News

New Release: 0 A.D. Alpha 26: Zhuangzi

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Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of 0 A.D. Alpha 26: “Zhuangzi” (pronounced: /ˈʒwæŋˈziː/), the twenty-sixth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source real-time strategy game of ancient warfare. The release is named after the ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou, who is better known as Zhuangzi and who wrote one of the most influential texts in Taoism.

Trailers

YouTube:

PeerTube:

Easy download and install

Download and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux, and macOS.
0 A.D. is free software. This means you can download, redistribute, modify and contribute to the application under the same licenses: GNU Public Licence version 2 (GPL v2) for code and Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 (CC-BY-SA 3.0) for artwork.
Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to download 0 A.D. completely gratis, directly from the developers. No “freemium” model, no in-game advertising, no catch.

How to Download 0 A.D. Instructions for Windows Instructions for Linux Instructions for OS X

Don’t forget to deactivate every mod before updating the game to avoid any risk of conflict.
If you’re a mod creator, please look at this page on how to port your mod to the new version. As always feel free to reach out to us for assistance.

Top new features

  • A new civilization: The Han
  • New campaign maps: Tarim basin and Yangtze.
  • Now units have acceleration.
  • Twenty-six new music tracks.
  • New and updated art.

Continue reading →

Alpha 26 is near!

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Are you ready for the next alpha version of 0 A.D. Empires Ascendant over a Han themed background.

The next alpha is just around the corner! After a painful feature freeze period, we finally managed to fix the biggest bugs, and we are now ready to release.

We’re just ironing a few details like the announcement and the trailer, and we hope you’ll enjoy this new version as much as the previous ones.

Sincerely,

The Wildfire Games Team

Summary of the Japan Tours Festival 2022

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Summary of attendance at the Japan Tours Festival 2022

From the 1st to the 3rd of July I held a booth in Tours, France. This was a first for me as this was a completely different event from the ones I was used to. For those who don’t know, the Japan Tours Festival is, as its name suggests, a Japanese-themed exposition, with lots of shops where you can buy Japanese merchandise, but it also has a lot of cosplay, and shops that provide anything you might need for your next event, from a rubber sword to a furry costume. But most importantly, it also features an indie development section, where indie projects can come to show their new games, and homebrew projects (projects that create games for old consoles such as the NES) can sell their cartridges.

To my knowledge, this was the biggest event 0 A.D. had been invited to. It had 21,856 visitors and 167 special guests.

As usual, we were still a bit apart because we were the only FLOSS game/project. People were quite surprised to see we were free and that while being a 22-year-old project they had never heard of us. They were even more surprised to learn we were only volunteers.

During the whole weekend, the public was allowed to vote for their favorite indie project and we made it to 3rd place out of 9 competitors!

I gave two interviews (FR), one for the Anjou Pop Corner and one for the event with KeydeeGamerBoy You can find the cut video here(YouTube) for the latter.

Feel free to ask your questions here!

The next event will take place in Vandœuvre lès-Nancy, France from the 3rd to the 4th of September. Hope to see some people there.

Thanks to all the people I met for the kind words and the constructive feedback, and thanks to the organizers and all the staff behind the Japan Tours Festival for allowing me to participate and for creating such a lovely event!

Special Thank you to Indie Beard who asked me to come and made me spend a wonderful 3 days. I hope we’ll work together again in the future!

Summary of attendance at the Stunfest 2022

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Stunfest 2022 Summary

From the 20th to the 22nd of May I held a booth in Rennes, France for the Stunfest. This was the first public event since the COVID so I was very excited to be able to meet people again. So I took my train ticket and my event stuff and headed to the nearest train station!

This was, to my knowledge the first event Wildfire Games attended that was 100% video-game oriented. This happens to be interesting because we are usually outsiders in the open source events we do (Capitole du Libre (CDL), Journées du Logiciel Libre (JDLL), Rencontres Mondiales du Logiciel Libre (RMLL), FOSDEM, GrafikLabor) as there are generally not that many games present. Most people are quite surprised we even exist

In this case, we were still a bit apart because we were the only FLOSS game/project. People were quite surprised to see we were free and that while being a 22-year-old project they had never heard of us. They were even more surprised to learn we were only volunteers.

