Comments - feneur

Lag is to be expected as the game is not optimized as well as it can yet, but it sounds like you experience something different. If you want to try and help us find the cause please post here: Wildfiregames.com with more information. Most importantly you should try to explain in more detail what you are experiencing, maybe even try to record a video if you can. But providing your system info (see Trac.wildfiregames.com for where to find the system_info.txt file on your system, if you provide that all the relevant information will be included without you having to do much digging). You can also try some different options to see if certain settings cause things, most importantly disabling GLSL and possibly the more advanced water effects. As well as playing on smaller or bigger maps, using fewer AI opponents, lower max population etc.

The game has been split up into two parts (one for 500 B.C. - 1 B.C. and two for A.D. 1 - A.D. 500), and the factions for the second part has not been decided. Late Rome/Byzantines are very likely to appear in one way of another though.

There was a bug that means that you need to first change another setting, save that, and then you can change the language. It will be fixed in Alpha 22 though, so you can just wait for that now.

It's up to modders what they do of course, but officially we can't endorse it as that would be copyright infringement. Especially the rights holders to the LotR universe are known for being aggressive towards projects using their intellectual property. Generic fantasy mods are probably safer.

The first release of 0 A.D. will focus on the years 500 B.C. - 1 B.C. but we do hope to create another part after that which will focus on the years 1 A.D. - 500 A.D. and it's very likely that the Germans will be included in that. We will have to finish the first part before we make any set decisions though ;)

Please try again, or download from IndieDB if you want to it's the same game in both places :) It was most likely just a temporary issue.

That is the placeholder animation for capturing, to show that they are not destroying the building.

I just realized that I didn't answer the Beta question. The truth is that it's too difficult to say for sure. It shouldn't be too long now though as most of the gameplay features are implemented, so there should only be a smaller number of Alphas left before we can move on to the Beta phase.

It is a lot closer to Age of Empires and Empire Earth, but the timeframe is definitely the same as for Rome Total War.

You can play both against AI and other human players (at the same time or one or the other).

Depending on what you mean by "huge" formations it might never be possible to fix, but we are certainly trying to improve the performance of the game. There haven't been any massive improvements in that area in this Alpha, but there are smaller improvements in almost all Alphas. Some specific things might be slower from one Alpha to another as new features might need more work before they run well or because e.g. better graphics features are slower. Over time the game should certainly run a lot better than previously though, it's just not always possible to both work on improving the performance and adding new things.

There is an OS X version as well ;) Just download the version that has got "Mac Version" in the title :)

The new pathfinder added in this Alpha decreases the lag, but there is still work to do.

Some lag will probably remain for quite some time, but we are working on removing it and every new version there should be less lag.

All versions will be free :) We're doing this in our free time for fun, not to make money.

Performance fixes will be added all through the development, some big, some small. In Alpha 19 (out now btw) there is a new pathfinder which should improve things a fair amount, but on the other hand that also needs to be improved, so it's not a quick fix.

You can install 32-bit applications on a 64-bit system, so there is no need for a 64-bit version.

Age of Empires is one of the inspirations for the game indeed, though there are ideas from other games and some unique ones as well.

We will look into it at a later point when the game is closer to being finished, it should at least be in Beta. It's not 100% certain that we want to put it on Steam though, depending on what rules they have and if they work together with the license of the game code/content.

All releases, for the last couple of years at least, works for multiplayer. You do need to have the same version of the game as the person you play with though. The same Alpha version that is, you can be on Windows, Mac or Linux and still play with someone who is using another operating system :)

We do hope to include some kind of campaign, but it remains to be seen what kind and how big we are able to create.

Thanks. IndieDB's WYSIWYG mode can be a pain to work with at times, I did see that it duplicated the download images a bunch of times, but that one I didn't catch.

I'm not sure I'm understanding what you mean here. What is confusing about mentioning which platform the installer is for in the title?

I will upload the Mac version here as well for completeness sake (though in the mean time you could just click the link in the release announcement and download it from SourceForge ;) ).

Wraitii wasn't paid for his work on the water -- it was discussed, but in the end he worked on that to get back into development in preparation for paid work, work which didn't happen as there wasn't enough time left at the end of the summer.

Hopefully we'll reach Beta by then :) (And hopefully we won't have to go through the entire alphabet again during the Beta phase.)

We aim to have it out around the end of August, but usually it takes one or a couple of weeks more since it's hard to account for everything beforehand.

Yes, 0 A.D. has got its own custom engine (which can be used for other games/modded).

It's certainly being worked on, our latest release was about two months ago, and the next will most likely be 1-2 months from now. If it's worth playing? Well, it depends on whether or not you're ok with playing a game that's not finished. There are still some missing features, the game is not perfectly balanced, and can get laggy in some situations (you can lower the likelihood by playing on smaller maps, either multiplayer or against just one AI, using a lower population cap etc). We'll keep working on all these issues of course, so if you want a more polished/better performing game you might want to wait. It's certainly playable though, so as long as you're ok with things not being as smooth as in a finished game I suggest you download it and try it out.

Especially since it's free - you don't exactly lose anything apart from some of your time from trying it at this point. ;)

Hopefully in the next release, that depends on people working on the translation though. Currently Polish is at 53% translated, so still some work left to be done. See Transifex.com for more information and to help out.