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Why Age of Empires 2 is still growing

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Re: Why Age of Empires 2 is still growing

#61

Post by skittlebrau »

artursapek wrote: post #59
skittlebrau wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strangely I am responsible for the name of this cheat code. It's an accidental-turned-intentional misnomer for a place we used to eat a lot during Age2 development called Fred's Downtown Philly.

If you have written up any memories/folk lore from your days building this game, I would love to read it (and I'm sure many others here would too).

I have never written anything up personally, but I'm sure there is some stuff out there to be found.

Get any two former Ensemble employees together, possibly buy them a beer, and you will almost certainly get some stories that sound apocryphal but probably actually happened :)

Re: Why Age of Empires 2 is still growing

#62

Post by Houshalter »

artursapek wrote: post #59
skittlebrau wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strangely I am responsible for the name of this cheat code. It's an accidental-turned-intentional misnomer for a place we used to eat a lot during Age2 development called Fred's Downtown Philly.

If you have written up any memories/folk lore from your days building this game, I would love to read it (and I'm sure many others here would too).

You might be interested in the Age of Kings Postmortem: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131844/postmortem_ense...

It has a lot of behind the scenes details which I found interesting.

Re: Why Age of Empires 2 is still growing

#63

Post by JoshGlazebrook »

drblast wrote: post #43
JoshGlazebrook wrote: post #18

Age of Mythology is still one of my favorite games ever. What made it fun is not the real time strategy, but the custom scenario maps that people could create. This wasn't just the terrain, but the mechanics of the maps themselves. It was part "programming" as well as part design. The multiplayer servers are still online, but the certificate expired years ago. You can force AOM to connect to them with fiddler2, but y…

My wife and I played AOM obsessively, it's such a great game. There's a small time commitment, the AI had just the right levels of difficulty to help you work on your rts skills while still having a blast. I always felt like the Atlanteans were slightly overpowered, but other than that the balance was pretty good. The steam version is good but I kinda wish there were an update with low system requirements that fixed…

I think the Atlantean's and their villagers that don't require drop-sites combined with their human infantry is overpowered.

Re: Why Age of Empires 2 is still growing

#64

Post by jsmthrowaway »

skittlebrau wrote: post #61
artursapek wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have written up any memories/folk lore from your days building this game, I would love to read it (and I'm sure many others here would too).

I have never written anything up personally, but I'm sure there is some stuff out there to be found. Get any two former Ensemble employees together, possibly buy them a beer, and you will almost certainly get some stories that sound apocryphal but probably actually happened :)

Ensemble was a truly great studio. I hear people rag on AoE3 but I personally don't think Ensemble ever missed. Once. Between you and Westwood, RTS was pretty great for a long time.

Whatever you did for them, thanks for some really fun entertainment across many years of my own life.

Re: Why Age of Empires 2 is still growing

#66

Post by Qwertious »

pwelch wrote: post #58
fouadf wrote: post #2

If you're a fan of age of empires 2, you should definitely try 0ad http://play0ad.com it's open source and multiplatform

I'm really excited for 0AD because I want to play AOE2 but only have OS X and Linux. Thanks to the 0AX devs for all your hard work!

Like another comment said, you should keep your eye on openage - it's a libre implementation of AOE2 and will run natively on Linux.

Re: Why Age of Empires 2 is still growing

#67

Post by frik »

JoshGlazebrook wrote: post #18

Age of Mythology is still one of my favorite games ever. What made it fun is not the real time strategy, but the custom scenario maps that people could create. This wasn't just the terrain, but the mechanics of the maps themselves. It was part "programming" as well as part design. The multiplayer servers are still online, but the certificate expired years ago. You can force AOM to connect to them with fiddler2, but y…

I prefer AoM too, it's IMHO the best RTS game of the AoE series. It was the first 3D game of the series, nevertheless had a very nice graphics. The AI is certainly the best of the series. And the random map generator was great too. (as well as the music, etc)

AoE3 was great too (superb graphics and physics engine - very nice even today), but I wasn't so fond of the timeframe and several design decisions (8 tower limit, no random maps, the trains concept.

AoE 2 has a buggy AI, it gives up way too often. It was an improvement in every respect to AoE1.

AoE 1 was great for it's time. Less units than modern games, so every unit was worth more. One could create unlimited amount of towers - I played tower defence style gameplay in AoE 1 in 1997.

Re: Why Age of Empires 2 is still growing

#68

Post by Mikeb85 »

frik wrote: post #67
JoshGlazebrook wrote: post #18

Age of Mythology is still one of my favorite games ever. What made it fun is not the real time strategy, but the custom scenario maps that people could create. This wasn't just the terrain, but the mechanics of the maps themselves. It was part "programming" as well as part design. The multiplayer servers are still online, but the certificate expired years ago. You can force AOM to connect to them with fiddler2, but y…

I prefer AoM too, it's IMHO the best RTS game of the AoE series. It was the first 3D game of the series, nevertheless had a very nice graphics. The AI is certainly the best of the series. And the random map generator was great too. (as well as the music, etc) AoE3 was great too (superb graphics and physics engine - very nice even today), but I wasn't so fond of the timeframe and several design decisions (8 tower limi…

AoE 1 endgame was basically just building 50 heavy catapults and a bunch of towers.

AoE 2 at least had fairly compelling multiplayer with a variety of options. Although town centre rushes were a dominant tactic in the original version...

Re: Why Age of Empires 2 is still growing

#69

Post by DCoder »

svisser wrote: post #10
thegeekpirate wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's happening. And not only for StarCraft =) http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/careers/posting.html?id... http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/careers/posting.html?id...

Also for Command & Conquer: http://openra.net (currently C&C (Tiberian Dawn), C&C: Red Alert, and Dune 2000 with Tiberian Sun on the way).

And Red Alert 2: YR fans might find Ares [1] interesting: it's an engine-enhancement that fixes a ton of funky bugs [2] and enables loads of new functionality, and popular mods like Mental Omega and D-Day take advantage of that functionality in interesting ways.

(I used to be the lead developer of Ares for several years, the amount of reverse-engineering and C++ voodoo involved was awesome.)

1: http://ares.strategy-x.com/

2: https://ares-developers.github.io/Ares-docs/bugfixes/type1/i...

Re: Why Age of Empires 2 is still growing

#70

Post by frik »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #68
frik wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer AoM too, it's IMHO the best RTS game of the AoE series. It was the first 3D game of the series, nevertheless had a very nice graphics. The AI is certainly the best of the series. And the random map generator was great too. (as well as the music, etc) AoE3 was great too (superb graphics and physics engine - very nice even today), but I wasn't so fond of the timeframe and several design decisions (8 tower limi…

AoE 1 endgame was basically just building 50 heavy catapults and a bunch of towers. AoE 2 at least had fairly compelling multiplayer with a variety of options. Although town centre rushes were a dominant tactic in the original version...

I almost exclusively play RTS in single player mode on random generated maps.

And the AI is very good in AoE/AoM series (well except for the AI bugs in AoE2, in both the original as well as in the "HD" re-release). Whereas other RTS games (e.g. EmpireEarth) cheat a lot, that's not very rewarding. The developer at least tried to create an AI that doesn't cheat with resources.

Playing an RTS for several hours in multiplay against friends (LAN) is fun (as long both are almost equal). Internet gameplay isn't that fun, when someone suddenly leaves the game, or just doing a common rush strategy. Nowadays some of them found their niche with League of Legends, etc.

For me, AI gameplay in single player is more fun.

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