The latest and greatest of 0 A.D. the open source real time strategy game has been released, please welcome Alpha 14 Naukratis! Alongside this is their new crowdfunding campaign.
Top New Gameplay Features in This Release
Blacksmiths: A brand new building type for the game, complete with models for all factions. Researches attack and armor upgrades.
Infinite farms: A farm will now keep yielding food until the end of the match, without need to rebuild it, but with diminishing returns. Only up to 5 gatherers can work on each farm. (Veteran players will notice that more space is now required to produce the same amount of food.)
Exponential armor and realistic health: Technologies now have the same effect on all units. Also, changes to the way units’ health is calculated in the game allowed us to correct some unrealistic phenomena, like archer damage to buildings.
Allies can now garrison in each other’s buildings.
Shared trade gain with allies: When you trade with an ally, there is a +25% bonus over trading with yourself, that is now split between you and your ally.
Ranged units can hit farther from high places.
Ranged units had to be within a minimum range from their targets to fire at them. This requirement has been removed.
Graphics, Sound and User Interface Improvements
Hero button: A persistent button in the top left appears when you train your one allowed hero(ine). Clicking it selects the hero(ine) wherever he or she is on the map.
Game speed controls: In single-player games, change the game’s speed whenever you want to.
Location hotkeys: You can now mark camera positions and jump back to them later with hotkeys.
GUI dropdowns support typing for quick selection.
Sound manager improvements: The game now plays a list of multiple songs per match, instead of playing just one song in a loop. Also, the user interface now responds to the user with sounds.
Terrain anchoring: Units now move more realistically on hills.
Saved games can now be given descriptions and deleted or overwritten in-game.
Several random maps were changed to be more beautiful and playable.
Fancy water rendering is now faster and improved.
Ships look better when sinking.
The Atlas Scenario Editor, Bug Fixes and Miscellaneous Features
Pike elevation tool in Atlas: Allows for making mountains and cliffs more easily.
Mod improvements: Saving maps in Atlas will no longer make it crash.
Fixed some common out-of-sync and out-of-memory errors.
Alert sounds no longer heard by all players, off-screen sounds only heard when appropriate.
Fixed crash with Nvidia Optimus graphics and some netbooks.
Walls can be placed along shores.
Improved hotkey support for non-QWERTY keyboards.
Several performance improvements.
They already have $1.3k of their requested $160k for their new campaign, they are running it as a flexible funding campaign meaning they will get all of the funds even if it doesn't reach the goal, this is why indiegogo is great for open source projects.
I hope they hit the goal or close to it I really do but they really need to power this onto as many news websites as possible to reach it.
Top New Gameplay Features in This Release
Blacksmiths: A brand new building type for the game, complete with models for all factions. Researches attack and armor upgrades.
Infinite farms: A farm will now keep yielding food until the end of the match, without need to rebuild it, but with diminishing returns. Only up to 5 gatherers can work on each farm. (Veteran players will notice that more space is now required to produce the same amount of food.)
Exponential armor and realistic health: Technologies now have the same effect on all units. Also, changes to the way units’ health is calculated in the game allowed us to correct some unrealistic phenomena, like archer damage to buildings.
Allies can now garrison in each other’s buildings.
Shared trade gain with allies: When you trade with an ally, there is a +25% bonus over trading with yourself, that is now split between you and your ally.
Ranged units can hit farther from high places.
Ranged units had to be within a minimum range from their targets to fire at them. This requirement has been removed.
Graphics, Sound and User Interface Improvements
Hero button: A persistent button in the top left appears when you train your one allowed hero(ine). Clicking it selects the hero(ine) wherever he or she is on the map.
Game speed controls: In single-player games, change the game’s speed whenever you want to.
Location hotkeys: You can now mark camera positions and jump back to them later with hotkeys.
GUI dropdowns support typing for quick selection.
Sound manager improvements: The game now plays a list of multiple songs per match, instead of playing just one song in a loop. Also, the user interface now responds to the user with sounds.
Terrain anchoring: Units now move more realistically on hills.
Saved games can now be given descriptions and deleted or overwritten in-game.
Several random maps were changed to be more beautiful and playable.
Fancy water rendering is now faster and improved.
Ships look better when sinking.
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Pike elevation tool in Atlas: Allows for making mountains and cliffs more easily.
Mod improvements: Saving maps in Atlas will no longer make it crash.
