OK seriously, is this game going to happen?

[FirePowa8]

The thing is, it's the likes of you and me - the regular supporters - who are meant to help get the word out.

[Aeros]

Also exactly what fan ideas have you oficialy put in the game and which ones are you considering?

More likely than not...some suggestions fans have had, have been planned for years already

[Mythos_Ruler]

Units on walls: Check!

Seasons/Weather/etc.: Check!

Larger Ships/More in-depth Naval combat: Check!

All planned. There are many things the design community has demanded for years already in the game design.

[CrazyThumbs]

Units on walls are a deffinate now? Last time I saw something on this it seemed unsure.

If its true though.. yeaaa!

[Mythos_Ruler]

Well, the plan is to use a hybrid "units on walls" system. A few other games, like bfme, have units on walls, while AOE games dont. What we'll do is allow players to "prop" units onto towers, walls, etc. in order to get attack bonuses. It's really an ingenius system someone else on the team came up with. It helps us fulfill the "units on walls" issue, while not having to do all the extra work on allowing units to run around on walls (which is considerable, why else wouldn't other RTSs allow this?).

[illyrian]

I definitely understand what A.K is saying, and i am sorry but i kinda agree.

Mount and Blade is doing the same thing. There were only 2 developers, husband and wife, and now they are like you guys, about ten... they allowed the community to actually play their game really early in its development stage and write suggestions on their discussion forum. i know i came up with their idea of one handed/two handed sword yelding, and they incorporated it. I had a whole community discuss that topic, and if you play mount and blade, you will see many features which i myself, and many other community members have helped incorporate in the game.

I am very proud of that, and i still play that game.

I write in your forums because i love the classical era more than any other one. And i have not seen one game that truly portrays it.

I hope i am not off topic but i don't know where to post this.

Edited April 21, 2006 by illyrian

[Aztec_Brave]

Monut and Blade just takes a different approach. OK, so it might improve community involvement slightly, but playing an unfinished game actually does kind of turn people off. Currently (haven't checked any updates in like a month or so, forgive me if something radically new and innovative was incorporated in the mean time) there isn't really that much to do: you've got a few cities with one or two people to talk to, virtually all the interiors are unfinished, a few places to visit, and arena to fight in, basicly it just isn't nearly enough for a full game yet and that can be annoying. Also, you can only play for a limited time unless you pay, which is totally different to the 0AD approach.

This has been tried before and due to HeavenGame's business plan I don't think it will happen since we do not have $10,000 to give them to support a community for us as do the other game developers. Unless we really are a good game and have potential for a good community and HG is feeling generous, I'm skeptical about a 0 A.D. Heaven. If it happens it'll be close to our release time as right now we're ill-prepared for having that kind of a community.

Actually, 0AD was mentioned one Heavengames a few days ago (Rise and Fall Heaven I think), so they do support you at least to some extent.

[Achilles_Knee]

I definitely understand what A.K is saying, and i am sorry but i kinda agree.

Mount and Blade is doing the same thing. There were only 2 developers, husband and wife, and now they are like you guys, about ten... they allowed the community to actually play their game really early in its development stage and write suggestions on their discussion forum. i know i came up with their idea of one handed/two handed sword yelding, and they incorporated it. I had a whole community discuss that topic, and if you play mount and blade, you will see many features which i myself, and many other community members have helped incorporate in the game.

I am very proud of that, and i still play that game.

I write in your forums because i love the classical era more than any other one. And i have not seen one game that truly portrays it.

I hope i am not off topic but i don't know where to post this.

Right.

I am excited about this game, as are many other players. There is a difference between players and developers I think.

For me, the RTS genre has been badly fractured. I will always go back to the days of Rise of Rome on the zone as the hey day of RTS genre. Since then, we have been badly fractured, and I for one spend my days playing AOE III, in an age period historically that I am not all that crazy about. But it is the best playing experience out there right now, and let's face it, that is what we all want. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong in wanting the latest RTS to be the best to play. It's natural as a player.

I never understood why Ensemble decided that a sequel always meant advancing in time. They really were on to something with AOM, but they blew it. AOM should have been a remake of Rise of Rome. Instead, it became a marketing exercise, the myth units and God Powers were more about competeing with Warcraft then adding value to the game.

So 0 AD has always represented to me the game Rise of Rome could have become had Ensemble focused on a remake with that AOM engine, rather then the cheeze they came up with.

I actually have an AOM scenario that removes all god powers and myth units. It really changes the game. I also have an rms that starts you in the second age for titans and removes myth units and god powers, and that game plays incredibly well, making a rush a real and serious threat as a matter of fact. It plays sort of like Empires, DotMW

So like others, I don't understand the proprietary approach here. On the one hand, you say that you are hobbyists and that this is a labor of love, and this will be a free game, and on the other hand, the whole open source approach does not seem to be in effect here.

I think you would be shocked to see what would happen if you sourceforged this project. Developers would spring up all over the place, and your fans would load up what they could, and even non-developers and non-artistic people would immediately start to contribute...there would be a ground swell of anticipation, and thousands of people would jump on the band wagon. I have seen it on other projects. That is what Open Source is all about.

