Zero-K
A downloadable strategy game for Windows and Linux
Commander wanted!
Drive giant robots, build an army of a thousand Fleas, move mountains if needed, bury the enemy at all cost!
- Real time strategy.
- Physically simulated units and projectiles.
- Terrain manipulation.
- 100+ varied units with unique abilities.
- Singleplayer campaign.
- Challenging, non-cheating AI.
- Multiplayer 1v1 - 16v16, FFA, coop.
- Multiplayer online campaign.
- Really free, no in-game currency, no unfair multiplayer.
Fully Utilized Physics
Simulated unit and projectile physics is used to a level rarely found in a strategy game.
- Use small nimble units to dodge slow moving projectiles.
- Hide behind hills that block weapon fire, line of sight and radar.
- Toss units across the map with gravity guns.
- Transport a battleship to a hilltop - for greater views and gun range.
Manipulate the Terrain
The terrain itself is an ever-changing part of the battlefield.
- Wreck the battlefield with craters that bog down enemy tanks.
- Dig canals to bring your navy inland for a submarine-in-a-desert strike.
- Build ramps, bridges, entire fortress if you wish.
- Burn your portrait into continental crust using the planetary energy chisel.
Singleplayer Campaign and Challenging AI
Enjoy many hours of single player and coop fun with our campaign, wide selection of non-cheating AIs and a survival mode against an alien horde.
- Explore the galaxy and discover technologies in our singleplayer campaign.
- Face a challenging AI that is neither brain-dead nor a clairvoyant cheater.
- Have some coop fun with friends, surviving waves of chicken-monsters.
- Cloaking? Resurrection? Tough choices customizing your commander.
Casual and Competitive Multiplayer
Zero-K was built for multiplayer from the start, this is where you can end up being hooked for a decade.
- Enjoying epic scale combat? Join our 16v16 team battles!
- Looking for a common goal? Fight AIs or waves of chicken-monsters.
- Prefer dancing on a razor's edge? Play 1v1 in ladder and tournaments.
- Comebacks, betrayals, emotions always running high in FFA.
- Want to fight for a bigger cause? Form a clan and join PlanetWars, competitive online campaign with web-game strategic elements, diplomacy and backstabbing.
Power to the People
We are RTS players at heart, we work for nobody. We gave ourselves the tools we always wanted to have in a game.
- Do what you want. No limits to camera, queue or level of control.
- Paint a shape, any shape, and units will move to assume your formation.
- Want to spend more time on tactics? Use construction priorities.
- Want to focus on economy? Order units to kite, strafe or zig zag bullets.
Plenty of Stuff to Explode Explore
Zero-K is a long term project and it shows, millions hours of proper multiplayer testing and dozens of people contributing ever expanding content.
- Learn to use all of our 100+ units and play on hundreds of maps.
- Invent the next mad team-tactics to shock enemies and make allies laugh.
- Combine cloaking, teleports, shields, jumpjets, EMP, napalm, gravity guns, black hole launchers, mind control and self-replication.
- Tiny flea swarm that clings to walls?
Jumping "cans" with steam-spike?
Buoys that hide under water to ambush ships?
Mechs that spew fire and enjoy being tossed from air transports?
Carrier with cute helicopters?
Jumping Jugglenaut with dual wielding gravity guns?
Meet them in Zero-K!
Find out more on our website or meet other Zero-K players on Discord.
Download
Install instructions
It is recommended that you use the semi-portable archives, to reduce the load on our download servers. Thanks!
Windows: Run Zero-K.setup.exe
OR
Download the semi-portable archive, extract to a writable directory, and run Zero-K.exe
Linux:
Install the following libraries (execute in terminal):
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install libsdl2-2.0-0 libopenal1 libcurl3
Download the semi-portable archive, extract to a writable directory, and run Zero-K.bin.x86_64 in terminal.
OR
Execute the following in terminal:
sudo apt-get mono-complete libmono-system-windows-forms4.0-cil libcurl4 libmono-system-runtime-serialization4.0-cil libmono-system-net-http4.0-cil mkdir Zero-K cd Zero-K wget https://zero-k.info/lobby/Zero-K.exe chmod u+x Zero-K.exe mono Zero-K.exe
Zero-K requires at least 2 GB of available storage, with 4 GB or more being recommended.
