It's free and fun, but definitely humbling if you consider yourself a master strategist:
The regression in performance seems to be caused by a change in Spidermonkey. For details check out https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/issues/7714
That said, even without this performance regression, 0 A.D. is prone to run slow in late game when lots of units are on the map. There are several reasons for that, but maybe the most intuitive one is that 0 A.D. is still largely single-threaded and therefore doesn't make use of the multi-core capabilities of modern CPUs. As you can imagine changing that is no easy feat and takes a lot of effort. As the number of volunteers to 0 A.D. is limited, nobody has picked up that topic yet.
If you enjoy 0 A.D. and want to improve it: it's Open Source and contributions are always welcome!
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/1500-archers-on-a-...
Edit: original where the pictures work https://web.archive.org/web/20180719170411/https://www.gamas...
> Rather than passing the status of each unit in the game, the expectation was to run the exact same simulation on each machine, passing each an identical set of commands that were issued by the users at the same time. The PCs would basically synchronize their game watches in best war-movie tradition, allow players to issue commands, and then execute in exactly the same way at the same time and have identical games.
All it took was for some salty player to activate a trainer or prez IFS and kill the game.
I like that the lobbies were ran over IRCd.
Dreamforge IRCd with the server password being "supersecret".
I know because I've gotten to the point in the late game where my computer can't simulate at realtime, and I can no longer control my units, but everyone else keeps playing.
Conveniently you can even still sort of chat in this state, and ask a teammate to assume control of your army on your behalf.
In RTS games like 0AD or AoE you don't just send a single huge unit to attack and wait for the result, you send many tens of individual units near enemy units, then the "battle" goes on in real time and you can micromanage units to influence the outcome. You can't just simulate it on the server because the server can't simulate the thought process of the players
Kind of old but lots of micro tactics per unit here: https://youtu.be/hjUgisPD_C4?si=F-UvzDOTsWRZhZSq
This is nothing short of stunning to see new developments happening for these games, especially in the open-source community.
For real, though, it's really great to see this game continue to live on.
A no small wonder. I never thought that MS, as the IP owner, would allow such an open community to grow and thrive. MS is notoriously bad at game community growth development.
I remember that right after the acquisition of ES through MS in 2001, Microsoft went on a rigid IP enforcement role and, for example, targeted people at MFO.
The story of DBD_Jinx losing his account to MS
Legendary DBD_Jinx lost his account and had to start anew under _IamJinx because MS suspended his ZONE account due to copyright infringement for using MS trademarks without a license.
What did he do?
He advertised at MFO to help people increase their early game through his academy training, which offered advice on micro-management, game planning, strategy, and scouting.
Together with a couple of other 2000+ Zone Rating dudes from the US, they started to make a few bucks on the side using AoE as a vehicle.
What a knee-jerk reaction from MS back then.
And today? Red Bull Wololo - I hardly can hold my pants compared to 2001.
I hope this keeps going, even though I am a purist "old-schooler" who prefers the AoE 2 classics game.
Cheers + gl + hf!
_CN
The company shut down and turned the servers off, but luckily someone created an implementation of the match making server.
And even to this day the community is fully alive and growing, they even continue to develop the game, and have taken it far beyond the original.
It’s called Forged Alliance Forever.
Hamachi appears to still be a thing, but I would prefer something open source.
Tailscale sadly doesn't support multicast, which I'm assuming most games use for LAN discovery.
ZeroTier maybe?
In a way it was even better because then nobody had to loose, and everyone believed they were winning.
While I like Steam for the convenience and also appreciate their efforts in developing SteamOS I am concerned about the lock-in. Projects like this really help to own more of what you paid for again, luskaner is a hero for me.
Maybe the old AoE versions will be open-sourced one day, that would be awesome.
Today I am only using the Steam version though because I can easily join multiplayer games with friends all over the world. Also, I really like all the additional features in the remakes of AoE that you can get on Steam.
Wikipedia explains it as "an activity done by individuals to protect themselves from possible subsequent criticism, legal penalties, or other repercussions, usually in a work-related or bureaucratic context."[1]
I wonder if there any public documentation for AoE3’s API that was used to make this or if this was all newly reverse engineered. I’ve seen people ask about this kind of documentation before, but I’ve never seen it.
You don't need anything paxos-like for this, the game desyncs and stops if any machine messes up but you can usually restore from a save point in that case.
I'd be surprised if the definitive editions changed the design significantly enough to move the netcode away from P2P, but I don't know of any actual information on it.
Given this, I suspect the server is used as a central source of truth between the clients where all game data goes through the server, with all the calculations still being done client-side.
For games that are fun I think you can leave in balance issues and even features-not-bugs. It's trickier for things like netcode bugs that are purely a negative.
Really grateful Id release their source eventually. Really hoping the same will happen for AoE2 someday.
while i think that it is well worth it, i am not the person who pressures other people to buy things for a single-digit-attendence one-time get-to-gether LAN-party.
1. the game connecting to multiplayer services
2. coordination server for the LAN setup itself.
I think this covers #2. #1 appears to be more complicated unfortunately, and involves tricking Steam into thinking you're connected.
Battle.Net has "PVPGN" that covers Diablo 2 up through Warcraft 3, and the Westwood Online games (ish) but searching for an AoE equivalent turned up nothing
This seems to work with the Remasters as well. Even better :)
Please add AoM support as well.
There were some questionable changes to the names of things to make them more politically correct but the game play is better than ever.
* AIX