FreeGameDev Planet - Games

The first race of the championship is done, tooner (Marek S) uploaded a video summary (thank you very much). Watch the video here Review the standings of the championship If you want to join there are still empty slots, and joining is possible up to the last race in November. Enjoy, Bernhard

Kudos to TMM from #oga for his 40$ donation over #paypal - it will get us some more awesome artwork done for sure!

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of "0 A.D. Alpha 10 Jhelum", the tenth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. This alpha features Hellenic factions such as Athens, Macedonia and Sparta; technologies, civilization phases, click-and-drag walls, healing and more!

Easy Download and Install

Download and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. 0 A.D. is free of charge and always will be. You can redistribute it and modify it as long as you abide by the GPL. You can even use parts of the art and sound for your own projects as long as you abide by CC-BY-SA. No "freemium" model, no in-game advertising, no catch.

Top new gameplay features in this release:

• New Hellenic Factions: Athenians, Macedonians and Spartans will now replace the generic Hellenic faction. Each features some unique characteristics along with shared Hellenic units and buildings:
  • Receiving significant naval bonuses, the Athenians are the rulers of the waves. Special Buildings: Gymnaseion, Prytaneion ("Council Chamber") and Theatron.
  • Macedonians have a wide selection of units and siege engines, for a combined arms approach. Special buildings (in planning): Lighthouse and library.
  • The Spartans can't build stone walls, but as their soldiers are top-notch, their men serve as their walls instead. Special Building: Syssiton ("Military Mess Hall").
  (Also, along the same lines, we have decided to include more factions in 0 A.D., beginning with the Mauryan Indians! Read on to find out how you can help.)
• Basic Technologies: Technologies, or techs, are economic or military bonuses that can be "researched" (bought) for resources at designated buildings. In 0 A.D., technologies come in mutually exclusive pairs: Within each pair, you can either research one tech or the other, but not both in the same game. As researching some technologies depends on having researched others, one should plan ahead carefully. (Importantly, for the meantime, all factions share an identical tech tree, but over the next few releases, different factions will get different tech trees, adding complexity and interest to the game.)
• Civilization Phases: Start in Village, upgrade to Town, then to City. Unlock new techs and expand your territory with each upgrade.
• Click-and-drag wall building functionality. (Support for gates is due in a future release.)
• Healing units from their battle wounds is now possible by a priest conducting a ceremony with special chants within range. Priests can be trained at the Temple.
• The Iberians get a pre-built walled settlement as a bonus every game.

Graphics improvements:

• New Models/Artwork:
  • Roman Siege Walls, Prytaneion, Roman Merchant Ship;
  • Iberian Special Building, Temple and Fortress; Remodeled Iberian Civ Center
  • Remodeled Hellenic barracks and market
  • Updated/Remodeled all walls
  • New hand-drawn Greek unit portraits
• Prettier unit/building selection rings
• Refactored rendering engine, supports the new specular effect.
• New graphics options: Ability to disable particles and unit silhouettes in game, which gives small boost to game's FPS if needed (Thanks, rouge-spectre and mk12)

• 9+ New maps, including: Acropolis 5, Laconia 1, and Punjab 3 (scenario maps) and Deep Forest (a random map).
• New music tracks: "In the Shadow of Olympus" (Hellenic) and a generic victory track.

• Usability Improvements:
  • Training units with multiple buildings of the same type selected trains that unit in all selected buildings
  • Several UI changes in bartering and setting units' formation and stance
  • It is now easier to select multiple control groups (by Shift+N, where N is the control group number, or by shift-clicking the control group icons) (Thanks, mk12)
  • Shift-clicking a garrisoned unit now ungarrisons all units of that type
• Atlas & Random Map Script Improvements:
  • Terrain eyedropper tool
  • Several bug fixes improving display and stability
  • New wall generation tool for random maps (Thanks, FeXoR)
• Bug fixes and minor features:
  • Refactored AI API, setting the groundwork for developers to reduce lag and program faster, smarter computer opponents in the future.
  • Attack restrictions: Soldiers can't attack stone walls, women can't attack soldiers, animals can't attack buildings, and more. (Thanks, ZsoL)
  • New "Random" faction option for random maps (Thanks, deebee)
  • Increased support for Linux and Mac on several accounts (Thanks, ZsoL)
  • Control groups are now persisted between save/load (Thanks, mk12)
  • Fixed several gameplay & AI bugs (Thanks, mattlott, Dietger, MattDoerksen)
  • New data paths on Windows and OS X (Windows: "%appdata%\0ad" and "%localappdata%\0ad"; Mac: "~/Library/Application Support/0ad").

Please contribute! (REPORTERS/BLOGGERS, PLEASE MENTION THIS! We need your help to finish the game. Thanks.)

We are especially seeking contributors in sound contribution management and in documentation, and, as always, in programming, art, sound, taking YouTube videos and more. These roles on the 0 A.D. development team are great if you want to brush up on your skills and update your portfolio, if you're seeking a project for school with real-life applications, or if you care about the cause of free culture and software and are willing to work pro bono with a group of dedicated volunteers from all over the world.

