Setup of this game ?

[lvca91]

When we will play this game ? tnx

[Belisarivs]

When it is done.

Sorry, it cannot be estimated.

[Mythos_Ruler]

Well, we'll let you know when we do have an estimation.

[Sophokles]

Seriously, how many people are going ask when the game is done?! I think 98% of the people in this forum need to read previous posts .

Edited September 1, 2009 by Sophokles

[Sluzky]

It's good to know that everybody's waiting for it

[buggy123]

I'm gonna be a strategy developer once this things comes out...I can imagine it...The Roman Ruthless Rush...the RRR OP!!! lol but anyways...can't wait

for people who hae no idea what I'm saying...just ignore this lol

Edited September 2, 2009 by buggy123

[Stormboy]

When we will play this game ?

About a week or so after the release of Duke Nukem Forever.

This game is seriously overdue for a vaporware award nomination.

[Sam Assoum]

This game will be completed and it is coming along smoothly, we have put countless hours into 0 A.D and plan on putting in many more. We will keep you posted.

[janwas]

About a week or so after the release of Duke Nukem Forever.

This game is seriously overdue for a vaporware award nomination.

heh, I see you've been lurking for quite a while

But how do you reconcile the term "vaporware" with the existence of a public SVN repo and a semi-playable alpha release?

[plumo]

It certainly isn't vaporware, but for us people who are in no way involved in the process of creating ( lack of skills ) it is very hard to tell where there is any progress.

[mattmill30]

Seriously, how many people are going ask when the game is done?! I think 98% of the people in this forum need to read previous posts .

Perhaps if there were a sticky thread from a moderator, with links to different pages:

• an up-to-date road map of the project with achieved features crossed out
  
• a link to a downloads page
  
• a bug-zilla system with a section for bugs/wishes to be nominated priority and version milestone
  

New users could find the information easily.

heh, I see you've been lurking for quite a while

But how do you reconcile the term "vaporware" with the existence of a public SVN repo and a semi-playable alpha release?

Is there a page with the svn and alpha download instructions page?

Thanks,

Matthew Millar

[Ykkrosh]

Trac has most of the information, particularly build instructions and bugs/tasks (though they're not very well organised or prioritised; I'm currently working on the gameplay system and aiming to improve the organisation there, which is probably where it's most needed).

I agree it would be good to make these things more findable from the web site. (There have been plans for redesigning it for quite a long time, but that doesn't seem to have got very far, so I'm not sure what the situation is with updates.)

[Jeru]

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

Thanks and keep the ideas coming!

[Crescento]

I believe a short trailer, 1 minute and a half to mention most features like the amount of civilizations, quality of visuals and effects, seige engines, hero system, whatever the game highlights are and finally a few lines of text with a link to let people know that you need more hands.

I work with video edition and post production, if you figure its a good idea I will give a hand.

There is simply not enough advertising, the way I found this site was while a I googling for hoplite images/concept art as reference to model it.

[Jeru]

Definitely a good idea, Crescento, thanks for your support. I agree 0 A.D. could use some more effective advertising. I believe Kimball would be very interested in collaborating with you on this project and I'm sending him a heads-up.

[Crescento]

Yes, I have contacted your buddy and shared my msn with him.

[Jeru]

Great! I look forward to seeing what you guys can come up with.

[Sophokles]

Here's an idea: a very broad development build tree, like in many open source games.

What I mean is this: on a somewhat regular basis, 0AD is made available as an installer, along with notes detailing the major differences from the previous release. Those who have gone to the Battle for Wesnoth website would know what I mean.

This way, people who want to play the game (even though it's in heavy development, but whatever...) can have .DEB or .EXE installers, while devs can have their constantly updated source code.

For those who don't understand trees, an illustration:

1.0 is released==> 1.1 has bug fixes and minor new features, as does 1.2, etc. until...

these versions are significantly better than v1.0==> some candidates are released, showing major new features.==> Then the candidates are merged into...

2.0, which has many new additions==> 2.1, 2.2, and so on... The cycle repeats.

Basically, integer versions are major releases that are a neat representation of the latest dev. Decimal versions are minor releases with bug fixes and such. Candidates have radical but untested new ideas. Of course, it gets complicated with development and maintenance releases.

My idea for 0AD is a new release every few months... What do you think?

[Ykkrosh]

I think somewhat-regular releases are a good idea, and I've recently been suggesting it a bit . For it to really work, I think we need to start in a situation from which it's possible to reach a decent completed game by lots of parallel incremental steps, and I believe the problem we've had in the past is that the gameplay code became too messy and incremental improvements weren't feasible, and nobody wanted to work on it, which blocked progress. So I've been redesigning and reimplementing it now, which is a lot of non-incremental work but I think it's getting closer to a stable state - I want to finish getting the broad features in, built on a solid framework, but then I'd like to pull it together into a release before starting the long incremental process of adding and polishing all the desired features and details.

