[HN Gopher] 0AD, an open source historical RTS in development fo...
___________________________________________________________________
0AD, an open source historical RTS in development for 22 years
Author : wsgeorge
Score : 569 points
Date : 2023-05-26 19:42 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (play0ad.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (play0ad.com)
| trollied wrote:
| I'd give this a go if I wasn't so terribly addicted to
| Factorio...
| hydroid7 wrote:
| Try Mindustry instead
| gwnywg wrote:
| Yep, I was addicted to that... and to 0ad at some point
| too...
| jgalt212 wrote:
| 0AD is implanted in my as the first package listed in Synaptic.
| math-ias wrote:
| I would guess that this drives a non-negligible number of
| people to playing the game for the first time. My personal
| anecdote is tab completing `apt-get install` by mistake and
| figuring I should research this 0ad package more to make sure I
| didn't screw up configurations.
| winrid wrote:
| NetPanzer is also an open source RTS in development for over 20
| years!
|
| https://github.com/netpanzer/netpanzer/tree/dev
|
| I just setup a new masterservers and a couple game servers with
| bots (but you need v0.9x+ to play with bots).
|
| I'm working with the maintainer to do one more release to the
| distros and then probably convert it to Godot.
|
| You can download the latest 0.9 release from sourceforge. 0.8, in
| the distros, is pretty old.
| robinhoodexe wrote:
| I'm quite excited for a future macOS ARM build.
| postalrat wrote:
| Can't you run it now or does that build include some arm only
| units?
| pohl wrote:
| Rosetta should run it, but a native build would still be
| desirable.
| adsche wrote:
| Is the "M1" build not native? It shows up as "Mach-O 64-bit
| executable arm64" for me and is fast.
|
| https://play0ad.com/download/mac/
| pohl wrote:
| Thanks for pointing that out! The system requirements for
| Apple, on the front page, still say...
|
| _Processor: 2006 or later Intel-based Mac, ARM based
| with Rosetta_
|
| ...so there are mixed signals.
| atum47 wrote:
| Got all my friends hooked on it back in my college days. We
| attended class at night, but for some reason beyond my
| comprehension we did have classes at Saturday morning. Being a
| bunch of nocturnal beings, we usually bought some pizzas and
| stayed up all night from Friday to Saturday playing on lan and
| having pizza. Good times.
| johnisgood wrote:
| > compression
|
| Yup, we are on Hacker News!
| atum47 wrote:
| I usually swipe to type (which works 80% of the time) and
| honestly some times my eyes to catch spelling mistakes like
| these. Sorry, haha.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Oh no worries really. Your typo was on topic as well! :P
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| played AOE 2 when it was just released, more than 20 years ago.
| And then 10 years later in 2011, online with real people which
| was a lot of fun and competitive touch. Then again, I played
| the AOE 2 DE 10 years later in 2021, at 4k which was a great
| refreshment. I would say I got even better at it and had so
| many incredible achievements and games during that time.
|
| I now see that more DLCs and patches were released after they
| did Poles and Bohemians, which were the last ones I played. The
| Poles as a civ were incredibly powerful btw. I felt really
| thankful for the team to keep supporting and developing the
| game in these recent years.
| rootlocus wrote:
| They recently released Return of Rome, where they added
| Romans to AoE2 and also implemented AoE1 inside of AoE2,
| using the same engine and QoL improvements from AoE2. You can
| now play the full AoE1 game (except ranked multiplayer)
| within AoE2.
|
| https://www.ageofempires.com/games/aoeiide/return-of-rome/
| [deleted]
| lagolinguini wrote:
| I don't mean to disparage other people's experiences but I find a
| massive disconnect between what other people are feeling and how
| I feel about this game.
|
| Actual AOE is still alive and kicking through the Definitive
| Editions and now AOE4 with a very active online community and
| developers. While 0AD is great and fully opensource, I still
| don't find it comes close to the Experience of the actual AOE
| titles. Maybe I'm biased because I don't mind paying for
| proprietary software and I sometimes use Windows. I do however
| definitely agree how great of an achievement 0AD is and it is
| definitely a great game when considered in isolation.
| wendyshu wrote:
| Are you talking about custom maps? The size of the online
| community? Those are better in AoE2. What else is?
| lagolinguini wrote:
| Matchmaking and the gameplay experience in general. I spend a
| lot of time playing AOE4 and I also like the direction that
| game is taking.
| aragilar wrote:
| The new AOM is really buggy (c.f. the original), so "alive"
| probably only applies to AOE2. I'm not sure I'd call AOE4 "AOE"
| (yeah, it's branded as it, but so was "Age of Empires Online"),
| so the series basically died at AOE3. The other thing is the
| new DEs (which are relatively recent) and AOE4 are Windows-only
| (there were Mac releases for the originals, and the originals
| were much easier to get running under wine), so there is more
| incentive to look at other games (or reimplement the engine
| like https://openage.sft.mx/).
| lagolinguini wrote:
| Age of Empires 4 is not the same as Age of Empires Online and
| is a a full fledged game in the Age of Empires Series
| incredibly similar to AOE2 with some learnings from AOE3
| added in.[1] It very much plays like it's predecessors. It is
| highly enjoyable and has a very active community as
| responsive developers. There are many content creators and
| tournaments for this game now. It has a large enough userbase
| for you to be able to find a game quickly and they are
| constantly releasing new content and patches. The latest
| patch was released quite recently.[2]
|
| AOE2, 3 and 4 have lots of tournaments, some of them with
| quite decent prize pools.[3]
|
| I personally don't play AOM so I can't comment on that but as
| far as I have seen, Microsoft has done a good job at reviving
| the other games and with the new game so while I don't doubt
| AOM is buggy I do have faith they are actively attempting to
| fix issues.
