and when it isn't, and then react appropriately to each case. What's more, Aegis Bot's flexible design sets the stage for exciting future AI improvements.[*]Gates - Wall segments of certain widths can be converted into gates. Once placed, gates can be either locked or unlocked: Locked gates prevent all units from passing, whereas unlocked gates are normally closed, but open automatically when your own units are nearby. Handle open gates with care, though, because your enemies can pass through them too![*]New sound system - Fixes several bugs, supports Mac OS X, and sets a solid framework for future sound features.[*]Shared LOS among allies - You can see whatever parts of the map your allies have explored and vice versa. Graphics improvements:To increase the game's realism, several post-processing effects and mapping enhancements have been implemented in 0 A.D.'s 3D graphics, using OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL). These will be disabled by default in Alpha 11 Kronos, since they are experimental and we don't yet know which hardware best supports which options, but can be switched on by changing settings in the user config file: Ambient Occlusion (AO) - Simulates a measure of how much each part of the model is illuminated by indirect sunlight. This effect darkens parts that are harder for ambient sunlight to reach, such as the areas inside arches (1-2, 4-5). Normal mapping - A technique used to accentuate the lighting of bumps and dents in a 3D model, and add details without using more polygons, which would slow down the game. This effect is easy to notice on the bricks and floor tiles of buildings, and in some terrains (3b). Parallax mapping - Enhances normal mapping, further increasing the "bumpiness" of surfaces, such as roof tiles, without adding polygons. Specularity - Some terrains and parts of buildings are now shiny, such as snow and the gold rings on the columns of the Roman temple. Trees in the game now sway gently in the wind. [*] Some extra improvements have been made to the way terrains are displayed: Custom terrain alphamaps - Allows different terrains to blend into their surroundings in different ways. Fancy grass material - A multi-layered terrain material makes it look as if blades of grass are sticking out of the ground, and at a fast loading time. Triplanar mapping for terrain - This fixes some ugly texture stretching that occurred in cliffs (6). Smooth Line of Sight (LOS) - As units move into the Fog of War or the Shroud of Darkness, the map is fluidly revealed, instead of a few tiles at a time. New art assets: Updated Celtic Broch fortress (7-8); Two scaffold props (9); Hellenic docks, theatron, gymnasion and fortress (10-11); Several sets of rocks (12-13); New Hellenic civilization centers (From left to right: Athenians, Spartans, Macedonians; 14); Macedonian & Spartan siege rams with animations; Roman quinquereme animations; New technology icons. The Atlas scenario editor and Random Map Scripts:Heightmap importing - Import an image file and Atlas will transform it into a 3d map, automatically rendering darker parts of the image as lower parts on the map.Random maps - Seven new maps are available: Pyrenean Sierra, Oasis, Northern Lights, Lorraine Plain, Sahel Watering Holes, Gear and Unknown. Also, some improvements were made to existing maps, such as Fortress, to make them prettier and more playable. Music and sound:Three new tracks - "Helen Leaves Sparta" (Spartans), "Rise of Macedon" (Macedonians), "Harvest Festival" (Athenians).Several revisited tracks - "Forging a City-State" (better bouzouki), "Celtic Pride" (total remake), "Honor Bound" (live trumpet added), "You are Victorious!" (live trumpet added), "Dried Tears" (total remake, plus live trumpet added). (Thanks, Avior Rokah!)All the other pieces of the score (19 tracks overall) have been re-mixed and re-mastered to a uniform sound quality and volume.New female citizen acknowledgment voices in ancient Greek, with phrases such as Ti esti? ("What is it?") and eisbalomen ("I will attack!"). 0 A.D. Soundtrack by Omri Lahav User interface and other features:Game setup and score screen changes - During match setup, small screenshots of the maps are available; The game summary screen includes player names, a market tab with trade and bartering data, and the map name and size (Thanks, hapsky!).Queued rally points - Use shift to place a sequence of rally points for new units to walk to, or to provide a series of tasks to do in order, such as constructing a set of buildings.New, more realistic ranged attack - Ranged units, such as archers, now miss their targets some of the time.Team & private multiplayer chat - Restrict messages to your allies ("/team"), to your enemies ("/enemy"), to a particular player (type "/msg" followed by the player's name) - or just chat with everyone at once ("/all").Other in-game changes - Hotkey to