Development log
- Zero-K is now on Steam tooApr 27, 2018
- Tournament and Whole History RatingDec 16, 2017
- Singleplayer campaign halfway releasedNov 26, 2017
- Added a portable package for the itch.io appNov 18, 2017
- Zero-K is ready for itch.ioNov 18, 2017
Comments
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pls make this work on a Mac.
https://github.com/smallketchup82/Zero-K-MacOS
Thanks! :)
Hello, I followed the instructions above, but Zero-K doesn't start on my Linux Ubuntu 16.04.... :( : ( : (
Any clue?
I would like so much make this game running...
This game crashes on my windows 11 PC. it won't even start at all. i get an error message telling me that spring.exe has crashed and it writes the whole log to github and i dont hear anything back.
this looks very cool
Every time i start the installed game again, it will download something that has been downloaded already. When I disconnect internet, the game will not start because it can not download the already downloaded shit.
Is that a bug or a feature? I don't know, but if that's the way it's meant to be, it's an outrage.
This i a good game. Downloaded it some years ago. I onlly play Single Player. Now i want play again.
(my system: windows7)
The installer is working and i can install the game but
Zero-K semi-portable is bugged
2 GB Version 83 info says "8 days ago"
starting the exe demands a download of newer version
1.5.6.266 (the downloaded is 1.5.6.264)
stops soon with message: download failed.
tried to run exe without internet, still demands a "zkmenu:stable."
I tried more than once the terminal solution on Linux Mint 20.2 and it returns the same:
---------------
Unhandled Exception:
System.BadImageFormatException: Could not resolve field token 0x04002041, due to: Could not load type of field 'ZkData.GlobalConst:contentServiceFactory' (126) due to: Could not load file or assembly 'System.ServiceModel, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' or one of its dependencies. assembly:/home/****/Zero-K/Zero-K.exe type:GlobalConst member:(null)
File name: 'Zero-K.all'
[ERROR] FATAL UNHANDLED EXCEPTION: System.BadImageFormatException: Could not resolve field token 0x04002041, due to: Could not load type of field 'ZkData.GlobalConst:contentServiceFactory' (126) due to: Could not load file or assembly 'System.ServiceModel, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' or one of its dependencies. assembly:/home/****/Zero-K/Zero-K.exe type:GlobalConst member:(null)
File name: 'Zero-K.all'
---------------
It might have to do with the fact libcurl3 is no longer available for me and libcurl4 is running instead.
I also tried downloading the portable and following through instructions but it was no help.
Running the portable through Wine.
After about 20 seconds of downloading zkmenu : stable it informs me that the download of zkmenu : stable had failed.
OK
I can play it through Steam but on my Linux/Mint box I get 20-25fps with Steam in the background.
When I went through Wine with the Zero-K Semi-Portable (about a month ago) I got 35-40fps. I suspect it's your ver.82 of the semi-portable that was updated 26-28 of September, 2021.
Please issue a fix for this? Thank you!
Hello. the game crashed
when i clicked play the tutuorial the game crashed.
https://pastebin.com/NJiU1LiR
this is the log.
also i am using ubuntu 21.04
is there any way to fix it
Are you getting a ZKMenu:Stable has failed error when running the portable through wine?
i am running native not through wine
Heya! Played that game a year ago, get back. I have a problem where only quarter of screen shows and i cant do anything exept moving mouse.
It will be really helpful if someone can help me. Thanks! (using portable one)
I had that problem with the recent update, but it's patched now with a hotfix. Just start the game again and you should be good to go.
Too many bugs, including random system resets/reboots.
First, after not playing for awhile, I went to go finish a SP campaign I started a few months ago. After the self-update, it could not seem to find my previous game. I only had two planets left to finish the game, and lost it all. It also did not save/restore my previous settings.
