Wildfire Games has released the sixteenth alpha version of 0 A.D., an open source, historical real-time strategy game which features excellent graphics and sound. The new alpha brings an improved AI, a new GUI along with big changes under the hood and more.
Improvements in 0 A.D. alpha 16 "Patañjali":
- New GUI, new font: The new GUI style seen in the multiplayer lobby in Alpha 15 is now used nearly everywhere. The GUI font has also been changed to Biolinum, a free font created by the Libertine Open Fonts Project;
- New AI - Petra: Petra features more aggressive expansion and combat and builds defence towers and fortresses as a human would. Petra manages resources better in late game than the previous AI, Aegis, and is more robust to external conditions. It will also trade over land with allied markets, if there are any;
- A Multiplayer "Ready" button was added: In a multiplayer game, all users must confirm game settings before host can start game. When the host changes a setting, players are set to “not ready” again. This is to avoid sneaky behaviour amongst some hosts, who would change the settings right before starting;
- Formation Updates: The Testudo formation (for Roman melee infantry) and the Syntagma formation (for Macedonian, Ptolemaic and Seleucid pikemen) have received new animations, and their movement has improved further over the previous version. The formations are also more moddable, which sets the stage for further developments in formations;
- Town Bell: Click on the new "town bell" button to sound an alarm and make your citizens garrison in the nearest structure until the enemy is gone. Once you sound the bell again, your units will ungarrison and go back to work;
- New Global Resource Trading Settings: You now set the chance a trader will trade a certain resource, rather than selecting it per trader. This gives you a better overview of your trade, and makes it easier to manage;
- The "Wonder" Victory Condition was added: If you set "Wonder" as victory condition, a counter counting down 5 minutes appears after you build a wonder. If the enemy can’t destroy the wonder in this time, you win;
- New "Explored Map" game setting, in which the entire map is covered with the Fog of War. This is an option that gives something between the "revealed map", where there are no secrets, and the default "dark map";
- New art assets: Animated flying hawks, Ptolemaic ships, Eurasian Wolf, Nile Crocodile, Ptolemaic buildings: Military settlement, Docks, Market, and quite a few new animations, e.g. a new seeding animation for farming units;
- New music track: "Water’s Edge";
- A new version of the JavaScript engine "SpiderMonkey" was implemented;
- 0 A.D. is now available by default in 12 different languages: Catalan, Czech, Dutch, English (United Kingdom), French, Galician, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Scottish Gaelic, and Spanish (Spain). Japanese is also available but its available as a separate downloadable mod due to large font files.
Check out these changes in the 0 A.D. alpha 16 video below:
(direct video link)
If you can contribute to 0 A.D. (programming, art, sound, documentation and more), see the programmers getting started page and join #0ad-dev on QuakeNet on IRC.
Download 0 A.D.
Ubuntu users can install the latest 0 A.D. by using a PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wfg/0ad
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install 0adDownload 0 A.D. (for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX).
