As a history Ph.D. student by day and free-software geek by night, I find that my poles of interest rarely converge. That’s why I was so excited when the real-time historical strategy game 0 A.D. was switched to an open-source license in July. I’ve been meaning since then to give it a try, and finally found the time and hardware necessary to do that. Here are the results.

Set in antiquity and designed with historical accuracy as a priority, 0 A.D. is a real-time strategy game that supports Linux, Windows and OS X. The developers, Wildfire Games, originally intended to distribute it as freeware, but decided to open-source the code last summer in hopes that it would speed the development process.

Why it’s great

0 A.D. is probably the only open-source RTS game besides Glest that attempts to bring to Linux users a gaming experience otherwise available only on Windows (or through wine, sometimes). Other strategy games for Linux exist, some of them decent enough to provide a few hours’ entertainment, but they’re mostly half-baked and lack the professional quality of their commercially developed betters, especially when it comes to art and gameplay.

rest here