Second, that *forced* auto-update is extremely annoying. For one, it takes several minutes to complete, even when there is nothing to update (I had just prior started the game then exited, trying to force it to save my new settings!) At the very least, give the players an option to not update, and/or not update if any file timestamp is less than a day old. For another, it seems to randomly fail and lock up. I cannot determine when, other than waiting more then five to ten minutes before giving up and terminating the task. (Which I have to go through the whole auto-update process *again* if I try to start it again...)
Third, the game is single-user hostile: I do not play MP, and I do not use Steam or connect to any server for playing. Yet the game wants me to do both. Yes, it lets me close the login dialog, but that is an extra annoyance to do all the time--especially when the other game bugs make needing to restart the whole game repeatedly.
Fourth, the game hard crashed my entire system: The screen suddenly went blank, he BIOS system check began, and my system started it's boot process. This happened three times so far; Once while idle at the campaign screen, and twice in the middle of actively playing.
Fifth, it is not very Linux friendly. Multiple issues here; Depending on settings, it fails to correctly register the mouse position. It locks the mouse to it's window when in windowed mode. It locks up randomly (thankfully, this is rare, but still happens). For me, I installed the portable version launched via mono. And this is another problem within itself--possibly within mono, possible within ZK--in that once I exit the game, I have to CTRL+C or terminate mono via the task manager in order to end mono and return to the command line. And the game does not seem to run very well (if at all) if I try to background the process with an "&" appended to the command line.
My system:
casteele@earth:~$ uname --all
Linux earth 5.4.0-0.bpo.4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 5.4.19-1~bpo10+1 (2020-03-09) x86_64 GNU/Linux
I have no idea what version of ZK is insalled, as the auto-update seems to do whatever it wants, and right now, I'm too annoyed with it to start i and check the "About" info.The force auto-update is there to prevent desyncs. which is a MUCH bigger can of worms. I have not had any issues with the game randomly stopping, through I am playing the game on windows so it may be a system-based bug.
Most other indie games would just downright stop you from joining any servers unless you redownloaded the game again. would you prefer re-downloading the 2.2gig game every update?
about the whole login thing, I do not understand why you are this pissed at a text box that you can close with a single button.
Many issues, in singularity, might not be so frustrating. A leaky faucet might be merely annoying, but every faucet in the house leaking may soon lead to a flooded house. It also indicates some potentially more severe underlying problems.
As far as the update and desync... The game queues the download of many resources in the background while playing. Clearly, the developers are capable of setting that up. Even if an update would require a restart, i wold be more clear to the player "how and why" than sitting helplessly idle and not knowing anything further. As an example of a well-executed update system, go play MineCraft. Both the launcher and main game update regularly, but updates do not force you to sit staring at... inactivity.
Finally, if you do not understand why I am "this pissed", then why comment about it without asking for clarification or offering something constructive? I want and hope to see the game improve and deal with such issues, making a better game. What is the goal of your comment about my comment(s)?
The reason the update stop you from doing anything else is because there's not much else you can do with an outdated version, and less so with an updating version.
There's a reason you can't edit a file while it is opened. And the same reason applies for why you can't update a game while it is running. I would like you to name any game that can run while being updated, and last I checked, minecraft can't. The game can download maps and mods while running because those maps/mods don't need to be opened while they are downloading.
I am just trying to explain to you how these "leaking taps" are not really a problem in the first place.
if you have a better way of doing things, please do make a pull request at https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K/pulls
You are incorrect on all counts.
First, the "you can't edit a file while it's open" part--computers would be less useful if we could not edit data, and the data has to come from somewhere, such as... a file. I will _assume_ what you really mean was something such as "should not have multiple, independent/parallel threads accessing the data when at least one is modifying the data, wihout some kind of locking and synchronization." This is a trivial problem to solve. The game already does it when it downloads a new world in the background to the cache.
Likewise, an update check and/or an update does not need to stop other things. I can have multiple web pages loading in multiple tabs; several files being transferred via FTP; several shell sessions, both local and remote; and so on. It is called "multitasking" in computers, even for a single CPU system which is technically only allocating CPU to one task at a time, but switching between so fast that it appears to humans as if they are all concurrent. ZK already does this as well, and it has a multi-stage loading process via the launcher.