|
| As for the Windows only thing, as I said, I use windows at
| times myself and I don't mind paying for proprietary
| software. But I understand if others have qualms about that.
|
| But to say that the Age of Empires series died with AOE3 is
| untrue, and while 0AD is a great achievement, to say it is a
| replacement for the actual Age games is also not true.
|
| Also note that MS did reimplement the engine for the AOEI
| definitive edition, unsure about the others.
|
| 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Empires_IV 2
| https://www.ageofempires.com/news/age-of-empires-iv-
| season-f... 3 https://liquipedia.net/ageofempires/Main_Page
| aragilar wrote:
| I've played AOE4 (during the free load balance trial), and
| sure, it's not Age of Empires Online, that doesn't mean
| it's an AOE game (another example: Halo 4 and 5 may be
| called Halo games, it doesn't mean they are ones). This
| view extends to the group of friends I play AOE2 with, so
| while I'm glad AOE4 has found its audience (so maybe
| they'll redo AOE1), I'm cynical that any sequels will be
| ones we want to play.
|
| The issue for the new DEs/4 isn't that they're proprietary,
| it's they've gone backwards for cross-platform play (no
| MacOS, worse on wine), hence the open source implementation
| (with propriety assets) would enable playing on whatever
| systems people have.
|
| EDIT: I will agree that 0AD isn't the same as AOE2 if I
| want to play AOE2, but given the option of playing a game
| that will work (0AD) vs. one that may work (new AOM), I'll
| take the one that will work.
| lagolinguini wrote:
| As someone who grew up on playing AOE and AOE2, I
| remember people said the same thing about AOE3 when it
| came out. In the end I never got into it myself but then
| when AOE4 came out it felt like a breath of fresh air.
| They way I see it is that each iteration in the franchise
| is really a different game and not a replacement for
| another. So I still find myself playing the AOE2
| campaigns from time to time in the definitive edition for
| the nostalgia factor. So I think it's a bit unfair to say
| AOE4 isn't an Age of Empires game.
|
| At the end of the day the goal is to have fun so if the
| new game doesn't fit your vibe that's totally
| understandable. But I invite you to give it one more shot
| , even the Viper plays it from time to time :)
|
| Also definitely agree about the no Mac/wine thing. A
| friend of mine ended up buying a new PC to play the game
| with the rest of our group.
| [deleted]
| nylonstrung wrote:
| A more interesting peer to this game is Beyond All Reason, an
| open source clone of Total Annihilation that has essentially
| revived a community for the franchise
|
| https://www.beyondallreason.info/
| laputan_machine wrote:
| Oh wow, thanks for this. I bought TA (& TA:Kingdoms) a while
| back but it wouldn't run on my machine
| mikae1 wrote:
| When it comes to open source RTS games,
| https://www.beyondallreason.info really deserves an honorable
| mention.
| wurzeltrick wrote:
| Beyond all reason is not open source though, since a lot of its
| artwork is licensed CC-by-NC-ND. https://github.com/beyond-all-
| reason/Beyond-All-Reason/blob/...
|
| Another Total Anhilation clone is ZeroK which is unfortunately
| also not completely open source because of its artwork license
| (Wikipedia mentions CC by NC ND but I could only fjnd this
| summary https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K-Artwork/issues/16).
|
| Unfortunately it is near impossible to setup a local LAN game
| with ZeroK, since there are no current instructions to setup
| the required spring-engine lobby server.
|
| Edited, because I recognized to late, that Wikipedia mentions
| that zeroK-Artwork might also be under CC-by-NC-ND.
|
| Edited again to clarify, that its not open source because of
| the artwork.
| concordDance wrote:
| Difficult without Steam? A friend of mine plays Zero-K on
| Linux without Steam.
|
| Maybe drop by the Discord to see if anyone can help you debug
| the issues you've run into.
|
| Also, just because it might be hard to use on non-closed
| systems doesn't make something not open source.
| grozzle wrote:
| Hmm. I read the licence.md. Does this mean if I fork the game
| to try my own patches, I'm forbidden from using the game's
| artwork in my forked version?
|
| If so, that is a serious impediment, tbf.
| wurzeltrick wrote:
| It just concerns some of the artwork, which is a major
| endeavour to recreate. For example
| https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K-
| Artwork/blob/master/musi... is under a Noncommercial
| License, so you can probably fork ZeroK just fine, as long
| as you don't have commercial plans.
|
| Unfortunately non-open source artwork is a problem with
| many games whose sources were released by the original
| publishers, after they abandoned any commercial plans.
|
| For example I'm a big fan of OpenRA, but its artwork is
| still non-free.
|
| I think ZeroK is a great game, and BAR probably also, so I
| didn't mean to distract from the great accomplishments of
| its FLOSS gameengine authors.
| yread wrote:
| looks like a Spring TA successor, nice!
| rand846633 wrote:
| Looks compelling! Could you offer a 3 sentence summary of what
| I would lean, were I to sped 10 minutes understand what exactly
| this game is? Also is it fully playable already?
| concordDance wrote:
| It's a sci-fi RTS game. Focused on multiplayer (co-op, 1v1
| and teams). It has cool explosions and giant robot armies.
|
| Yes, it's fully playable (and indeed being played by
| thousands of people) right now.
| egeozcan wrote:
| How is it possible that as an RTS fan, I've never heard about
| this? They even had a pro tournament:
| https://youtu.be/_dq9Xwfh4h4
|
| Some aspects vaguely look like C&C Generals, and some like
| Starcraft, if I'm understanding stuff from the video correctly.
| Thanks for sharing!
| Kiro wrote:
| As an RTS fan, I'm surprised you compare it to Generals and
| Starcraft instead of the obvious inspiration: SupCom. BAR is
| basically Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander
| reincarnated. I think even the devs call it a clone or
| derivative.
