0 A.D. Alpha 23: Ken Wood

Go to the changelog overview, if you are looking for a different release.
Check the history overview to only read updates of this site.

Development started by ​Wildfire Games on July 29^th 2017 (r19923).
Feature Freeze 1: March 12^th 2018 (r21529)
Feature Freeze 2:
String Freeze:
Translation Freeze:
Commit Freeze:
Release:

Release Announcement:
Tickets: ​https://trac.wildfiregames.com/query?status=closed&group=resolution&milestone=Alpha+23

An overview of all tickets handled is found at the respective ​milestone on trac.
To download and install the developmental release of 0 A.D., have a look at the build instructions.

The following list presents all changes noticeable to the enduser up to r20252, more important ones first.
Many small bugfixes, typo fxies, and code cleanups are not mentioned here.

AI

r20025 Actually make the AI aware of aura and tech modifications of templates
r20031 Stop Sandbox difficulty Petra from expanding
r20039 Improve support for more than 3 phases.
r20052 Support more obstruction shapes (eg arches).
r20063 Fix building of first CC (which is also used if all CCs were destroyed when rebuilding).
r20065 Let Petra build wonders to increase the pop-cap, even if not in Wonder victory mode.
r20072 Improve the behaviour of currently capturing units when these are attacked
r20084 Remove the obsolete tutorial AI
r20107 Some protection against missing templates
r20108 Look for naval treasures
r20162 Template loading from the AI (#4611)
r20175 Account for diminishing returns of fields
r20209 Stop trying to defend some structures in unconnected territory where there is no chance to defend them.

Art

Improvements

r19948 Give Spartan elite spearmen heads. (#4686, D752)
r19964 Give Scythian archers capture animations (#4711, D771)
r20020 Fix 6x6 and 8x8 foundation actors.
r20631 Support the female citizen idle-carry animation.

Atlas

r20021 Help menu pointing to the manual and helping with reporting bugs
r20058 Add scrollbars to all tabs. Should make Atlas more usable on small resolutions.

Audio

r20236, r20211 Projectile impact sounds even if the firing unit died meanwhile. New siege impact sounds. (#4779)

Balancing

r19956 Change CtR default to 2
r19967 Unsuccessfully bribed people get to keep your money (#4623)
r20210 Healers, fishing boats, and merchant ships are no longer conquest critical
r20248 Domesticated animals are no longer visible in FoW

Game Mechanics

r19950 Damage upon death/destruction (#1910, D451)
r19969 Linear splash damage now uses the correct vector
r20007 Calculate spread from the aimed at position instead of the current target position
r20015 Make civ and classes bonuses work for splash damage
r20079 Allow BuildRestrictions Min and Max distance to be modified by techs and auras (see TechModifications)
r20122 Allow different victory durations for CtR and Wonder victory modes.
r20156 You can only win once
r20193 Mark exhausted resources as not available, improves gatherer behaviour in cases where a resource is depleted
r20204 Delayed damage (currently used by the fire raiser (#1911)
r20223 Less random random walks for animals.

GUI

r19955 Victory and defeat reasons (#4382, ​Phab:D762 )
r19957 Rally point lines now in player color (#4618)
r19965 Update the color of the selection ring, rallypoints and territory outline when the playercolor is changed in Atlas (#4643)
r19966 Build time tooltip now with more correct values
r19970 Resource total now on the left in the summary screen
r19980 Allow users to interact with the GUI while cinematics are playing
r19987 Fix the attack cursor for entites in the FoW
r20005 Support XMPP MotD
r20006 Make the sorting arrows in tables point in the correct direction
r20050 Display all relics and heros for observers (where all means less than 19 in total)
r20070 Display old chat messages in the lobby when returning from a game
r20071 Visual move order indicator (#4732)
r20073 Display the move order indicator to observers when following a player
r20075 Implement readonly Input GUI objects, allows users to copy paths in the replay menu
r20081 Focus on deleted entities in observer mode if following a player
r20097 Display the move order indicator in the SoD
r20101 Use tabs for the options page
r20195 Make the text in the mod selection screen readable.
r20224 Align session dialogs
r20250 Fix the repair hotkey

