| August 15 |
Old upgrades disappearing/crippled in RoR?
Wild rumors are going around about upgrades being disabled or crippled in the expansion. Calm down, this will of course not happen :) but it is true that some upgrades are slightly changed (either getting stronger or weaker). You will soon have a chance to ask all the questions you want...
Rise of Roms units
I have made an overview with all Rise of Rome units, their special attributes, their strengths and their weaknesses. Their true strenghts can only be determined in a real game, though, which will have to wait until November 5 (official release date).
Interview with Stephen Rippy
You have had your chance - the form for the questions is now closed. The interview will take place soon. Stay tuned for the answers :)
| August 14 |
All RoR upgrades on one page!
I have revamped the page about the Rise of Rome upgrades, now showing the costs of all upgrades and the civilizations for which they are not available. Because that info has been published now, there is nothing left in the manual that cannot be found in one of the two official Rise of Rome pages.
Rise of Roms screenshots
Microsoft has made an ftp directory with RoR screenshots available for download and use on webpages for everyone. Check it out.
In-house competition between webmasters ;)
Well, it just seems like that sometimes when you look at Ensemble's Rise of Rome page - Microsoft's page about that has nearly everything, but Michael comes up with some extra information now - unit costs, designer's information about the map types etc.
Yesterday, the new Mediterranean map type was released with a commentary from Sandy Petersen, Lead Designer. Over the next three Wednesdays, you will find each of the remaining map types revealed, complete with screen shots and some expert commentary from Petersen.
On the "Weekend Edition" of the news, ES will be posting the remaining Units as well as other juicy tidbits of information not already discussed in detail anywhere else.
| August 13 |
Questions for Stephen Rippy - two days left
I have two days left for submitting your questions for the interview with Stephen Rippy, so if you want to ask something, you had better follow that link quickly...
More about the RoR manual
I have read the entire manual now, and I was surprise how little extra information it contains that has not been posted officially yet. Basically the only extra things are the exact unit attributes and upgrade costs, and the availability of the new units to "old" tribes. A few of the old upgrades have also been modified in order to work together with the new setting. All in all, you do not miss much by not having the manual yet. I am not unhappy for having it, though ;)
Btw, for completeness, the most important features (already posted before) are:
- New ability to queue the production of units.
- Double-clicking a unit selects all units of that type on the game screen.
- New Random civilization option so you don't know which civilization you're playing until the game starts.
- In multiplayer games, there is now an in-game option to change the population limit using the Game Settings.
RoR upgrades
I have made a page about the upgrades in RoR. It is not just a copy of the official information, but I also give my two cents about how strong I estimate the upgrades to be in the game.
RoR on warez
"Rise of Rome" continues the infamous tradition of being warezed before it is even finished. It has been posted on Microsoft's ftp server for the testers to download (at least rumors say that). The location slipped out and spread over newsgroups. This shows the interest for the expansion, but on the other hand, it will require using CD keys for future betas. They should be grateful that the downtime of Microsoft's web server is so high so only few people can access their news and files :>
| August 12 |
Unauthorized copy of the RoR manual floating around
Someone had sent me a copy of the manual of the expansion. However, the beta test will be handled internally, under a non-disclosure agreement. Therefore, that person was not allowed to send the manual to other people, and I will not post any information from it. If some other web masters get a copy of the manual, please tell them to do the same.
New scenario, new campaign
BlackDouglas who has created the new unit tables has also made a great campaign.
"The ultimate test must be how I felt having completed the 7 scenarios - I wanted more! Well done, well planned and layed out." (David, after playing it)
If you want to play that campaign, too, go quickly to the scenario section - and do not miss the other excellent new single player scenario either.
| August 11 |
Zone and expansion news
A new rule has been introduced:
"Have you ever joined a game of Age, forgotten to check the settings for "no cheating," and then had some guy immediately drive a rocket-launcher sports car over your Stone Age settlement? Well, now the oversight won't cost you like it used to. If you're dropped or resign from a Rated game within the first four minutes, you get an "abandonment" instead of a loss. By itself, this doesn't cost you any rating points, but don't make a habit of abandoning games: every 10th abandonment costs you...a whopping 100 points."I think that punishing someone for the 10th abandoned game is a strange and inconsequent rule. Without it, abandoning games due to high lag would be easy, but like this, it remains a luxury. What do you think?