It was also the occasion to meet game developers from various studios and to get feedback from the video game industry. We did get a lot of positive feedback in general and some suggestions on how to make the UX/UI nicer. One suggestion was to make the popup when hovering over buildings static, instead of changing on mouse move, the other was to add chat bubbles instead of the wall of text in the tutorial.

Unfortunately, I was not able to set up a networked game, as it would just timeout when trying to connect whether through direct connect or the lobby probably something wrong with the network there. It was however not a big deal, as to the exception of a few people, most didn’t stay long to play.

I gave three interviews, a short one for the event, one for the “La Playade” podcast, and one more in-depth for the“Pettri” They should be available (in French) in the coming weeks.

A few people seemed interested in the engine for various purposes someone expressed his will to represent prehistoric civilizations in it and another for representing a Conan Themed live action roleplay and some for undisclosed academic activities. We were also apparently (I could not attend) mentioned by a Rennes representative during the opening presentation to promote open source.

Feel free to ask your questions here!

The next event will take place in Vandœuvre lès-Nancy, France from the 3rd to the 4th of September. Hope to see some people there.

Thanks to all the people I met for the kind words and the constructive feedback, and thanks to the organizers and all the staff behind the Stunfest for allowing me to participate by creating such a nice event!

Alpha 26 Feature Freeze Update

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Alpha 26 Feature Freeze Update

 

The date of the 6th of March 2022 at 23.59 CET was the beginning of the 0 A.D. Alpha 26 Feature Freeze, a major precursor to the actual release of the new alpha version of the game. Since then we have been trying to get the new release ready for your hands.

What is the Feature Freeze?

The Feature Freeze is the point at which new features cease to be added to the new alpha version and the development team focus solidly on final preparations and bugfixes to facilitate the release.

What happened after the 6th of March?

We currently have seven release blockers tickets on the milestone. As their name suggest those bugs or issues prevent the release. As long as they are not fixed we cannot release another version. You can find more information about them here:

  • #6440 fast clicking makes formations walk in slow motion
  • #6444 Survival of the fittest and the Regicide game mode are broken
  • #6451 Crash in the replay menu
  • #6487 Out of Sync
  • #6506 Mouse cursor issue on 4K screens
  • #6513 Crash when running the game in non-visual mode or running the reinforcement learning interface.
  • #6494 Rectangular texture glitch on water when dying

Once those are fixed, we are going to release the first release candidate test bundle to make sure there are no more outstanding bugs.

When Will Alpha 26 Officially be Released?

Until the release blockers are fixed, we cannot provide a date.

Want to help?

As the current version is currently unstable, we will not release pre built bundles. You can however still install the development version and test it extensively.

You can also help by fixing the bugs or offering programming advice, or reaching out to people you know that might be able to help.

If you have a M1 Mac you can also test the Alpha 25b test bundle. See this thread. If the tests are conclusive, we might be able to provide a version for A26.

What can I expect from Alpha 26?

If you are not afraid of spoilers and can’t wait to see what new things are coming in the latest version check out this page

How can I update my mod to be ready for the release?

See wiki:Port A25 to A26 and download the development version.

Re-release of 0 A.D. Alpha 25: Yaunā

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Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, is happy to announce the re-release of 0 A.D. Alpha 25 “Yaunā”, the twenty-fifth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source real-time strategy game of ancient warfare.

This version is a maintenance release. Gameplay remains untouched and both versions of Alpha 25 remain multiplayer-compatible. We strongly advise you however to upgrade to benefit of the following fixes:

  • Ranked matches did not longer grant points in the lobby.
  • Mod installation no longer require restart.
  • Mod installation no longer prints errors when installing mods by double-clicking
  • Mod installation now overwrites the existing mods to allow for easier updates.
  • Fishes are now easier to spot on lowest settings with the addition of seagulls.

The team wishes to apologize for the inconvenience and hopes you will be enjoying your time playing 0 A.D: Empires Ascendant.

Easy download and install

Download and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux and macOS.

0 A.D. is free software. This means you are free to download, redistribute, modify and contribute to the application under the same licences: GNU Public Licence version 2 (GPL v2) for code and Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 (CC-BY-SA 3.0) for artwork.

Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to download 0 A.D. completely gratis, directly from the developers. No “freemium” model, no in-game advertising, no catch.

How to Download 0 A.D. Instructions for Windows Instructions for Linux Instructions for OS X

 

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