I think what your message here is:

it's a proprietary game *and* we don't have the staff to get it out there, so we are taking a very long time *and* you will just have to wait *and* we are OK with that *and* so should everyone else be, including our fans...

I think you seriously over estimate the patience of an RTS player...and seriously under estimate the power of the open source community...

[illyrian]

You fellas are really talented, and what i have seen here in this forum is an example of just that. I come here everyday to check these posts because as A.K has pointed out, this project has the potential that Ensemble Studios did not realise Rise of rome had, or chose not see.

I have no other motives but to help with whatever expertise i have, which are limited, and believe me, i am willing to do everything in my power to help make this game the revolutionary game that it seems to have potential to be.

If you guys don't want to give out all the secrets in the game, then i suggest that you post vids where the community can comment on the different aspects of the game. I just finished playing the demo or Rise and Fall and to tell you the truth there are so many things that i would want to tell the devs because it really handicapped the whole experience.

Since this game is going to be a freeware, let us help you with bug reports or any information that would better the game experience. A predictable ai that doesn't realise the strengths and weaknesses of the surroundings, its just worthless, and the demo of Rise and Fall was just that.

Don't want to see this project as one of those disappointments.

I think A.K is on to something, personally.

As far as mount and Blade is concerned, the developers have put in castles from one of the modders who put them in his own mod, you can also siege two castles in the game, and now the armies can be put into formation, infantry, archers, cav, and you can give orders to each separately. They are doing very well, and adding even more effects.

If you play the game, you will see many changes from the original form. All because of the community which very much involved in the development of the game.

Edited April 25, 2006 by illyrian

[Matei]

Once the game is released, there will be continual updates based on player feedback. Unlike most developers, we are very motivated to improve the game after release because it's not something that we throw away to start work on the next game to charge you another $50, it is our product. There will also be a 0 A.D. Part II which will add a bunch of more advanced gameplay elements and will obviously be very influenced by the response to Part I. However, right now the game is simply not far enough into development to be useful to a player (though it's getting there). It's not like we're holding onto it as a secret - we created it simply because we want people to play it, after all.

We mentioned some of the problems with open-sourcing the game at this stage before. First of all, because we still need to implement some core systems, anyone working on the project would have to get very familiar with the engine and commit a decent amount of time, and if they're willing to do that they might as well apply to join the programming team; we wouldn't benefit much from people who just want to fix a few bugs or to add a minor feature. (Later, once the basic systems are all in place, this will certainly change however). Most open-source projects you see people contributing to are very mature for this very reason, and anyone who wants to actually commit to the main branch (rather than distributing a modified version themselves or creating a plugin) generally needs to be approved. We've never denied people who had something to offer and we've advertised at places like gamedev.net and gotten programmers, artists, etc there. Secondly, as soon as the game is playable everyone would start taking the gameplay in their own direction, and although everyone has an idea of what an RTS should be like, nobody agrees, and when you mix them up you end with a mess. AOM is a great example of that: you say you don't like the MU's and GP's, but they are exactly what a Blizzard fan loves to see in a game and if they had a choice they would add similar abilities to AOE3. Part of a game design is what can't be done; for example, Chess is beautiful precisely because a knight can only move in an L and a pawn can only attack sideways; throwing in features doesn't always help (the RPG example you gave is one where it does work because their goal is to create an interesting environment, not a strategy game). It makes more sense for us to first implement our design (which has been in planning for a long time) and give people an idea of how we want the actual game to play, then allow them to contribute to this concept or create mods to create their own game.

Our team members are all gamers and the point of making 0 A.D. is exactly to let us create a game that gamers want to see, so we will use as much feedback as possible when there is someting that people can give feedback on.

[Achilles_Knee]

Very detailed and long response, but all you have to do is look at the date that I joined this site...

Pretty much says it all.

I'm sure I will play the game when you get it out there...my point here is that you could really have a lot of support behind you...I guess if that statement sort of flies over the teams head...I don't know what else to say.

I've talked to a lot of people over the last 2+ years about this project, we all pretty much feel the same way...

It's not a bash. Just letting you guys know. A lot of us bought into this concept in 2003...

Now in 2006 not so much anymore...

Good luck, I'll check back in another 6 months I suppose...

OK, so 6 months has gone by, and as I mentioned - wanted to check back in. Are we going to see anything tangible out of 0AD this year, next year, 2008?

Have you thought about getting out a small little applet that has a unit that can be rotated and viewed or anything?

[Ykkrosh]

Have you thought about getting out a small little applet that has a unit that can be rotated and viewed or anything?

We have . (But it can't be "small" except in appearance, because it reuses a lot of the game's low-level and graphics and editor code - and we want to clean things up so it doesn't have to be compiled with the rest of the game's code too, so it'll take some time to get that done before releasing it.)

[Achilles_Knee]

So maybe you can help us set our expectations here - no offense, but it seems like pretty much every response to the innocent "hey, how is it going, when will we see something?" from your team is: It will come out when it comes out...or vagueness, or whatever...