display all healthbars; Progress in technologies being researched is shown in the top right corner of the screen; Shallows represented on minimap; Improved wall system.Cheats - Entering "i want pizza" into the chat box adds 1000 food to your inventory, "bring me my axe" adds the same amount of wood, "your money or your life" adds metal and "i see a mountain here" adds stone; "jame jam" reveals the map, "the hive master" maxes out your population, and more.Increased support for OpenBSD and improvements to our build system (Thanks, anthonyjbentley!). Known issuesAlthough we have made a great deal of progress, there are still many things left to implement and fix in 0 A.D. Here is a partial list (full list here):Lag - The game does not run as fast as we would like because of several reasons, mainly pertaining AI and pathfinding. The problem worsens in these conditions: (1) When there are many units on the map, (2) On island maps and (3) With multiple AI players.Visual glitches or textures not loaded - Sometimes this is a driver problem. Please make sure you have the latest drivers for your graphics card. Missing animations - Some units glide around or don't drop to the ground when killed. This is a work in progress. Sound problems - We have implemented a new sound system in Alpha 11 and it still has several bugs. We intend to fix them in future alphas.Errors and crashes - Unfortunately, these can happen for many possible reasons, and a closer look is needed to determine the source of the problem.With your help, we can improve 0 A.D. Please report bugs with as much information as possible, including steps to reproduce the problem, on our bug reports forum or on the Trac system. (We prefer these media to the in-game feedback system, as we can use them to ask for more information and coordinate bug management.) Also, particularly when reporting errors and crashes, please post relevant parts of the logs (interestinglog.html) and crash dumps if available. These files are saved in paths detailed here. Thanks in advance for your help. Please contribute! REPORTERS/BLOGGERS, PLEASE MENTION THIS! We need your help to finish the game. Thanks. We are seeking contributors in programming, art, sound, documentation and more. Programmers are especially welcome and can get started immediately. These roles on the 0 A.D. development team are great if you want to brush up on your skills and update your portfolio, if you're seeking a project for school with real-life applications, or if you care about the cause of free culture and software and are willing to work pro bono with a group of dedicated volunteers from all over the world. Interested? Log onto #0ad-dev on QuakeNet on IRC and meet the developers. Also, you are invited to register on our forums and start participating! Why "Kronos"?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 mythology, Kronos (or Cronus) was the leader and the youngest of the first generation of Titans. At the request of his mother, Gaia, he overthrew his father Uranus, and took the throne with his sister Rhea. Kronos and Rhea ruled during the mythological Golden Age, a time of prosperity and harmony, when people lived without toil, greed or violence, and no laws or rules were needed. To prevent any chance of losing the throne, Kronos swallowed all the heirs Rhea produced for him. Not fond of the idea of losing all her children, Rhea drafted a plan to give birth to a son, Zeus, in a discreet cave, where the divine goat Amaltheia would then suckle and raise the child. To fool Kronos, Rhea wrapped a stone in Zeus' swaddling clothes, and Kronos took it and swallowed it, believing it was the child. Years later, Zeus returned, and with the help of Gaia, made Kronos regurgitate the stone and the five children he had previously swallowed. Along with his siblings, who had just been vomited out of Kronos' stomach, Zeus led a rebellion against Kronos and the titans. They won this war of gods and imprisoned many of the titans, including their father, Kronos. In turn, Zeus and his siblings became some of the main deities of Greek religion, called the Olympian gods. Kronos was worshipped in Athens as a patron of harvest, but his myth later took a much larger role in Roman religion as Saturn, a god of agriculture, liberation, and time. (Sources: English Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Mythica. Thanks for the name idea, Geek377!) For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter L. Keep it original and related to the time frame portrayed in 0 A.D. (appx. 500 BC - 1 BC)! Long time, no siegeWildfire Games will keep releasing new versions of 0 A.D. from time to time. Watch our news feed to get updates, 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. Contact info for press, bloggers, etc.: aviv@wildfirePANTHEONgames.com without the name of the set of ancient Greek gods written in all caps.