| egeozcan wrote:
| I had skimmed the video from my phone, and I still didn't
| have the chance to look at it in detail, so apologies if I
| misled anyone! I still long for a successor to RA2 and C&C
| Generals, that is also probably skewing my perception
| heavily :)
| kasztelan_ wrote:
| As someone unfamiliar with that project I looked up About Us on
| the main site. There wasn't a section that would just explain
| what the project was about.
|
| I know this is more 'if you know you know' kind of hobby but it
| would still be nice to get a quick overview :)
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| https://play0ad.com/game-info/project-overview/
| hu3 wrote:
| Are there opensource RTS games made with JS that run in the
| browser?
|
| Not having to install would be awesome. And JS would make it
| accessible to most devs.
| stodor89 wrote:
| You can play Tzar in the browser: https://tza.red
|
| Not open source tho.
| npteljes wrote:
| There are a few on itch.io: https://itch.io/games/platform-
| web/tag-open-source/tag-real-...
|
| Open source games are not really constrained by devs, I think.
| I'd say that dev work is the one that's best covered in the
| open source game development. Project management, marketing,
| asset production, user experience, quality assurance, product
| management seem to be much more underserved.
| hohg wrote:
| https://littlewargame.com/
| anonzzzies wrote:
| > And JS would make it accessible to most devs.
|
| Don't think it would be more than it is now; game dev is not
| the same as web dev and the sourcecode of this game is very
| readable and easy to work with. The language is not going to be
| the issue for getting collaborators.
| psychphysic wrote:
| I played 0ad nearly every day about 5 or so years ago. What a
| blast from the past.
| pelasaco wrote:
| Best game. My kids play it every weekend - when they are allowed
| to consume medias other than books. They love to play historical
| battles, go through the history of the civilizations. I still
| beat them, but it's such fun to have some "LAN-parties" with
| them.. said that, we noticed that quite often, the network game
| gets aborted. Is that something that just happen to me (Linux,
| Mac, Windows, doesnt matter) or the network part of the code is
| not so robust as the rest?
| mike_hock wrote:
| [flagged]
| bee_rider wrote:
| Ehh... it is an open source game, not a kernel, a playable
| alpha is fine as long as it is fun.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| 0ad is completely playable right now.
|
| (Although, if HURD had drivers _it_ would be usable right now,
| too.)
| peter_retief wrote:
| Really enjoy OAD, good to know it is being developed.
| badnogooderevil wrote:
| I've read about this.
| Phlogi wrote:
| It's alpha for so long, how stable is it to play ? Why are they
| not focusing on a 1.0 release and seize adding features, new
| civs, and therefore complexity?
| bandrami wrote:
| Remember that the "unstable" aspect of alpha isn't that "it's
| going to crash randomly" but that "you can't rely on a given
| feature being there in the future".
| CameronNemo wrote:
| I can only comment on Linux and to a much lesser extent macOS,
| but IME it is quite stable.
|
| I think never going 1.0 is an open source game dev meme or
| something. Xonotic is still pre-1.0 even after over a decade in
| development. Stable as heck.
| imiric wrote:
| Not just in game dev: https://0ver.org/
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > It's alpha for so long, how stable is it to play ?
|
| It is 100% playable and has been for years. As sibling comments
| note, I think the only reason they label it as anything but
| stable is because there are still significant changes between
| releases. Although I personally think they could fix even that
| by just chopping the first parts of the version number off - if
| they stopped calling it "alpha" and just called it 0ad version
| 26, and then released version 27, everyone would still have the
| right expectations.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| I tried to play it at a LAN party. It started off great, but
| as the number of units increased, the connection slowly
| deteriorated until eventually it was literally unplayable.
| You say that it is "100% playable and has been for years"?
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Some details would be good: what machine was the host, what
| network, how many clients, which 0ad version? Just curious.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| This was a few years ago, so I don't remember all the
| details. I remember that we had 4 players in the LAN.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Honestly I've only ever played it single player or with 2
| players. So yes, it's 100% playable under all conditions
| that I've been able to test. There are plenty of games with
| unacceptable performance on my machines; do I get to call
| all of them alpha-quality?
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| My objection was not related to 0AD versioning their
| releases as "alpha". That's absolutely fine by me! My
| objection was related to _you_ describing 0AD with words
| "It is 100% playable and has been for years". Clearly it
| has _not_ been 100% playable for years!
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| Because it's an OSS project ran by volunteers, each of whom
| work on the features they are interested in.
| suddenclarity wrote:
| Even in OSS it's wise to have some people steer the
| direction. I tried the game about eight years ago but it
| didn't run well on my laptop. I've tried to keep up somewhat
| but lost interest when it felt like they just added new
| features instead of polishing and improving core
| functionality.
|
| I had a similar feeling with Black Mesa. At a certain point,
| it feels like they've worked so long on the project that they
| lost the original selling point. At what stage does it make
| more sense to just remake the game in the latest UE than
| offering a 20 year old game that still isn't close to being
| released.
|
| I don't want to talk down on the project but it's a question
| I think about every time I see these types of products.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Not sure what exactly you meant, but Black mesa was mighty
| playable and 100% stable when it was released as full.
| Maybe stay away from half-working early builds of these
| kind of games, IMHO its not worth the frustration just
| because of some nostalgia.
|
| Now if somebody would port first Deux ex into Unreal 5.2
| engine that would get me interested (but still, keep your
| emotions in check and play when its ready, otherwise just a
| recipe for regrets)
| wsgeorge wrote:
| Fair point. On my part, I like to think of them as "ever-
| green" projects. So they're never "done", they just keep
| evolving at whatever rate the community can manage, and
| people check out and check in once in a while to see where
| it's at.
|
| > I tried the game about eight years ago but it didn't run
| well on my laptop
|
| Care to try it now? I've been playing Alpha 26 for a few
| weeks, and I _actually_ love it.