I suppose the reaction in some of us to that will be forgotten once something actually does happen, but do you feel like asking these questions after 3+ years of announcing your project is rude and or annoying? I've noticed that people now seem to have to walk on egg shells when asking these questions, do you see the fact that some people would like to hear some real tangible status after all this time?

I guess it would be good to know if the game is still years away from being seen, in any incarnation...

[janwas]

Howdy!

do you feel like asking these questions after 3+ years of announcing your project is rude and or annoying?

Rude: nah, annoying: a little. Each "are we there yet?" causes the trip to take a little longer because the drivers are thus distracted.

We do also have news and even an SVN commit ticker for exactly the purpose of keeping ya'll informed as to what is happening.

The facts are thus: 1) this game WILL be completed 2) available time of programmers varies so wildly that scheduling is basically guesswork 3) work continues!

Unfortunately I can't make a reasoned statement as to when what happens, so I guess we can indeed leave it at "it's done when it's done", and checking back once in a while shows the progress that has happened since then.

Off the top of my head, I am not sure what all is new over the past 6 months, but the executive summary is that the game is currently mostly 'playable' (you can send people around, build stuff, attack, etc.) in sandbox mode for the Celt and Greek civs (albeit without most sound effects).

[Achilles_Knee]

Wow. I think it's really too bad that no one but you guys has seen this, even in video form...

You guys sort of position this as a better thing/project/game then what the traditional game developers do, yet there isn't even an E3 like preview video or anything for us to chew on...

I guess we just sort of sit back and wave our pom poms and wait - Give me a ZERO!! Give me an A! Give me a D!!

What's that spell!!

meh. At least what you said about the sandbox state is SOME kind of news!! Thanks! (seriously)

[Irish_Crusader]

Achilles, you've watched the trailer right? Well, thats not unlike most E3 videos. The only thing missing is the date of release-which according to the staff is still up in the air- and gameplay footage- well, they have just state that the game is only mostly playable. Whats the point of gameplay footage if it isn't pure eye-candy? Most of E3 videos, are only released when the game is either complete but needs bug-testing, or is only two or three quarters away from release. And as for the pom-pom waving, why not? It'll only make finally getting the game that much better.

[Esus]

You guys sort of position this as a better thing/project/game then what the traditional game developers do, yet there isn't even an E3 like preview video or anything for us to chew on..

...But on the other hand, traditional game developers don't release screenshots month-by-month showing the progress of production and often showing half-finished graphics.

Be thankful for what we get.

[Titus Ultor]

And you'd be amazed how often ES talks to their community like this.

[Aeros]

We fully expect devoted fans to become dissapointed at us not being able to meet certain expectations or deadlines, its flattering in a way. I would like to remind you of who we are though. Take you, yourself. Take your passion for history and your passion for RTS. Add Game devloping skills. Add college life, social life, school or work life. What does that equal? WFG Staff

I'm sitting here on my 18 year old butt in the process for applying to colleges while browsing the internet, and, I sincerely and dearly appologize I'm not availible right now to work on this game without any sort of compensation to deliver it iin retail quality in time and for free into your hands for your own gaming pleasure We are happy with what we do and our progress and we understand how people can come to expect this title, but realistically I'm sitting here on my home computer on my desk, next to my textbooks, while on the phone with my girlfriend and while getting my bed ready and I know full well we aren't anywhere close to a proffesional game developer, we are nothing like that and its unrealistic to expect anything like that from us, we simply aren't that way. As for what separates me from you, Achillies, in terms of how I have access to the game and how I work on it...really all that separates me and you is some motivation and a few passwords and acquaintances. I log onto this same site in order to "work" on our beloved 0 A.D.

We are simply a widley diverse group of people who are extremely passionate about our tallents and hobby and who have stuck with this for years and are detirmined to see through our vision for this game.

Currently I am amazed with our flora art, its reached a state where it is equal to my vision for it years ago, its better than any natural art I've seen in any game to date. Yes, better than oblivion - atleast for our field of view in the game. I'm really proud of this team and our progress Its nothing short of amazing how this team even exists, let alone how it manages to work.

Edited September 22, 2006 by CheeZy

[Achilles_Knee]

ummm....

Congratulations?

Seems like anyone that sort of asks about when will we see the game takes it on the chin for doing so...I mean for God's sake - the background page says the game was born in 2001 - people are now down to asking meekly and shyly how it is going every 6 months to a year now...

I mean - your audience/fans are RTS players, I don't know how kindler and gentler a group like us can get, but geesh, excuse me for asking yet again - guess I'll try back in the spring.

[Esus]

You appear to have very little perspective.

And I don't see where you're "taking it on the chin"; CheeZy is just explaining the situation as best he can. The other type of response would be "it'll be ready when it's ready". CheeZy's is a tad better than that.

[Morgan]

The other type of response would be "it'll be ready when it's ready". CheeZy's is a tad better than that.

But I'm not.

When the title goes gold, you'll know.

Topic closed.