New Player

[slopsbucket]

Just tried 0ad for the first time and wanted to give you my first impressions while they're still fresh.

I like it. I love the graphics.

Although it gives all the warnings I never had any lagging and noticed no glitches or bugs.

Fullscreen 1920 X 1080 on an old intel ivybridge built in graphics with 1 Gb ram dedicated to graphics, leaving 7 Gb ram for Ubuntu 14.04.

I think I'm running a slightly outdated version though, I got it straight from the repositories but it's listed as 0ad-0.0.15.

I only played a sandbox game and population only got up to around 100 but it played perfectly.

This game is going to just get better and better, good job!

Now I'm going to have another go.

Cheers,

Andrew.

[fabio]

I just recommend to try alpha 19, see instructions here:

http://play0ad.com/download/linux/#a0A.D.providedpackages

[slopsbucket]

Thanks for the suggestion, Fabio.

Interesting to see how far it's come in less than 2 years.

I'm still a rubbish player though.

Cheers,

Andrew.

Edited December 15, 2015 by slopsbucket

[slopsbucket]

Another opinion now that I've played the game a bit - sorry but you're making exactly the same mistake that Microtoss did with their AoE series. Let me explain.

The first AoE truly was a brilliant strategy game, I played the demo before the game was released and I still play the game today, nearly 20 years later.

AoE II had slightly better graphics but the upgrades available were too much, a lot of the need for strategy was replaced by simply being able to gather resources more quickly. It wasn't as much fun to play although I still have it installed.

AoE III was a waste of time and space. Because of the advanced graphics they had to limit the map sizes. Maps are so small that there isn't enough room to employ any strategies, all you get is a little kiddy's "in your face" slogging match. You can't sneak around the back of your opponent, you can't decoy your opponent into exploring in the wrong direction, there just isn't enough room on the map. I uninstalled AoE III after 3 days and dropped the disk in the bin. What a waste.

To give you an idea of how big maps really need to be in order for this to be a true strategy game, the Thessalian Plains map makes a good 2 player map, but then you start to notice lagging in the game because of the graphics.

I never play on public servers but I do enjoy playing against friends via a direct connection, I was very impressed that you included this ability in 0AD. If you can find some way to mitigate the lagging on large maps (less intense graphics maybe) it might become a replacement for AoE.

I would suggest removing the clouds for a start, they seem to provide nothing other than annoyance.

Cheers,

Andrew.

Edited December 17, 2015 by slopsbucket

[Stan`]

Graphics are not responsible for the lag. You can disable everything and still experience the lag. We are trying hard to fix the engine anf have improved with pathfinder and the rest. There is still things to be done and graphics will be optimized too.

[slopsbucket]

Hi Stanislas69,

Please don't take my critcisms personally.

I understand the this is only an early deveopment version of the game, but this is also the time when decisions like this need to be made.

I would truly love to see this game become successful, and it's off to a good start.

What I truly wish for is to be able to dump Windows completely, the only thing I still use it for is games.

Cheers,

Andrew.

[Stan`]

I wasn't taking it personnaly just pointing out that unless you have a terrible graphic card graphics are not the issue.I have a HD7950 and get at most 110Fps on 3840x1024 which is basically the same than battlefield 3.

Well with 0ad you can drop windows

So don't worry graphics arent going to kill your fps but game AI and pathfinder might

[Pedro Falcão]

Interesting opinion about the AoE series.

I can't say I played Age of Empires before it was launched, but I used to watch my father and my cousin playing together, and started playing myself when I was 7 or 8 years old. I played every single one of the Age of Empires and Age of Mythology series and still play, from time to time.

I agree with you that the size of the map in Age of Empires 3 was annoying, it could even be game-breaking for turtlers like me, but I found it a good experience in many ways, too. The shipment system had its problems, but I lost count of how many times my bases were saved because of those extra 6 musketeers from the shipments, or the extra gold, or how oppressive the factories and the forts (acquired only through shipments) could be if you let them be. IMHO they also did an awesome job in balancing the stats of the units (I can only guess how much of a nightmare balancing all those cannons must have been), and holy crap, those were the best campaigns in the whole series!

