Thank you for installing 0 A.D.! This page will give a brief overview of the features available in this incomplete, under-development, alpha version of the game.
[font="serif-14"]You can switch between fullscreen and windowed mode by pressing Alt+Enter. In windowed mode, you can resize the window. If the game runs too slowly, you can change some settings in the configuration file: look for binaries/data/config/default.cfg in the location where the game is installed, which gives instructions for editing, and try disabling the "fancywater" and "shadows" options.
[font="serif-14"]The controls and gameplay should be familiar to players of traditional RTS games. There are currently a lot of missing features and poorly-balanced stats – you will probably have to wait until a beta release for it to work well.
Basic controls:
• Left-click to select units.
• Left-click-and-drag to select groups of units.
• Right-click to order units to the target.
• Arrow keys or WASD keys to move the camera.
• Ctrl + arrow keys, or shift + mouse wheel, to rotate the camera.
• [font="serif-bold-14"]Single-player[font="serif-14"] — play a sandbox game or against one or more AI opponents. The AI/AIs are under development and may not always be up to date on the new features, but you can test playing the game against an actual opponent if you aren't able to play with a human.
• [font="serif-bold-14"]Multiplayer[font="serif-14"] — play against human opponents over the internet.
To set up a multiplayer game, one player must select the "Host game" option. The game uses UDP port 20595, so the host must configure their NAT/firewall/etc to allow this. Other players can then select "Join game" and enter the host's IP address.
[font="serif-bold-16"]Game setup
[font="serif-14"]In a multiplayer game, only the host can alter the game setup options.
First, select whether you want to play on a random map (created automatically from a random map script) or a scenario (created by a map designer). Scenarios can be filtered to show only some maps. The default maps are shown immediately, but custom maps are often not so select "All maps" to see a list of all available maps. Then select a map to play on. The "techdemo" maps are designed for testing particular gameplay features and are probably not generally useful.
Finally change the settings. For random maps this includes the number of players, the size of a map, etc. For scenarios you can only select who controls which player (decides where you start on the map etc). The options are either a human player, an AI or no player at all (existing units will attack enemies that come into sight, but no new units will be created, nor will the units be sent to attack anyone).
