0 A.D. is an in-development free and open source RTS, one that's very promising and looks pretty good and the next Alpha version will also feature experimental Vulkan support.
Performance has been a problem for 0 A.D. across many versions, so I'm quite hopeful that this will help towards that. They put up a very brief announcement, which links to a forum post going into more details. It's currently going through testing, with the developer asking people to give it a run (although you would need to compile it from source) so that they can get Vulkan into a stable state ready for release. However, a Release Candidate should be available sometime soon to make that easier.
Don't go expecting better performance yet though, as they need to work on the multi-threading. Right now they're focused on ensuring it works and doesn't run into driver problems.
See their previous release trailer below:
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8 comments
This is great news! I have been following 0AD for many years now and indeed performance has always been an issue, let's hope this helps.
1 Likes, Who?
Mountain Man Jan 13, 2023
This thing has been in development for, like, 50 years, and they still haven't nailed down performance?
0 Likes
Does it have a campaign yet?
Also, nice, I might look at what they are doing in RenderDoc and give them some pointers (if GPU is their bottleneck)
Also, nice, I might look at what they are doing in RenderDoc and give them some pointers (if GPU is their bottleneck)
0 Likes
ssj17vegeta Jan 15, 2023
The very first open-source game I told my self it had nice graphics. Back in, like, 2005 ? Geez, I'm old :(
Can you believe the project started in 2001-2003 ? That was ages ago ! Back then, the pinnacle of what Linux could offer to a "standard user" was Mandrake. I still had some games that required MS-DOS, listening to music or watching a video on the web was a mess, provided you even had enough bandwidth, etc.
Imagine what the game looked like inside (the code). It probably has nothing to do with its current code.
Can you believe the project started in 2001-2003 ? That was ages ago ! Back then, the pinnacle of what Linux could offer to a "standard user" was Mandrake. I still had some games that required MS-DOS, listening to music or watching a video on the web was a mess, provided you even had enough bandwidth, etc.
Imagine what the game looked like inside (the code). It probably has nothing to do with its current code.
2 Likes, Who?
It looks so cool but every time I play it, the performance is too much of a problem. I don't get it? Is it running smoothly for some folks?
0 Likes
It looks so cool but every time I play it, the performance is too much of a problem. I don't get it? Is it running smoothly for some folks?
Well it seems so for some people. Maybe you didn't adjust the graphics settings, or maybe something else is at play. What you might be confusing as lag could be the command delay in multiplayer games.
Performance has also improved over the years with the threading of the pathfinder and the various Spidermonkey improvements.
The very first open-source game I told my self it had nice graphics. Back in, like, 2005 ? Geez, I'm old :
Imagine what the game looked like inside (the code). It probably has nothing to do with its current code.
You'd be suprised. Some 2009 code is still there, untouched.
Does it have a campaign yet?
Also, nice, I might look at what they are doing in RenderDoc and give them some pointers (if GPU is their bottleneck)
It has campaign support but only one person made a campaign so far. We hope to integrate it in the mod downloader at some point, but updating the maps from three alphas has been a bit difficult. They have a github: https://github.com/SciGuy42/Macedonia_0ad/tree/a25
With regards to Render doc, you have to change some options in the config (to enable 3.3 GL by default it's set to 2.1) You'll probably see that we have some heavily unoptimized art assets. Also, the lack of instancing, the number of materials, and the great variety in assets.
This thing has been in development for, like, 50 years, and they still haven't nailed down performance?
20! Well it's not a simple issue, and good C++ programmers with time and patience don't roam the streets. We're a very small team these days and we have 500k LOC.
0 AD is the best Age of Empires 2-like game, hands down.
Thanks!
1 Likes, Who?
With regards to Render doc, you have to change some options in the config (to enable 3.3 GL by default it's set to 2.1) You'll probably see that we have some heavily unoptimized art assets. Also, the lack of instancing, the number of materials, and the great variety in assets.
I'll wait for the Vulkan renderer to look at that :)
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