Ask Stephen Rippy
What did you always want to ask a game co-designer and composer? Now it's your turn! Ask Stephen Rippy everything about creating sound effects, the music in AoK or whatever comes to your mind. However, questions about AoE strategies or technical problems belong to the Message board rather than an interview.
Gamecenter RoR preview announced
Gamecenter will feature a Rise of Rome preview at the end of this week (August 14). An interview with Bruce Shelly and Stephen Rippy will also be part of the preview. Stay tuned.
Restructuring this page
In the next few days, I will restructure this page. Only the technical framework will be touched for now, so you should not see any difference except that some pages may be at different locations, so external links may become broken. If you want to help me, please send me an e-mail. Experience with shell scripts or parsed HTML is welcome but not needed.
| August 10 |
ROR information
I have put up a section about the AoE expansion - Rise of Rome. So far, I have posted a few links to older information and to the screenshots that are available. I will soon post some information about the units and technologies that are available.
New graphical tech tree sheet
Mr. Fixit has posted some a new version of his graphical tribe sheet. It now contains extra information such as unit speed etc. There is only a generic sheet available yet (with all technologies). Please give him some feedback about the improvements, because the new specific tribe sheets will depend on that.
Empire Earth preview
"GameCenter has posted this new piece on Empire Earth." (Mr. Grinch)
It is the first really extensive preview, and it comes with a good interview. There are also a few early screenshots of the game. Highly recommended!
AoE quiz
"At Ogre's Age of Empires, [you can] test your AoE knowledge by taking Ogre's AoE Quiz.
It is a short 8 question Javascript quiz that you will need to have I.E.
4.0 or Netscape 4.0 to play."
It's not a very hard test but will be a challenge for casual players.
| August 8 |
Microsoft's ROR page opens!
The ftp site has not much useful stuff yet, but their official AoE expansion page is truly amazing. Unlike the AoE page, this one has a lot of information about all new units, upgrades and other features of the game. It also has many nice screenshots. I will post some of them with thumbnails later (there are no thumbnails at MS's page). Anyway, have a look at that page if you are interested in the expansion, it is certainly worth the time!
There is also a Rise of Rome page at Ensemble's site, but for once, it holds less information than Microsoft's counterpart. Go there if you want a short summary of the best features of the expansion.
| August 7 |
Expansion web page and ftp directory
Microsoft will open both their AoE expansion page and a new ftp directory with screenshots today. Since Ensemble's page has little information about the expansion (though a tons of info about the sequel), it will be worth to check it out.
Thanks to Steve for keeping people informed with his press releases.
| August 6 |
New scenarios!
Finally, I could update the scenario section again. Go there and get the new scenarios! There is something for everybody - new single player and multi player scenarios can be found. I am afraid that a rather large part of the submitted scenarios had to be rejected, usually due to lack of playtesting. So if you design a scenario, please take your time tweaking it before making another one.
Anyway, this page is always open for good maps ... submit your scenarios if you have good ones!
All unit statistics - now also printable
I have realized that Excel's HTML output was far worse than what my Perl script that I had written in 30 minutes produces. That is why I have rearranged BlackDouglas' AoE statistics in better (i. e. shorter) HTML form. The pages should now display correctly under any browser, and load up in time. There is also a link to a script that makes the pages printable.
Note that the tables have been made automatically, so they do not represent the most compact HTML code possible, but it is still 50% smaller than what Excel produced :)
| August 5 |
Rise of Rome News
"On Friday, August 14, GameCenter will be publishing an exclusive preview of RoR including an interview with designers Burce Shelley and Sandy Petersen. Be sure to pop over there on Friday to see what they have to say about the expansion pack. There are sure to be lots of images, descriptions of the new units, and much more.Microsoft will also put up a Rise of Rome page this Friday, together with an AoE2 page even though Ensemble's page has much more information.
