Wildfire Games / 0 A.D. Embassy

[Mythos_Ruler]

Hi guys. I've been on this site for a few years, so maybe some of you know me. I am the Art Director (aka Art Dept Lead) over at Wildfire Games. We're an independent game developer creating a new Freeware real-time strategy game called, "0 A.D." (website)

I talked to Jasper roughly a year ago about posting some exclusive stuff for the members of RAT. I've been busy with developing the art for the game and coordinating the art department, as well as assisting in PR over at our ModDB profile. But tonight I found myself with some extra time to go ahead and post some exclusive content for you guys.

First up is a sparse shot of a couple of new Roman "Scout Towers" (freestanding towers that give a line-of-sight bonus to the player), some new "Savanna" terrain textures, and some Extraordinarii soldiers:


A quick shot of an island which shows off our water rendering:


Next is a shot of the Persian faction's walls and wall gate. You'll recognize the wall gate as a replica of the Babylonian "Ishtar Gate" that can be seen in the Berlin Museum:


Here is a rather recent shot (last week) of some new "Mediterranean" biome terrains and flora. This is the 4th iteration of the Mediterranean biome's terrain textures. I personally have been responsible for the terrains of the game and was very unhappy with the look of the previous Mediterranean terrains. I am now very happy with them. Are they authentic? I based the look on as many photographs of Greece, Greek isles, Sicily, etc. as I could find (like so):

PS: You can also see one of our Greek heroes in that shot.

This is a Celt settlement shot I whipped up to just show some new "Temperate" biome terrains and how the Celt buildings would look with them (no units, sorry - they are completed, I just couldn't be arsed to include them in this particular shot ):


And finally this is a very large screenshot of a small Greek town just getting underway. Here you can see the Mediterranean biome in its full glory as well as glimpse some of the Greek buildings:


We plan on going "Open Source" soon (sometime this year, hopefully this Spring), which means we will release the code of the game to anyone interested in assisting in its development. The art of the game is in an advanced state and we are mostly waiting on programmers to power us through to an open Beta. When we go Beta will depend upon the reception we receive when we go Open Source.

Well guys, hope you liked the shots. Occasionally I'll drop in and show you some more stuff.

[Titvs Statilivs Castvs]

Awesome! Reminds me of Age of Mythology, only this has way better textures! 8)

[Mythos_Ruler]

Our Iberian Shields:

(I don't usually post our in-game artwork like this, but someone was asking about Iberian shield designs in another thread, so I said, "Why not this one time?" )

[Phalanx300]

Really nice, I knew of this game for a while :mrgreen: .

The only bad thing I found is that the Spartans wont have Mora emblems and will only have black helmets with the lambda. I'd pick the historical correct ones but the rest of the game is very nice. :twisted:

[qcarr]

Very nice, Michael! Thank you for sharing these images with us. I'm very much looking forward to the release of your game.

[Mythos_Ruler]

We are in the process of completly redoing all of our ships. Here is the first completed redone ship, the Persian Trireme (modeling done by our guy EmjeR, texture by me):

[Komet]

This looks so awesome. Is it OpenGL or DirectX...that is to say, is it cross platform or for Windows only?

[Mythos_Ruler]

This looks so awesome. Is it OpenGL or DirectX...that is to say, is it cross platform or for Windows only?

OpenGL. Cross platform support. MacOSX, Windows, Linux.

Here's a video from 2 years ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI782nafjwY

[Komet]

Excellent. I'm really looking forward to playing this. About five years ago, a friend and I wished to endeavor on creating an Age of Empires-inspired open source 3d RTS, but neither of us was talented enough to pull it off at the time. This looks much better than what we could have hoped for as fledgling developers. It's especially interesting since I tend to use Linux for my development, gaming, and general purpose OS (even Maya has a native x64 Linux client). I boot into Windows to play certain games (like Total War, Fallout 3, stuff like that), but I prefer gaming in Linux whenever possible.

[Mythos_Ruler]

Here's a video I slapped together the other night showing a little bit of our water rendering.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mubI7S9q3-M

[SigniferOne]

Good job Mythos, it really does look quite good.

[Magnus]

I don't know anything about this game, but is it going to be more battle driven, or will it be a combination of managing resources, diplomacy, etc.?

I suppose the system req's will be pretty high?

[Mythos_Ruler]

A typical game session will be about 10 minutes of base building and gathering resources, then another 15 minutes of expansion and skirmishing, and then 15-30 minutes of all-out-battle, micromanaging and death.

[Magnus]

Just the way I like it. :twisted:

Will there be individual missions like Age of Empires, or will it be more like a long campaign spanning decades like RTW?

[Mythos_Ruler]

Just the way I like it. :twisted:

Will there be individual missions like Age of Empires, or will it be more like a long campaign spanning decades like RTW?

We plan to have single player campaigns, akin to Age of Empires, but those might come post-release. Right now we are focused on a compelling, balanced, and stable multi-player experience first.