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Modding Age of Empires II with a Sprite-Diffuser

engine.study

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Re: Modding Age of Empires II with a Sprite-Diffuser

#91

Post by bombcar »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #67
hnlmorg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C&C is another hugely popular one. Though I was in the minority of not enjoying Westwoods RTS so much. I much preferred Warcraft and StarCraft. But my favourite was The Settlers. This was also an era when business simulation games (you could argue as another “style” of RTS but not combat based) were popular too. Like Transport Tycoon, Theme Park, etc. From past conversations on here, it sounds like City Builders are…

I feel Westwood's games were always more about the single player experience. The maps were pretty well designed as sort of puzzle boxes you needed to figure out. The amazing soundtracks and cheesy FMVs were also very good at building atmosphere. Multiplayer felt unbalanced in a not very fun way.

Agreed, StarCraft and friends got a big multiplayer scene that I was never into; I'm not a good enough player.

But C&C were fun to play through, and felt accessible to scrubs like me. (To be fair to Blizzard, StarCraft 2 is the ONLY Blizzard RTS I ever completed - or at least the episodes I bought ; they did exceptionally well on the difficulty scaling for that game.)

Competitive multiplayer was always meh for us, we loved comp stomps, and I somewhat am sad that the AI was so "bad" that you never really could get a good balance between "destroyed you instantly" and "easily overwhelmed".

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/08/04/the-armageddon...

Re: Modding Age of Empires II with a Sprite-Diffuser

#92

Post by bombcar »

drekipus wrote: post #2

That is sick, I'd love to play some wackier AOE environments, or do "space station vs jumping castle" battles. Units would be hard because there's a sprite for each direction which you'll have to keep consistent, but it would be great to see if it's possible to do, maybe as a sprite sheet

Reminds me of the SimCity texture pack which made it look like outer space (or maybe it was SC2000).

It did nothing but replace the graphics, but it blew my mind.

Re: Modding Age of Empires II with a Sprite-Diffuser

#93

Post by throwaway6734 »

littlestymaar wrote: post #84
EamonnMR wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The staying power makes me feel kind of sad, because it represents a lack of vitality... they've cleared the local space, like some sort of planetoid, and newcomers have little chance.

It's not that newcomers have little chance, but more the symptom showing that there's little interest for competitive AoE2 play among newcomers. Like Starcraft Brood War, that still features Flash, Jaedong and Bisu. You can compare it to Starcraft 2, whose scene remains quite attractive, and the top 4 European players (all of them being top 10 world) are just 25 23, 21 and 18 years old.

>It's not that newcomers have little chance, but more the symptom showing that there's little interest for competitive AoE2 play among newcomers

This isn't true. Hera & Lierey are two of the best AoE2 players and are both young.

There's an S-Tier tournament happening this week for anyone interested: https://liquipedia.net/ageofempires/King_of_the_Desert/5

Re: Modding Age of Empires II with a Sprite-Diffuser

#94

Post by [deleted] »

erfgh wrote: post #49
Dalewyn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Real Time Strategy (RTS) genre more or less died in the mid 2000s with Age of Empires II, Warcraft 3, and Starcraft being the ones that left a mark. Since that time: Warcraft 3 died; Starcraft was supplanted by Starcraft 2 and both eventually died outside of the lucrative Korean pro scene. Age of Empires II also died until it saw a resurrection in the pro scene in the early 2010s which has lasted to today. The RT…

Why do people want constantly new games otherwise they think that something is dead? This is like saying basketball is dead because basketball people only play basketball and not something else.

[deleted]

Re: Modding Age of Empires II with a Sprite-Diffuser

#95

Post by dcist »

instakill wrote: post #61

Just here to comment that AOE2 is probably the best game ever made.

I agree with this comment. I wish there was an effort to improve the performance and fundamental capabilities of AOE2 specifically (bigger maps, more varied terrain, higher pop count, ability of the game engine to use multi-core processors, etc.). AOE2 really did almost everything right and it's a timeless classic.

Re: Modding Age of Empires II with a Sprite-Diffuser

#96

Post by neilsonnnn »

omneity wrote: post #6

Big AoE fan here. The idea is brilliant and I love the execution. I wish the author did not put every screenshot in a gif, I'd have preferred to be able to look at the results in a less stressful way. 2 seconds to switch to another screenshot, that's way too fast! On a side note, it would be interesting to try to apply the same technique to units and effects (explosions, fire, etc). I didn't see a mention of it by th…

hey, author here, thanks for the note about the GIFs. If you go to the website (https://engine.study/sprite-diffuser/) you can select the themes from a dropdown to see each one.

