It's alpha for so long, how stable is it to play ? Why are they not focusing on a 1.0 release and seize adding features, new civs, and therefore complexity?
It is 100% playable and has been for years. As sibling comments note, I think the only reason they label it as anything but stable is because there are still significant changes between releases. Although I personally think they could fix even that by just chopping the first parts of the version number off - if they stopped calling it "alpha" and just called it 0ad version 26, and then released version 27, everyone would still have the right expectations.
I think never going 1.0 is an open source game dev meme or something. Xonotic is still pre-1.0 even after over a decade in development. Stable as heck.
I had a similar feeling with Black Mesa. At a certain point, it feels like they've worked so long on the project that they lost the original selling point. At what stage does it make more sense to just remake the game in the latest UE than offering a 20 year old game that still isn't close to being released.
I don't want to talk down on the project but it's a question I think about every time I see these types of products.
Now if somebody would port first Deux ex into Unreal 5.2 engine that would get me interested (but still, keep your emotions in check and play when its ready, otherwise just a recipe for regrets)
> I tried the game about eight years ago but it didn't run well on my laptop
Care to try it now? I've been playing Alpha 26 for a few weeks, and I actually love it.
Unreal Engine isn't an option if open sourcing it again was a goal and/or a means to attract new developers after the death of half of the previous core team.
Old engine foundations doesn't necessarily mean a bad thing : for instance the Spring engine was started in the late 90s, released in 2005, and not only is still used today, the fork of it that is even more successful (and with the fanciest looking games, and the best performance) today, Recoil, is the one that decided to stick with legacy OpenGL3 features rather than radically change to better fit with how OpenGL4 does things(?), in order to not break games !
No noticeable bugs affecting my single player gameplay, except a few quirks with ship movements (they tend to overlap, which makes it look unnatural)
I have also noticed that clusters of units tend to look smaller than their actual number, so it might be a similar issue as I've noticed above. From someone who still enjoys the AoE 1 Ex, 0 AD is a really amazing game.
Some specifics about this game that make it unique:
1. You cannot build anything any where. There's the concept of a "region of control" that surrounds your Civic Center (Town Center equivalent) that marks the borders of your settlement. Building right on the borders expands it. Exceptions to this rule are made for docks, outposts Roman army camps (if you play as a Roman)
2. Besides mounted and siege units, your soldiers are also your builders/resource gatherers. Citizen soldiers. Non-combatant builders/gatherers are female citizens. As soldiers gather experience from fighting, they become more capable soldiers and less capable citizens.
3. The default UI uses traditional, civ-specific names for units and buildings (with English equivalents as secondary), which can be jarring at first. I swap them to make deciding on what to build easier.
You can also train mercenaries who can only fight and not work.