@PhatFish said:
Finally the first good look at what DE has to offer. It looks beautiful. Nice to see the different shader options. Animation is top notch. I noticed some things right away that should be changed though, starting with the ridiculous small instruction text field. Should be made bigger vertically. Old original bitmaps won’t blend in with the background. Also the minimap cliff colors are still brown. Why in the world are the wood and food resource counters switched around? That will really confuse players! Same thing for the command and status screens.
Very eager to see the AI in action, in this gamescom demo it does absolutely nothing lol. Passive .per I assume. I hope the AI is improved since I read/heard nothing about it.
Actually the resource counters order seems logical: 1st you gather food, then wood, then gold and stone. Just my opinion.
@GrimToadstool said:
I like to see the gameplay, but whoever played that had no idea how to show off the game. We couldn’t see the queues properly, the build menu, the pathfinding. But he made sure he didn’t lose with cheating ressources.
You can see unit queues at about 1 minute mark. I think there weren’t any villagers to show the build menu (there is far than enough resources). Not sure how you want to see the pathfinding: many units moving through an area filled with trees? (this can be seen in the latest trailer)
The game looks fantastic! Sure there are some animations that definitely need to be fixed (elephants’ attack and tower destruction for example) and that elevation bug that @Penelinfi found of course but otherwise everything is great: graphics, sounds, music, UI! Can’t wait to play and really hope to get into the beta asap!
Looks like it’s coming along nicely I’d say.
Roll on the 19th of Oct!
So you can’t change the much heralded ‘new zoom’ in game with a key press, you have to go into the options to do it?
@CagierNebula24 said:
So you can’t change the much heralded ‘new zoom’ in game with a key press, you have to go into the options to do it?
You can probably use your scroll wheel.
Another thing I noticed–the rubble of crushed houses looks exactly the same each time, unlike in the original Age I or II where the rubble appeared in a different situation (rotated differently) each time. The building destruction animations may look better, but the rubble does not. In real life houses do not look exactly the same when collapsed. (See 5:30 mark, which also features the absolutely godawfully animated elephants).
Also, the icons of the original Age I were not kept–so now they look muted and it’s difficult to distinguish horse archers from cataphracts, for example.
I wouldn’t freak out about artistic details yet. Still worth mentioning, but those are often some of the last things on the list to get finalized.
@mythdracon said:
Another thing I noticed–the rubble of crushed houses looks exactly the same each time, unlike in the original Age I or II where the rubble appeared in a different situation (rotated differently) each time. The building destruction animations may look better, but the rubble does not. In real life houses do not look exactly the same when collapsed. (See 5:30 mark, which also features the absolutely godawfully animated elephants).
Also, the icons of the original Age I were not kept–so now they look muted and it’s difficult to distinguish horse archers from cataphracts, for example.
We still have two months to go before launch. They will probably mix it up a bit as this could just be a placeholder.
Re: pathfinding, you can see them get bunched up trying to fit through the wall funnel at the wonder. It may be possible to guess what’s happening when they move around the corners of cliffs on the way up, as this was an area units would sometimes act as if there was no way to the instructed area.
I do miss the objects at campaign map, currently they look like flat (minimalistic) maps, where are my monks or soldiers over the pointing arrows :neutral:
Wait you can’t show it, no screenshots no video, no gameplay sharing. But ign show it on YOUTUBE WTH.
That is allow than???
@BRNanoFighter said:
@Elke1988 said:
Wait you can’t show it, no screenshots no video, no gameplay sharing. But ign show it on YOUTUBE WTH.
That is allow than???
maybe IGN got a permission to show the current stage of the game (as shown in Gamescom)
I see it was just gamescom demo gameplay. mayby that was allow
If it wasn’t allowed, I’m sure it would have been taken down by now 
I’m pretty sure the staff said that any photos and video from /of GamesCon can be shared.
Part of the reason they don’t want a public sharing of the beta by everyone is that you’d end up with a lot of footage with bugs and other issues, which non-suspecting people would stumble across and think was the final product.
@CagierNebula24 said:
So you can’t change the much heralded ‘new zoom’ in game with a key press, you have to go into the options to do it?
Maybe you can set default zoom in options?
Improve according to me, the icons taken a while from AoE 3 and AoM, then some units like the catapult stoned with the rest of the units, the initial menu would be a touch of class resume the old one instead of the priest. The IA has improved, the graphics, but not all over. A nostalgic touch must always be there.
Most of the unit icons are tough to distinguish–they all look muted gold. So no, they aren’t an improvement over the original icons, which at least were easy to see and immediately tell what they are. In the demo, the only unit icon that stands out is that of the elephant.
It’s nice that they brought the ancient artwork back into the interface background:
Much more subtle this time around, I love it
There is just something wrong with the horses’ neck, being bent over and not holding its head up high. At least turn around the horse archer icon so it faces the other direction, doesn’t get mixed up with heavy cavalry ;p