How often do updates actually happen? It could be minutes between update releases, or many months. In the meantime, it is forcing the player to wait every time they want to play the game, exactly as in my case, the game kept crashing and needing me to start it again. Imagine if operating systems did this: "Your computer is booting. Please wait while it checks for an update before proceeding. Go grab some coffee while you wait..."
Back to MineCraft updates... You are not correct. It can, and does, update while running. That is why I used it as an example. Even the launcher self-updates. On rare occurrences, an update requires a full restart, and asks/alerts the user about that. It does not force it upon the user every time they start it, whether or not there is an update pending that would require it. There are numerous other examples. My operating system of choice is Debian Linux. Debian packages and the apt tool can and do update many things while they are running. Sometimes those things do need to restart after an update. Sometimes they do not. In my experience, ZK is the only one that seems to force "every time" in order to avoid "some times".
So you are trying to "explain" those "leaky faucets" to me... In a manner that is not trying to explain anything. You are trying to impose upon me that my opinion about the way ZK does things is invalid, and that I should accept it. You are trying to tell me that I should not post my comments in the comment section, despite the obvious: That is what the comments section is designed for. If you disagree, I am not stopping you from posting your own praise in comments. I am only responding to your negative criticism against my comments, as if I have no right to my own opinion and comments.
Same with regards to making a pull request; Pay me for it. I make a living by doing contract programming and consulting. The ZK team may do what they do without compensation. They make that choice because they are free to do so. Likewise, I am free to make my own choice to refuse to do so without compensation.
Furthermore, going back to the basic idea of improving the game... If the provides a negative or bad user experience, there is little or no incentive to "get involved" with it's development, regardless of compensation status. From the perspective of my profession, I actively encourage my clients to provide me feedback and comments: What am I doing right? What am I doing wrong? How can I improve my services and keep you coming back for more?
What I do NOT do is become defensive about negative feedback and tell them that they are wrong to feel that way. That would "add insult to injury", regardless of whether or not both or either was real or imagined. That would only incense and anger them more, making the situation worse. (I can go further in to this, as well: My background and education includes international communications and conflict resolution, not just mathematics and information technology. But this is already much longer than I intended to post.)
"This is a trivial problem to solve. The game already does it when it downloads a new world in the background to the cache."
"Likewise, an update check and/or an update does not need to stop other things. I can have multiple web pages loading in multiple tabs; several files being transferred via FTP; several shell sessions, both local and remote; and so on. It is called "multitasking""
But that's not what it means to update a game while it's running. A docter can perform a heart transplant on other people, but that doesn't mean he can do it on himself. A webpage that is loading doesn't need to run the parts that are loading. A map being downloaded in the background doesn't need to be interacted in any other way other than the download process itself.
Sure, yes, it's theoretically possible. If that's the point you are making, then sure. My point is that it's just not practical. It requires a complete redesign to save a few minutes. there's bigger fish to fry.
"How often do updates actually happen? It could be minutes between update releases, or many months. In the meantime, it is forcing the player to wait every time they want to play the game, exactly as in my case, the game kept crashing and needing me to start it again. Imagine if operating systems did this: "Your computer is booting. Please wait while it checks for an update before proceeding. Go grab some coffee while you wait...""
I'm sorry but that happened to me many times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Update. And it's not just windows, MacOS also does this: https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT201541 , and so does raspberry pi: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/raspbian/updating.md If these large companies can't solve this issue, how do you expect a small indie game to?
"Same with regards to making a pull request; Pay me for it. I make a living by doing contract programming and consulting. The ZK team may do what they do without compensation. They make that choice because they are free to do so. Likewise, I am free to make my own choice to refuse to do so without compensation."
By that logic, pay the Devs if you want them to fix the update system."You are trying to impose upon me that my opinion about the way ZK does things is invalid, and that I should accept it."
I am just trying to explain to you that these issues are not as simple as you might think. And that if you do want to fix them, you don't go shouting about how the game sucks because of them, you come up to the devs with a detailed proposal on how to fix them.
