Новости Zero-K
Объявления разработчиков, обновления и обсуждения.
Cold Take #26 - Reliable Raven
Raven was arguably the single most influential unit in Zero-K, and is definitely the most reworked. As the main bomber for 15 years, its burst damage defined the health thresholds that determined vulnerability to air. I …
Читать и обсудить →Cold Take #25 - Completely Free
Zero-K is freer than the average free game. Even the fact that none of it is locked behind payment or grind surprises people, but it goes deeper than that. Zero-K is free software that anyone is able to modify to suit th…
Читать и обсудить →Zero-K v1.13.4.1 - Snazzy Plasma
This update sports fancy new plasma cannon visuals and an engine update. The engine update is fairly well tested by this point, and should resolve a few rare crashe…
Читать и обсудить →Cold Take #24 - Balancing Burst Breakpoints
Light units are great at absorbing large amounts of burst damage. A burst, i.e. a single high-damage shot, from a Heavy Laser Turret may evaporate a Flea, but at least it only kills one Flea. Recluse also dies in one sho…
Читать и обсудить →Cold Take #23 - Against Space
Zero-K technically has "space" combat. This is true of any game where units can end up high in the sky, and where being very high up has any mechanical meaning. In our case, extreme height makes units immune to weapon fi…
Читать и обсудить →Cold Take #22 - Radar and the Limits of Vision
Strategy games sometimes offer extra ways to detect the enemy, beyond the standard line of sight, with radar being a classic example found in Zero-K. Radar reveals quite a bit about player interaction, but we will also h…
Читать и обсудить →Cold Take #21 - To See What You Can See
Welcome back to Cold Takes for 2025. The goal this year is to post one every *three *weeks, but to not fight for space with patch notes. Just about every real time strategy game has fog of war. Without it, you could wat…
Читать и обсудить →Zero-K v1.12.12.0 - Shield Tech
This patch has a slew of balance changes and a new game mode. Shieldball and Phoenix are the focus of the nerfs, but there are many more tweaks that ended up touchi…
Читать и обсудить →Cold Take #20 - Teamwork By Default
Zero-K pushes the limit of team games in RTS, supporting up to 16 players per side - something that sounds impossible. Your average RTS caps out at 4v4, with a few going as high as 6v6. In Zero-K players regularly play g…
Читать и обсудить →Cold Take #19 - Game Jams
This week's cold take is early, unusual, and short because Ludum Dare is this weekend. Ludum Dare is a game jam: an event where individuals or teams of people make games in a short period of time. They tend to run for a …
Читать и обсудить →Zero-K v1.12.9.0 - Maps and Mobile AA
The diversification of bombers over the past year has been great, but it also highlighted some problems with a few mobile anti-air units. This patch tries to *caref…
Читать и обсудить →Cold Take #18 - Terrain Matters
Zero-K maps set surprisingly few hard restrictions on unit movement. Instead, many of them mainly use terrain to influence the value of locations, as well as how easy they are to reach and defend. There is also plenty of…
Читать и обсудить →Cold Take #17 - Tactical and Strategic Cloaking
Cloaking is awesome. At least, some types of cloaking. Depending on who you ask. Let me start again. Cloaking is polarising. Some love it, some hate it, and being on the receiving end of an invisible strike can feel pre…
Читать и обсудить →Cold Take #16 - Aim and Fire
it is finally time to talk about weapons, starting with how they are fired. The weapon design space is huge, thanks to projectile physics, and we put it to good use. But such freedom is a double-edged sword, since much o…
Читать и обсудить →Cold Take #15 - Experiences With Veterancy
This week we're back to Sprung's series on unit improvement mechanics missing from Zero-K. After Mighty Morphing, it's time to tackle veterancy. This one still exists, well, sort of. Already in Zero-K's oldest ancestor,…
Читать и обсудить →Zero-K v1.12.7.0 - Revenant Revised, Scallop Superior
Revenant was brought back from the dead just over a year ago, but it lurked in t…
Читать и обсудить →Cold Take #14 - Free Factories For All
Every game has to start somehow, and strategy games start with players acting before they know what their opponent is up to. I call this phase the *setup*, and in it, players tend to build up their base and deploy some f…
Читать и обсудить →Zero-K v1.12.6.0 - Likho's New Look
Likho has a new model by brunocb, giving it a proper singularity bomb. This update also has many fixes and a few balance changes. Some of the fixes are due to an en…
Читать и обсудить →Cold Take #13 - Pro-Simplicity, Anti-Nuke
Zero-K has nukes. This should come as no surprise, since otherwise the genre police would revoke our sci-fi license. Even a few fantasy games have nukes, but wherever they are found, they all work basically the same way:…
Читать и обсудить →Cold Take #12 - Mighty Morphing
Players coming from other strategy games often find classic conventions broken and common systems missing. The three focused on improving units - morphing, veterancy, and research - are largely absent from ZK. Today is t…
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