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| February 28 |
Sierra fires 135 programmers and artists
This is bad news for gamers: Sierra shut down 4 development divisions, closed on of its divisions, sacked 135(!) employees - mainly artists and programmers - and transferred their HQ in a big, bad reorganization of the whole enterprise.
It seems like the gaming business is getting tougher again - many companies are struggling, a few of them had to close (e. g. crack dot com) and no one knows where we are heading. If the business concentrates on a few small companies, this will automatically mean less competition and worse games. I hope that the resurrection of the Macs and the advent of Linux open new chances to innovative companies.
| February 26 |
Microsoft's "live coverage" virtually non-existent
Microsoft has promised a "live coverage" on their website about their internal event, but it took quite a while until their website was updated. And now, their link to the update is broken so the update is not of much use.
Fortunately, Ensemble's page has covered the news well, with links to previews of AoK:
| February 24 |
Not much yet from Gamestock
When I last check the Official Gamestock '99 Web Site of the so-called "private" event, there was not much to see yet. An interview taken before the event and a few screenshots was everything. However, this is supposed to change today, as most events take place now, including the chat with all the famous game designers.
Unfortunately, the web site layout is not a masterpiece, but it should be easy enough to find the links to the pages you want.
| February 22 |
RoR charts - printer friendly version
Dave's RoR unit sheets have a light gray background, which may be dithered during printing and then look rather ugly (having black spots everywhere instead of a white background). I have tried to reduce the grey spots as much as possible using a histogram filter which increased the contrast. I have not tried to print the enchanced versions, so I cannot tell whether they really look better on paper (they look worse on the screen because the edges are sharper).
| February 21 |
Gamestock update
Meanwhile the official press release arrived, with some more accurate information about that event. Gamestock is due to February 23 and 24:
"Fans can win some great prizes, including entry into the Age of Empires II beta program (...) Ensemble Studios' Age II designers Bruce Shelley and Mark Terrano will be on hand to talk to you, the fans, live on the Zone. (...)
Included in this year's 1999 lineup are: Age of Empires II, "Zulu", Starlancer, Conquest: Frontier Wars, Asheron's Call, and nearly a dozen other titles.
- Gamestock Cup Sweepstakes: Fans can test their computer and arcade gaming knowledge with a few trivia questions, and become eligible to win some fantastic prizes.
- Official Gamestock '99 Web Site: Complete with screenshots, game introductions, and feature lists, check this site to get the whole scoop on the upcoming titles.
- Superchat on the Zone: talk shop with (...) Bruce Shelley of Ensemble Studios (Age of Empires), Erin Roberts of Digital Anvil (Conquest and Starlancer), Toby Ragaini of Turbine (Asheron's Call) and Clint Keith of Angel Studios (Midtown Madness).
More RoR awards
Among some other new awards that the Rise of Rome expansion has won is Gamesmania's Award for Excellence. And most people who have RoR are really happy with it. Of course people become more demanding each year, and two years ago it was usually enough to supply a few new maps and tunes to make an expansion. RoR changes the strengths of the tribes in some crucial areas like sea battles, inviting people to explore these.
| February 18 |
More about Gamestock
The page is at Microsoft's server, and even though the event is said to be private, the connections to that big company are obvious. This means that Age of Kings is of course among the presented games, and Microsoft will cover the event so we can probably see the first screenshots from an Age of Kings match outside Ensemble Studios' buildings.
You can also win some stuff at a contest at the Gamestock page, so check it out, even though it's still three days to go until the event actually starts.
New RoR unit sheets
Dave has made these new RoR unit sheets which are made after the look of the AoE unit sheets. They are the only complete unit sheets for RoR on the net (at least that's what Dave says ;) so you should check them out. They were very big gifs originally, but I could compress them to less than 20% of their size, so they are now about 40 KB each.
