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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday January 09 2018, @03:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the history-of-the-world dept.

Over the last 20 years, these epoch-spanning games have starred more than 50 historical civilizations, sales have surpassed more than 20 million units, and a core fanbase of hundreds of thousands has put hours upon hours into playing one series entry or another on a weekly basis. Age of Empires is one of the most influential strategy games of all time. And far from fading into obscurity, as history is wont to do, Empires is now squarely back in the (games-playing) public consciousness.

[...] I spoke to several of the two dozen or so people who worked on the original Age of Empires about how it was made. I asked them to reflect on the series' triumphs, successes, failures, and legacy. This is a compressed retelling of their many stories, focusing on the early days—the building of the foundations that are so central to both the Age story and each of the Age games—but spanning the full breadth of the series' life

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/01/the-age-of-age-of-empires-as-told-by-the-devs-who-built-it/

Long read.

Related: Age of Empires: Definitive Edition adds 4K Resolution, Zoom Levels, Remastered Soundtrack
Microsoft Announces Age of Empires IV


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by richtopia on Tuesday January 09 2018, @09:05PM (1 child)

    by richtopia (3160) on Tuesday January 09 2018, @09:05PM (#620213) Homepage Journal

    I cannot find the specific article I remember, but the development of the Forgotten mod and the evolution to the re-release of Age of Empires II on steam is really inspirational. The quick version is that modders struggled to add new content to the game and found some clever tricks to make it happen. The mod they were working on was just finishing when Microsoft was moving to launch AOE2HD on Steam, and the modders contacted Microsoft to implement the mod. Now this content is modern expansion packs for a game made in 1999, and the community has really had a renaissance.

    https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/12/28/age-of-empires-2-forgotten-empires/ [rockpapershotgun.com]

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday January 09 2018, @09:51PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday January 09 2018, @09:51PM (#620231) Journal

    AOE2 multiplayer was fun back in the day and the game was about as good as it never needed to be (in terms of subtle improvements over AOE1, like the ability to walk over farms).

    The new expansions are pretty good but there are some bad bugs remaining. The late game performance is too slow on my 2011 machine and the AI makes some dumb choices in the late game that seem to have lowered their difficulty. Land units can get stuck on the edge of water and vice versa. Little annoyances. These could be addressed with a "Definitive Edition" though [soylentnews.org].

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