| wsgeorge wrote:
| It works very well. I used to run the Alpha 23 on my old
| Windows 10 device, but I got Alpha 26 a few weeks ago for my
| Intel Mac.
|
| No noticeable bugs affecting my single player gameplay, except
| a few quirks with ship movements (they tend to overlap, which
| makes it look unnatural)
|
| I have also noticed that clusters of units tend to look smaller
| than their actual number, so it might be a similar issue as
| I've noticed above. From someone who still enjoys the AoE 1 Ex,
| 0 AD is a really amazing game.
| Phlogi wrote:
| Thanks, how is the learning curve in comparison to AoE2 DE?
| wsgeorge wrote:
| I figured out the basics before bothering to read the docs,
| so anyone who played classic RTSs will get off to a good
| start.
|
| Some specifics about this game that make it unique:
|
| 1. You cannot build anything any where. There's the concept
| of a "region of control" that surrounds your Civic Center
| (Town Center equivalent) that marks the borders of your
| settlement. Building right on the borders expands it.
| Exceptions to this rule are made for docks, outposts Roman
| army camps (if you play as a Roman)
|
| 2. Besides mounted and siege units, your soldiers are also
| your builders/resource gatherers. Citizen soldiers. Non-
| combatant builders/gatherers are female citizens. As
| soldiers gather experience from fighting, they become more
| capable soldiers and less capable citizens.
|
| 3. The default UI uses traditional, civ-specific names for
| units and buildings (with English equivalents as
| secondary), which can be jarring at first. I swap them to
| make deciding on what to build easier.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _2. Besides mounted and siege units, your soldiers are
| also your builders /resource gatherers. Citizen soldiers.
| Non-combatant builders/gatherers are female citizens. As
| soldiers gather experience from fighting, they become
| more capable soldiers and less capable citizens._
|
| You can also train mercenaries who can only fight and not
| work.
| lagniappe wrote:
| Age of Empires ignited my passion for these games, but 0AD
| captured it just by sheer ubiquity and accessibility. That says
| something, to me.
| mproud wrote:
| OK, that has fellow open-source project _The Battle for Wesnoth_
| beat by 4 years.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I actually prefer 0 A.D. to any AOE game, now.
| taopai wrote:
| Me too. When I found it during the pandemic, it was like "Wow
| this game has everything I dreamt about when I was a little kid
| playing AOE". Capturing buildings and other awesome features!
| pelasaco wrote:
| for sure. AOE2 is ok, but the game controls are much better on
| 0 A.D.. i think 0.A.D is more dynamic and the civilizations
| much more interesting.. there is a middle ages mod to 0.A.D
| which is pretty cool too.
| m00x wrote:
| [flagged]
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| How did this find players? People want "more Age of Empires II"
| (and to some extent more Age of Mythology). In the most literal
| sense of those words. 0AD got there earlier.
|
| Other previous discussions
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10684532) were about
| pathfinding in this game. The pathfinding in AoEII is something.
| It's neither naturalistic, immersive, nor intellectually
| stimulating, which would be goals of mine and probably the
| average game designer in 2023. I'm not going to say how I really
| feel because I don't want to be downvoted over something stupid.
| The important thing is people love this pathfinding. It's worthy
| of copying.
|
| 0AD: People love more of the same. Another free & open source
| example is Pokemon Showdown. People want original untainted
| Pokemon so badly that Pokemon Showdown still has concurrents in
| the tens of thousands. Who wants to play competitive Wikipedia?
| Nearly a million people a day do.
|
| Commercially: There was an audience for "more Breath of the Wild"
| before TOTK: Genshin Impact. League of Legends is more than a
| decade old now. Counter-Strike is almost as old as 0AD. Old
| reigns supreme.
| feldrim wrote:
| The pathfinding discuss was good. I remember that around
| 2008-2010, I read the Killzone AI related papers and
| presentations. Basically, all the planning, tactics were based
| on pathfinding algorithms. Because, if you find the shortest
| path by scoring the nodes, if you add multiple layers - like
| line of sight as a triangle- you can also update the scores,
| which eventually help the character move most optimal path:
| short but safe path.
|
| The idea made it possible to convert the graph into either way
| finding meshes or influence maps, a great abstraction layer to
| build complex scenarios on top.
|
| What makes me sad here is that, even though the paper written
| for 0 A.D. is newer than the paper I had read around 15 years
| ago, it is primitive. It is also a good thing as it is a low
| hanging fruit here for game devs. But I am not sure if there is
| enough interest for game devs here.
| seventhtiger wrote:
| In game design terms it's interesting how old games
| pathfinding is so much better than modern games.
|
| If pathfinding is too efficient, and the same for all units,
| then the micro aspect of the game is killed. Micro is the
| "real time" part of real time strategy.
|
| If you play something like Starcraft 1, Warcraft 2, or AoE 2
| you'll see the pathfinding has immense peculiarities that as
| you get better at the game you learn to manage. Units get
| stuck on each other and so on.
|
| Starcraft 2 has a very good pathfinding algorithm but it
| still intentionally adds a lot of variety to how units move
| to recreate that cumbersome peculiar pathfinding that rewards
| micro. Yet if you look at Starcraft 1 you see the units still
| move in much more unique ways.
|
| I think it's too easy to fall into a technical rabbit hole
| and try to do the best pathfinding when it actively harms the
| game.
| grozzle wrote:
| Interesting. Could you give a bit more of a concrete,
| specific example of "good pathfinding hurting the
| experience"? It's an odd sounding idea, to me.
