News archive
Local search engine for this page available!
Finally I have had time to set up a local search engine. You can now find out how many times your name appears in the page or any specific page, using the appropriate keyword. The form on this page will serve you as a quick search while the link will take you to a page with more possibilities and some hints.
AoE cartoon
Chris V. has sent in an AoE cartoon, check it out. You are free to publish this cartoon on your page as long as you give Chris credit for his work and me for resizing the picture and converting it to jpg. Who knows, maybe there will be as many cartoons in the future as there were for Warcraft 2 :)
ICQ list again open for new submissions
Since I did not get any newer list, I will open the current list for new submissions. People who have entered their name during the last week have to enter it again :(
Sorry for the inconvenience.
New campaign
There is a new campaign at that section, it consists of nine difficult scenarios so it should keep you busy for a while :)
ICQ list and message board hacked up and erased
Someone has erased the ICQ list and all messages from my message board at Nextlevel. Since Nextlevel does not allow anonymous logins, it must have been someone using a Gamewatch or Nextlevel password - so all people who have an account there should change their password immediately!
Help me getting the ICQ list back!
Maybe you have a copy of it in your Cache. Right click at the folder \Windows\Temporary Internet Files (MSIE) or Program Files\Netscape\Communicator\users\username\Cache and look for a file called index.html (or any .html file with Netscape) that is about between 27 and 35 K in size and newer than February 7. You can use the "search" option and scan for the word "ICQ" in the file. You can see the latest list recovered here (thanks to Kooky for his help).
There is no way to recover the messages from the message board unless someone at Nextlevel made a backup :(
Helepolis history
Here is the bit of historical information that I promised for all people who have been too lazy to read that section in the help file (I recommend reading it, you will learn how this machine actually worked).
The original of the machine was abandoned outside the city of Rhodes when a besieging army withdrew. It has been reconstructed on paper from contemporary sketches and descriptions of that only known example.
AoE Help file
So if you get the upgrade, you will have to destroy all your helepolises except one ;)
Michael S. has found more information about the siege of Rhodes. You will find a comprehensive archeological report at that page.
Scenarios wanted!
I am looking for scenarios for 3 or 8 players. I will not take any scenario, though, it should be well balanced and interesting to play. If possible, please make the map look aesthetically pleasing as well. Read the scenario design guidelines for more information.
Chat with Bruce Shelley in two weeks
Microsoft has updated their AoE page again:
"Chat with Bruce Shelley and others on the Ensemble team. It's on the Internet Gaming Zone February 23, 6 p.m. PST! Don't miss this great opportunity."
Bruce Shelley is the co-designer of Age of Empires, and he will certainly reveal details about the sequel of Age of Empires. Unfortunately 6 p.m. PST is a little late for people in Europe :(
Pathfinding in strategy games
Many people have been annoyed be the unsatisfactory pathing in AoE. However, there is not a better algorithm available yet (you can only find a better path by sacrificing more CPU time). Like many other games of its kind, AoE uses the A* algorithm for the pathfinding. This algorithm is very well described in a scientific paper written by F. Markus Jönsson. It is not too hard to understand the principle if you have a basic idea of graphs, but it shows how solving and implementing a seemingly simple problem can be very hard on a computer.
New poll
An AoE expansion pack has been announced before the game was finished, but no one knows yet when or whether it will be released. Anyway, I ask you the question "What do you want to see in an AoE expansion pack?", if there will be one. Is it really the save game option, or do you want to see a unit editor? Cast your vote!
Poll results
Last week's poll about the first RTS game played by you yields remarkable results:
The popularity of Herzog Zwei, the first real time strategy game, has surprised me: 12% of all people have played it. Dune, prequel of the upcoming Dune 2000, is indeed the mother of all modern RTS games: for 37% of all players, it has been their first game of this genre. Warcraft was also a groundbreaking RTS game from this viewpoint.
Historical background of AoE
Someone has asked me to post more historical information about the units in Age of Empires. I think this is not needed, because it is already extensively covered in the AoE help files and in the manual. You will find some interesting stuff there, so check it out and learn how many helepolises really existed (I will tell it tomorrow) ;)
I will make a web page for money ;)
I have found a new job at Unitek and will help them to design a demo web page for their latest project. There is nothing to see yet about it but there will be something soon :)
Poll problems
Due to technical problems, I have moved the poll to this server and extended its expiration date by one day. So if you have not contributed to it yet, you can still check which game was the "mother of all RTS games".
New scenario
I have added a new single player scenario to that page.
AoE glossary
A few people have asked me to add a few common abbreviations to the AoE glossary, and I hope they will help people who are new to the Internet.
Zone newsletter
This month's newsletter has arrived:
"Don't miss out on the special Age Campaign Strategies that will help you
in the single-player campaigns, and should prepare you for the intense
conflict to be found on the Zone. And we've also published excerpts from
a chat with the game's co-designer, Bruce Shelley. Bruce had lots of
interesting things to say about the game, and about its possible sequel.
http://www.zone.com/asp/aoferedir.asp
The strategies are nothing special, and the chat with Bruce Shelley is from December 97 but still worth reading. It is only accessible for MSIE users, though - and Microsoft still claims that they are working "very hard" for making the page accessible to all browsers.
