Impressive work! :) Congratulations for your management. It works very well and the improvements are coming steadily. I hope the settings area will be implemented soon. It's quite important for me to set lower details for better performance as I'm on an old Intel GMA3000.
Thank you! :)
Will Episode 2 come out soon? I noticed the donations meter is still at 60% in quite a while but there are no other news about this project. It's like the developer is missing in action.
Hmmm... I was about to say the interface looks like the one in 0 A.D. but now I see they are both built on the same engine. :)
It looks interesting. I'll track it. :) Good luck with it!
:) I played this alpha for about 3 hours. It's in alpha-stage so no wonder there are still things to build and polish. But the overall feeling was great. I'm quite impressed. The user interface is quite light and so far I encountered a few minor issues:
1. The mouse is not as snappy as it is in the main menu. I got the feeling it's slightly lagging.
2. Sometimes the game chokes for some reason and moving around on the map is slow because of it. It happened even with few units in sight so I suspect it's not a rendering stuff. (my video adapter is a Radeon Mobility HD 3470 256MB RAM, Linux Mint 9 32bit - based on Ubuntu 10.04)
3. Using too many gatherers (15-20) to get meat from wild animals will make them block each other, especially when the animal is on the edge of the map.
These are probably known issues considering I heard many people talking about 0 A.D. but maybe it helps. Great game so far! :) Many thanks to everyone involved for your effort and hard work! :)
Very good music. Professional indeed.
:) Impressive! Music done the hard way. But it does sound great so it's really worth it. :) Congratulations!
:) Hehe! More robots to chat with. I can hardly wait for the second episode.
[PART 2]
Usually the price tag makes the difference but as you can see, the payment methods can also be a barrier. I remember one highly successful game that made the developer literally rich. I don't know how many of you know/remember Sven. It was a little game with a black male sheep that had to screw the shees from the flock while avoiding getting caught by the shepherd and his dog. That game was sold for as little as 2 EUR and you could even pay it by phone, calling a special number and being charged on your bill. The first version of the game got sold in over 2 million copies during its first year or something like that. Sven has 4 or 5 versions. You can imagine the developer could now probably happily retired or simply working whatever he likes for fun so he can generate spending money.
In conclusion, game piracy can be lowered can be lowered taking in consideration the following things:
1. Make people realize what piracy actually is, not just point the finger at them and expect to react positively.
2. Find widely accessible ways to pay for the game. This is crucial.
3. Sell the games cheap. Sure you won't get much per unit but selling a lot of units will make it worth the effort. Why cling on 10-15 EUR and have 10,000 customers when you can sell for 5-7 EUR and have 100,000 customers or more?
I'm new on IndieDB and I only tried Dead Cyborg and 0 A.D. (both free) so I have no clue what the prices are in here. But I suspect there aren't many games selling for 2 EUR. I think whoever believes he can take the chance he should just do it with one game at least. You guys might have a big surprise and I certainly hope your efforts will be rewarded more than you expect.
Good luck!
[PART 1]
I pirated games before I even knew what a software license is, before I knew the term "piracy" exists in the software world. It was back in the early 90's when I started learning IT.
Later, after I "grew up" I found out most software is closed source and paid. That felt like crap because I was still in high-school and I didn't afford anything. Besides, at that point I haven't even seen the internet let alone be able to make online payments. At the same time you could only find a tiny selection of software in stores. So people simply lived with pirated software because of that.
It didn't change much after I got a job but at least I finally got on the internet and I understood pretty much how stuff works. But I still couldn't make the mental switch to buy software and I pirated by inertia.
I didn't earn much anyway (100-200$ a month) so you can imagine paying for software was a forbidden luxury for me back then. The most money I invested in was my dial-up internet connection which I needed to get online and learn as much as I could and also help others. It's how I ended up supporting open source projects with whatever I could: feedback, help other users, translations and finally code. This finally helped me get rid of my piracy habits.
But there's another thing keeping me away from buying more games/software. The ability to buy online. This kind of shopping has two big issues:
1. Not having a compatible card with the payment service.
2. Shops not delivering to my country (Romania).
Sure, electronic copies are easily accessible as long as you can pay. But I still don't have a good card I can use for online payments so whatever I bought (games, books and online courses) I paid through PayPal with the money transferred to my account by someone I worked for. But as my pocket is still not large I just wait for the prices to go down.
Sounds great! :)
sudo apt-get install 0ad
I use Linux Mint 9 (based on Ubuntu 10.04) and I started the game with start-game_fullscreen.sh
I found the mouse controls... but I first went to the readme file and nothing there. Then I started the game and I used Help / Credits thinking it would be there - also not found. I was a bit puzzled but then I remembered about the in-game help. I still didn't find the mouse controls by pressing H. I had to press M for more keys.
A simpler way should be considered. I don't know if returning to the main menu would be possible in-game and get back to the game exactly in the same place in the same state but it's pretty standard to most games. It would be quite nice to hit escape for the game menu so you can access the preferences/settings area where you can tick on/off and adjust stuff.
Anyway, I just want you to know I could live with the very first version and I still liked the game. :) So thank you again! I can barely wait for the second episode. :) Good luck with the donations!
It's already in Episode 1 v002 - the second release of the episode.
Feedback:
1. I wish the mouse would work in the main menu.
2. A mouse sensitivity setting would be great.
3. Alt-F4 = main menu? That simply closes the whole game. There's no way to return to the main menu.
Thank you for adding mouse control! :) It's much better than before. :) I simply replayed it from scratch and it works just fine.
kneekoo
Nicolae joined
I'm an occasional gamer, rather a guy spending time online learning, sharing knowledge, translating software or something else required in the open source projects I'm involved in. My main open source activity is in the PHP-Fusion CMS area, as the founder of the Romanian support site. I started contributing to open source back sometime in 2002 I guess. I wish I had more time, peace of mind and resources to help in more areas but the least I can do is help others do the same and inspire them as I can. :) It's fun.