|
| Also, you seem to be deep in this world, I'll also ask you
| - are there RTS games out there where the specific terrain
| is crucially important for various unit types - like we've
| seen in the real world recently, with weather updates
| waiting for deep mud to dry out being the main factor in
| when tanks and other sorts of vehicles can be useful? My
| experience of RTS games is limited, but I remember maps
| being very flat overall, with very few types of steepness
| modelled.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| It's a well known phenomenon in StarCraft 2 that the
| super efficient pathfinding increased lethality and
| reduced defender's advantage compared to the first game.
| And the game is overall considered to be VERY high
| lethality with a very weak defender's advantage.
|
| Small fights don't make the difference as noticeable, but
| larger armies are so much more efficient in SC2 compared
| to SC1, that it's harder to hold off a larger force with
| a smaller but better-controlled force. The bigger
| "deathball" tends to just win, it's harder for someone to
| come back from an army disadvantage with skillful play.
|
| Another small example there is that "ling runbys" in SC2
| are vastly more punishing for even small mistakes in
| leaving a gap open in a building wall, because a huge
| number of lings can run through a small gap extremely
| quickly.
|
| If pathing efficiency is the goal, why not make every
| unit in an RTS extremely tiny? That would make it more
| efficient for sure. Or, hell, just turn off unit
| collision entirely. Or make units all move ultra fast, or
| get rid of all map choke points? All of these things
| would improve how efficient pathing is.
|
| Pathing efficiency isn't the goal itself, it's part of
| the game designer's toolbox. Plenty of things are
| intentionally pathing-inefficient -- like big, slow units
| -- as part of the game's design and balance.
|
| The lead designer of Stormgate, which is the closest
| thing we're gonna have to StarCraft 3 probably, has
| talked about SC2's pathing efficiency problem himself.
| Granted, it doesn't sound like he wants StarCraft 1-style
| pathing, he just wants to compensate for the efficiency
| in other ways, like maybe making unit hitboxes bigger.
| feldrim wrote:
| Great insights. The gaming experience and pathfinding
| relationship can also be expanded to game AI in general.
| I found Lars Liden's slides specifically mentioning
| "intelligence! = fun". So, for a better gaming
| experience, it is better to dumb down the AI.
|
| https://www.slideshare.net/_Lars_/ai-talk
| otikik wrote:
| I recently started playing StarCraft 2. Amazing game, can't
| believe it is free.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Tangent about bad pathfinding:
|
| Another game with really frustrating is (still pre-release) Age
| of Darkness.
|
| Units typically get slaughtered if they traverse uncleared
| regions of the map. But you can't tell them not to, and you
| can't even see ahead of time what pathfinding will choose for
| them.
|
| It's amazing how much cognitive load is added by having to
| prevent units from doing super-stupid stuff.
| sesm wrote:
| But if pathfinding is too smart, then it becomes hard to
| micro-control the units, see StarCraft 2 vs StarCraft Brood
| War.
| bee_rider wrote:
| N.B: Age of Darkness is an inherently player-vs-environment
| game (Survival RTS... it is sorta like They are Billions if
| you've played that). So, I think super high action-per-
| minute PVP style gameplay is not really the goal.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| StarCraft is a great example because we can talk about it
| now without the threat of ultras. Like its audience has
| gone away, people only feel nostalgia for it but they don't
| really play it anymore. It's easier to talk about the
| objectively bad and clunky things about it.
|
| I personally don't think micro, as it exists in StarCraft,
| is interesting or even worthy. It only made that game
| harder in ways that were not fun. Which is too bad, because
| it was a phenomenally engineered RTS engine (starting with
| WC3) that brought us many other game formats in its custom
| scenarios.
|
| Compare to Supreme Commander, which had very sophisticated
| pathfinding and in my memory more interesting micro.
| Compare to all MOBA formats, where if you're going to have
| WC3/SC style micro, you might as well focus on micro of one
| unit. There were many ideas that came after StarCraft that
| are in an important way, objectively better.
|
| It has a lot of other clunk. The way you have to manage
| resource gathering. The unit building queues and how
| spending occurs. The spellcasting. The selections. It has
| so much legacy.
|
| StarCraft 2 had to cater to a very specific eSports skill
| base that probably led to it going into the same level of
| obscurity as EverQuest: Gen X people still have strong
| nostalgic feelings for it, but they don't play EVE Online,
| they're not 20 anymore with oodles of time and no
| responsibilities, they don't want hard permadeath single
| instance experiences. They want something much gentler but
| they still feel very positively about like, this one clunky
| thing they may have mastered a long time ago when their
| brain power was so much more plastic.
|
| Is the AoEII engine similarly as worthy as SC2, like from a
| technical engineering point of view? In my opinion, no. So
| besides the existence of an ultra audience, I don't think
| there's a good reason to celebrate the crappy pathfinding
| anymore.
| omginternets wrote:
| What's an "ultra"?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Mostly a nitpick, but StarCraft has little to do with the
| WC3 3D engine, and is a full 4 years older than WC3.
| Perhaps you meant WC2?
|
| Also, the SC2 and even SC communities dwarf Supreme
| Commander, EverQuest, or EVE Online. There are still
| worldwide SC2 tournaments, sometimes televized, with
| price pools in the millions (well, until this year, when
| Blizzard dumped the prizes significantly). SC is still
| quite popular at least in South Korea.
| doix wrote:
| I find it really hard to believe that AoE2 "ultras"
| exist. It's a pretty small community with mainly older
| players, just like StarCraft. Many people still play
| SC:BW and SC2, there are still tournaments and hardcore
| fans that cheer for their favourite players.
|
| > I personally don't think micro, as it exists in
| StarCraft, is interesting or even worthy. It only made
| that game harder in ways that were not fun.
|
| That's you're opinion. I think the exact opposite. If
| those games didn't have the micro opportunities they did,
| they would have died long ago and would have been
| forgotten in history like most other RTS games out there.