And about the Age of Empires 2... Is that so? I feel like Age of Empires 2 was a huge improvement on the first in many aspects. The barracks' infantry in the first had too small of a line of sight and moved very slowly. Priests, principally so for the babylonians, were totally broken (what about that cross-continental range? And the conversion rate was hella fast, to booth!). With a bit of luck, you'd get a civ that could totally smash another civ, too. Units getting clipped and/or hiding behind things, non-refreshable farms, kinda confusing tech tree... All these were things I noticed myself that were fixed in the second game. Don't get me wrong, the first one was one hell of a good game, no other game so far could capture its atmosphere and the soundtrack and effects surpass AoK's ones, but there were so many improvements in the second game that I (as the zealous fan I am) admit I felt a bit offended when you said it forsook strategy, in fact I felt that you could really focus better on the strategy side of the game than on annoying bugs or on your soldiers being kited by enemy archers.

I'm sorry you had to read such long a rant, It's just that I found interesting how different you thought about the series!

Now, as for the 0 A.D., I just have to say that it's still Alpha (there is much yet coming before the game is complete), but judging by the passion the team and the community devote to this game, it will be another brilliant strategy game, just you wait!

[Lion.Kanzen]

Our maps may be will be the huge maps in a RTS of this kind, the lag is for other matter not graphic ( at all) if you pause the game see the same graphic the performance increases, so you can see isn't graphic problem. Try to play in huge maps but huge maps bring some lag. A19 Syllepsis have best performance than older versions.

About your feedback with strategy we are discuss how create our own path, and be more different than AOE series.

[Kunsgnos]

I started playing this game a week ago and love it! I'm surprised at the quality of the game over all considering it's still in Alpha stage.

I've been playing RTS games since Dune II came out in 1993 and have played almost all decent titles since then. My favorite was Act of War: Direct Action back in 2005. I liked the game balance hard counter system. No unit could be spammed because there was always an available counter. This made multiplayer fun. There was one exception however, for those that remember the game, Task Force Talon had a multi role Spinner tank that could counter most units well if used properly (late game).

For 0 A.D I'm interested to see how the game balance is developed further. I won't criticise the game right now because it's not finished yet but I will say that things are looking promising. Developers just remember, all units must have a useful purpose (main strength) and a main weakness. Hard counters work well and they also expose the over powered units early in development, which makes this a good time to look into it further.

Any unit that is considered ‘multi role’ tends to become an awkward problem later.

One of the great features in Act of War was that infantry units could be set to 'ambush' mode in a bush where they would inflict a one time double attack bonus verses the enemy. This created interesting situations because there were already hard counters to everything. A tank or humvee rushing your base early could be 'one shot' by the singe rocket launcher hiding in wait.

Command and Conquer Generals had a good balance system until Zero hour was released. It wasn't as good as Act of War but close and still lots of fun.

What impresses me most about this game so far is that it contains every great feature and innovation found in RTS games over the years but leaves out the annoying things. Keep up the great work guys!

[Stan`]

Hello, and welcome to the forums

For 0 A.D I'm interested to see how the game balance is developed further. I won't criticise the game right now because it's not finished yet but I will say that things are looking promising. Developers just remember, all units must have a useful purpose (main strength) and a main weakness. Hard counters work well and they also expose the over powered units early in development, which makes this a good time to look into it further.

Any unit that is considered ‘multi role’ tends to become an awkward problem later.

The game is mostly based on historical accuracy, and still trying to get a good balance between civs to make them all with pros and cons. For now we got rid of hard counters apart from some units like spearmen that would get crushed by cavalry otherwise.

One of the great features in Act of War was that infantry units could be set to 'ambush' mode in a bush where they would inflict a one time double attack bonus verses the enemy. This created interesting situations because there were already hard counters to everything. A tank or humvee rushing your base early could be 'one shot' by the singe rocket launcher hiding in wait.

This is planned see http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/3177

Glad you like it