Additionally, the Ensemble Studios site will be changing their weekly Themes from AoE II to RoR. Commencing this Friday, August 7, ES will feature RoR screen themes, all of which are available for you to post on your Web site."
Win a signed tech tree poster of "Empire Earth"!
"Stainless Steel Studios, the game development company founded by Rick Goodman (creator/lead-design of Microsoft's Age of Empires®), has announced a daily historical trivia contest that's being held online at the company's web site, starting on July 31st.
Gamers interested in learning more about Empire Earth® the real-time, multi-player strategy game for the next millennium that's being created by Goodman, and those who want to participate in the daily historical trivia contest, should visit the official Stainless Steel Studios web site at http://www.stainlesssteelstudios.com." You can read the full press release for more information before you go to the contest page.
E-mail problems solved
You can now again use the old address, as usual, and I have received all messages from yesterday.
| August 4 |
Submit your questions for the interview!
As announced before, I have set up a script for your questions for Stephen Rippy. I will choose the best ones for the interview in two weeks. Finally you can have an interview where the questions you want are asked! (However, I cannot guarantee that he will give out secrets about Age of Empires 2.)
E-mail problems
My current e-mail account seems to have been down for about 24 hours by now. Please send your e-mails to cartho@mordor.ch until the problem is solved. I am afraid you will have to resend old mails unless they have been answered.
| August 3 |
Kali for Linux available!
Good news - the first beta version of Kali for Linux, Kalinix 0.9, is available at ftp://www.kali.net/pub/kali/kalinix/knix09.tgz. This first version still has a few bugs (which will be cleaned at 1.0 stage) and is still entirely command line based. It should be quite easy to add a graphical extension, though; if someone is interested in doing this, send a mail to majordomo@kali.net with "subscribe kalinix-digest" in the message body to get on the mailing list.
Rise of Rome unit: the Camel Rider
Ensemble shows the most unusual of the units from the expansion pack: the Camel Rider:
"The camel rider was created for several reasons. The most important is that they are particularly effective against cavalry. (...) While the old-fashioned cavalry rush can still be pulled off, it is less dominant, somewhat riskier, and he rusher is far better off if he accompanies his rush with some other types of soldiers (swordsmen, archers, etc.) to help protect the cavalry."More screenshots are available at Ensemble's page about camel riders.
Rise of Rome logo
I had posted the Rise of Rome logo with a minor change a while before. A few people have noticed the joke; the link above points to the unchanged logo ;)
Perl hacker wanted :)
I need someone to help me setting up and changing a few Perl scripts. Some of tasks are easy, some of them not, and I am afraid I do not have enough time to handle everything alone. So if you want to learn more about CGI programming, please send me a mail.
| August 1 |
Interview with Stephen Rippy
I am glad to announce an interview with Stephen Rippy in about two weeks. Keep checking back this page, because you can submit your questions as soon as I have written the CGI script for it :)
Please do not send me questions via e-mail - I will handle everything with a mail form.
Empire Earth network
"I have just created an Empire Earth network. It is called The Empire Earth Network (what a coincedence =) and is located at http://eenetwork.gamescentral.com"
Submitted scenarios
Thanks go to all the (many) people who are now reviewing the scenarios. Expect the scenario section to be updated again soon with some great new maps. Because so many people help with reviewing, I can now accept plenty of new maps. Submit your scenarios! Especially multi player maps are welcome, for the people who do not always want to play with random maps.
Scenario testers for multi player scenarios are still welcome.
Last weekly theme at ES
The 7th weekly theme at Ensemble's official AoE2 page will be the last one for quite a while. This is understandable, because they do not want to spoil all surprises from AoE2 ;)
The current theme is about ships and shows a nice screenshot from two different AoE ship, one of which is shown above. There is no information about how naval combat works in AoE2, but this is their greatest innovation, so it will be kept secret till the first alpha versions come out.
Rise of Rome logo
Finally, the upcoming Age of Empires expansion has it own logo. It is the standard AoE logo with a subtitle under it - enjoy the Rise of Rome logo :)
| September '97 - July '98 |
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