|
| I find RTS games without micro extremely boring. I Micro
| makes it exciting because it's not immediately obvious
| who will a win a fight. You can choose to gamble and be
| slightly greedier in your economy and rely on winning a
| fight that you should lose. It also forces you to
| constantly choose between where your focus should be. Do
| you focus on the fight or your economy? And when there
| are multiple fronts to a fight it gets even crazier. I
| think those things are core to the RTS gerne.
|
| > Is the AoEII engine similarly as worthy as SC2, like
| from a technical engineering point of view?
|
| I mean you are comparing games from different eras. But I
| think AoE2 is extremely worthy from a technical
| engineering point of view. You have so many ranged units
| shooting many projectiles, each with it's own collision
| detection back in '99. It's nothing short of a work of
| art.
| qu4z-2 wrote:
| StarCraft is a lot more fun to watch than SupCom though.
| dumpsterlid wrote:
| I couldn't disagree more, Forged Alliance Forever or
| Beyond All Reason are infinitely more interesting to
| watch if you don't care about obnoxious micro skills.
| billfruit wrote:
| Some games have issue in moving groups of units, with some
| units moving slowly while others move faster, end up reaching
| the destination at different times, and get easily taken out
| by enemy units one by one, unless the player painstakingly
| babysits the entire movement to ensure same time of arrival.
| bee_rider wrote:
| This sort of RTS sub-genre (of which They Are Billions is the
| only other example I can think of) probably needs different
| unit AI than a typical RTS.
|
| In case anyone is not familiar with these games, you are
| building a base, the map begins unexplored and is populated
| by monsters which will attack you in waves, so it is a sort
| of inherently player-vs-environment, very asymmetrical game.
|
| Because the enemies are basically expendable and your units
| aren't, your units should... try not to sacrifice themselves
| so much. They should avoid the fog-of-war areas unless
| explicitly instructed to go there. Melee units should flee
| when injured. Ranged units should stay out of melee range.
| Total War unit AI (where ranged units typically skirmish by
| default) might be a better starting point than Age of Empires
| style unit AI.
|
| Although, it is a niche within a niche, so I guess I'll take
| what I can get, haha.
| 3np wrote:
| Sounds a lot like Factorio. Quite different and you
| generally don't do things involving pathfinding in the
| first place; so not sure if it scratches your itch.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I did enjoy Factorio (and also Mindustry) a bit. For
| Factorio a lot of the fun seems to be in really
| optimizing the heck out of your factory, which I didn't
| really enjoy as much, so it was only good for like one or
| two playthroughs for me. One or two fun playthroughs
| though, no complaints.
|
| It is sort of funny, I do enjoy optimizing, but in a game
| I prefer setups where you have to kinda intuitively
| optimize by your gut rather than really tweak things. The
| 50-80% efficiency range, rather than hitting those 80-99%
| targets, so to speak.
| ilyt wrote:
| You don't need to get in 80%+ optimization in the
| slightest in factorio. The jankiest factory in the normal
| difficulty settings in the end will get there just fine.
|
| But in vanilla yeah, if you don't enjoy optimization for
| sake of optimization and building bigger there is not
| that much more to do once you played it once or twice.
|
| There are few more directed mod/modpack experiences to
| play, but they generally also add complexity to the build
| and not everyone enjoy figuring out complex builds for
| that.
| Cogito wrote:
| There are a few playstyles, both modded and unmodded,
| that will allow for more of the "we're under attack!"
| panic and less optimisation of your factory.
|
| Ramping up the number of biters in an unmodded world
| (deathworld) can be really fun.
|
| Modpacks like Warptorio 2 add a very different dynamic
| but has that same frantic feel.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I'll have to check that out, the adding to the time
| pressure would, I think, probably be a big improvement.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| This stuff has been solved by middlewares like Unity for
| ages.
|
| > bad
|
| What I really wanna get into: the cognitive dissonance of
| being a programmer and an AoEII ultra at the same time.
|
| Game mechanics do have a certain objective truth to them.
| They are also pieces of software, they follow a lot of the
| same rules as Gmail and Instagram and whatever. As a matter
| of objective reality: when your game does not aspire to
| specifically be clunky - this distinction is sometimes called
| "QWOP" - it seems valid to say, okay, this pathfinding is the
| word you used. I have the wisdom to not use that word you
| used in this forum to describe something people feel ultra
| about. But it is true.
|
| People feel so strongly about bugs and clunk in their social
| media YouTube drip. The same ADHD personalities love clicking
| around villagers! I mean what a "something" piece of
| gameplay.
|
| I wonder how to harness the resources poured into something
| like 0AD to make "Better AoEII" or "Better AoM." I'm not sure
| how often that question is asked and how it is answered.
| That's why this cognitive dissonance matters.
| lukevp wrote:
| Your phrasing and word choice is very peculiar. It's a bit
| difficult to follow what you're saying to me. For example,
| you say you're an AoEII ultra. Is this an ultra fan? Or
| ultra what?
|
| > People feel so strongly about bugs and clunk in their
| social media YouTube drip. The same ADHD personalities love
| clicking around villagers! I mean what a "something" piece
| of gameplay.
|
| If I had to rephrase this section based on my
| understanding, I would interpret it to say something like:
| Often, people are bothered by bugs and other issues that
| happen in commonly-used apps like Facebook or YouTube, but
| when these bugs manifest in video games, it's viewed as
| part of the character of the game. For example, the
| micromanagement of villagers that's required due to bad
| pathfinding in AoE II (to prevent them from running under
| turrets and such).
|
| Is that correct? Any ideas why your phrasing would seem so
| foreign to me? I'm very curious why.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > Is this an ultra fan?
|
| Yes
|
| > you say you're an AoEII ultra
|
| No. I can't say how I really feel about the game.
|
| > it's viewed as part of the character of the game
|
| Yes.
|
| > I'm very curious why.