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of "0 A.D. Alpha 10 Jhelum", the tenth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. This alpha features Hellenic factions such as Athens, Macedonia and Sparta; technologies, civilization phases, click-and-drag walls, healing and more! Easy Download and InstallDownload 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 "freemium" model, no in-game advertising, no catch. Top new gameplay features in this release: New Hellenic Factions: Athenians, Macedonians and Spartans will now replace the generic Hellenic faction. Each features some unique characteristics along with shared Hellenic units and buildings:Receiving significant naval bonuses, the Athenians are the rulers of the waves. Special Buildings: Gymnaseion, Prytaneion ("Council Chamber") and Theatron.Macedonians have a wide selection of units and siege engines, for a combined arms approach. Special buildings (in planning): Lighthouse and library.The Spartans can't build stone walls, but as their soldiers are top-notch, their men serve as their walls instead. Special Building: Syssiton ("Military Mess Hall").(Also, along the same lines, we have decided to include more factions in 0 A.D., beginning with the Mauryan Indians! Read on to find out how you can help.)[*]Basic Technologies: Technologies, or techs, are economic or military bonuses that can be "researched" (bought) for resources at designated buildings. In 0 A.D., technologies come in mutually exclusive pairs: Within each pair, you can either research one tech or the other, but not both in the same game. As researching some technologies depends on having researched others, one should plan ahead carefully. (Importantly, for the meantime, all factions share an identical tech tree, but over the next few releases, different factions will get different tech trees, adding complexity and interest to the game.)[*]Civilization Phases: Start in Village, upgrade to Town, then to City. Unlock new techs and expand your territory with each upgrade.[*]Click-and-drag wall building functionality. (Support for gates is due in a future release.)[*]Healing units from their battle wounds is now possible by a priest conducting a ceremony with special chants within range. Priests can be trained at the Temple.[*]The Iberians get a pre-built walled settlement as a bonus every game. Graphics improvements: New Models/Artwork:Roman Siege Walls, Prytaneion, Roman Merchant Ship;Iberian Special Building, Temple and Fortress; Remodeled Iberian Civ CenterRemodeled Hellenic barracks and marketUpdated/Remodeled all wallsNew hand-drawn Greek unit portraits[*]Prettier unit/building selection rings[*]Refactored rendering engine, supports the new specular effect.[*]New graphics options: Ability to disable particles and unit silhouettes in game, which gives small boost to game's FPS if needed (Thanks, rouge-spectre and mk12) From top left: 1. Specularity; 2. Celtic walls and revamped selection rings; 3,4. "Drag" (3) and "drop" (4) to build all types of walls, including Roman siege walls pictured. All works CC BY SA Wildfire Games. 9+ New maps, including: Acropolis 5, Laconia 1, and Punjab 3 (scenario maps) and Deep Forest (a random map).New music tracks: "In the Shadow of Olympus" (Hellenic) and a generic victory track. 0 A.D. Soundtrack by Omri Lahav Usability Improvements:Training units with multiple buildings of the same type selected trains that unit in all selected buildingsSeveral UI changes in bartering and setting units' formation and stanceIt is now easier to select multiple control groups (by Shift+N, where N is the control group number, or by shift-clicking the control group icons) (Thanks, mk12)Shift-clicking a garrisoned unit now ungarrisons all units of that type[*]Atlas & Random Map Script Improvements: Terrain eyedropper toolSeveral bug fixes improving display and stabilityNew wall generation tool for random maps (Thanks, FeXoR)Bug fixes and minor features:Refactored AI API, setting the groundwork for developers to reduce lag and program faster, smarter computer opponents in the future.Attack restrictions: Soldiers can't attack stone walls, women can't attack soldiers, animals can't attack buildings, and more. (Thanks, ZsoL)New "Random" faction option for random maps (Thanks, deebee)Increased support for Linux and Mac on several accounts (Thanks, ZsoL)Control groups are now persisted between save/load (Thanks, mk12)Fixed several gameplay & AI bugs (Thanks, mattlott, Dietger, MattDoerksen)New data paths on Windows and OS X (Windows: "%appdata%\0ad" and "%localappdata%\0ad"; Mac: "~/Library/Application Support/0ad"). Please contribute! (REPORTERS/BLOGGERS, PLEASE MENTION THIS! We need your help to finish the game. Thanks.)We are especially seeking contributors in sound contribution management and in documentation, and, as always, in programming, art, sound, taking YouTube videos and more. These roles on the 0 A.D. development team are great if you want to brush up on your skills and update your portfolio, if you're seeking a project for school with real-life applications, or if you care about the cause of free culture and software and are willing to work pro bono with a group of dedicated volunteers from all over the world. Specifically, we invite contributors to guide us in ancient Indian history and architecture as we collaboratively design the Mauryan Indian faction in 0 A.D. Interested? Please register on our forums and start participating! (If you are applying for a role on the team, we request you start a thread in the applications and contributions forum following these instructions. Thanks!) Why "Jhelum"?