0 A.D. (video game)


0 A.D. is a real-time strategy video game under development by Wildfire Games. It is a historical war and economy game focusing on the years between 500 BCE and 1 BCE for the first part, and the years between 1 CE and 500 CE for the second part, which is planned. The game is cross-platform; playable on Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD. It is composed entirely of free software, and free media, using the GNU GPLv2 license for the game engine source code, and the CC BY-SA license for the game art and music.

Gameplay

0 A.D. features the real-time strategy gameplay components of building a base, economic development, training an army, combat, and technology research. The game includes multiple units and buildings specific to each civilization as well as both land and naval units.
During the game, the player advances from 'village phase', to 'town phase', to 'city phase'. The phases represent the sizes of settlements in history, and every phase unlocks new units, buildings and technologies.
Multiplayer functionality is implemented using peer-to-peer networking, without a central server.

Development

0 A.D. originally began as a comprehensive total conversion mod concept for in June 2001. With limited design capabilities, the team soon turned to trying to create a full independent game based on their ideas.
On 10 July 2009, Wildfire Games released the source code for 0 A.D. under the GNU GPL 2 license, and made the artwork available under the CC BY-SA license.
There were about ten to fifteen people working on 0 A.D. around 23 March 2010, but since development started over 100 people have contributed to the project.
On 5 September 2013, an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign was started with a goal. They raised a total of to be used to hire a programmer. The majority of the project's finances are managed by the Software in the Public Interest organisation.
There is no official release date set for the finished version.
The video game music label Materia Collective released a 26-track soundtrack on 8 June 2018.

Reception

For 2010, 0 A.D. received an honorable mention for Player's Choice Upcoming Indie Game of the Year. 0 A.D. has been generally well received. It was voted as LinuxQuestions.org "Open Source Game of the Year for 2013". Between 2010 and 2019, the game was downloaded from Sourceforge.net over 1.3 million times.