0 A.D.

a.k.a. 0ad / 0 AD

created and published by Wildfire Games in 2009, running on Linux
type: strategy, edutainment
genre: Historical
setting: Antiquity, Past
perspective: bird's-eye push-scroll
player options: single player, LAN, Internet
languages: eng
Install with apt

Description

0 A.D. is an original historical Real Time Strategy game that has been in development since June 2001 and was licensed under the GPL on July 10th, 2009 marking its first public release. It focuses on the major civilizations' interactions with Rome and military units; less on civilian interaction. Further focus is placed on the BC civilisations. Present will be Romans, Hellenes (Athenians, Spartans and Macedonians), Carthaginians, Persians, Iberians, Celtic Britons and Gauls. Egyptians, Franks, Huns, Goths, Dacians, and peoples from the far east are also being discussed in wildfire's extensive collection of historical articles. Historical cultures, subcultures, battles, equipment, languages, and people will be part of the game. For instance Ambrosius Aurelianus is a character and the Celts will have a slight agricultural advantage due to their use of plows. Attic Greek will be spoken. The battles, and politics and interactions of the Maccabees, Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and are included (Wildfire staff include people of many faiths, including religiously faithful and devout atheist). Wildfire checks their facts with actual historians. However, they have admitted they will "circumvent" certain historical facts for the sake of balanced and fun gameplay, family friendliness, and simplicity required by the medium. Jesus will not be included as a character out of respect. They mention the possibility of fully historical, "WFG history mods", community modules, and characters, being added later. Nomadic cultures and fishing are planned for a later module. Wildfire will endorse high quality mods. There will be AI players and versatile team play witho or without them. Players can trade with any civilization on the map. Soldiers are also citizens with 'civilian responsibilities'. Their service to their country does not consist only of fighting battles. Units automatically upgrade themselves. Units automatically tend to their own health. Hero units based on historical figures are several times stronger than most units and have a special gameplay value. All units are basically historical, so there are no naming of them. Units can be captured and recruited or rarely defect. Structures play a part in battles; soldiers can fight on and inside structures (but there are not indoor maps). Terrain and structures are 3D and effect gameplay. Ships are done to scale and people and equipment placed realistically. There will be weather and seasons and effect there of. Provinces and Territories will be present in some modes but not all. There is an overall reduction of technology and economy micromanagement in favor of managing strategy and tactics. Food, wood, stone and ore will need to be collected and are exhaustible. Fog of War and Shroud of Darkness is optional. There is no line-of-sight. Random natural disasters will not occur, just historic ones. Pillaging is not managed by the player, it just occurs. Certain animals can be hunted or domesticated. There are no locked campaigns or enforced order but each campaign has its own sequence that must be followed. Cheat codes can be unlocked by completing campaigns. Campaigns are only for single player games; multiplayer games are a custom configured campaigns by the hosting system. Zooming is allowed and rotation is optional/per game supported. The camera is perspective. Camera continues to function during cut scenes. Cut scenes are performed with the existing game object, not separate videos. There is no multimonitor support built-in. The game will run in a window. The source code is platform independent but Wildfire is not doing an OSX version themselves. The community is encouraged to compile the code for other platforms. LAN/Internet games are cross-platform. Only single player mode can be paused. The current version (as 2010-02-12) is limited to 6 players. This will probably be increased to 8. A 56k connection is sufficient for 6 player games. Play session is designed to last 1 hour but can take as long as 3 hours. Uses TCP/IP for multiplayer. Will not use direct Modem, IPX, or direct cable link (unless your system can do TCP/IP over said cable ). Custom anti-cheat systems are being employed for both single and multiplayer games. Replays are no rewindable nor cross-system playable. However, they can be fast forwarded and the possibility of stopping a replay to play from that point remains. Extensive tools for modding and creating content for all aspects of the game are included (except for sounds, which must be ogg files created externally). Games scripting is done in javascript.

The content of the game is licensed under the BY-SA Creative Commons license. The game engine is original. Wildfire games has stated that the game will be downloadable and playable over the Internet at no cost. There will not be a demo version but the game will be split into separately downloadable modules. There may be a boxed version available for reasonable fee. The modular design is also intended to encourage community mods. Community discussion includes discussion of Tolkien, Arthurian, and Ancient Egyptian, inspired modules.

The people at Wildfire games are aware that there is no Year 0. "Indeed. Think of 0 A.D. as a hypothetical time period that never existed. It is a snapshot in time where major players of the classical ages were placed in an observatory. This is your chance to see them 'duke it out'. Your job as the player is to create the hypothetical and recreate the historical." -From the official web site.

Wildfire games is also the developer of Age of Empires II: Age of Kings. 0 A.D. which is otherwise unrelated to AoK. 0 A.D. is not a mod, add-on, or total conversion of any other game although in its initial planing stages it was to be total conversion of AoE2. The Last Alliance is a 'sister project' to 0 A.D. Resources are shared between the two.

(Zerothis) - # 2010-02-12 21:03:37

Technical specs

hardware: x86-64 CPU,
display: textured polygons

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teran01
zerothis
Sanguine

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