|
| People feel very, very strongly about their nostalgic
| retro childhood fun cozy times like playing AoEII.
| They're ultras, right? It's like talking about football.
| It can be perilous.
| jaredhallen wrote:
| I see where you're coming from, but (in my opinion)
| you're over indexing on the issue. If someone gets bent
| because you said some video game has bad pathfinding, so
| what? Seems like their problem. It isn't a mean spirited
| or unreasonable thing to say.
| nephanth wrote:
| 0ad is always the first listed package of linux distro repos
| (in alphabetical order). That might have helped with
| discoverability
| Ruq wrote:
| You are 100% correct. I remember over the years always seeing
| it when viewing alphabetical listings of packages in various
| distros.
| scrapcode wrote:
| Ye ole Yellowpages marketing trick!
| mattigames wrote:
| The modern version of that trick is adding "near me" to the
| name of your business, there was a viral pic of a
| restaurant called "Thai food near me".
| doesthiswork23 wrote:
| Also as a fan of the genre when I was younger, I recall just
| trying to find other RTS games that I could play, including
| free ones. This game came up pretty often.
| uoaei wrote:
| > Who wants to play competitive Wikipedia? Nearly a million
| people a day do.
|
| I wonder how many of these are bots developed by three-letter
| agencies trying to build their own AI.
| n3storm wrote:
| About players, some parents are Linux users and we loved help
| our children develop computer skills and also play games with
| them in their Linux computers. In my case Gcompris for learning
| and pre-10 years old and TuxCart, TotalAnhiliation and 0ad when
| older. In 0ad case, is both gaming and learning, about
| civilizations and history. We played together first and
| networking later, which helped learn some networking skills
| like looking his computer IP.
| silisili wrote:
| I found it years back looking for games in the repo. The only
| two were tux racer, and 0ad. Been playing it off and on ever
| since(not so much tux racer).
| toyg wrote:
| _> Old reigns supreme_
|
| Advancement in computing capabilities over the last 15 years
| seem to have gone almost exclusively to graphics and duration.
| We get bigger and bigger games with better and better visuals,
| but fundamentally the same few gameplay modes.
|
| Maybe it's just perspective, compressing the "glorious past" of
| 80s/90s games (breaking all sorts of barriers and inventing new
| ways of gaming with every other title) over a shorter timeframe
| in my memory, while the last decades feel long and bare. I
| probably sound like a boomer talking about rock'n'roll.
| smcleod wrote:
| I remember discovering 0AD from it being installable from
| package managers in various distros maybe 12-13 years ago.
| COAGULOPATH wrote:
| AoEII has fantastic pathfinding. That and the formation system
| was the game's secret sauce.
|
| In early RTS games like Warcraft, half the game was
| micromanaging your units from place to place. You'd send your
| army to a location, and if there was an obstacle in the way
| (such as a forest), they'd awkwardly path around the edges of
| it, one tile at a time (causing massive congestion, because the
| units at the front would obstruct the ones behind). They'd
| arrive at their destination one by one, and if the enemy was
| waiting, they'd get slaughtered.
|
| In Age of Empires II, your army would arrive in a solid mass.
| It was a relief: you could actually play the game, instead of
| babysitting a bunch of units.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Habadakus.
| stodor89 wrote:
| prostagma
| imiric wrote:
| Vulome. Etimos. Pani.
|
| Wololooo
|
| <3
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Much improved. AoM has some buggy pathfinder edge cases still
| but its enough that its an annoyance not a mainstay.
| rollcat wrote:
| > In early RTS games like Warcraft, half the game was
| micromanaging your units from place to place.
|
| This is probably the most annoying aspect of StarCraft 1 /
| BroodWar (1998), considering the game still has a very strong
| player base and is very enjoyable to watch (even if the
| clunky mechanics are too much to bear for me to play it).
|
| > You'd send your army to a location, and if there was an
| obstacle in the way (such as a forest), they'd awkwardly path
| around the edges of it, one tile at a time (causing massive
| congestion, because the units at the front would obstruct the
| ones behind). They'd arrive at their destination one by one,
| and if the enemy was waiting, they'd get slaughtered.
|
| In SC1, they wouldn't even arrive on location half the time,
| because the pathfinding is so stupid they'd get stuck trying
| to walk up a wall. It's so infamously bad it's still being
| mocked: https://youtu.be/mCEZ2hIcUW0?t=134 - still, a great
| game!
|
| In SC2 (2010), the pathfinding has been massively improved.
| You can give orders to hundreds of units and they will all
| figure out how to navigate complex terrain. They will still
| clump up at chokepoints or occasionally get a bit stupid when
| trying to path around other units that are engaged in a fight
| but this is more easily fixable with even a tiny bit of
| micro.
|
| However SC2 makes no attempt to make units maintain
| formation. So if you're moving your army across the map,
| still best to keep an eye on it, and group up / pre-split /
| set up before attacking. It's a bit less of an APM game, and
| more of an SPM (screens per minute) game.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is amazing how well Age of Empires 2 aged. My regular
| gaming crew likes RTS sometimes, usually AoE2. So, we
| decided to try out some Brood War, since it was the
| decidedly superior RTS 20 years ago. Could barely finish
| the game! All the comforts they've added to AoE2 over time
| (bigger viewport and better graphics mostly) and the
| grouping/pathfinding made us spoiled.
|
| I played a ton of StarCraft growing up and it definitely
| has a high rank in the pantheon of games, but I've been
| converted to AoE2 I guess. Wololo.
| [deleted]
| npunt wrote:
| Back in the day when I was working on another RTS of the era
| (Dark Reign 2), pathfinding was the bane of our existence. We
| weren't able to dial the pathfinding in because we'd pivoted
| late in the development cycle from the more innovative but
| complex 'walk anywhere on a 3d terrain' design to the ship-it-
| quickly traditional grid unit placement of 2d RTS'. This was
| the era of 2d RTS' transitioning to 3d, so everything was new
| and a bit harder than anticipated.