More RoR unit tables
If you go to the links page, you will find two links - one is to Dave's page, the other one to Mr. Fixit's page, which happens to have RoR unit sheets as well. Mr. Fixit's tables take one sheet per civilization while Dave's table have all civilizations in one big table. Take whatever you prefer.
| February 14 |
1 week till "Gamestock"
That is the exhibition where, as far as I can tell from Mike's (Ensemble Studios' webmaster and contact to the rest of the world) vague announcements, Age of Kings will be presented to the public. Alpha (in-house) testing has started quite a while ago, so I think the game should now be ready for being shown to the press, and hopefully soon thereafter for beta tests that we are all waiting for.
AoK battlefield re-opened
As I have announced a few days ago, the sister site at age2.gamesmania.com has been completely redesigned. The new pages, after a long time of tweaking, have finally gone online. If you want more information about Age of Kings, go there! This page will focus on Age of Empires and only have the most important AoK news.
Old links...
Reeces has gone through the links page and removed some of the old links. In some cases, the server was not accessible - I have left these links, but I will check them again later, and remove them if the pages are really gone.
| February 12 |
New links...
I added new links to a very good strategy page (GX AoE) and two big gaming sites (CGN and Chanodin.net). They are marked with a "new" entry, so you will find them quickly.
I have noticed that the links page has grown very large today, so it needs some "spring cleaning" some time. If someone wants to check some pages to see whether they are still up to date, please e-mail me.
| February 11 |
Game Developers' Conference 1999
The first "GDC Independent Games Festival" has had a contest about that best independent game. Independent means that there has been no financial support at all from the publisher. The finalists have been chosen now. These games did not have the budget of the "large" competitors, but they have a refreshing spirit behind them and focus on good gameplay. If you are looking for "different, non-mainstream" games, check it out.
| February 7 |
AoK news...
There is currently not much groundbreaking news about Age of Kings, aka AoE2. People at Ensemble Studios are still reviewing suggestions (dozens of ideas every day, with now 99.5% old ideas), which may indicate that the project has been delayed, for it is no longer possible to include groundbreaking ideas that require elaborate modifications without delay. On the other hand, Ensemble might just be showing their good will by still collecting suggestions, and keep them for later games.
Ensemble Studios has announced more AoK news to be posted in about 1 1/2 weeks. Maybe they will give out information about beta testing (right now their policy is: ask later), or more screenshots will be posted (as it used to be in the "weekly themes" that stopped months ago).
The Gamesmania sister site, the AoK Battlefield is not a dead page. BravenIrish, the webmaster, has rewritten the page and will post the new updated version soon - under a new domain, but still at the same server.
| February 5 |
WinDOS and NT 5 going further apart?
Microsoft says it will support the Windows 98 operating system
for the next two to three years and will upgrade the core of the operating
system at least once more before revamping it to the more advanced Windows
NT platform.
| February 1 |
I am back...
After a longer absence than actually planned (due to a nasty flu), I am now back. I am glad that Reeces kept the page running and brought the scenario section a big step forward. I will have to mirror everything first, and clean up some small things, and then I will add more scenarios and campaigns. Scenario testers are always welcome.
RoR tribe table
Kwang has made a RoR tribe table for Excel (150 KB, .zip) that fits on one page. The current layout uses colors, but you can change it to b/w for printing.
Hacking the resolution settings
Intager came up with the idea of changing the resolution in AoE:
I was wondering if you knew of anyone who could write a patch to AoE to allow
for screen resolutions higher then 1024? I tried changing the registry to
1280 and it worked, however the screen area above and beyond 1024 was all just
black wasted space :( (My monitor supports up to 1800X1440, that would be
interesting to see!)
Of course for changing the resolution, one would also have to edit the .exe file itself. I wonder how hard it will be to find the resolution settings ... for easier searching, I recommend changing it to 800 x 600 first, because these values do not divide by 256 and should be easier to find with a hex editor.
Higher settings made no sense when AoE was released. It seems like cutting edge hardware (and a 19 inch monitor) makes it now possible to play AoE at even higher resolutions...
| September '97 - January '99 |
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