Web Server for AoE 1, 2 and 3 DE supporting LAN multiplayer 100% offline

It just had a big release in January even!

Alpha 27 of 0 A.D. has a notable performance regression for a subset of users, compared to earlier versions. Users not affected by this regression should see improved performance, thanks to improvements like the added Vulkan support.

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!

I haven't had an issue with that personally (played on and off for almost 10 years), though I imagine it could be an issue on some older hardware. Massed units will cause lag in big team games where there's 4 armies clashing, though that might be more of a network thing.

Same here. I use a modern Windows 10 PC (Ryzen 5600x, RTX 3070Ti) when playing games. I wonder if the performance is better on Linux for some reason.

The lagging frames just give extra time to strategize ;)

It probably won't matter. When I play a "random civ" game with my friends, I always get Vikings. On maps with no oceans.

For real, though, it's really great to see this game continue to live on.

Imagine AoE being owned by Nintendo. :D

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

That is how kids play Monopoly too. It is part of the fun :)

What's CYA?

It's CYA if it's meaningless.

Thank you for pointing that out. I am afraid that AoE is probably not one of them though?

Maybe the old AoE versions will be open-sourced one day, that would be awesome.

Does this apply to AoE? I never played it much in its hey-day but it would be interesting to get into properly. I have no interest in buying an old game with DRM given the obvious potential for maintenance issues though.

From memory, there was a patch that added a new-fangled option "internet" as well as LAN play. I remember the days of fiddling with port forwarding and then calling a friend over the telephone to read out my IP address for them to type in.