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, ...). "Jhelum" is the Indian name for the Hydaspes River in the Punjab region, and the site of a major battle between Alexander the Great against King Porus of the Hindu Paurava kingdom in 326 BC, located in modern-day Pakistan. Alexander victored, but at a heavy cost, and the bravery, war skills and princely attitude of Porus so impressed Alexander, he allowed him to rule Hydaspes in Alexander's name. In honor of the decision to include Mauryan Indians in 0 A.D., we decided to dub Alpha 10 "Jhelum". (Thanks for the name idea, zaphzaph!) The setting for the battle of Jhelum is represented in the "Punjab 3" map included with Alpha 10. For the meantime, Persians replace the Mauryan Indians on this map, but this will be corrected as we include the Mauryans in 0 A.D. within the next few alphas. For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter K. Keep it original and within the 0 A.D. time-frame (appx. 500 BC - 1 BC)! Long Time, No SiegeWildfire Games will keep releasing new versions of 0 A.D. from time to time. Watch our news feed to get updates, 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. Contact info for press, bloggers, etc.: aviv@wildfireHYDASPESgames.com without the Greek name of this alpha version written in all caps.

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of "0 A.D. Alpha 9 Ides of March", the ninth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. This alpha debuts the Roman faction, new combat and trade systems and more. 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 "freemium" model, no in-game advertising, no catch. Top new features in this release: The Roman Republic faction, playable on custom scenarios and random map scripts--in single player and multiplayer, complete with a new art set, including new buildings, units, and ships. A new combat system that adds bonuses and weaknesses to each unit, like rock-paper-scissors (e.g. spearmen defeat melee cavalry, but are countered by skirmishers and cavalry archers). A brand new trading system, over land with traders trained from markets, and over sea with merchant ships built at the dock. Establish a trade route between two markets or docks, and your traders will gain resources for every trip made. You can choose which resource will be gained by a trader. Over a dozen new random map scripts by Spahbod, wraitii, and mmayfield45. New animations: Rowing oars for ships, rams, some catapults, traders, some animals. AI improvements: 0 A.D.'s default AI, qBot, has had a performance increase and had a serious bug fixed with the attack code. All works CC BY SA Wildfire Games. Music and Sound: Four new tracks and one re-made track, all composed and directed by Omri Lahav, featuring Marta Mc'cave on the flute and Shir-Ran Yinon on the viola. Two of the tracks celebrate the Roman faction with a very Italian mandolin. An Old Warhorse Goes to Pasture - An Iberian early peace track Juno Protect You - A Roman early peace track Elysian Fields - A Roman peace track Highland Mist - A Celtic early peace track The Road Ahead - A remade, neutral (not faction-specific) peace track <iframe width="300" height="410" style="position: relative; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; display: block; width: 300px; height: 410px;" src=" http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/album=3237142056/size=grande3/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0"><a href="http://play0ad.bandcamp.com/album/0-a-d-soundtrack">0 A.D. Soundtrack by Omri Lahav</a></iframe> Bug fixes and minor features: Outposts available for all factions. These are cheap and can be built quickly anywhere on the map except on enemy territory, but are weak and easily destroyed. Minimap colors have been adjusted to see player units more clearly Hunters now automatically continue hunting after they finish gathering from one animal Military-only bandboxing (Thanks, gerbilOFdoom) Improved Atlas selection behavior Garrisoning now has a range check (no more teleporting) Allies are now placed near each other in random maps Fixed OS X fullscreen mode (Thanks, Echelon9) Improved FreeBSD support Improved COLLADA importer Replaced most old 3D models with COLLADA versions Experimental Android/GLES/GLSL support. To be sure, 0 A.D. is not designed to run on smartphones. <iframe width="560" height="315" src=" http://www.youtube.com/embed/qtbhTPhcJ4w?