Community
Tips and tricks
Resource gathering
- Use Workers to gather resources.
- Civilians are best at gathering fruit and grain.
- Citizen Infantry excel at gathering wood, stone, and metal.
- Citizen Cavalry can only gather meat, but do so very quickly.
Control groups
- Save your current selection to a hotkey by pressing CTRL + a number from 0 to 9 (by default) simultaneously.
- After the control group has been created, quickly select them again by pressing the assigned number.
- A double click additionally centers the camera to the selection.
Formations
- Arrange your soldiers in formations to keep them organized during battles.
- Formations are selected as a whole by default, but that can be changed in the game settings.
Barter
- At the Market structure, a player can exchange a resource for another of a different type.
- Rates are affected globally by all players. Turn this into an advantage by checking prices regularly.
Fishing
- Fish the seas for a bountiful harvest.
- Fishing boats can carry a large amount of food and gather faster than Workers on fields.
- Careful! Fish are not an infinite resource! Although they do slowly repopulate when left alone.
Defense tower
- Defend a vulnerable position by building these strong watchtowers.
- Has a large vision range and shoots arrows at any enemy in sight.
- Garrison Infantry inside to increase its firepower.
Get support
As 0 A.D. is still in alpha phase, there are still many problems we need to fix and features we need to implement. Nevertheless, you can find support for 0 A.D. from a variety of sources. Take a look — you’re likely to find an answer to every question.
Frequently Asked Questions
See the FAQ on the wiki.
Web Forums
Register to our forums and ask the people in our active bug reports forum. You can also search the complete history of questions and answers.
Live Support Chat
You can also speak with the 0 A.D. community directly using our internet relay chat (IRC) channel: #0ad on QuakeNet.
Technical Issue Tracking System
Developers and technically inclined users may use the Giteasystem to help us keep tabs on bugs and other issues. New tickets should include all information necessary to reproduce the bug. Thanks.
Known Issues
Although we have made a great deal of progress, there are still many things left to implement and fix in 0 A.D. Here is a partial list (full list here):
- Lag – The game does not run as fast as we would like because of several reasons, mainly pertaining AI and pathfinding. The problem worsens in these conditions: (1) when there are many units on the map, (2) on island maps, and (3) with multiple AI players.
- Visual glitches or textures not loaded – Sometimes this is a driver problem. Please make sure you have the latest drivers for your graphics card.
- Missing animations – Some units glide around or don’t drop to the ground when killed. This is a work in progress.
- Sound problems – We have implemented a new sound system in Alpha 11 and it still has several bugs. We intend to fix them in future alphas.
- Errors and crashes – Unfortunately, these can happen for many possible reasons, and a closer look is needed to determine the source of the problem. Please follow the instructions on this page to report any errors. Thanks in advance for helping us improve 0 A.D.
Participate
Everyone is invited to join and contribute to 0 A.D. on a completely voluntary basis, to gain game development experience, to comply with a school project or just for fun.
If you are a programmer, please jump right in and just start offering patches according to the instructions below, and with time we will contact prominent contributors and put them officially on the team. Artists and other contributors can do the same, or just ask to be interviewed and get a volunteer gig in 3d modeling, animating, sound, music etc.
For Programmers
0 A.D’s game engine is called Pyrogenesis and it is specifically designed for flexibility and ease of modification. The engine is in C++, and gameplay scripting is in JavaScript. Game logic, artwork, and data can easily be changed through data files. The engine itself is modular in design to provide maximal flexibility while still remaining efficient. Anyone can download, build and run the latest version of the game.
If you’re a programmer and you want to contribute to 0 A.D., just get your feet wet and get started. We don’t want to hinder your progress with any applications. If you do a good job over time, you’ll get inducted to the team anyway.
We use Subversion for revision control, and Trac for documentation and issue-tracking. Our technical discussions are conducted on the forums and over IRC (#0ad-dev on QuakeNet). You could create a patch and submit it to us, and we’ll then review it and maybe suggest some changes or commit it to SVN. Contributors who make consistent contributions to the codebase are offered permissions to commit directly to SVN.
For Artists
Like the codebase, 0 A.D’s art is also “open source”. The models and animations can be created in the software of your choice, as long as it capable of exporting COLLADA files (.DAE). Similarly, the 2D textures are exported though the paint software of your choice to a Direct Draw Surface (.DDS) file. The alpha channel of the texture is used to define player color, object color, or transparency.
The art assets are organized in XML files called ‘actors’, which define entities in the game. An actor declares callouts for models, textures, and animations, if applicable. Since you can specify alternate textures and props to an entity, you can use the 0 A.D. art model to allow for randomness in the art. That way, several instances of the same Celtic warrior could appear in battle with variant hair colors, and two adjacent instances of the same Greek house could have pots and carpets aligned differently, so they’ll seldom look exactly alike.
Templates to help you make art assets (like textures and meshes) are readily available. Also, various tutorials and guides will allow you to hit the ground running. More information about the nuts and bolts of creating art assets for 0 A.D. can be found here. Check out our open art development forum, and feel free to participate!
For Translators
We are currently using Transifex to translate the game texts. To start translating the game, create an account in Transifex and ask to join a translation team (or create a new one) at https://explore.transifex.com/wildfire-games/0ad/.
You can find more information on this wiki page.
For Everyone
- Subscribe to us on RSS, ModDB, Facebook or Twitter to get updates as development goes on.
- Spread the word over social media, blogs and everywhere! Be sure to mention that we are always looking for new contributors.
- Create your own fan videos and screenshots and upload them over your favorite social media platforms! (Remember: 0 A.D.’s license, CC-BY-SA, requires you redistribute derivative works like fan videos and screenshots under a similar free license.)
Mods
Contact us
I have a technical problem with 0 A.D.!
We’re sorry you’ve been running into problems with 0 A.D. It’s a work in progress, so it can be buggy sometimes. Please read the support page to find ways for us to try to figure it out together.
I want to help out!
Great! Thanks! Please read the following:
- If you would like to help program the game, you’re invited to get your feet wet and get involved. No applications necessary.
- If you would like to join the project in any capacity besides programming, we welcome your applications here. We are looking for visual artists (2d and 3d), animators, sound artists, technical writers, video editors and more.
- If you want to translate 0 A.D. into your own language (e.g., French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, …): Please see the Localization page on our wiki for more information.
I have something else to say!
If you have something to say or ask that is not covered above, you are invited to email webmaster, which is at wildfiregames dot com.