RTS revival - AoE2 and AoM expansions

StalaggtIKE · Sep 28, 2015

Two of my favorite games are getting expansions: AoE2 receiving two and AoM receiving one.
http://www.forgottenempires.net/

Age of Empires II: The Forgotten

Welcome to Age of Empires II HD – The Forgotten; the first new official expansion for the Age of Empires II universe in over ten years. Challenge friends with five additional civilizations and technologies, battle through seven campaigns, vanquish opponents in new game modes on massive maps, or shoutcast a match and stream it all through twitch.tv.

Crafted exclusively for Age of Empires II: HD Edition; The Forgotten expansion builds upon the Age of Empires II: HD experience and includes Steam workshop support, new expansion rankings, steam trading cards, and more!

Download Steam version: http://store.steampowered.com/app/239550/
Download Mod version: Install

Age of Empires II: The Forgotten originally started as a modding project back in 2011, called Age of Empires II: Forgotten Empires. The project got gradually out of hand to the point where we felt confident on showing our mod to Microsoft, hoping there might be room to breathe new life into the decade old classic that Age of Empires II is.

Little did we know they were already working on their own revival of the series with a HD reboot of the game. After this proved to be successful we were offered the chance to turn our modding project into an official part of the series. An offer we couldn’t possibly refuse. For a full story on how the project came to life, please check out “The Story so far…”

Italians – Set sail to Venice and take the role as general in one of the Italian republics that emerged from the chaos after the collapse of the Roman Empire!

Indians – Put vast armies under your command, comprised of countless Camels and powerful Elephants.

Slavs – Even after the dissolution of the Mongolian Golden Horde, these icy planes of Eastern Europe still echo under the thundering hooves and countless boots of your soldiers.

Magyars – Lead the mighty Black Army over the Hungarian plains and command the fiercest cavalry forces that Europe has ever witnessed in the Middle Ages

Incas – Lead your armies along the shores of Lake Titicaca, defend your wealth and heritage from the invading Conquistadors and erect mighty structures to withstand the test of time.

Alaric

Sforza

Bari

Dracula

El Dorado

Prithiviraj

Battles of the Forgotten

Improved AI

12 New maps

500 population limit

Treaty mode

Capture the Relic mode

Twitch.tv integration

Spectator mode

Ludikris mapsize

Countless balance adjustments. (Changelog)

Many new scenario editor objects, including penguins.

It’s always very nice to read what others think about our games, here is a small selection of reviews we found across the web.

The project started as a huge community geared project and up till today, it still is. Special thanks to all the people who have helped us make a dream come true. Check the full credits here.

The project was originally created as a mod. This mod is still available here. Note that we no longer update this version, therefore a lot of content (such as the campaigns) is missing from this version.
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StalaggtIKE · Sep 28, 2015

Age of Empires II HD: The African Kingdoms

New civilizations also mean… new buildings! And we were presented with a big plate of fresh challenges. Looking back at the new architecture sets introduced in Age of Empires II HD: The Forgotten, we knew we had to step up our game. The Italian set was masterfully photoshopped from the Middle Eastern set (with some exceptions) but we wanted to go the extra mile for the African set. Time to brush off our 3D modelling software!

References & Concept Art
The first task is to find pictures of existing African buildings, we gathered hundreds of pictures of Northern African architecture. However, here we met our first challenge: we’re not making a set just for the Malians, we’re having them share their set with another African civ. So we had to make a “generic African” set, which is not something that exists. Time for concept art! We started with themarket as our first building. The reason for this was two-folded. First of all, the market is a building that changes in all ages, so we can use its style and texture as a base for the rest of the buildings. Secondly, it’s a big building with a lot of variety, which helps us define that proper style.

Basic Blocks
Time to turn this pencil & paper artwork into digital models. We jumped into our modelling software and came up with the following models:

However, we made a big mistake, which we didn’t notice right away. All buildings in Age of Empires II have their characteristic shapes and sizes. Although the market was “roughly” following the proportions of the existing markets, it wasn’t close enough, and it felt like the buildings stood out too much. Back to the drawing boards, where we analyzed the existing sets to turn all buildings into basic blocks. Playing with LEGO as it were.

Now we had the basic shapes, we could start modelling again. This time we focused hard on the Feudal Age set. A lot of improvements were made as you can see on the images below. Feudal Market V1 shows the market prior to our block-building analysis and V2 shows the revamped version with proper AoE2 proportions.