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Please contribute! (REPORTERS/BLOGGERS, PLEASE MENTION THIS! We need your help to finish the game. Thanks.) We are seeking contributors in programming, art, sound, web design, taking YouTube videos and more. These roles on the 0 A.D. development team are great if you want to brush up on your skills and update your portfolio, if you're seeking a project for school with real-life applications, or if you care about the cause of free culture and software and are willing to work pro bono with a group of dedicated volunteers from all over the world. Interested? Please register on our forums and start a new topic introducing yourself in the applications and contributions forum following these instructions. Who were the Romans? The Romans controlled the largest empire of the ancient world. Rising from a group of villages to controlling an empire stretching from southern Scotland to the Sahara Desert, Rome remained one of the strongest nations on earth for almost 800 years, controlling over 60 million inhabitants, one quarter of the Earth's population at that time. Rome's regime changed over time from a republican system to an autocratic empire. While the politicians seemed to be in control, the real power lay with the army. Indeed, war was the heart and soul of the Roman political system, affecting everything that the government did. In fact, Romans reveled in combat and war so much so that one of their favorite forms of entertainment was gladiatorial combat. This resulted in a population that was eager to fight and support their military efforts. Rome produced not only effective generals but formidable engineers. Today we owe many technological advances to the Romans, who were the supreme builders of the ancient world. Roads, massive buildings, and large mining and water movement projects were common. These inventions and more served to spread the Roman legacy that endures to this day, from language to medicine, from literature to government, and from legal codes to art, architecture and beyond. The timeframe of 0 A.D., 500 B.C. - 1 B.C., coincides with Rome's rise to power from a small city-state to one of the greatest empires on earth. In following centuries, however, this massive empire soon became too large to control, and foreign peoples began swarming into the Empire. For centuries, Rome fought an ever-increasing flood of migrant "barbarians", until the western half of the empire fell in 476 A.D. The eastern half, however, lived on and evolved into a very different empire, called Byzantium. The Byzantines' religion was Christian, their language was Greek and their capital was in Constantinople, which is modern-day Istanbul. Rome's eastern successor, Byzantium, continued to be a powerhouse well into the middle ages. In 0 A.D. the Romans will have many bonuses that match their historic strengths. These include: Powerful infantry, Incredible siege equipment, Superior defensive construction and mining, And an excellent navy. While the Romans may not specialize extremely well in specific areas, they are one of the most well-rounded civilizations in 0 A.D. (Source: 0 A.D.: Romans) Why "Ides of March"? 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 honor of the release of the Roman faction, we decided to dub Alpha 9 "Ides of March". The ides was a day in the Roman calendar that marked the approximate middle of the month, deriving from the Latin word "Idus" which means "half division". The ides was the 13th day of most months, but the 15th day of March, May, July, and October. The Ides of March was a festive day dedicated to the god Mars, and a military parade was usually held. In modern times, the term Ides of March is best known as the date on which Julius Caesar was killed in 44 B.C. (Sources: English Wikipedia articles Roman calendar and Ides of March) For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter J. Keep it original and within the 0 A.D. time-frame (appx. 500 BC - 1 BC)! Long Time, No Siege Wildfire Games will keep releasing new versions of 0 A.D. from time to time. Watch our news feed to get updates, 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. Contact info for press, bloggers, etc.: aviv@wildfireROMULUSgames.com without the name of Rome's legendary founder written in all caps.

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of "0 A.D. Alpha 8 Haxāmaniš" (Alternate spelling: "Hakhamanish"), the eighth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. This alpha debuts the mighty Persian Empire, includes support for both saving games and reconnecting to multiplayer games, a bartering system, improved AI and more. 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 "freemium" model, no in-game advertising, no catch. Top new features in this release: Bartering system: Buy and sell resources in exchange for other resources. Resources are traded at exchange rates that vary with each deal. For example, to purchase 100 Food, the player may have to spend 100 points of another resource type (Wood, Stone, or Ore). By the next deal, however, Food will become 1% more expensive. Over time, the exchange rate automatically gradually resets to the default rate. Saved game support: Single-player games can be saved and reloaded. Multiplayer reconnection support: If you are disconnected when playing (by an unreliable internet connection, or perhaps by the game crashing), you no longer have to abandon the match - you can simply connect to the server again, and it will launch you back into the match in a few seconds. 