Notice how I never said you were in the wrong for complaining about frequent ccrashes. If the game is truely crashing on load multiple times then there certainly is a solvable, and impactful issue
"You are trying to tell me that I should not post my comments in the comment section"
Please quote where I said that, so that I can be more friendly next time :)
"Sometimes they do not. In my experience, ZK is the only one that seems to force "every time" in order to avoid "some times"."
If you want, I can make a list of all the games I know of that force you to update them before playing.
Also, desyncs are not "sometimes". they are "every time". If you are running an outdated version it's not about will you desync but rather when - does it happen on game load or 5 minutes into the game?
Desyncs are also for all practical purposes as bad as a crash. That unit you are commanding on your screen may have never been built on everybody else's screen since that raider that you thought you killed near the start of the game didn't die on everybody else's, and went on to kill your factory. and it all happen just because a balance change tweaked the hp of a third unit by 5%. You might as well have crashed and are now just playing in another room.
"What I do NOT do is become defensive about negative feedback and tell them that they are wrong to feel that way."
"My background and education includes international communications and conflict resolution"
Ok, here's an example of a negative feedback:
"You are clearly not doing your job as somebody who studied conflict resolution as there are still arguments between people"
You're gonna tell me on how it's not practical or possible for you to solve that? right?
let's say you don't. then prove your works by doing it.
Let's say you do. you've just became defensive about negative feedback.
It's alright to explain to people who are making negative feedback on how their idea for improvement / problem identified is not practical to solve. I don't study conflict resolution, I don't know what conflicts are easy to resolve and what conflicts are near-impossible to resolve. And this issue of time spent updating falls under the near-impossible to resolve category.
"should not have multiple, independent/parallel threads accessing the data when at least one is modifying the data, wihout some kind of locking and synchronization." Rust lang is the answer to life which also adds protection for this.
i still dont get the chicken monsters thing and why does the enemy commander commit suicide he kills so many glaives
still amazing game
anybody else just trying to make every unit possible
and think that the ronin are gods
Does not work on Linux.. even from the itch App, when trying to install libcurl3, terminal says:
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or is only available from another source
However the following packages replace it: libcurl4:i386 libcurl4
Ubuntu-MATE 20.04 as well as on MX Linux 19.3
Did you run the command that it tells you to. Because part of the command installs libcurl3
Yes I did run the command, as a matter of fact I did copy and past the command in the description ;)
you dont need it i am on ubuntu 20.10 and it is working fine after installing through itch ap
Ubuntu 20.10 is an unstable version (even though, it's very stable), I use my computers to work as well ;). So I'll stay on a LTS.
Thanks for your input.
One of the best strategy games out there, the tactical scope of it is grand. The gameplay is fluid and the battles are epic.
This game is awesome! Thank you devs
is this Supreme Commander 3?
Zero-K/Complete Annihilation is older than Forged Alliance, but not vanilla SupCom.
ok then
theres no linux version on steam
Win Installer is very broken.
Created tones of empty folders and failed to update and install properly.
Seems this game is not supportetd here anymore still want to give a heads up.
We make an effort to keep the standalone installer updated and working. We'll look into it.
I did get it to run in the end. Also it does not work through the itch app.
Deb package requires me to remove 18 packages for no reason
A better Linux port is needed. Without .exe and without mono.
And _without_ exporting system environment variables that might be used for sth else, you know.
Please, for the sake of Linux (and anything else) compatibility and for performance, DON'T use C#. Just don't. It's a pure poison from Microsoft. Ruined so many games' compatibility I can't count.
An AUR "zerok-git" package would also be quite nice.
Harsh but true, can't install the game as a simple Spring mod right now. It's a turn off.
+1 for AUR
is on https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/zero-k/
Instead of uploading installer files, can you please upload a portable Linux verison for use with the Itch app? Just upload a ZIP, the Itch app will handle extracting and launching. Also, please mark this portable version as "Linux" and unmark the installer files so that the Itch app knows what to download. See: https://itch.io/docs/itch/integrating/quickstart.html and https://itch.io/app
I honestly think this game would be the definitive RTS if you could actually make your own units part by part. Plus all the other awesome features.
