Maybe a 2001 in the title would help?
We've 10/100mbps in 2001 and I think 1500 archers on 28.8k hayes is a great challenge no matter what the year.
1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond (2001)
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Re: 1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond (2001)
#22It's interesting how the online gameplay has changed between the different versions of the game as network latency has improved. For example, being able to micro manage archers to dodge other archers, and time their shots is something that wasn't possible previously.
Has network latency improved much since this article's date? Bandwidth definitely, but latency?
Yes: dialup modem latency was on the order of 100-250ms, DSL 10-70ms, and cable modems 5-40ms.
Sitting on my couch using Wi-Fi over cable, I have 18ms to Google.com – call it a full order of magnitude better than a disk up user despite Wi-Fi adding 7ms.
Re: 1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond (2001)
#23I enjoyed reading how they solved synch problem: schedule this moments commands for 2 turns from now, and the turn length is dynamic to smooth out experience.
Re: 1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond (2001)
#24This site used to be Gamasutra didn't it?
Yup, this post is how I found out that they changed their name.
> Game Developer was first founded in 1997 as Gamasutra and has strived since its inception to be a leading resource and reference for game development and industry knowledge. Following the shift from Gamasutra to Game Developer in August 2021, the site has maintained that mission while embracing the in-depth content its namesake Game Developer magazine is known for.
Re: 1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond (2001)
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds terrible. I'm pretty sure the next game in the series, Age of Mythology, didn't permit missed shots.
Archer micro is a huge part of the competitive AoE2 scene. AoE4 had auto tracking arrows and I think folks didn't like it as much as it lowered the skill ceiling
I understand what was said. I'm saying that sucks. I don't really care about the tiny minority of people who care about the skill ceiling within a super low level micro.
RTS entices people into a strategy game. But the games are so similar that everyone but the top 1% of players will do better by simply following a predefined strategy and executing it as tightly as they possible can. And that sucks. Nudging guys a few inches to the side is the opposite of what makes the game fun for most people.
I'd like to see RTS games that randomize game parameters each time, requiring you to actually strategize.
Re: 1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond (2001)
#26Re: 1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond (2001)
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. Most people back in 2001 were not using fibre. Dial-up, DSL, etc are all much higher latency. In Dial-up you are easily talking at least 100ms slower, if not a lot more.
Ah. How I would have killed for a 100ms ping back in my 56k modem days. My average ping on any Quake2 server was 250-300ms. It’s amazing how times change, now I get annoyed when my ping is higher than 30ms.
It’s amazing how times change, now I get annoyed when my ping is higher than 30ms.
That's because 2sec of ping is used to request 124 fonts, each using one char.
Re: 1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond (2001)
#28As someone who grew up playing Age of Empires II and still consider it among the best games ever made, reading this is nothing short of amazing.
I still regularly have dreams about it 20 years later.
I take it as a sign that I'm in a good healthy place mentally when the most stressful and anxiety inducing thing my brain can conjure up is me being rushed by 3 units in the dark age.
Re: 1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond (2001)
#29As someone who grew up playing Age of Empires II and still consider it among the best games ever made, reading this is nothing short of amazing.
I still play it (the definitive edition) with my wife. Best game ever in my opinion.
Same. Played 6 games with my brother and friends today.
Re: 1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond (2001)
#30Seeing stuff like this on here fills me with nostalgia.
I basically learned to code thanks to a few helpful and extremely patient IRC members in the Spring RTS engine[1] community (some of whom I spot in these comment sections on occasion - hi!), and deterministic lockstep simulation for online play was one of the first ideas that totally blew my mind when I learned about it ("b-but that means all the "random" numbers on every computer need to be the same! and so do all the floating point calculations across different hardware!"). Of course, to me at the time, that was deep magic that I thought I'd never be able to fully understand.
[1] see https://springrts.com/ - or check out http://zero-k.info/ and https://www.beyondallreason.info/ for games on the engine that are still pretty active