I didn't see this on here, and as far as I know it's not against the rules, so...
We all know Ensemble Studios was canned by Microsoft a couple years back, and a lot of us have fond memories of the Age of Empires series. Sadly, historical RTS has pretty much dropped off the radar of big companies since about 2006, leaving us grognard-lite gentry with nowhere to go to sate our thirst for Romans and Celts.
Enter 0 AD.
This is an indie project I'm not personally involved with, but have been following from a spectator's standpoint for a while now. It's an historical RTS set during the time period from 500 BC to 1 BC, following the various major civilizations of the near east during that period (Romans, Greeks, Celts, Carthage, Persia, and Iberia) with gameplay very similar to that of Age of Empires. It's being developed by a group of college students and is planned for release for free - to that end, the developers are releasing a series of Alpha versions of the game, with all the features they've implemented to date and basic multiplayer functionality. The game looks fantastic (Seriously, it's about as good as you can get within the standard RTS camera model), and (IMO) has great promise.
So. This is a great-looking project and I want to see it thrive. If you have any interest in RTS, especially historical RTS, you owe it to yourself to take a look [http://wildfiregames.com/0ad/] and start following them. I imagine they'd also appreciate it if you took notice of them on the IndieDB page [http://www.indiedb.com/games/0-ad] (they have a contest going) or if you felt like donating for continued development.
This is not an ad. I am not affiliated in any way with the 0 AD development team, I have not been paid to talk about it, all that jazz. I just want to foment discussion and appreciation of this game that I greatly enjoy.
EDIT: In the interest of discussion: Do you think historical RTS is a good idea? Is this the way to do it? Could an historical RTS make it big in today's climate?
I guess we'll see if an historical RTS can be commercially successful when AoEO comes out, but I think I might actually prefer this design to AoEO. More authenticity.
Have a nice day, y'all!
We all know Ensemble Studios was canned by Microsoft a couple years back, and a lot of us have fond memories of the Age of Empires series. Sadly, historical RTS has pretty much dropped off the radar of big companies since about 2006, leaving us grognard-lite gentry with nowhere to go to sate our thirst for Romans and Celts.
Enter 0 AD.
This is an indie project I'm not personally involved with, but have been following from a spectator's standpoint for a while now. It's an historical RTS set during the time period from 500 BC to 1 BC, following the various major civilizations of the near east during that period (Romans, Greeks, Celts, Carthage, Persia, and Iberia) with gameplay very similar to that of Age of Empires. It's being developed by a group of college students and is planned for release for free - to that end, the developers are releasing a series of Alpha versions of the game, with all the features they've implemented to date and basic multiplayer functionality. The game looks fantastic (Seriously, it's about as good as you can get within the standard RTS camera model), and (IMO) has great promise.
So. This is a great-looking project and I want to see it thrive. If you have any interest in RTS, especially historical RTS, you owe it to yourself to take a look [http://wildfiregames.com/0ad/] and start following them. I imagine they'd also appreciate it if you took notice of them on the IndieDB page [http://www.indiedb.com/games/0-ad] (they have a contest going) or if you felt like donating for continued development.
This is not an ad. I am not affiliated in any way with the 0 AD development team, I have not been paid to talk about it, all that jazz. I just want to foment discussion and appreciation of this game that I greatly enjoy.
EDIT: In the interest of discussion: Do you think historical RTS is a good idea? Is this the way to do it? Could an historical RTS make it big in today's climate?
I guess we'll see if an historical RTS can be commercially successful when AoEO comes out, but I think I might actually prefer this design to AoEO. More authenticity.
Have a nice day, y'all!