45° Field of View (FOV): The FOV was changed from 20 degrees to 45 degrees. This means the view of the camera was changed from a nearly isometric angle to provide a deeper, more immersive look, which is standard in other 3D video games. You can see the difference easily by toggling back and forth between these two screenshots: 20°, 45°. AI improvements: The default AI engine is now qBot, kindly contributed by WFG programmer Jonathan Waller, also known as quantumstate. qBot is still having trouble learning how to fend off attacks, but it runs a tight ship economically, and it can be very sneaky militarily. In fact, qBot has been observed rushing a human opponent just a few minutes into the game. An all-new and unique Persian civilization, including: A brand-new building set. Monumental and eclectic, it reflects the cosmopolitan nature of the Achaemenid Empire. New units, from chariots and hoplites to rams and biremes, from Xerxes to Cyrus to skirmishers and archers. All works CC BY SA Wildfire Games. [*] Music and Sound: Several new tracks, all composed and directed by Omri Lahav. They feature live percussion, as well as a flute segment by a professional musician (Thanks, Marta Mc'cave!). Sands of Time: A mesmerizing and very orchestral Persian peace track. Eastern Dreams: Persia's early peace track. A dreamy yet minimal, traditional-sounding arrangement, without orchestral strings. The Road Ahead: A long, neutral (not faction-specific) peace track, it has several changing moods and orchestrations to keep it interesting, while still staying in the realm of "background music". <iframe width="300" height="410" style="position: relative; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; display: block; width: 300px; height: 410px;" src=" http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/album=3237142056/size=grande3/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0"><a href="http://play0ad.bandcamp.com/album/0-a-d-soundtrack">0 A.D. Soundtrack by Omri Lahav</a></iframe> [*] New map: Zagros Mountains. All works CC BY SA Wildfire Games. [*] Bug fixes and minor features: Improved selection boxes: Selecting units is now more functional and intuitive. Slowly but surely, we are making 0 A.D. more compatible with the Mac, with the Atlas Scenario Editor now running on OS X. For developers, a new performance profiler has been implemented, which allows anyone to see which parts of the game take up the most of the CPU's and GPU's time. The reports can be seen in a web browser. This helps developers figure out how to reduce lag. Some progress has been made on improving performance, especially in the fields of pathfinding and AI. A marker line now helpfully connects the building and its rally point once you select the building, to make far rally points easier to discern. Also, a button in the building GUI changes the view to focus on the Rally Point, which can be useful if you've set a rally point far away and don't want to have to scroll to it. Rally points can now can be set on resources, so that citizens will automatically gather that type of resource when they are created. Random map fixes: Fixed crash while generating maps and out-of-sync error in multiplayer games. Please contribute! (REPORTERS/BLOGGERS, PLEASE MENTION THIS! We need your help to finish the game. Thanks.) We are seeking contributors in programming, art, sound, web design, taking YouTube videos and more. These roles on the 0 A.D. development team are great if you want to brush up on your skills and update your portfolio, if you're seeking a project for school with real-life applications, or if you care about the cause of free culture and software and are willing to work pro bono with a group of dedicated volunteers from all over the world. Interested? Please register on our forums and start a new topic introducing yourself in the applications and contributions forum following these instructions. Many of the features mentioned above were made possible through our previous fundraising effort from 2010-11. The sum we raised last time was directed to pay for a month of full-time development of the 0 A.D. codebase by esteemed contributor Philip Taylor, also known as Ykkrosh. As you can see, that month has paid off tremendously for the project. We'd like to allow Philip to work full-time for yet another month, so we can keep delivering awesome new features and making progress towards a finished open source game of ancient warfare. So let's celebrate openness and antiquity together. Support 0 A.D. Thanks in advance. Who were the Persians? The Persians originated from the Pars province in the southern part of modern-day Iran. They speak Persian, which belongs to the Indo-European language family, a large family of languages including Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit. The Persian Empire, when ruled by the Achaemenid dynasty (ca. 550 BC–336 BC), was one of the greatest empires of antiquity, stretching at its zenith from the Indus Valley in the east, to Thrace and Macedon on the northeastern border of Greece. Since most existing accounts of this vast empire are in works of Greek philosophers and historians, and since much of the original Persian documents are lost, it is difficult to portray the Ancient Persians in their own terms and ideas. Nevertheless, the Persians can be credited as the pioneers of empire-building of the Ancient World. Later empires, such as the Hellenistic and Roman empires, adopted many administrative innovations that the Persians had come up with. While taking over various peoples with different customs, laws, religions, languages, etc., the