New Release: 0 A.D. Alpha 16 Patañjali news

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of “0 A.D. Alpha 16 Patañjali”, the sixteenth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. This alpha features localization into 13 different languages, an improved AI, a new GUI, big changes “under the hood” 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. Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to download 0 A.D. completely gratis, directly from the developers.

Moreover, you can redistribute the game and modify it freely 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.

* Note: Unfortunately, the Mac OS X bundles for Alpha 16 are not ready yet, because we have run into some technical problems making them. We expect to overcome these problems and have the bundles prepared in the near future. We extend our apologies to 0 A.D. fans who use OS X.

Top New Gameplay Features in This Release

• Localization:
  • 0 A.D. is now available by default in 12 different languages, contributed by volunteers from all over the world: Catalan, Czech, Dutch, English (United Kingdom), French, Galician, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Scottish Gaelic, and Spanish (Spain).
  • The Japanese translation is also completed, but due to the large font files, it would cause a larger download for other players and it also requires a computer with higher specs. So, we offer the Japanese translation together with the font files as a separately downloadable mod. See installation instructions for East Asian locales on our Wiki.
  • Many more languages are currently being worked on and are planned to be released in future alphas.You are welcome to contribute in this area.
• Formation Updates: The Testudo formation (for Roman melee infantry) and the Syntagma formation (for Macedonian, Ptolemaic and Seleucid pikemen) have received new animations, and their movement has improved further over the previous version. The formations are also more moddable, which sets the stage for further developments in formations.
• New AI – Petra: Petra features more aggressive expansion and combat and builds defence towers and fortresses as a human would. Petra manages resources better in late game than the previous AI, Aegis, and is more robust to external conditions. It will also trade over land with allied markets, if there are any.
• Town Bell: Click on the new “town bell” button to sound an alarm and make your citizens garrison in the nearest structure until the enemy is gone. Once you sound the bell again, your units will ungarrison and go back to work.
• Global Resource Trading Settings: You now set the chance a trader will trade a certain resource, rather than selecting it per trader. This gives you a better overview of your trade, and makes it easier to manage.
• The “Wonder” Victory Condition: If you set “Wonder” as victory condition, a counter counting down 5 minutes appears after you build a wonder. If the enemy can’t destroy the wonder in this time, you win.
• We also have an “Explored Map” game setting now, in which the entire map is covered with the Fog of War. This is an option that gives something between the “revealed map”, where there are no secrets, and the default “dark map”.

Graphics and User Interface

• New GUI, new font: The new GUI style seen in the multiplayer lobby in Alpha 15 is now used nearly everywhere. The GUI font has also been changed to Biolinum, a free font created by the Libertine Open Fonts Project.
• Multiplayer “Ready” button: In a multiplayer game, all users must confirm game settings before host can start game. When the host changes a setting, players are set to “not ready” again. This is to avoid sneaky behaviour amongst some hosts, who would change the settings right before starting.
• New art assets: Animated flying hawks, Ptolemaic ships, Eurasian Wolf, Nile Crocodile, Ptolemaic buildings: Military settlement, Docks, Market, and quite a few new animations, e.g. a new seeding animation for farming units.

Music

• New music track: “Water’s Edge” (click below to listen). This beautiful track is assigned to the Britons and Gauls.

SpiderMonkey Upgrade & Other Development Updates

• We have implemented a new version of the JavaScript engine “SpiderMonkey” in 0 A.D. It supports new features of JavaScript such as Map and Set objects. These two types, for example, have improved performance compared to normal objects when working with certain kinds of collections. Modders and developers who are used to working with the latest features of JavaScript are also happy about the new features which are now available.
• SpiderMonkey also brings improved Javascript profiling and analysis features which allow for producing graphs. These features are another useful tool for performance measurements and for finding performance problems.
• The version in Alpha 16 (v24) does not improve performance yet. But there will be improvements for the next version (v31) which should be included in Alpha 17.
• Most importantly, the upgrade from v1.8.5 (which was released in March 2011) to v24 was quite a big step and a lot of work. Being on a current version means we avoid writing code for an old API that doesn’t exist any more and it saves us a lot of work compared to staying with v1.8.5 and upgrading years later.
• Last but not least, it’s a “must have” from the security perspective, and it enables us to report bugs or even request new features from the SpiderMonkey developers.
• This release contains many more changes and bugfixes not mentioned here. In terms of tickets closed on the project management and bug tracking system we use, Trac, this was another record.

Getting Support

Please see the “Get Support” page on our website to find ways to get help from the active and friendly 0 A.D. community.

We are well aware there is some room for improvement in 0 A.D. Some known issues are: Lag, visual glitches or textures not loaded, missing animations and more. When you provide feedback, we would ask you to focus on some of the other points that could be improved. Thanks.

Please Contribute!

We are seeking volunteer contributors in programming, art, sound, documentation and more. Programmers are especially welcome and can get started immediately. Interested? Log onto #0ad-dev on QuakeNet on IRC and meet the developers. Also, you are invited to register on our forums and start participating!

Why “Patañjali”?

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, …).

Patañjali was one of the three most famous Sanskrit grammarians of ancient India. In honor of languages everywhere, we have decided to dub Alpha 16 “Patañjali”.

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

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Contact info for press, bloggers, etc.: aviv@wildfireSANSKRITgames.com without the capitalized name of a language spoken in ancient India.