0 A.D. Development Report #15

Wildfire Games, the international group of volunteers developing 0 A.D., is happy to present this week’s 0 A.D. development report.

If you want to find out more about the development of this open-source, cross-platform real-time strategy game or if you are interested in game development in general, it might provide an interesting read.

Screenshot of the Month

Enrique’s new horses (WIP). Animated transparent manes and moving armor are also in the pipeline (thanks to Wraitii).

Team News

Our ‘family’ keeps expanding! A warm welcome to Scythetwirler, who has been working on our multiplayer lobby among other things.

Translations

Work has begun on translating 0 A.D. into many, many languages. Using the Transifex translating system, everyone can help! Check out this link.

Programming & Art

Mythos_Ruler added a new map (Savanna River), rebalanced many units/technologies/… and laid the groundwork for our next civilization: the Seleucid Empire.

Yves has been hard at work upgrading Spidermonkey from 1.8.5 (which is old and unsupported) to a more recent version (v24 or later). He committed one patch that solves the massive performance problems we got with the new SpiderMonkey versions in lategame by changing the way different AI players are separated from each other. The second big patch adapted our code with the old SpiderMonkey version to match the most important constraints required by newer versions without updating yet. The third patch removed the JS Debugger temporarily because it will require a partial rewrite but doesn’t have priority for the update.

After these changes the WIP patch for the new SpiderMonkey is now much smaller and easier to handle (test, update and review).

Wraitii added a fishing boat for our latest civilization: the Ptolomaic Egyptians. He also implemented some new animals done by Micket: crocodiles, sharks and hawks. He optimized the water code making it faster (speed-up of foam generation code, …) and more modern. Last but not least, he is overhauling the Aegis bot (AI), squashing AI bugs and improving their capabilities.

Sanderd17 implemented countless functionality fixes; his energy/time went primarily to reworking formations and chasing (i.e. attacking fleeing units, animals).

Enrique has been reworking our horses, as they were getting a bit outdated. Your cavalry charges will be even more heroic!

Leper & Historic_Bruno fixed a number of crashes and other bugs. A full list of changes is available in the SVN log (any similarity with 99,9 % of all Google Chrome change logs is pure coincidence…)

Bajter and Kabzerek are working on the summary screen. Their changes should provide more information to the player (after-battle statistics…).

AnnieQ has been working on new unit cards for the Celtic factions.

BoeseRaupe has been working on the hero icon and a way to delete a units group with a right mouse click.

Lordgood: Artiste extraordinaire and My Little Pony-afficionado, has created a new Roman tower and a new wonder & homestead for the Carthaginians. Our “Brony” (Brother + Pony) also started working on the building set for the Seleucids.

Dumbo has been working on improving unit behavior when choosing opponents.

Itms added a town bell function. Enemy raid incoming? With one mouse-click your female citizens rush to the nearest building to find shelter.

Scythetwirler & Josh have implemented various multiplayer lobby fixes to the alpha 15/16 server and alpha 16 client. They are hard at work fixing the post-game lobby disconnects and the problems with hosting to improve your multiplayer experience in alpha 16.

Apart from the lobby, Josh has also been working towards a more intuitive lobby login UI in the new “modern” style (WIP by Pureon), has done various UI engine cleanup, and re-worked the selection back-end to yield ~2% overall performance increase.

Mimo improved the way trade works. Now the trade management is centralised so there’s no need to click every trader.

Stanislas69 has been reworking the Iberian barracks and corral, and the Gallic mill and farmstead.

Music & Sound

Omri_Lahav has been working on new peace tracks for the different civilizations and freshening up the score. A professional tin whistle player will redo the Celts / Gauls, a trombone player will record the low brassy parts on Honor Bound / Elysian Fields, and the Qanun player will be brought in to add another unique color to the Ptolemaic Egyptians. I think it is fair to say Omri is setting new standards for music in freeware software.

LAVS has been working on battle sounds that will make every melee more compelling.

Want to help out?

If you want to be part of this project, we urge you to post your application in our forums or just grab a task from our list of open tickets and get right to it. We are currently looking for Gameplay, AI, Sound and Graphics Programmers along with Animators and 3D & texture artists. You prefer to do something else than programming or drawing? Luckily for your portfolio we are also looking for Video Editors, a Documentation Manager and Scenario Designers. Still no luck? Head to our forums and join our active community!

!!! We are in need of (skilled) programmers. If you are one, redirect yourself to this thread. Your contributions are crucial !!!