Units are going to be difficult, villagers are something like 10 pixels across - getting them to pose correctly will be hard. However, there is someone doing something similar with the original Mortal Kombat sprites who is having a lot of success -

https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/13jllfh/qu...

Re: Modding Age of Empires II with a Sprite-Diffuser

#97

Post by hermitdev »

bombcar wrote: post #89
TulliusCicero wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they've cleared the local space, like some sort of planetoid, and newcomers have little chance. The newcomers to the RTS scene are largely badly made. Company of Heroes 3 has already dropped below Company of Heroes 2 playercount despite having come out just a few months ago. AoE4 also had plenty of problems (no ranked ladder at launch? it took 6 months), though it being Relic, that's not very surprising. I'm on the…

It's hard to make a good RTS that both satisfies the competitive players and the people who want to just do various forms of comp-stomp.

AOE4 has been an interesting journey for someone that prefers the good ol fashioned comp-stomp. It wasn't long before I was easily taking on 4 of the hardest AI and easily stomping them on certain maps, like mountain pass. But, they've progressively made the AI into a much tougher opponent. It's actually challenging now, and I'm only back up to 2 hardest, 2 hard with AI teammates on the same map. Can't speak to pvp; I've not tried at all.

Re: Modding Age of Empires II with a Sprite-Diffuser

#98

Post by hot_gril »

bombcar wrote: post #87
fbdab103 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem I have with the rankings here is they seem really prone to grade inflation and band-wagoning. Even more-so when the game is expensive.

The BGG rankings are a particular viewpoint into a general take on board games; the way I look at it - anything high ranked is going to be "good" even if I don't particular like the play style, theme, or execution. Many are "good but not for me". The problem with the rankings is that some very playable games are ranked low. It's a meme on BGG but CandyLand is famously shit on: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/5048…

Yeah, I've heard of very few of the top ones, and they look like the super complex kind of games I don't play. I did play Pandemic Legacy and didn't like it. Then I cmd+F'd for Diplomacy, Catan, and chess on the top list, didn't see them, and said nah.

Re: Modding Age of Empires II with a Sprite-Diffuser

#99

Post by hermitdev »

hnlmorg wrote: post #46
Dalewyn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Real Time Strategy (RTS) genre more or less died in the mid 2000s with Age of Empires II, Warcraft 3, and Starcraft being the ones that left a mark. Since that time: Warcraft 3 died; Starcraft was supplanted by Starcraft 2 and both eventually died outside of the lucrative Korean pro scene. Age of Empires II also died until it saw a resurrection in the pro scene in the early 2010s which has lasted to today. The RT…

C&C is another hugely popular one. Though I was in the minority of not enjoying Westwoods RTS so much. I much preferred Warcraft and StarCraft. But my favourite was The Settlers. This was also an era when business simulation games (you could argue as another “style” of RTS but not combat based) were popular too. Like Transport Tycoon, Theme Park, etc. From past conversations on here, it sounds like City Builders are…

I picked up a copy of C&C red alert a year ago. Sadly, it's unplayable on modern PCs. At least it was for me. Too many issues, crashes and the game speed not being changeable before game launch and by the time you can change it in game, it's too late and you're basically already way too behind to catch up. It's a shame because it was one of my favorites from the era.

Re: Modding Age of Empires II with a Sprite-Diffuser

#100

Post by rkuykendall-com »

neilsonnnn wrote: post #96
omneity wrote: post #6

Big AoE fan here. The idea is brilliant and I love the execution. I wish the author did not put every screenshot in a gif, I'd have preferred to be able to look at the results in a less stressful way. 2 seconds to switch to another screenshot, that's way too fast! On a side note, it would be interesting to try to apply the same technique to units and effects (explosions, fire, etc). I didn't see a mention of it by th…

hey, author here, thanks for the note about the GIFs. If you go to the website ( https://engine.study/sprite-diffuser/ ) you can select the themes from a dropdown to see each one. Units are going to be difficult, villagers are something like 10 pixels across - getting them to pose correctly will be hard. However, there is someone doing something similar with the original Mortal Kombat sprites who is having a lot of s…

Unfortunately the website is not currently usable, it's on a fixed loop.
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