Feedback on the game so far

[Deicide4u]

Spoiler, it's a lot of fun.

 

Now that I've spoiled the entire premise of this post, I wanted to thank the development and art team for making something truly unique. I've been following 0 A.D. since I got interested in Linux (around 7-8 years ago), because it was the first package listed in Synaptic, the old GUI package manager. I couldn't play it at the time, my computer barely ran Windows 7, let alone an RTS game full of eye-candy detail.

Well, now I can, and the feeling of finally being able to play THAT ONE FREE GAME I've always wanted to play is phenomenal. The fact that this game is free (as in freedom!) is a miracle. I can't even fathom how much work went into this game. Technically, it feels the most like Age of Mythology, while gameplay is most similar to Age of Empires 2. The choice of civilizations is at first daunting, but each one plays similarly enough that you could just pick any and learn as you go.

One feature stands out, and it's not intuitive at first. Citizen Soldiers (CS) are both your workers and your basic soldiers. They cost Wood in addition to Food, and some of the swordsmen types can even cost Metal. They might be weak, but they're easy to mass. You would use them primarily to gather Stone and Metal, with few of them on Wood (females gather Wood only slightly slower than males). Since females will be your primary gatherers in the early game, you should avoid making too many of CS in the Village phase.

The game begins in earnest in the Town phase, when more of your soldiers become available. Most champion units are still locked behind City phase. More importantly, siege engines can also only be built in this phase (baring a few civs), so your options at storming the enemy towns are limited until the City phase. This might be my only complaint so far. In Age of Empires 2 or Age of Mythology, you get access to siege weapons in the 3rd phase. In addition, 20 Knights can level the Town Center alone, if it's not defended. In 0 A.D., attacking a Civic Center with 20 Town phase cavalry units will likely result in utter failure, wasting resources.

Maybe this is a good thing, maybe not. It depends on what kind of player you are. But players should get an option that is not simply "move to the City phase ASAP".
Other than that, I had a blast playing Romans, Athenians and Persians so far. I'll try some other civilizations (SPARTAAAAANS! READY!) and ultimately decide on my "goto" civ. This is really a fun game to play on a relaxing rainy day. Absolute chill when compared to the APM madness in StarCraft. And I love it.

Thank you so much.

[Classic-Burger]

Imagine if the formation combat system was improved and made more tactical.

It could be played less frantically and allow for more maneuvers in the battlefield.

I'm not saying it should be slow, but it should allow you to relax while supervising a fight.

 

[Deicide4u]

4 hours ago, Classic-Burger said:

It could be played less frantically and allow for more maneuvers in the battlefield.

I'm not saying it should be slow, but it should allow you to relax while supervising a fight.

It wouldn't be slow, just less mechanically intensive. This is primarily a macro game, so better formations could help a player focus on the economy and unit production more.

It helps if you know your army won't be decimated by a couple of bolts from bolt shooters and ballistae.

[Deicide4u]

I've tried Alpha 13 mainly because of the old damage and armor calculation. However, I was more impressed with the older art style, especially the unit icons and resources.

I've got to admit, I prefer the older icons and art style. Spartan unit icons in alpha 13 are superb. It's also much more clearer what is what.

If you fork alpha 13, apply some polish to the GUI, fix bugs and rework the balance around that version, you'd get a release-ready game. After you add some new civilizations that were released after, of course.

[Stan`]

You'll also get a lot of lag and a game that doesn't work on AMD CPUs.

But the art thing is interesting, what do you like more? Maybe comparison screens ?

[Deicide4u]

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

You'll also get a lot of lag and a game that doesn't work on AMD CPUs.

 

Well, you would also port any bug fixes and hardware enablement code so that the game would run on modern systems well.

I can't share the alpha 27 screenshots as I don't have it installed right now (I have the configs backed up, so it's easy to re-install). But, you should be able to start a game and compare.

Here are the Spartans, Oasis 11 scenario. I might share more screens later when I get a chance to build up a town.

 

 

Edited 9 hours ago by Deicide4u
For some reason, I forgot about F2.

[Stan`]

55 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

But, you should be able to start a game and compare.

Well I cannot because of the reasons above. But thanks for the screenshots 

From what I can see you're showing @LordGood's portraits which I loved but we only had them for a handful of units. So it only looked good for some civs maybe 2-3 of the 14. Also I think they were not really liked at the time.

[Deicide4u]

Sadly, alpha 13 has many issues, one of the game breaking ones being: AI stops working after loading a saved game. Also, had a crash 15 minutes into one game.

So, back to Alpha 27 I go!

Here's Leonidas with his champions after destroying some Indian people on Death Canyon. I play the game at around average quality and no shadows (because integrated GPU), yet the models still look great.

 

[Seleucids]

Good new features of A27 (please keep):

1. Save game and rehost

2. Change password

3. More available player colours

4. Fixed position mainland map

5. Patched vulnerabilities. 

 

Imperfections:

1. Atlas conflict with Wayland: the editor crashes on start or if I press a certain key combination. 

2. Mainlog.html should be cleaner, imo. The log is literally millions of lines long and hundreds of megabytes in size. It is also overwritten so records are lost if I restart game. We could split it up into dedicated log files, each noting certain things then strategically replace some to save disk space.  

3. The GUI pages should be completely async, especially if they are overlaying each other on the same screen. 

 

@Deicide4u If you like the older icons, you can make a mod which replaces the icons with the old ones.