News archive
AoK showcase: Japanese
"The first ever Age of Empires II: Age of Kings Showcase debuts with the first
civilisation -- Japanese.
The first of 13 exclusive features showcasing the different civilisations
will include screenshots, units, buildings and sounds unique to the Japanese
culture. Mark Terrano, Lead Designer, tells why he prefers this civ:
'The Japanese civilization was also one of the first where Chris Rippy
(Sound Engineer) added the specific voice -- I've already learned a little
Japanese for woodcutter and miner. With the clean lines and light wood
colors in their interface, as well as the beautifully rendered buildings,
the Japanese are usually among my first picks when selecting a civilization.'"
The showcase has lots of screenshots, a few sound samples, and much historical information about Japan in the Middle Ages. It also has some information about how the Japanese will play - their infantry will be their greatest strength, and the Samurai will be their super unit. Also, fishing boats will be greatly enhanced. Don't miss the screenshot of the gorgeous "dragon ship"! The greatest bonus is probably that gathering site buildings only cost half as much as usual. This allows for very fast expansions, and for great conquering strategies. Of course, the bonuses can still change slightly over the next few months.
Also, the release date for AoK is now officially Fall 99. It will be shown to the public in the E3 Expo next month. I guess the schedule with testing will be like for AoE - only two years later.
AoK showcases coming soon
Ensemble Studios is going to present some "AoK showcases" from April 20 on. These will, as did the very first ones, show screenshots and go into detail about a particular feature of AoK. It is now a very long time ago (more than half a year) since details about AoK were published by Ensemble Studios; however, much has become known through reviews in game mags. However, I am sure that we will see some new stuff there, reducing the waiting time until the release of the game.
HTML PLAIN
This acronym stands for "HTML preprocessor lacking an interesting name". I have been working at that project for the past few months, which is also why I did not update that page very often. The latest version should install easily under any operating system, but I need some testers. So if you have some time, please go to the HTML PLAIN page and check it out.
While I will not be able to do any more scenario testing soon, please keep sending in scenarios and campaigns - I will test them later on.
I was busy...
Again I could not update the page for a while. I finished version 1.0 of HTML PLAIN, a very useful HTML precompiler. Because I spend most of my time doing that, I did not have the chance to update this page. I hope I can catch up with scenario testing and everything else later.
As most people guessed, the news about the beta signup was a hoax. Because Ensemble is running a huge alpha testing, beta testing will not be very important, and probably carried out rather shortly before the release. This is similar to the beta tests of Civilization: Call to Power, which will be released April 26. So all strategists have something to look forward to, even though AoK is not finished yet!
Gamespot's interview with Bruce Shelley
Gamespot UK has fully published the interview with Bruce Shelley taken two weeks ago (parts of it were published in a preview). It has some interesting information about the AI, formations and the heroes:
"We'll ship a number of AI scripts with the game, so you'll be able to play against those right away in a randomly generated or multiplayer game. But you'll also have the ability to write your own AI script, put it back in your data file and play against it." (...)
"The way the formations work, basically, is that there are fighting ones and movement ones. There are different kinds of fighting ones: columns, lines and wedges. You'd put your missile units at the back and hand-to-hand fighters at the front. If you take a formation and just move it slightly, it'll stay in the same formation. But if you move your soldiers a long distance, they'll go into a column formation that moves faster, and then, when you get there, they'll go back into a fighting formation." (...)
"The campaigns are based on historical figures. They're kind of story-based.
Joan, for example, starts off as a peasant girl
who comes in and rallies her army. Then, in the next scenario, she's the
leader of her army.
Joan is actually on the map. All the heroes are on the map, so there'll be
a William Wallace piece and a Genghis Khan piece.
They're usually powerful units, but if you lose them, you're out of the
scenario, so be careful how you use them.
And they might have a special ability."
The unit AI is not scriptable, but after I saw the performance of scripted unit AI (even compiled as a dynamic library) in Baldur's Gate, I think that this generation of processors is not ready for this yet (at least not for dozens or hundreds of units in a strategy game).
Finally! AoK beta signup
Everyone has been waiting for public beta tests (the current "usability testing" in the area of Dallas is an alpha testing, since it is not really public), and here they are. All you have to do to sign up for the list where 100 lucky people are chosen is to send an e-mail to I.want.to.be.a.beta.tester.for.AoK@microsoft.com. You should write a few specs about your computer (processor, RAM, graphics adapter and sound card) because some of the testers will be chosen based on their hardware, others just at random. You don't need to include your home address or any other personal information. Good luck!
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September '97 - March '98
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