0 A.D. prealpha released

[Machete234]

0 A.D is an age of empires like open source RTS game

in this prealpha you can build a few things, and send your troops to kill enemies that dont do anything.
If this gets a good multiplayer it could become a great game

Lets see.

http://wildfiregames.com/0ad/

[SirArtturi]

Yea I know this project. It seems very cool and promising!
I'll test the game when it's ready...

Wanted to post screen just to get people enthusiased:

[Gota]

It even has decent zoom..

[Wombat]

got better trees than spring, EVERYONE MOVE TO 0 A.D.

[Egglet]

screenshot looks like ATITD2

[SirArtturi]

got better trees than spring, EVERYONE MOVE TO 0 A.D.

Spring has these very same trees as a custom features imported by Beherith.

Now just add these as a default trees and voila, we have same trees. Nobody needs to move to AD0 :)

[JohannesH]

Nice graphics, so what?

Hope it'll be a good game.

[Machete234]

You cant really say if the game will be good or not, they would need a good lobby like spring.
This is the top priority imho, then they need to balance this game testing the multiplayer.

My impression is that they think the singleplayer is very important and that they need nice historic campaigns etc etc,
this is a waste of time they should get the mp part running and build a communitiy.

They only plan to have direct connect via TCP/IP and servers when they have the money for it.

[Das Bruce]

While this is clearly, as they state, prealpha, it does look nice and has potential. I'm more of the opinion that focusing on single player is important, it's one of springs, current major failings.

Also lol animation timings.

[SinbadEV]

perhaps we could jump on the bandwagon and figure out a way to let games of this be hosted on our lobby+server... then we get twice the lobby development + audience exposure.

[Neddie]

I'm more of the opinion that focusing on single player is important, it's one of springs, current major failings.

Well, single player, in terms of story-driven campaigns, is prohibitively expensive to produce at any level of quality even given a stable game and stable engine. It often uses between sixty and ninety percent of the resources devoted to commercial titles, for less than twenty hours of gameplay.

I do think some sort of flexible proto-campaign system, and more attention to skirmishes, would be viable.

[Masure]

I'm more of the opinion that focusing on single player is important, it's one of springs, current major failings.

Well, single player, in terms of story-driven campaigns, is prohibitively expensive to produce at any level of quality even given a stable game and stable engine. It often uses between sixty and ninety percent of the resources devoted to commercial titles, for less than twenty hours of gameplay.

I do think some sort of flexible proto-campaign system, and more attention to skirmishes, would be viable.

Source ?

[Neddie]

I can't give you a validated source, this is not an issue developers would write papers about, but it is reasonable given the experiences of various people here and the scope of single player in commercial titles. Quantum originally brought the problem to my attention, and I evaluated a number of larger titles (C&C Generals, Supreme Commander, Warcraft III, AoE II, etc.) to verify it.

Think about it - custom concepts, custom models and skins, map features, map layouts, mission event scripting, story scripting, single player sound effects/voices, cutscenes? In Warcraft III, including the expansion, roughly half of the models and skins are custom for use in the campaigns. Somewhere between a half and two thirds of the shipped maps are campaign maps. Each scenario has been balanced and scripted manually around the unit balance, with various AI activities, event triggers, item spawns and interactive features. The save/load system has been arguably added entirely for single player purposes and has to preserve not only unit positions, but items, event sequences, and current actions. All of the cut scenes are included for the benefit of single player. There is no story in multiplayer, the authors are retained entirely for single player.

If you ignore the single player campaign, the whole of Warcraft III consists of less than a hundred and fifty models and textures, two or three dozen unscripted maps, the basic audio files, the basic AI, the UI and the balance model (Unit balance, Items, Spells). We've delivered considerably more multiplayer content than that with 1944.

We can and have done more than that on no budget in the same time frame of four years, all ten major developers part-time. I can't remember the precise numbers, but didn't Warcraft III require well over ten developers and have a price tag reaching into the millions?

[JohannesH]

wc3 team had to make the basic engine too... And those mapping tools you mention only for singleplayer can be used to make multiplayer content as well no?

[Neddie]

Except you're missing the point. I didn't mention the Spring Engine project in 1944 either, I factored out the engine entirely. The engine is code, loading and using content, but while without it there can be no game, as code it is and will always be comparatively cheap. Oooh, DirectX, we can pull that segment from here, and this from there, and here is the model loader!

The fact is that missions require specific content, specific scripting and specific balancing which doesn't play a part in multiplayer maps. A single player map (i.e. scenario) is a much more significant undertaking, and no, most of the products are not useful for multiplayer use because scenarios do not depict two or more sides of equal power and expansion capability on a balanced map - if they did, one wouldn't bother with scripting or a story at all, you'd be playing a skirmish match.