A free clone of the Age of Empires II engine

In highschool we had a filesharing systems that teachers "used" to upload class materials, homework, notes, etc.

In reality, about 5% of the teachers used it to host their syllabus but didn't bother to upload anything for the remainder of the year. My junior year I spent the better part of a semester building a workaround to allow students to locally install AoE via a cracked version that I torrented and brought in on a CD. We hosted the files deep into our technologically inept math teachers directory and buried ourselves during study hall to try and host complete matches in our allotted 40 minutes.

I wonder if it's still there. Even today I can still imagine the cries of "more wood please!" very distinctly.

I remember downloading the demo - a whopping ~60mb. I had to start the download in the morning, went out for a bit and prayed to god that the 56k didn't cut out or my mum didn't use the phone.

I even remember the demo had online capability on MSN. Nine year old me didn't get the point of death match. I tried building as usual in the middle of the map instead of rushing for a corner.

I remember another time me and another player decided to lay down arms and just build. That was fun. I was looking for a SimCity or Caesar III in AoE.

So much fun. I'm glad people feel the same enough to invest so much time in something like this.

What a lot of folks might be unaware of is that the "HD" edition primarily did not do any graphical makeovers; rather they just adapted the game to run on modern screens/OSes, use the steam workshop for mods, and most importantly, they did several expansion packs of absolutely top-notch quality.

They've almost added as many civs as were in the entire original game + all of its expansions: Magyars, Indians, Slavs, Incas, Italians, Berbers, Malians, Ethiopians, Burmese, Khmer, Malays, Vietnamese. Several of these came with completely new architectural styles.

And they did balance patches to the original stuff! It's a dream come true for an old-school AoE2 player like me.

I drew a real-world map of Taiwan for AoE II using Peter Olson's map maker [1].

I'd like to recreate the history of the island and make a video, using AoE II HD to stage some battle scenes. For example, Koxinga's pirates burning the Dutch fort in Tainan. I've already written the script of the 5-minute video, which should be YouTube-ready.

The trouble is, making that scene would need multiplayer, which requires Steam. The non-HD version wouldn't look as good.

Would OpenAge be a better platform for trying to make this video? I'm not much of a movie producer, just a programmer geek who'd like to do this as a hobby project. I actually thought of the idea about a year ago, but never followed it up because I've been too busy trying to find a job.

[1] https://github.com/peterolson/AOE2-Real-Map-Creator

I was playing a free version of Civ1 the other day and the nostalgia took over my body for a whole weekend.

A few stories:

- Still remember the day we went to the store and picked up AoE gold in like ‘98. First game I played was as Byzantines. Still remember the first enemy trebuchet launch with its immense range: “wtf is that and where is it coming from??”

- my brother and I were both into it. It was so addictive but we only had one computer and had to buy the game 3 times b/c we (I?) broke the CDs when we’d fight over it lol

- lots of hiding from my mum playing it at night in living room. Had to be quick to shut the monitor off and hide during dangerous moments.

- Most memorable recorded game was the 3v3 Yucatán between Arch_Koven, L_Clan_Rami, Arch_Vile vs. L_Clan_Bender, L_Clan_Ugnis and Korean (?). Mongol, Celt, Persian vs mongol Spain and ?? An epic that Gilgamesh would be proud of.

- favorite games vs computer were tiny map, 8 player on hard. Scenarios were enthralling too

- worst part, like the PC Gamer review said, was the opening cinematic

Held in Hall Borg: https://streaming.media.ccc.de/35c3/hallb