Age of Mythology — Update 2.8 Preview [Official Discussion]

[GMEvangelos]

UPDATE NOTES

Age of Mythology — Update 2.8 Preview

DISCUSS!

Over the next month or so, we will be collecting multiplayer data and information regarding desyncs and game performance to verify that the 2.8 Update had a positive impact on the game. To aid with this, we need a few things from those of you interested in exploring the new build:

• Play multiplayer matches!
• Report desyncs!

This information will be the most useful as we continue to analyze and make tweaks to the game. As mentioned above, we also fixed some major rendering issues, so please let us know if you notice a difference or see any new visual issues as you play. Once you’ve had an opportunity to play with them, you are invited to discuss the changes with others on the official Discord or right here in this thread, where we’ll be looking to learn more about your experience.

Thank you for your ongoing support and help; we’ll see you on the battlefield!

[TallishSpy8594]

Fixed an issue where hotkey customizations would not save properly, causing both the custom and default configurations to be active at the same time.

Very good fix, but Defaultkeymap*.xml is still flagged as desync sensitive, so no playing multiplayer with hotkey mods.

Very annoying, because the hotkey editor doesnt allow conflicting hotkeys.

Back in the disc version, I used to mod all age 2 myth units to the same hotkey (q - button creates anubite, sphinx, etc). Normally game requires you to have them to be in the different buttons which is really annoying when playing different gods.

And any news on _anim files desync tag fix? People should be allowed to use cosmetic mods on units. Like Xentelians unit upgrades.

_anim.txt files, desync sensitive tag and online matches

Original AoM:TT allowed to use modified _anim.txt files online. Sadly AoM:EE tag all _anim.txt files as desync sensitive and wont allow them in online matches. For that reason Xentelian’s Unit upgrades wont work online. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1847625570 I found that there has been some efforts to fix that. https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/discussions/18446744073709551615/35221031709087635/?appid=266840&ctp=6 "Anim Sync Checker WarriorMario is working on a…

[PlokiteWolf]

Awesome to see this game is not abandoned after all!

[MSTRSup3rninja]

Absolutely wonderfulll!!!

[AfternoonWall94]

Should probably restore the Scarab and Battle Boar’s shine effects (aka their use of the .CUB files) that’s really the only thing missing atm.

Also on the topic of QOL changes, a disable autoqueue option in the random map game menu would be nice, and be a nice little thing to convince some of the Voobly players to move over to AoMEE.

[AfternoonWall94]

Forgot to mention, the unexplored fog of war edge should be fixed to be a smooth transition like the original game, as the effect looks pretty blegh in AoMEE at the moment.

[McLerristarr]

Thank you for these changes. Here is some small feedback:

• Allowing Sea Snakes to attack more units is good but it needs tweaking. Minions can attack the same way normal soldiers do, and Serpents can attack almost all units just not buildings, but their naval counterparts Ghost Ship and Sea Snake (using the Sea Serpent unit AI) can only attack human soldiers, myth units and war ships. They can’t attack heroes, animals, siege weapons, villagers, buildings, fishing ships, caravans, shades or Oracles. They should at least be able to attack the Argo. Presently, you can send the Argo in to fight them and they can’t fight back.
• The patch notes say that Chaos can no longer affect Ravens, but the tag was not removed from Raven in the proto file. Chaos also shouldn’t affect Oracle Scouts (because they can’t attack so they just stand there).
• There are still some broken textures / graphical glitches, which can be seen when placing units in the editor: Broken Siege Weapons (two variations) and Mini Atlantis are ones I’ve noticed recently. The player colour is also missing from the Statue of Poseidon, Market Stall and Kastor with Staff.
• The petrified and acid melt animations (from Medusa, Perseus and Argus special attacks) look broken compared to the original game.
• The Atlantean tech tree is missing Medium Archers and Medium Cavalry. The Chinese tech tree has Stone Wall instead of Stone Wall Chinese.

[AfternoonWall94]

Another thing, Bump Maps seems to be broken, probably due to a changed shader file.

[IamMirezNL]

Massive improvement overall, excellent job. However I did spot a few things.

• Hotkeys

  • Hammer ship/ram ship inconsistency in dock unit training
  • kopesh swordsman listed in egyptian barracks as “Dragon Turtle”
    • multiple kopesh swordsman listed as “multiple Dragon Turtle”
  • bogsveigir listed in norse hill fort as “Build Stable”
    • multiple bogsveigir listed as “Build Garden”
  • onager listed in atlantean palace as “storage pit”
  • There’s a seperate category “Shenning chinese castle unit training” with just fire lances and sitting tigers. Why? This category doesn’t need to exist.
  • No hotkey option for multiple white tiger
  • When you assign a unit his original hotkey it doesn’t work. For example I change the the Egyptian Camelry to S. However I later decided to put it back to C. The key wouldn’t work anymore. Same happened to the Norse dwarf and generic Caravan Unit.
    I can “fix” this by first pressing unbind and then press on default. However it’s still rather undesirably because not every player knows the default keymaps.

• Options

  • Vsync doesn’t work when you launch the game while it’s enabled. You need to uncheck, accept, then re-enable vsync every time you launch the game in order to make it work.

• Visual

  • Fishing spots remain almost impossible to see. I find myself looking at the minimap and then randomly clicking in the water hoping I hit one of the spots.

• Misc

  • Walking Gaia Tree is called “Walking Oak”

[HumorousSauce61]

Hi!
Thanks for the new patch. I noticed a new issue with the wolf ambient sound. Yesterday I was playing against the AI in Jotunheim, and the Wolf howl sound played every time I pressed the Pause button. Since I was playing against the Titan AI, I had to pause quite often and the sound was a bit distracting.