Fixed some common out-of-sync and out-of-memory errors.
Alert sounds no longer heard by all players, off-screen sounds only heard when appropriate.
Fixed crash with Nvidia Optimus graphics and some netbooks.
Walls can be placed along shores.
Improved hotkey support for non-QWERTY keyboards.
Several performance improvements.
They already have $1.3k of their requested $160k for their new campaign, they are running it as a flexible funding campaign meaning they will get all of the funds even if it doesn't reach the goal, this is why indiegogo is great for open source projects.
I hope they hit the goal or close to it I really do but they really need to power this onto as many news websites as possible to reach it.
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
I have had this installed for so long and not played it time to give it a go and probably donate :D
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It's starting to sound more and more like AoE. I'll have to wait until I get paid before I pledge because IndieGoGo is stupid and takes your money up front (even if it is flexible).
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I was just thinking the other day, these guys should just do a Crowd Funding and go ahead and finish the game. I mean otherwise, development probably would've dragged on for many more years. I hope they make goal.
It is a bit sad though, that to get anything done in Open Source anymore, crowd Funding has become almost a must. Of course that still doesn't guarantee a finished product.
It is a bit sad though, that to get anything done in Open Source anymore, crowd Funding has become almost a must. Of course that still doesn't guarantee a finished product.
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Unfortunately it's not possible to pay with PayPal (probably because they are non-profit), and I'm not willing to give my credit card number to Indiegogo. The Donate button on your page also leads to some unknown untrustworthy website. This probably discourages more people, not just me. They should at least set up a Flattr button, if nothing else.
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Quoting: KamilUnfortunately it's not possible to pay with PayPal (probably because they are non-profit), and I'm not willing to give my credit card number to Indiegogo. The Donate button on your page also leads to some unknown untrustworthy website. This probably discourages more people, not just me. They should at least set up a Flattr button, if nothing else.Just to check, by your do you mean theirs (0 A.D.) or ours?
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I know it is Open Source project, but still for such big project IMO choice fixable campaign would be better idea. Now I'm not sure if money which they will get make any difference in project progress. I'm not want throw money and still wait like 5 years until game will be polished and meets my expectations. I would be in if it be fixable campaign, but now I'm not sure.
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Donated. I can't think on a game that deserves my money more than this.
Ok, maybe Wesnoth and Dungeon Crawl... but stop sidetracking me!
Ok, maybe Wesnoth and Dungeon Crawl... but stop sidetracking me!
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Quoting: KamilUnfortunately it's not possible to pay with PayPal (probably because they are non-profit), and I'm not willing to give my credit card number to Indiegogo. The Donate button on your page also leads to some unknown untrustworthy website. This probably discourages more people, not just me. They should at least set up a Flattr button, if nothing else.We (0 A.D.) do have a Flattr, see https://flattr.com/thing/419240/0-A-D-0AD (There is more info on our other donation options on the Donate page on the web page as well: http://play0ad.com/community/donate/ The Click-and-Pledge thing is via SPI, which I'd say is trustworthy, other projects like LibreOffice, Debian, Drupal and Arch Linux uses their services as well :)) Plus, if you're uncertain about making your credit card number available to Indiegogo you can most likely find a way around it. Some banks allow you to get a temporary credit card number just for internet transactions, and Visa/MasterCard etc might have e.g. prepaid credit cards which wouldn't interfere with your normal credit card/bank account.
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As GOG has failed me once again, I'll be giving these guys my 500$ instead. GOG has had too many chances from me now.
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Quoting: xeranasI know it is Open Source project, but still for such big project IMO choice fixable campaign would be better idea. Now I'm not sure if money which they will get make any difference in project progress. I'm not want throw money and still wait like 5 years until game will be polished and meets my expectations. I would be in if it be fixable campaign, but now I'm not sure.It's of course up to you, but I'll say two things: One, we do already have an Alpha out, so you can test that and see how close it comes to your expectations. Second, there's no guarantee that we would meet your expectations even if we would get a fixed amount of money. All we can do is be open about what we do, and how we do it, and give people a choice to help bring the game to completion faster. Even if we only get a part of the money that would be a good help toward making the game more polished as it would mean that we could hire Jorma (the programmer) for at least part of the time. We do have some money already, so we've been paying him to work on the game for a while already. Feel free to check out this report: http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17522 for more information.
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