Zero-K has that for commanders, the unit you start with, and you an build unit formations with any unit you want. Do you want some kind of mainline unit that you can build or do you want a morphable strider or something else?
how to know the requirement of this game
If you have 8GB of RAM and a OpenGL core profile version string: 4.5 I am sure you can run the game on Ultra. I haven't experimented yet to find the minimum.
I was able to run this game on minimal graphic on my asus chi t300 [spec here: https://www.asus.com/au/2-in-1-PCs/ASUS_Transformer_Book_T300_Chi/specifications/ ]
only good for 1v1 or max 2v2 though
more than 300 units at a time would crash you for sure
ZK uses the SpringRTS engine which has requirements listed here: https://springrts.com/wiki/About
You can assume ZK has similar, if not stricter requirements.
Manjaro Linux user here, I really Enjoy this game!! looks awesome and plays great! the only problem I had was trying to install it from the AUR Itch desktop client, I had to manually download and run it from the .sh file. Other then that I plan on playing this quite a bit, Thank you for your time and effort making this cool game!
Never thought zk would have an itch page
This has an itch.io page now?
The number of ways to win is amazing.
Nice work! The game is really good.
good!
:)
mabey_like_command_and_conquer
GG
WP
Playing the game since before it was renamed to Zero-K more than 10 years ago. While it is an open-source "hobbyist" project, the level of gameplay polish is comparable to that of the top E-sports titles.
The best RTS I have ever played!!!
Here is a super easy to read Pro & Cons list I made for you all so you can get the gist of what your going to get when you download this,
Pros:
Graphics are very detailed!
No Lag!
Easy To Play!
Simple controls
Tutorials are amazingly well crafted
etc
Cons:
Sound effects are very busy and appear to be not based on where you camera/screen is located.
well.. that's it. Lol!
Overall Review: 10/10, I will never delete this game from my PC because its a great offline game, you can player it whenever & wherever you want, its fast and easy to use/play. And is very creative seeing as you can edit land, place troops in bulk in precise areas and in precise "outlines" or "Maneuvers". The creativity never ends!
:D
I am also playing this game for 7 years lol. Best game ever. Give it a try!
EDIT: make sure also to check the forum!
Years ago Cavedog's Total Annillation was my best RTS game I ever played, superior to many later games.
Only RTS game I consider superior to TA was Supreme Commander by original creators of TA. SC1 got older, SC2 was not so good, I played SC1 with 3rd party launucher Forget Alliance Forever, but large battlefield games were not working correctly on modern PCs.
Meanwhile I played with Spring as part of my TA obsession, before SC1 came out. Somewhat I missed Zero-K mod for Spring.
I am happy I found it 3 months ago - on Steam. It is a great game. Superior that most contemporary games, more complex than Ashes of Sigularity etc.
First game you can reshape your map!
Chapeau bas, devs! Great job.
I'm playing this game for 7 years now, and its still my favorite.
There is a friendly community trying to help new players.
Many different strategies, tactics, units maps, etc...
Oh, and the best Clan :D.
Mumble for the WIN!
I want to use the chance to invite every new player who wants some help, or just prefers to talk to others while playing to join us on mumble.
(Adress: mumble.springrts.com)
really. Nice! I will give it a try ^6^
cool. We're waiting for you
The greatest RTS of its kind, ZK takes all the best parts of Total Annihilation/Supreme Commander style games, and throws out the need for extensive eco basebuilding or teching up. It's possible to make maps with an extremely fine level of detail, with lots of room for modern lighting, normals, and other shaders. Extensive community contribution framework. A joy to both play and contribute to.
I've been playing this game for three years, long before the ITCH.io release was even a thing.
Still not tired of it.
I took allot of time to figure out how to play the game, but it was so worth it. This is a surprsingly deep game with tons of content. I had allot of fun playing and will continue to play in my own time. I would definetly reccomend this to anyone ho is a fan of RTS games.
Great video, thanks!
This game has kinda ruined other RTS for me. It's the real hidden gem of the genre.