I also noticed that the <initialresource resourcetype="Food"> code is disabling the bored animation of the nature animals since the original release of the Age of Mythology. I am not sure if this is intended but it would be nice to have bored animal animations in actual gameplay.

I also noticed some minor issues with the rainbow and the water lillies. Rainbow is almost invisible and the water lilies show up beneath the surface of the water.

Thanks again for the patch, and the new scripts. I also really hope that some of the constants will be modifiable in future patches. Pop cap is included in the Scenario editor, but it never goes beyond 300 hundred for example. Civilization/Culture scripts sound very promising, but I would really love to have an easily modifiable XML file for civ/culture similar to the techtree.

[MagnificChip493]

Game Version:

• Latest official patch, still present in 2.8 beta as well

Issue:

Simply put, the unit models in EE are missing details that were present in the original version of the game. In one such example, the hoplite unit’s spear is missing a lot of the metal details etc.

Reproduction Steps:

1. Just build various units and compare them to how they look in the original version of the game. They’re not rendering properly for whatever reason.

[McLerristarr]

There’s a seperate category “Shenning chinese castle unit training” with just fire lances and sitting tigers. Why? This category doesn’t need to exist.

I’m not an expert on hotkeys, but I assume it’s because Shennong Fire Lances and Sitting Tigers are different units to regular Fire Lances and Sitting Tigers.

Walking Gaia Tree is called “Walking Oak”

There’s no Walking Woods unit for Gaia trees so Gaia trees turn into oaks. Changing that would require duplicating the Walking Oak unit and renaming it (which would be pointless and confusing) or creating a new unit animation for Gaia trees.

[AfternoonWall94]

The latter would be simple actually as the walking woods trees use attachpoints to place the trees on the “root legs”

[MagnificChip493]

Here’s an extremely minor nitpick: the history entry for Archers says that the Norse do not have any archer units. This should be updated to reflect the existence of the Bogsveigir in EE.

[McLerristarr]

You’re right actually. They don’t need to create a new animation. They should do it then.

[Megamanfooh]

I think shennong is still weak, he has very mediocre benefits compared to all other civs like reducing the cost of improving the wall and converting mythical unit with the bad monk (it only works against AI practically) and one of the main reasons is the fire lancer it appears to be weaker against units than the fuxi / nuwa.the wood GP is ok
Here some sugestions:

• double the wall’s hp and an equivalent increase in wall improvements can increase some of castles hp too.

• monks have twice the conversion range as before patch 2.7 (if monks are so OP which is something Icompletely disagree maybe maybe with that it is more chosen than fuxi / nuwa(heroes and siege counter them totally and only defending that they are good and the converted non-mythical units are weak because they do not retain the improvements if they are not Chinese)

• the fire lancer must replace the chukonu with the shennong and by that I mean he must be better against units and maybe worse against buildings to balance because the 2 range splash is almost useless and simply placing it in a scattered formation makes it completely useless, the sitting tiger is better against construction and the fire lancer is only really good against construction in the last age when the catapult is already available and which is very good by the way but it doesn’t pay off to get shennong if it isn’t for the fire lancer who should be the stronger one.this 2.8 patch only improves the fuxi and nuwa’s fire lancer, the shennong’s one remains practically the same.

• if none of these are possible, maybe that will serve to reduce the cost of the villagers that nuwa had and they took it from there to instead shennong because it would not be OP to give shennong a bonus because the ones of his are quite irrelevant.

• East Sea and Ancient Destroyer is too much expensive imo it should be not half but 1/3 cost.

• The nordic bogsvegir in addition to being clearly the best archer in the game receives the infantry improvements this is very OP, I think anyone who plays nordic has realized that they are very good and must have specific improvement of archers again to slow them down a little.

thanks for patch 2.8 i really appreciate the effort and dedication i really liked it

[McLerristarr]

Graphical issues

Screenshots captured with highest graphics settings on 3 June 2020 with 2.8 beta up to date.

1. Water lilies are not showing up correctly.
   

   

2. Dragon Turtle’s water ripple effect is broken. Plus it has no selection circle (no Chinese naval units seem to have one).
   

   

3. When cycling through variations of Cinematic Rocks in the editor, the shadow of the previous version remained after going to the next one. I’ve seen the problem with other objects. I don’t know if it’s a general problem or specific to certain objects.
   

   

4. Fish appear quite pixelated.
   

   

[NakamuraRTS]

To fix the pixelation, turn off FXAA and water refraction. Both make the game look terrible.

[McLerristarr]

Problems

1. The edge of water looks bad under fog of war.

2. Learn to Play scenario 2 (Pleasing the Gods), Fall of the Trident scenarios 9 (Revelation) and 10 (Strangers), and that campaign’s final cinematic all have .scx files, which are overriding the original .scn files. The new files use the current data set rather than the vanilla data set.

3. Arkantos is bugged in the cinematic before Revelation, and he remains bugged in the level unless I skip the end of the cinematic.

4. Revelation has bad pathing. Units often refused to move or got stuck. At one point, Arkantos got permanently stuck next to a stalagmite, which eventually deleted itself (but he was still stuck).

5. There are visual issues in the final cinematic, such as boats floating above the water.

6. Mother Nature in campaign scenarios is always worshipping a god rather than Nature. Sometimes the god in vanilla scenarios is Nu Wa. (I’m not sure if a Chinese god appears without having the DLC installed.)