Specifically, we invite contributors to guide us in ancient Indian history and architecture as we collaboratively design the Mauryan Indian faction in 0 A.D.

Interested? Please register on our forums and start participating! (If you are applying for a role on the team, we request you start a thread in the applications and contributions forum following these instructions. Thanks!)

Why "Jhelum"?

We name our releases according to development status ("Alpha" or "Beta"), successive release number (1, 2, 3, ...) and a word relating to the ancient world, in alphabetical order ("Argonaut" for A, "Bellerophon" for B, ...).

"Jhelum" is the Indian name for the Hydaspes River in the Punjab region, and the site of a major battle between Alexander the Great against King Porus of the Hindu Paurava kingdom in 326 BC, located in modern-day Pakistan. Alexander victored, but at a heavy cost, and the bravery, war skills and princely attitude of Porus so impressed Alexander, he allowed him to rule Hydaspes in Alexander's name.

In honor of the decision to include Mauryan Indians in 0 A.D., we decided to dub Alpha 10 "Jhelum". (Thanks for the name idea, zaphzaph!) The setting for the battle of Jhelum is represented in the "Punjab 3" map included with Alpha 10. For the meantime, Persians replace the Mauryan Indians on this map, but this will be corrected as we include the Mauryans in 0 A.D. within the next few alphas.

For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter K. Keep it original and within the 0 A.D. time-frame (appx. 500 BC - 1 BC)!

Long Time, No Siege

Wildfire Games will keep releasing new versions of 0 A.D. from time to time. Watch our news feed to get updates, or follow us by e-mail, RSS, Facebook or Twitter. And you're always welcome to join the 0 A.D. community on our forums.

Contact info for press, bloggers, etc.: aviv@wildfireHYDASPESgames.com without the Greek name of this alpha version written in all caps.

While we wrap up things to be able to release Alpha 10 we want to highlight a few new open positions where you can help out. Read on to see if you have the relevant skills, if so follow the instructions below the job descriptions on how to apply.

Sound Lead
You should have

• A solid understanding of sound creation/editing so you can guide other contributors, and edit sound clips yourself. Preferably documented.
  
• Previous game development experience is a huge plus
  
• Any teamwork experience, especially in a leading position, is advantageous

Other tasks may include

• Keeping documentation up-to-date
  
• Putting the sounds into the game via XML editing
  
• Interacting with the programmers to make sure that sound is implemented in a way that makes the most sense.

You are most encouraged to make original sound contributions of your own to 0 A.D., and that is, of course, a huge plus.


Documentation manager
One or two volunteer contributors to oversee maintainance of user & developer documentation on the Trac system.
We're looking for someone with:

• Very good written English skills are needed
  
• Very good expression skills are also needed
  
• Technical knowledge is a plus
  
• Previous experience with documentation of open source or other software is also a big advantage

Familiarity with the game is not a big issue and can be learned as you go along, though is of course an advantage if you have it. Please provide expository writing examples.

To apply go to the application thread in our forums and follow the instructions there. Looking forward to working with you

Weekly A&O report Hi everyone! I'm back with a new weekly A&O, trying you to illustrate what changed since last week. As planned, I refactored the encoding of sprites. But imagages probably tell more than words:

The image to the right shows the old encoding sprites had. TTexture described a sprite/texture as a single, shared entity defined by it's width (s.w) and height (s.h), together with the actual image data of the sprite (the rect portion within the black rect). However due to hardware restrictions the actual texture might need to be of a certain size and thus to be larger.

The new encoding splits TTexture to two independant entities. A sprite now stores information about its size and references to physical image by storing a link to it and a position where the sprite is located.

This encoding allows to pack multiple sprites (red rects) into a shared image (black rect). Doing so may reduce the amount of unused empty space as well as the total count of black rects. Graphics hardware generally benefits from both.

Right now however each sprite (red rect) will be created together with a unique texture (black rect) and stored in the lowever left of it, mimicing exactly the original behaviour. The next step on this frontier obviously will be taking the rectangle packer and allocate multiple sprites within shared textures.

Before doing this step however, I'll continue with removing as much deprecated OpenGL1.x as possible and probably write some GL2 renderer.

read more

I finally finished the implementation of the CSM events: Oxygen Production Overload, Oxygen Shortage, Water Production Overload, Water Shortage, Food Production Overload, Food Shortage.

These events can be triggered, in case of the Production Overload, when the colony's production cannot sustain the entire population and, in the case of Shortage, when the colony's production cannot sustain the entire population and there's no more available reserve to compensate it.

These events put their influence on the tension, the health and the economic/industrial output of the colony and, depending on which events are triggered, the people can begin to die of asphyxia and starvation. It's a good and certain way to loose your colony :)

It taken time because of the design time required for these events, to make something coherent.

I also began finally to code the segment 3 of the production phase.

After that I'll need to complete the Colonization Phase System and, that with some additional details, will set the end of this alpha 1.