Persians imposed a centralized, bureaucratic administration under the emperor, with large, professional military and civil services. These included a postal system, advanced road systems, standard coinage, weights and measures and the usage of an official language, Aramaic, throughout the empire. The ancient Persian army was largely comprised of national contingents from the various subject nations under the rule of the Great Kings. These contingents were organized along military/administrative lines and used a decimal system of organization by multiples of ten. Well-known national 'regiments' were: Medo-Persian, non-Medo-Persian Iranian, Lydian, Carian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Indian, Ethiopian, and Libyan. The ancient Persian empire collapsed and disintegrated around 330 BC with the Hellenistic conquest, led by Alexander the Great. In later centuries, peoples in its former territories were either ruled by Alexander's successors, the Ptolemaic Kingdom and Seleucid Empire, or gained independence and were self-ruled. The culture of the central Iranian plateau, however, continued to thrive and eventually reclaimed power by the 2nd century BC. The Persian empire would also set the tone for the politics, heritage and history of modern Persia (now called Iran). In 0 A.D. the Persians will have many bonuses that match their historic strengths. These include: Strong archers and cavalry, Good agriculture and trade over land, and Strong structures and defenses. (Sources: English Wikipedia: Achaemenid Empire; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Achaemenid Dynasty) Why "Haxāmaniš"? 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 honor of the release of the Persian faction, we decided to dub Alpha 8 "Haxāmaniš". Haxāmaniš (Alternate spelling: "Hakhamanish") is the original Old Persian name for the legendary founder of the Achaemenid dynasty, who the Greeks and Romans called "Achaemenes". His dynasty included renowned rulers such as Cyrus II, Darius I and Xerxes I. Haxāmaniš himself, however, was a minor ruler of the Anshan (Ansham or Anšān) in southwestern Iran in the seventh century B.C. Nobody is quite sure if Haxāmaniš in fact existed, little is known about him and the little known is peppered with myth. (Ancient Greek texts say that he was "raised by an eagle".) Nevertheless, he remains a figure often mentioned in Persian history. Nobody knows for sure how Haxāmaniš was pronounced in Old Persian, but it is probably something like hah-xāh-mah-neesh, where all the a's are as in "father", and the a with the macron (ā) is longer. X is the voiceless velar fricative, as in ugh, loch, or Chanukah. The stress is uncertain; If it were as in Sanskrit, it would have been on the last syllable (hah-xāh-mah-NEESH). (Thanks, Thamar E. Gindin, Ph.D., expert on Iran!) For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter I. Keep it original and within the 0 A.D. time-frame (appx. 500 BC - 1 BC)! Long Time, No Siege Wildfire Games will keep releasing new versions of 0 A.D. from time to time. Watch our news feed to get updates, 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. Contact info for press, bloggers, etc.: aviv@wildfirePERSEPOLISgames.com without the name of the ancient Persian city written in all caps.

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of "0 A.D. Alpha 6 Fortuna", the sixth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. We have added hundreds of terrain textures and dozens of sounds, redrawn and added Hellenic units and buildings, implemented unit stances and put in some WW2 fighter planes just to show that the game engine can support flight. 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 "freemium" model, no in-game advertising, no catch. New features in this release: Top new features: Unit stances: "Violent" - The unit attacks any enemy unit in sight and pursues it as it escapes into the Shroud of Darkness; "Aggressive" - Attacks enemy units in sight but does not pursue them as they escape; "Defensive" (Default) - Attacks enemy units who come within half vision range distance. Will pursue the enemy until they leave that range. If no more enemies are within range they will return to their original positions; "Stand ground" - Only fights back when attacked or when their comrade next to them in formation is being attacked. Else, does not move unless tasked to move or attack; "Avoid" - Does not attack, and runs away from enemy soldiers in the direction of the nearest Civ Centre or Fortress. A unit with this stance, if tasked to move, will attempt to avoid contact with enemy units. [*] 250 new terrain textures. (These are still a work in progress.)