|
| Just that one thing of having sub-par pathfinding made the game
| far worse, I'd guess at least a full point off a 10-point game
| rating. I believe we had to slow the whole pace of the game
| down because the player had to babysit units as they moved,
| which made the game far different from its extremely fast-paced
| predecessor and which the players expected from a sequel. I
| played DR2 again recently and it doesn't hold up almost solely
| due to pathfinding and the pacing that results.
| en3r0 wrote:
| Remember playing that demo over and over as a kid! Really
| cool that you worked on it.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| On the other hand, specific, suboptimal pathfinding is like
| 80% of a Brood War charm. The game without die decades ago if
| dragoons and zerglings would blob optimally.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Arguably, low tech pathfinding is what gave us the tower
| defense genre.
| Aeolun wrote:
| For what it's worth, reading about one of the first true 3D
| RTS games (after Ground Control) at the time was really cool.
| Even if I never actually played the game.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > Ground Control
|
| A surprisingly unknown title. Always wished it had a third
| campaign with base building or a level editor though.
| OOPMan wrote:
| Ground Control and it's sequel were great. Battlezone 2042
| was also pretty good
| NSMutableSet wrote:
| Dark Reign 1 was the first online game that I ever played,
| back in 1997. I still have the manual somewhere...
| trog wrote:
| I worked on that game! Started at Auran about three months
| before it shipped. Fun times.
| eiginn wrote:
| Loved Dark Reign, I have the discs still, somewhere.
| gregoryl wrote:
| Fantastic game!
| Fuzzwah wrote:
| I'm confident that I'm not the only old crusty Australian
| Quake player who got a smile from seeing trog comment on
| hn. Hope you're well bud.
| arendtio wrote:
| I think the path finding was one of the crucial elements that
| lead to porting AoE1 to the AoE2 engine (which was released
| just this month DLC Return of Rome). So there are some cases
| when it produces weird behavior, but in general I like it.
|
| Nevertheless, I admire 0AD especially for the consistent
| progress and commitment to the game. It has been a while since
| I played it the last time. Might be a good occasion to start it
| again!
| OOPMan wrote:
| Pretty sure Genshin Impact was in development as early as 2016,
| before Breath of the Wild was released, although after it was
| announced.
|
| Contrary to popular belief, Nintendo are not the only people
| that make open world games...
| somethoughts wrote:
| I'd say a key element for me was that it is multi-OS (even
| installs on Google supported ChromeOS Linux Developer Mode),
| does not require any store account, does not require crazy
| powerful external GPUs and still supports LAN only mode.
|
| This meant I could setup a LAN party by dusting off a
| collection of semi-retired Windows, MacOS and Chrome machines.
| bombcar wrote:
| I'd love to configure a PXE boot server so you could have a
| LAN party in a box.
| tm-guimaraes wrote:
| People play showdown because of easy UX for netplay on both
| official, fan formats or old formats. It's not about "untainted
| pokemon", and more about "build a team without grinding and
| have an online matchmaking with different formats". So, that
| one in particular is a bad example.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > It's not about "untainted pokemon"
|
| It's not about original ideas in Pokemon either.
| tm-guimaraes wrote:
| How not so? I don't get what you mean. Supports every new
| thing and has new formats. Only one gimmick was disabled in
| the devs/smogon formats on the previous gen as it did work
| very well for those (but was great in the official ones) So
| I would really like to know what you mean by it not about
| the new.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I think they're trying to say that it's not trying to
| progress Pokemon, to make something new or better out of
| it.
|
| I don't have any opinions on this (I'm not really into
| Pokemon).
| ransom1538 wrote:
| This game is awesome.
|
| This is the only game me and my son(7) play together. It amazing
| for little kids. They learn history, building resources, building
| alliances, and destroying the dad empire.
|
| I wish it was possible to play online multiplayer :(.
| Unfortunately, the people that play online are pretty elitist.
| Just reject your offers to play, setup the game for you to lose
| on join, etc etc. The multiplayer "collect resources" is not very
| fun - it would be awesome to start with 50k each and just create
| an awesome battle. I don't want to spend 2 hours collecting fake
| trees - only to have the opponent destroy me in 2 seconds. You
| can't do any strategy since you will never get to the stages
| where that matters.
| chickenimprint wrote:
| The strategy is to start out with a couple of horse
| javelineers, send them to hunt game until you have at least 5
| and then get raid other players' women. Remember to always
| queue women in groups of 2-4 and get the first berry upgrade
| asap. Play against people of a similar ELO, and you will have a
| lot of fun online!
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Same! Weekend 0AD LAN parties with my family is a real treat!
| philipswood wrote:
| There is a "deathmatch" mode you can setup during map selection
| where all players start with ample resources and you can
| enforce a starting timed ceasefire to allow some building
| before the battle starts.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The deathmatch mode also literally gives each player 50k in
| all resources to start out with.
| mishftw wrote:
| I started my coding journey by fining OAD. I was able to
| contribute to the project in my early days. Truly amazing to see
| how far it's come!
| wsgeorge wrote:
| Thank you for your contribution to this amazing game!
| hedgehog wrote:
| 28,827 commits. GitHub mirror of the code:
|
| https://github.com/0ad/0ad
| jonbaer wrote:
| For those interested in RL portion,
| https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GettingStartedReinforcem...
| and https://github.com/0ad4ai
|
| There has also been some work to establish a geospatial
| intelligence class using the game engine as well
| (map/market/resource analysis).
| pelasaco wrote:
| The openage is as well a fantastic project
| https://github.com/SFTtech/openage
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| est wrote:
| It's a cool game and all, but does it still burns the cpu0 only?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-05-27 23:01 UTC)