However, we weren’t happy yet. The shape was right, but the building looked a lot more simple than the buildings currently in the game. This was due to two reasons: firstly, African feudal architecture was mainly mud-based, which has functionality over aesthetics, but secondly is because we made it look simple. It’s not because it’s simple, that we can’t make it look more special, time to step up our game!

So we began experimenting, which eventually led to all the images below. First we tried with some more complicated textures. Then we started to change the shape of the building, which eventually led to V3, which we nicknamed “Flintstone-melted potato with a tennis sweatband”-style. Needless to say, we ditched that one in the end.

Many iterations later, we ended up with the final Feudal Market, which is the one you will see in the game.

Rendering & post-processing
Now, what was the reason we got the market to fit in with the other buildings in the end? Once again, two important reasons. The first one is because of the way Ensemble Studios created their buildings. In the 90s, 3D modelling wasn’t as evolved as it is today. Each and every object was created individually, down to every brick in a wall. Which is exactly what we did. The straws in the thatch roofs on the Feudal market are all modeled individually. Which you can also see in this detail of the Imperial market.

Now comes the most difficult part: we’ve seen the models in high-quality 32-bit renders this whole time. But for Age of Empires II, they need to be converted to 8-bit images, which means from 24 million colors to just 256! Luckily we can use Photoshop to help us in that conversion so that not too many color-ranges get lost, but it’s still a shocking difference to see sometimes.

Last but not least, we add eye candy! The last step in post-processing to make the buildings fit with the rest of the game. We copy some barrels, items and little plants that can be found on other buildings and paste them on our new models.

It’s been a month-long journey, and at the time of writing, we’re not at the end yet, but I would already like to thank our lead artist Jorgito, for all the hard work he has done and still maintaining his sanity over it

To top it all off, a small teaser screenshot of a Feudal Age Malian village!

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StalaggtIKE · Sep 28, 2015

Age of Mythology: Tale of the Dragon

13 years. It’s been 13 years since the release of Age of Mythology on PC. And 12 years since the release of its expansion pack: The Titans. But for great games like Age of Mythology, these years are merely a number. It’s time for a new expansion pack! With the collective experience and with expansions for the Age of Empires II series, Age of Mythology almost feels like the next logical step, although next time we probably shouldn’t wait over a decade before taking on the challenge

Many of you already guessed it after the sneaky teaser at E3 and a lot of speculation has been seen across the community boards, but now the word is officially out: Age of Mythology: Tale of the Dragon is being created by Forgotten Empires and SkyBox Labs and will be the next part in the legendary series.

Livestream
We’re not diving into a lot of detail here, but we’ll quench your thirst for more soon on a livestream. So make sure to tune in on www.twitch.tv/ageofempires on October 2nd (exact time will be posted later). See you there!

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SheepHugger · Sep 28, 2015

I really liked that they went through the effort and made a HD version out of AoE2.

And expansions too? Nice!

StalaggtIKE · Nov 2, 2015

StalaggtIKE · Nov 3, 2015

Age of Empires II HD: The African Kingdoms to be released on November 5th!

StalaggtIKE · Nov 4, 2015

SheepHugger · Nov 4, 2015

StalaggtIKE said: ↑

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MUST HAVE!

StalaggtIKE · Nov 5, 2015

Countdown until release!
http://www.forgottenempires.net/

StalaggtIKE · Dec 20, 2016

New expansion!

Welcome to Age of Empires II HD: The Rise of the Rajas; the third new official expansion for the Age of Empires II universe in over 17 years. Challenge friends with four additional civilizations, new units, technologies, and build your empire on both water and land. Guide history’s greatest heroes in Southeast Asia through four additional campaigns and conquer your foes with mighty hordes of elephants under your command!

4 New Civilizations

Burmese – Assemble the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia through a legion of Battle Elephants that can demolish the most powerful of defenses. The Burmese unique unit is the Arambai, a ranged cavalry unit with a deadly but low accuracy attack.

Khmer – Construct the largest religious monument in the world and amass an immortal army of devastating siege weapons. The Khmer unique unit is the Ballista Elephant, a mounted scorpion that can be upgraded to fire two bolts simultaneously.

Malay – Conquer Southeast Asia with the vast island empire of Malay and upgrade your docks to harbours which can shoot arrows. The Malay unique unit is the Karambit Warrior, an extremely cheap infantry unit that can quickly overwhelm its foes.

Vietnamese – Lead your people to independence and wage guerilla warfare with an extremely powerful arsenal of ranged units. The Vietnamese unique unit is the Rattan Archer, a heavily-armored ranged unit that is effectively impervious to enemy archer attacks.

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Orcinus · Dec 24, 2016

SALE!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/221380/?snr=1_620_4_1400_45

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