So I expect it'll be a while (a small number of months) before we could reasonably move onto a more OS-friendly release system, but that's what I'm currently aiming for, and I think it's likely that it will work out

[Aldandil]

I think it would help just to have a clear, easy-to-find FAQ and a stickied link to it that is visible from every part of the forum. The Overview post helps, but it does not contain a full FAQ and is difficult to locate on the forum (I have to Search to find it). I read that the current FAQ is very out of date (last updated 2004), and I didn't know how to find it from the website. Looking at the Getting Started Guide and Trac Wiki did not answer my questions either. I ended up posting a stupid question on the Technical Discussions forum that makes me look like a spammer/idiot/jerk, because I don't even know which forum to ask these questions in. I still don't know if this is the correct place to ask it.

Questions I have, and don't know where to ask them:

1. If the game is not in alpha or beta yet, why is there already a version available to download? What is it for if it can't be played yet?

2. What can people with no programming or art skills do to help?

3. What should people with no programming or art skills NOT do to avoid getting in the way/wasting developers' time?

4. Is it OK to post on forum sections that appear dead?

5. How do I delete forum posts that I accidentally posted in the wrong sub-forum?

Other Questions that it would be helpful to put in the FAQ for newcomers:

1. When will the game be released?

2. When will the alpha and beta bug testing happen?

3. What system requirements will it have?

Edited February 2, 2010 by Aldandil

[feneur]

1. If the game is not in alpha or beta yet, why is there already a version available to download? What is it for if it can't be played yet?

2. What can people with no programming or art skills do to help?

3. What should people with no programming or art skills NOT do to avoid getting in the way/wasting developers' time?

4. Is it OK to post on forum sections that appear dead?

5. How do I delete forum posts that I accidentally posted in the wrong sub-forum?

Other Questions that it would be helpful to put in the FAQ for newcomers:

1. When will the game be released?

2. When will the alpha and beta bug testing happen?

3. What system requirements will it have?

1. So that potential developers can see what the game is like and find out if it's something they'd like to contribute to. And actually, as long as one don't break any laws or violate the GPL we don't really care who downloads it or what they do. However don't recommend non-programmers to download it yet as it's not too much fun if you're not both ready to do some (relatively) complicated things to get it working and be prepared that a lot of things aren't yet working.

2. By posting in the forums (so we know that there are people out there who want to play the game, it's a good help to motivate us and you might have some good insight or be fun to talk to in general which is also a good thing, so it doesn't get too lonely in the forums), talking about 0 A.D. to people you think might have the necessary skills to help develop the game, and also spreading the word about the game in general.

3.

4. It's very much ok, as long as you have something relevant to say it's great.

5. You can't, just post a message to say you want it deleted and a moderator will delete it.

The main reason we haven't updated the FAQ now (it really should have been updated much earlier so it's not an excuse, just an explanation) is that we're redesigning the website. The new website will probably not be out for some months yet, but it's still soon enough for us not to want to spend too much time on the old site. A lot of questions/answers in the present FAQ are still valid, and a lot of questions aren't easier to answer now than then. Questions about dates/system specs will not be possible to answer until very soon before they're due.

Posting a link to the FAQ in the forums might be a good idea, thanks But I'd say the FAQ is reasonably easy to find on the website, perhaps we could post a direct link to it in the menu as well, but since some parts are not up-to-date I'm not sure how useful that would be.

[Jeru]

Aldandil,

Thanks for your question. The other day I added to the bottom of this page a few other ways you can contribute:

I'd like to help, but I don't know how to develop games!

That's okay. There's still plenty you can do to spread the word:

• Do you own a blog or a Twitter account? If so, blog or tweet about us to get the word out. Maybe some motivated, potential contributor could find out about the project from you!
  
• If you downloaded and ran 0 A.D., you can make in-game fan videos and upload to a site like YouTube, or you could make screenshots with our scenario editor, Atlas, and upload to a photo hosting service like Flickr. (Remember - 0 A.D.'s license, CC-BY-SA, requires you redistribute derivative works like fan videos and screenshots under a similar free license).
  
• Join the official 0 A.D. Facebook fan page to get updates and show everyone your enthusiasm.
  
• Subscribe to the 0 A.D. RSS feed and the feeds on our ModDB page.
  

Edited February 3, 2010 by Jeru

[ZeZar]

When did you get the facebook fanpage?? Awesome!

[Jeru]

January 29, 2010. Thanks! Spread the word!