Age of Empires is A game by Ensemble Studios which revolutionized the RTS gaming industry which is still played by millions round the clock! But it did not stop with the Age of Empires series. Many more historic RTS games have come up in the past decade; Empire Earth, Rome Total War, etc. And here’s one that is coming out soon!
What is 0 A.D. ?
0 A.D. is a historical Real Time Strategy game being developed by Wildfire Games. It all started by a collaborative effort of three modding communities in 2001/2002. You can read The Story of 0 A.D. to know the full story. The game was open sourced in July 2009 and has been quite a star in the open source gaming world.
Who we are.
We are a team of two; myself, Sathyam M Vellal and my teammate Jashwanth Reddy M and we have enrolled into “Architecture of Open Source Technologies”, an elective being offered in our college. This elective requires us to contribute to an open source community through the semester and we decided to contribute to 0 A.D.
Why 0 A.D. ?
Every open source community has its share of awesome developers and mentors. What makes this better? An open source community developing a game. Nearly half the community is online most of the day and developing some feature. What I like most about this community is the relaxed discussions they have. Its serious, yet fun and fun, yet technical. Well, if these aren’t enough, I have an excuse to play the game any time I want now! Even during class! By the way, the game has amazing graphics; have look at some screenshots and it has an incredible soundtrack!
0 A.D Docs and Info
The developer devil – Documentation. Nobody wants to write it, yet everyone wants to read it. Although 0 A.D. is not too different from others in this regard, the game is still highly structured with information present online to help a developer start his work. The root of all info is trac. And there’s always IRC for everything else.
This blog is for us to record our adventure in exploring and contributing to 0 A.D. Stay tuned for more updates!