GUI scalability

r19928 Take gui.scale into account when repositioning tooltips (​Phab:D749 )

Maps

Random Maps

r19974 Danubius: More gates for the fortress
r19972 Danubius: Stop spawning attackers on wiped out sides (#4715)
r20123 Polar Sea: Speed up target finding for gaia wolves
r19935 Latium: More than two metal mines

Biome library

r20115, r20117, r20118 Allow selecting biomes for random maps
r20127 Move the random biome code to a new library
r20129 Move biome definitions to JS and JSON files to allow mods to add new ones easily
r20131 Remove hardcodings to allow mods to remove biomes.
r20139 Biome descriptions

Map Generation Library

r19929 !Fix SimpleGroup and RandomGroup placement retries (​Phab:D249, #4294)

Tutorial Maps

r20084, r20085, r20086 Convert the Introductory Tutorial to a tutorial map
r19998 Fix tuturial being stuck (#4696, #4697)

Renderer

r20001 Shadow map quality option (#4351, #743)

Engine/Modding

r19951 (and a few more later) Allow the AI to load custom templates (follow-up to #2951) (​Phab:D693 )
r19952 Allow using {civ} in builder lists when some civs don't have those templates without errors (​Phab:D707 )
r20035 Fix an assertion failure when closing the game in the map loading scren (#4154)
r20067 Add a window icon (#4363)
r20120 Allow specifying the gravity affecting projectiles

This allows for different flight paths (eg mortars, magical projectiles).

To keep the same behaviour as previous iterations of the game add <Gravity>9.81</Gravity> to the <Attack> tags of your templates.

r20141 Add -unique-logs parameter to make debugging of OOS issues locally easier
r20181 Move placeable templates out of special/.

Specifically special/territory_pull is now other/territory_pull, and special/trigger_point_[A-K] are trigger/trigger_point_[A-K], update your map xml files and trigger scripts accordingly.

This is part of a change from a placeable filter approach (where one has to explicitly list all folders/templates that can be placed in atlas) to an unplaceable filter approach. This should make it easier for modders to use a different folder structure than the public mod, and having it work without any changes. We assume that adding unplaceable templates happens less often and that modders will notice if they can suddenly place something they added that shouldn't be placeable.

r20196 Add FloatDepth property to Position.

This allows to have amphibious units that swim at a certain depth.

To keep the current behaviour add <FloatDepth>0.0</FloatDepth> to all <Position> tags of your templates (probably as high up in the inheritance hierarchy as possible).

r20203 Move damage types definition to a helper similar to how resources are handled.

This should make it somewhat easier to add new damage types. (See #4801 for more improvements.)

r20204 Delayed damage. Can be used for grenades or similar. (#1911)

To keep the current behaviour for ranged attacks add <Delay>0</Delay> to the <Ranged> tag of your <Attack> tags.

r20215 Remove special_units/ by using inheritance.
r20241 Move formation templates from formations/ to special/formations.

Part of the placeable/unplaceable restructuring.

Make the same moves for your mods, also update all templates specifying formations (<Formations> tag within <Identity> tags).

Update your civ.json files. Prefix special/ for all entries in the "Formations" property array.

r20242 Move special_filter/ templates to special/filter/.

Move any filters you have in your mod to the new folder.

r20244, r20252 Make rubble non-decaying by default.

If your mod specifies rubble in <SpawnEntityOnDeath> (within <Health>), or elsewhere you should prefix those occurences with decay|. Specify different decay settings in the individual rubble templates, the decay| filter just activates the decay.

See the commit for a *nix one-liner to make this change for you. (As always check the end result, and use a version control system.)

r20246 Switch back to an unplaceable filter for templates.

This makes rubble/ placeable.

The only unplaceable templates from now on start with template_ or special/. All other templates now show up in Atlas, and in code queries for all templates.

Allows using different template organization schemes (subfolders, different folders, etc).

r20249 Command line options can now start with - or --.

Performance Optimizations

r20256 Fix lag from moving to the edge of the map
r20438 Fix lag from sinking ships (#4713)
r20630 Improve Hierarchical Pathfinder Update, somewhat substantially on larger map sizes
r19936 Stop copying the territory grid when recomputing the texture.(​Phab:D741 )