LAN tournament
I will be away at a LAN tournament, so there will be no updates today :)
AoE tops the best seller lists
Today, Microsoft has announced that Age of Empires has been the best-selling strategy game in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and France since its release in October 1997. To date, customers have acquired more than 850,000 copies. For more information, read the entire press release.
Glossary complete?
I have added "tvb" to the AoE glossary, and I hope it was the last important term I have missed.
AoE tournament
Kooky at Kooky's AoE page organizes an online AoE tournament: "We need lots of players for this to be a
good tournament." So instead of bothering about your current ladder ranking, play there :)
New link
I have added a new link to Coo Mo Dee's AoE page.
Telcontar selling out?
At Gamesmania, you may notice the slightly increased number of advertisements on the page. They are not there to make me richer, but simply to cover the costs for the server.
Bill Gates hit by a cream cake :)
Someone has thrown a cream cake at Bill Gates' face in Brussels (just heard this
in the news). He wanted to join an EU commitee, and when he got out of his car, some people were standing
ready with cakes, threw them, and one of them actually found the target :)
The police has arrested one of these guys but he has my sympathy :) "The one person who threw a cake got away, but police arrested another person and are questioning a third who filmed the event." (CNN) ;)
The picture is also from CNN where you can read their version of the story.
New scenario
There is a new single player scenario in the scenario section.
New links
I have added a couple of new links.
Starcraft delayed
According to ActiveNet, Starcraft will be delayed until late March or early April. Maybe Dune 2000 will be finished by then :)
Dune 2000 fans wanted!
I was a big fan of Dune 2, and I want to make a page about its sequel. People who are interested in helping me should contact me. I am looking for people who
- have a talent for CGI and/or HTML
- are good at drawing pictures and logos
You also should have a clue about ftp and telnet, and you should be at least 16 years old.
Unofficial AoE page will host other pages
"Its about a new gaming network, just for AOE, that has been started.
Although its not running yet and in planning/design. We are looking for people who want to be hosted for free. The server WILL be run at empires.com but is currently at www.saturnet.com/empires/
So you can have a look at the
basic format!"
Rob
Null modem cable info
Just a hint for all users, a Null Modem cable is just a toy compared to an Ethernet card. If you want to play games with two computers, go ahead and buy a network card; do not waste your money on a slow Null Modem connection.
New poll
The Starcraft poll had an interesting result: 2 out of 5 people will follow the hype and buy the game anyway, while almost as many players want to try the demo first. Some players have had enough RTS games for a while, and only 10% of all people actually listen to reviews.
The new poll asks you about the first real time strategy game you have played. How many old school strategists who have played Dune 2 or Herzog Zwei are still active? Who has been introduced to this genre by C&C or Warcraft?
AoE glossary increased
I have added more words to the AoE glossary, so it will also help you out in chat sessions now. Beginners should check it out.
I have won an award!
This is not AoE related, but too cool to pass up here. In the System programming courses in Zurich, there was a contest: who wrote the best driver for a Null Modem cable? The winner got nearly 80 Kbps, and the program from my team (me, Chrigi and Daniel) was only half as fast.
However, it was the only program that was fully resistant to the "Mouse trap" bug, using an asynchronous transfer protocol that could catch errors with a CRC and packet numbers.
(Moving the mouse affected the chip for the serial port because it used the same interrupt.)
You could even pull out the cable and plug it in again, and the transmission would continue :)
As a special prize for that, we won a mouse trap (a real one) with a chocolate bug caught in it :)
The cool image is from Slashdot.
More than 100 people in the ICQ list
Thank you all for joining the ICQ list. You can now find more than 100 AoE players there! Of course I see the need for better software to make the handling of the list more convenient (e. g. with search/sort options).
AoE glossary
I have added a short glossary that explains the most common AoE terms and abbreviations to new players.
Reader's choice award
PCGamer has their own award (who hasn't) for the game of the year 1997. This time, Total Annihilation has beaten Age of Empires, and no real time strategy game made it into the overall top ten. You can get the full listings at PC Gamer.
The top 5 real strategy games:
| Title |
Votes |
Percent |
| Total Annihilation |
4397 |
50.08% |
| Age of Empires |
2104 |
23.96% |
| Myth |
897 |
10.22% |
| Dungeon Keeper |
759 |
8.64% |
| Dark Reign |
445 |
5.07% |
The top 5 games of the year:
| Title |
Votes |
Percent |
| Quake 2 |
2008 |
22.69% |
| WC: Prophecy |
1786 |
20.18% |
| Jedi Knight |
1495 |
16.89% |
| Fallout |
1444 |
16.31% |
| Curse of Monkey Island |
538 |
6.08% |
Dune 2 remake
Dune 2, the first popular real time strategy game (altough Herzog Zwei was the first RTS game ever, made 1992), will have a comeback as Dune 2000. 5 years after the release of this classic, RTS games have been refined and fine-tuned, but the concept is still the same. According to the preview at PCGamer, the new version will offer multiplayer support and a few new features. I am interested to see Westwood's new RTS title (to be released this spring).
|
September '97 - January '98
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