Hello

[mk12]

Hi, my name is Mitchell and I'm a 16-year-old student from Ottawa, Canada.

I bought Age of Empires II (and later The Conquerors expansion pack) a very long time ago and played it extensively. I'm pretty sure it's my all-time favourite game—I have fond memories of playing the campaigns and playing multiplayer over LAN—it never seemed to get old. I loved training huge armies and expanding a base with endless layers of walls. I also got Age of Empires III (vanilla) later on and enjoyed it as well. It was of course the online which gave it a very long life for me. I didn't like how it was leaping forward in history, though—I would have rathered that it stayed in the same time period as AoE II or go earlier. It's been a long time, but I found it sad to see Ensemble Studios disband, the community die out, the online players dwindle (I have no idea how many still play today).

I can't remember when or how, but I'm pretty sure I found out about 0 A.D. when it was in Alpha 3 Cerberus. Or it might have been earlier and I just never saw the first two alphas. Anyway, it made me very excited to see it. I won't bother repeating everything you already know about your own game, but it's perfection for me. Something to look forward to. Because, it does look very promising, now more than ever. Games like this don't seem to be made anymore, but 0 A.D. will hopefully prove that there is still room for innovation in this genre. I've followed 0 A.D., checked this website every once and a while for the past few years. It's amazing what's been accomplished. I really hope it is a success, and hope to contribute to that success in my own small way.

That brings us to me. I've thought about contributing for a long time, so I finally decided I should at least introduce myself here. I began learning html 4.0.1 when I was far too young to understand much of anything, probably when i was around 7 or 8, and javascript a bit later, then Java. Since then I've developed a passion for programming. In my first computer science class which I had this year, I already knew everything and my teacher said I'm the best he's seen in 6 years of teaching.

I've made a knockoff of Angry Birds with a level editor as well as a very basic Minecraft clone. I am pretty well-versed in OpenGl (and using forward compatible/legacy free code), for using it in 2D games or basic 3D anyway. I am fluent in a dozen or so languages, so even though I've never written a line of C++ until recently, I picked it up fairly quickly. I am currently in the process of reading Effective C++ (although I got sidetracked by learning Haskell, which has now become my favourite language in terms of elegance).

I can learn quickly, and I've taught myself everything I know with the help of the Internet. I am an extreme perfectionist when it comes to programming. I hate having to choose between two equally good ways of doing the same thing. Whatever I write, I spend long enough so that it's as polished as possible.

I've been working on a simple, original 2d game which I would release on the Mac App Store if I ever finished it, but I figured it would be better to place me efforts here instead. My only machine is a Mac, so hopefully I'll be able to get everything set up on it. I think I built 0 A.D. once before, but it took a long time and I really don't like using MacPorts. I might also be helpful for the Mac side of things since I do all my developing on OS X, I am familiar with Xcode and I know how users expect a proper Mac application to be.

I've never actually contributed to an open source project before, so I'm not familiar with how that goes, or even what working on a project with multiple developers is like. But I'd really like to get experience with this, and start here. The thing is, I'm not exactly sure where to start.

I'm looking through the code, am I am looking at http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GettingStartedProgrammers, so hopefully I'll find something and be able to get started. But if anyone has any particular suggestions about places that are good to start, maybe something that needs better documentation, or a small job like that, that would be nice.

Some weeks I may be able to contribute an hour a day, others only a little, or maybe sometimes every hour I'm awake of the weekend. It really depends on school and what else I have to do.

Also, I made a DVD case cover for 0 A.D. for my graphics class at school. Not that it will be distributed that way, but I thought you might want to see it.

Looking forward to submitting my first patch!

[KayEhn]

Very nicely done sir, hope you can find a way to help out!

Also, on the DVD case cover- very well done!

[Mythos_Ruler]

Diggin the DVD cover. We might release an "official" DVD cover for those who want to burn the game to DVD. In fact, seeing your effort has solidified the idea in my mind.

[Jeru]

Hi Mitchell! Welcome! We are looking forward to your contributions. You're already off to a great start.

[FeXoR]

Also, I made a DVD case cover for 0 A.D. for my graphics class at school. Not that it will be distributed that way, but I thought you might want to see it.

Hi and welcome.

I like the idea of heaving a cover, too.

I'm not the right person to ask for publishing or representative issues in general so don't take me to serious here. But since the game suppose to be historical correct I thought I'd add some comments:

- 'In the spring of the world...': If 'world' means something like 'existence' or 'universe' it would correspond to the big bang and (as far as we know) that was about 13.75 billion years ago (If you prefer creationism it still was at least 2000 BC depending on culture and believe). If it means the planet 'earth' it was about 4.54 billion years ago. If it means 'homo sapiens' it was 200.000 years ago. If it means the first high culture it would still be 3000+ BC.

-'...the dawn of history': Similar to the above. Historic records was found from 2000+ BC AFAIK.

-'You must prove which civilization is the greatest of all.': What is 'proven' by playing a game? All civilizations in the game are history and gone so why 'is'?

...but I have to admit: it sounds nice

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

Note, the Carthaginians were a republic not an empire. Otherwise, very well done with the design.

Edited April 9, 2012 by Thorfinn the Shallow Minded

[mk12]

Very nicely done sir, hope you can find a way to help out!

Also, on the DVD case cover- very well done!

Thanks!

Diggin the DVD cover. We might release an "official" DVD cover for those who want to burn the game to DVD. In fact, seeing your effort has solidified the idea in my mind.

I'm glad you like it. I actually did some more final touches (making the text more legible mainly) but that psd is on the computer at school. If anyone involved in the official cover at some point thinks mine would be helpful, I'd be glad to provide the final, 600 dpi version with all layers intact, etc.

Hi Mitchell! Welcome! We are looking forward to your contributions. You're already off to a great start.

Thanks, me too .

Hi and welcome.

I like the idea of heaving a cover, too.

I'm not the right person to ask for publishing or representative issues in general so don't take me to serious here. But since the game suppose to be historical correct I thought I'd add some comments:

…

Haha, well, you might want to talk to someone else because I pretty much took that stuff straight off The 0 A.D. Creed .

Note, the Carthaginians were a republic not an empire. Otherwise, very well done with the design.

I blame that on this page, then: 0 A.D. Factions.

Also, I can point out a few things since I made it. The GPL 3 logo is wrong—you use GPL 2, but there doesn't seem to be a pretty svg logo for it . Also, the whole back part is pretty heavily based on AoE III since it was my only reference. The main offender is the system requirements, I blatantly copied that (although it was a bit of work getting those nice shapes to be pixel perfect). I also mostly copied the fineprint at the bottom from AoE III, but I said "All Rights Reversed." . And it's probably incorrect since 0 A.D. and Pyrogenesis aren't registered trademarks of you guys. And I guess maybe the Mac logo shouldn't be there.

Edited April 9, 2012 by mk12