0 A.D. is a free and open source in-development real-time strategy game from Wildfire Games, one that hasn't seen a big release for quite some time (Alpha 23 was in 2018) but work continues on with it pulling in lots of goodies and Alpha 24 should be quite an exciting one.
What's always impressed me with 0 A.D. is the quality of the visuals, and they're set to look even better whenever Alpha 24 arrives. Before now it had no Anti-Aliasing but thankfully that was merged into the game earlier this year so it's going to look even better. As their team shared on Twitter, it's a nice difference:
It's most clear to see the difference on the roof.
Matches in 0 A.D. are going to get more lively too, with new animals making their introduction including the Eurasian Brown Bear, Polar Bear, Hippopotamus, plus Aurochs Bull and Aurochs Cow. Not only that, some previous issues with animals have been solved like speed not matching walking animation and building construction issues when animals are present.
Additionally, looking further over what they've done, there will also be tons of improvements to other areas of the game. New unit animations, a bunch of enhanced textures for various units, a new map with Sahyadri Buttes (the next picture below), another new map with Atlas Valleys, improved game icons and more.
If you're like me and you want building placement to match up we've got good news there too, as building-snapping has also been added in. When you hold down CTRL as you're moving around a building blueprint, it can then snap right against the sides of existing buildings. It's real handy! You can see a quick demo here first showing normal building placement, then the sudden snapping is the new feature when holding CTRL:
I have to admit my fondness for 0 A.D. is also due to another reason with their built-in scenario editor tool. You can use it to make maps of your own and do pretty much anything. It's also gained quite few new assets to include in maps from flora to cliffs, multiple new types of trees and just a lot more biodiversity to add in maps.
There's of course hundreds, if not thousands of other changes and improvements coming that I've not mentioned. 0 A.D. Alpha 24 is going to be good.
Want to try out the latest development version that will eventually be Alpha 24? You can download 0 A.D. as a Snap Package across many Linux distributions, look for the "edge" channel for all the latest bits. Keep in mind obviously that's all development code and there will be bugs.
If you've never seen 0 A.D. before head to the official site for more info.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
TheRiddick May 10, 2020
Why not SMAA? its superior!Because it is a lot harder to implement.
FXAA is a relatively simple post-effect, just blurring together neighboring pixels more or less. One of the reasons it makes stuff quite blurry and some prefer having no AA at all over FXAA.
SMAA is more involved, effectively "intelligently" smoothing edges instead of just blurring. But it also requires a lot more GPU power (and afaik CPU as well for the preparation?).
It is possible their graphics pipeline is not set up for that. Who knows.
Why not SMAA? its superior!Because it is a lot harder to implement.
FXAA is a relatively simple post-effect, just blurring together neighboring pixels more or less. One of the reasons it makes stuff quite blurry and some prefer having no AA at all over FXAA.
SMAA is more involved, effectively "intelligently" smoothing edges instead of just blurring. But it also requires a lot more GPU power (and afaik CPU as well for the preparation?).
It is possible their graphics pipeline is not set up for that. Who knows.
Hey there,
The code has been made so we can add more filters later on :) It just takes time to add such filters because we need to make sure they are gonna work for everyone. For instance the FXAA filter we used had to be modified because it only worked on NVIDIA hardware and would crash on AMD and Intel.
I can't say for sure we will provide SMAA in the next release, but some work as been started. However we are only volunteers so free time is defined by the amount of time we spend AFK;
Stay tuned for more updates, and thanks a lot to GamingOnLinux for this article :)
Last edited by play0ad on 10 May 2020 at 7:55 am UTC
TheRiddick May 10, 2020
Why not SMAA? its superior!Because it is a lot harder to implement.
FXAA is a relatively simple post-effect, just blurring together neighboring pixels more or less. One of the reasons it makes stuff quite blurry and some prefer having no AA at all over FXAA.
SMAA is more involved, effectively "intelligently" smoothing edges instead of just blurring. But it also requires a lot more GPU power (and afaik CPU as well for the preparation?).
It is possible their graphics pipeline is not set up for that. Who knows.
The code has already been done for SMAA (open source I believe) and it doesn't really chew anymore GPU/CPU power then FXAA. Trust me I've been using it and FXAA for many years analyzing it very closely in performance impact! It's just flat out better :)
with new animals making their introduction including the Eurasian Brown Bear, Polar Bear, Hippopotamus, plus Aurochs Bull and Aurochs Cow.Does said Hippopotamus wear a fancy tophat and fart rainbows as it flies trough the sky burping hearts? Cuz if it doesn't I'll be very disappointed.
Mountain Man May 10, 2020
The only thing important to me it lacks for me is a voiced tutorial/campaign with a clear objective system.
This game is amazing! Are there more high-quality opensource games like this (not specifically RTS, any genre will do)?
After a few YouTube-tutorials and a bit of wiki-reading I have had a really great time with OpenTTD. Not as fancy graphics as 0AD, and at first a bit daunting with it's seemingly clunky user interface, but it's actually not bad once you get to know it and learn the most important hotkeys.
This game is amazing! Are there more high-quality opensource games like this (not specifically RTS, any genre will do)?
Another RTS i’m playing from time to time is Zero-K.
On Steam you won’t see Linux, but if you ask on the Discord they grant a beta key.
Out of Steam you can download and play the Linux version.
This game is amazing! Are there more high-quality opensource games like this (not specifically RTS, any genre will do)?
I've enjoyed FreeCiv and Battle for Wesnoth.
After a few YouTube-tutorials and a bit of wiki-reading I have had a really great time with OpenTTD. Not as fancy graphics as 0AD, and at first a bit daunting with it's seemingly clunky user interface, but it's actually not bad once you get to know it and learn the most important hotkeys.
I've enjoyed FreeCiv and Battle for Wesnoth.
I know these games very well :) And still play them to this day, from time to time!
Another RTS i’m playing from time to time is Zero-K.
On Steam you won’t see Linux, but if you ask on the Discord they grant a beta key.
Out of Steam you can download and play the Linux version.
This one I did not knew! Thanks, and I'll check it out definitely! Looks cool :)
Last edited by Avikarr on 10 May 2020 at 9:33 pm UTC
This game is amazing! Are there more high-quality opensource games like this (not specifically RTS, any genre will do)?
If you enjoy Thief-like stealth games, then The Dark Mod (which contrary to the name is a full game, not a mod) is definitely worth recommending (code on GPL and BSD, assets on CC by-nc).
And there is a space-sim commercial game but with the source code fully open source (still you need to buy it to play, assents aren’t free): Helium Rain (BSD-licensed source code on GitHub ).
Last edited by silmeth on 10 May 2020 at 10:06 pm UTC
It is currently the best game in its category, and it is OSS :D
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