[*] 43 new sound effects: Building selection and construction. (Thanks, Dynamite Sound Bytes team.) These are just a few of the sounds created for the game by the Dynamite Sound Bytes sound design team, made up of three contributors who are professionals in the recording arts, based in Vancouver, Canada. Video compiled by 0 A.D. contributor Pureon. (CC-BY-SA Wildfire Games) Art: New Greek houses. New Greek siege tower, which acts like a mobile missile battery. Updated shield patterns for Greek hoplites. Art released for all of the remaining Champion units, including: Persian War Elephant, Persian Cataphract, Carthaginian Sacred Band pikeman, Carthaginian War Elephant, Roman Extraordinarius, and Roman Consular Cavalry. Thracian Mercenary unit - "The Black Cloaks," famed for fighting for the Macedonians against the Romans. New movement animations for giraffes and lions (by Athos). New Greek houses, updated shield patterns and the Thracian Mercenary unit. (CC-BY-SA Wildfire Games) Maps: Cycladic Archipelago III, a huge Greek islands map. Southern Greece real-world map. Updated Belgian Bog. Cantabrian Highlands random map now uses the Temperate biome terrain set. Gambia River map, using the new Tropic biome terrain set. Mediterranean Coves. The updated Belgian Bog map and the new Mediterranean Cove map. (CC-BY-SA Wildfire Games) Programming: Delay in carrying out unit instructions eliminated. Units less likely to get stuck. Various improvements to the text input boxes in the game. Unit selection limit matches population cap (200 units). The Atlas scenario editor:Player settings editing panel: Set teams, colors, default AI behavior, starting resources etc.Entity filter: Enter part of the name of an object/objects you want to add to your map to filter them out from among the rest. Two new features in the Atlas scenario editor: The improved "Player settings" panel and the new entity filtering function. (CC-BY-SA Wildfire Games) Just for fun: Flight demo: A brand new P-51 Mustang can fly around the map, and attack targets on the ground and in the air. (Thanks, Brightgalrs.) Airplanes! (CC-BY-SA Wildfire Games) Room for improvement: Known issue: The AI builds an awful lot of mills on the edge of the Acropolis II map. Many unit stats are still unbalanced. Many planned gameplay features are not added yet: There is no research, no auras, no formation bonuses, 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.) Why "Fortuna"? 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 recognition of some of our good fortune recently as a development team, we have decided to code-name 0 A.D. Alpha 6 "Fortuna". Fortuna was the goddess of fortune and the personification of luck in Roman religion. She was believed to bring both good and bad luck, and so came to represent life's capriciousness. She could be represented as veiled and blind, as in modern depictions of Justice, and was usually portrayed standing and wearing a rich dress. Fortuna. (CC-BY perpetualplum) Her cult was introduced by Roman king Servius Tullius, who reigned in the years 578-535 BC. She had a sanctuary on top of Quirinal Hill, one of the seven hills of Rome, and a temple on the Forum Boarium, the oldest food market in ancient Rome. This market was used both for cattle trade and as a religious center. Also, in Praeneste, a city 35 km east of Rome, there was an oracle dedicated to Fortuna. This oracle was a shrine where Fortuna was believed to reveal the future, through a ritual in which a young boy would choose one of several rods, each inscribed with a different prediction. (This was the ancient Roman version of the magic 8-ball.) To this day, the ruins of this sanctuary can be seen in modern-day Palestrina, Italy. (Sources: Wikipedia: Fortuna and Encyclopedia Mythica: Fortuna.) For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter G. It's best if you think of something related to Carthage or the Punic Wars. Keep it original and within the 0 A.D. time-frame (appx. 500 BC - 1 BC)! A Special Call for Contributions Over the last few months we have been particularly privileged to welcome great contributors in various areas (programming, art, sound, music and more). But we'd like to take this opportunity to share some of our plans for this summer, and invite you to pitch in and contribute in two particular areas. The first area is 3d art, as part of our aim to release the Carthaginian faction of 0 A.D. by the autumn of 2011. To achieve that goal, we invite 3D modelers to join the 0 A.D. development team. You must have adequate experience in a mainstream 3D application such as 3DS Max or Blender, and be able to properly UV map a model with a given texture. Also, it's best if you know a little bit about animating, but it is not required. The second area is web design. We would like to design a new website for 0 A.D. over the next few weeks and are seeking one or more experienced web designer(s) for that purpose. You should be able to demonstrate that you can design usable interfaces, effective website layouts, and attractive 2d graphics, as well as write readable, standard-compliant code. We need to create uniform navigation and branding across a Wordpress blog, a Trac wiki and an IPB forum and create corresponding graphics for 0 A.D. profiles on other websites, such as ModDB/IndieDB, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Bandcamp. These roles on the 0 A.D. development team are a boon if you want to brush up on your skills and update your portfolio, if you're seeking a project for school with real-life applications, or if you care about the cause of free culture and software and are willing to work pro bono with a group of dedicated volunteers from all over the world. Interested? Please register on our forums and start a new topic introducing yourself in the applications and contributions forum following these instructions. 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.