Erik Johansson (“feneur”) has announced he will step down from managing the development of the free, open-source game 0 A.D., citing his wish to focus on his writing and other hobbies. Johansson, 27 from Sweden, has been the project lead since 2008, and the team thanks him for his sustained leadership of the project. Back in ’08, 0 A.D. was a small, proprietary freeware project, but under Erik’s watch, the project has gone open-source and developed tremendously to a global community with thousands of fans and supporters. Erik has emphasized that he wishes to remain on the team, and he will continue to assist with certain administrative tasks, including serving on the Treasury Committee, a committee of contributors who make financial decisions for the project.

Longtime 0 A.D. contributor Michael D. Hafer (“Mythos_Ruler”) has agreed to take over leadership of the project pending the success of a crowdfunding campaign, tentatively set for May and June 2013, which he will plan and carry out. If the campaign succeeds, Hafer will work in a full-time capacity for one to two years from his home in Indiana, USA to promote all aspects of development of 0 A.D.

Starting from now, Michael will be replacing Erik on the Design Committee, which decides which features will be included in the 0 A.D. software. He will still answer to the Treasury Committee for all decisions concerning raising and disbursing project funds. If the crowdfunding campaign succeeds, the Treasury Committee will pay Michael’s salary according to the terms of a pending contract.

Current committee members are:

Design committee: Enrique, Michael (“Mythos_Ruler”) and Jonathan (“quantumstate”).
Treasury committee: Erik (“feneur”), Kieran (“k776”) and Aviv (“Jeru”).

Edit (April 5, 2013): The new project liaison to SPI is Aviv Sharon (“Jeru”).

We invite contributors to advise our upcoming crowdsourcing campaign and help with related tasks. If you are interested, please let us know on our forums or on our contact form. Thanks!

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of “0 A.D. Alpha 13 Magadha”, the thirteenth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. This alpha features the Mauryan Indians, AI improvements, six new songs and more! Continue reading →

Alpha 9 introduced the Roman Republic into the game. As I was looking forward to working on the Romans since I first joined the team, needless to say I was excited! However finding the proper sound proved to be challenging, and several options were thoroughly examined before finally deciding to go with a mandolin, an English horn and pizzicato strings. This combination of sounds resulted in two tracks: “Juno Protect You”, and “Elysian Fields”. Continue reading →

I’m taking a break from the regular blog progression to address a recent question I received – regarding the instruments I own that were used to create the sounds of 0 A.D. :

All these blogs make me wonder: Just how many instruments does Omri have? He seems to own 5-6 instruments for every civilization!

Let’s start with admitting that I have a problem… I am an instrument hoarder, I have around 40 different ones in my studio… Let’s take a look at the instruments that were used to create each civilization’s distinct sound: Continue reading →

It’s time again to take a closer look at one of the contributors to 0 A.D. This time we’ve chosen to feature Pureon, one of the most versatile contributors we have, but I’ll let him elaborate on that below. Let’s just say that it was an easy decision to feature him, and that we are very grateful that he’s part of the Wildfire Games team and community. Continue reading →

Alpha 8 introduced the mighty Persians!

Looking to create a distinct sound, I picked up my oud, saz, acoustic bass, darbuka, djembe and bamboo shakers, and just started recording different combinations and ideas. Continue reading →

As we progressed to Alpha 7, the Main Menu was redesigned by the team, and the music changed accordingly with a track titled “Honor Bound”.
(By the way I’d like to take a second here and thank all the team members for suggesting track titles!) Continue reading →

Welcome to The Greek Theater, official 0 A.D. music blog!

This blog will chronicle the making of 0 A.D.’s music, since I assumed the role of composer and music department lead for Wildfire Games!

Continue reading →

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, has successfully applied to make 0 A.D. an associated project at an organization called Software in the Public Interest, Inc. (SPI).

SPI is a non-profit corporation based in the USA, that acts as a fiscal sponsor to many open source projects, including Debian, Drupal and LibreOffice. This means SPI can accept donations and hold funds for the development of these projects, sign contracts on behalf of the developers, provide legal advice when they might need it and more.

Importantly, if you live in the United States, you can donate to 0 A.D. through SPI and deduct it from your taxes. (Europeans can donate to SPI through a non-profit association based in Germany, named ffis e.V., which has partnered with SPI.)

Continue reading →

As some of you may have noticed, we’ve created some new structure and technology icons over the past few Alpha releases. Below we’ll give you some insight on how these icons come to life.

The icons themselves are created at 128×128 pixels or larger, but must remain recognizable when scaled down to 40×40 pixels when used on the game’s user interfaces. This need for scalability means the full size icons must have high contrast colours and sometimes include exaggerated shapes, otherwise they will fade and blur too much when scaled down.

Continue reading →