For part 3 of the tutorial on developing a game with the Frogatto engine, I’ve decided to do a series of videos demonstrating how to add walking, jumping, and crouching to Elisa. I recommend watching the videos in as high resolution as you can. Here are the videos:

Vulcan by Kasia88 and Deevad http://t.co/x31TyDvx #screenshotsaturday #art #gamedev #artwork #tbs #bbg #creature #2d #creativecommons

New and visible Features / Enhancements: + Prototype of permanent balance display as well as a stats overview on hover + Play an error sound when transfering resources among own ships and settlement...

by cybersphinx on 2012 May 13

A new beta, loading skirmish games works again, for the few other changes see the changelog below.

Note: If you can't start the game for whatever reason, please make a trac ticket and attach the file WZdebuginfo.txt located in your config directory so we can look at it.

Known Issues:

• See also: http://developer.wz2100.net/report/17

Bug Reports:
This release probably contains bugs, please report them so they can be fixed. If you have trouble getting the game to work at all, consider a forum thread, you will probably get help faster that way.

See BugReporting for details, in short:

• Search the existing tickets for your problem, if the problem has already been fixed in git, the ticket will be closed.
• If there is an open one already, feel free to add more info to it.
• If there is no report yet, make a new ticket (one per issue).
• Be as detailed as possible in both summary and description, and either log in with your forum account or leave an email address so we can contact you if we need more information.
• The more information we have, the easier it is to fix problems (or the other way around, the harder it is for us to reproduce a problem, the less likely it is to get fixed), so include savegames/instructions to reproduce the bug, crashdumps, backtraces, screenshots for graphical problems... whatever is relevant.
• When you attach files to a ticket, please add each text/image file separately and uncompressed, so we can view them easily in trac (savegames can and should be zipped, they consist of name.gam, possibly name.es, and the files in the name/ folder).

About the 3.1 series:
The 3.1 series is the first based on the new netcode, with new terrain renderer and many other changes. The main target are systems capable of OpenGL 2.0 (with shaders), but at least the important things like team colours should work with OpenGL 1.4+ (some things might look strange though).

Configuration uses a new directory, if you want to use old mods/maps/savegames, you need to copy them (see FileLocations). Note that savegames from 2.3 and 3.0 are incompatible, only those from newer master snapshots might still work. For mods it depends on what they do, don't expect old mods to work either.

2.3 is now officially unsupported.

Changes since the 2.3 series:
(Items marked with a * were already in the cancelled 3.0 series)

• New terrain renderer*
• Support for 3*/5*/6*/7*/9/10 player maps
• Targetting by line of sight, preventing shooting through terrain or too early*
• Gates in multiplayer games
• New deterministic netcode that makes sure the same things actually happen for all players, should be much more cheating-resistant
• New power system, power is deducted in full at the start, and when power is low, in the order things were queued
• Unit targeting is more intelligent, they won't all shoot one target when one shot is sufficient
• Remove fog of war/mist options in favour of a combined explored/seen mode
• Stored templates. Automatically adds a unit design when all needed research is available
• Command line parameters now need a '=' (which was optional before), e.g. --resolution=1400x1050
• Apple systems: Drop support for PPC and Mac OS X 10.4, add support for 64 bit Intel on Mac OS X 10.6+

Changelog for 3.1 beta10:
General

• Fix: Loading of skirmish games (#3451, 18216c60e7)
  
• Fix: Scavengers in Fast Play are on their own team again (#3447, c3218e7ecc)
  
• Fix: Allow building the designed unit in the tutorial (#3058, 7079ad2951)

Multiplayer

• Fix: Don't desync occasionally when some player slots are empty (1ef4fc6cfd, ef685d0b89)
  
• Fix: Don't tell players who lost that they won (#3449, 25e118c628)

Graphics

• Change: Updated texture for the urban building features (4a9ac7fc3e)
  
• Fix: Team colour mask on Plasmite Flamer, Sunburst AA and AA Flak Cannon (#3433, e36cdf11e8)

Translations

• Update: Hungarian (#3458, #3470, 0def25206b, 9bed66e764)
  
• Update: Spanish (#3473, baa1438722)

Changelog for older versions: https://github.com/Warzone2100/warzone2100/blob/master/ChangeLog
Full list of changes since 3.1_beta9: https://github.com/Warzone2100/warzone2100/compare/v3.1_beta9...v3.1_beta10

Download:
As usual, downloads can be found on our Download page or directly on Sourceforge.

(9 comments)

We've completed another forum upgrade, and we hope you like it! This release didn't come without issues. There are two known issues at this time:

• The Pledgie and Paypal badges are missing. They will be added back in soon.
  
• Avatar images may have been changed. If your avatar's been modified, feel free to change it back by going into your profile settings.

If you have any issues or feedback, drop by our upgrade feedback thread.

Later today, Wildfire Games will be performing an upgrade to it's forum software. The upgrade will start around 7pm GMT. During this time, the forum will be unavailable. The wiki, Trac, and all of our other applications will still be running normally. We expect for the upgrade to take only a few hours. If you spot any issues after the upgrade, feel free to stop on by and file a ticket.

Thanks, everyone, for being patient!

Thanks Myckel from #oga for his generous #bitcoin donations (summing 8 coins). You can contribute too: 1Gpa3NKn8nR9ipXPZbwkjYxqZX3cmz7q97