An AoM Definitive Edition cant be done in the actual engine

[Latulevieja]

Guys as you might now, the graphics engine used for AoM is to old and so outdated. It is obvious they cant use the same Graphics engine for improved visuals.

So I have two speculations about it:

1-The most likely option is that they will use the AoE 3 engine, so they keep it optimized and beautifuly made at the same time, theres no AoE game as beauty as AOE 3 right now, so I think that will work pretty well.

2-Considering AoE 4 is more like AoM, everything is almost the same, even the chickens… they might have been planning this from a while ago and not just right now. I mean even before making AoE 4 they might have thought about AoM Retold. And this means they might be using the AoE 4 graphics engine for AoM Retold. Town center is pretty much like the ones from AOM, the farms too, the gameplay and the holy/aura gold effect surrounding some units are quite the same, and some other more.

So actually imagine AOM in the AOE 4 engine, being made by the perfectionist people from forgotten empires who brought the AoE 2 and 3 DE masterpieces (specially the last one)… in other words, AoE 4 perfect sound and musicalization team plus FE studio graphics improvement to make it looks next gen while keeping the essence of the game… (improved gameplay as well)

If this is the case, which seems to be the easiest one to follow, this game might be the bomb! it could not be any better, it would be a dream because actually AOE 4 engine is so pleasent to the eyes (just bad graphics lol), but improved details, graphics, earth and visual effects would make it amazing. Can you imagine? And its not to crazy to be real, remember thats the same engine of the game (CoH) that let us use V2 bombs for a complete devastation, misil rains, terrain deformation, dust, epic explotions and many other features alike the original AOM. It means that engine might be ready to handle AoM with nowdays graphics.

Just remember that for the retold intro they made pozeidon and zeus exactly the same than the original game!! They could be that much detailed in the final game, considering the perfection brought for AoE 3.

Well those are just my thoughts, what do you think so far? Am I right or do you think I am completely mental?

[EverybodysFoo1]

My thoughts are that when I played AoE4 I honestly had the same thoughts!
There really are quite a few parts which definitely remind an AoM player of AoM. So I personally agree with your take that they might even have planned it for longer and yes I also agree that an update of the old engine they used for 2002 might be too old and lackluster (i mean you can definitely get much out of an old engine like Bethesda always tried to show us) but even they now had to make a new one and we can just hope FE will be the ones overhauling the game in a new engine (which again might be AoE4s)

[Nerathion]

I hope that if they use AoE4’s engine, it won’t have the same camera angle (or graphic style). AoE3DE’s engine looks much more fitting, though I guess making buildings HD is a much larger task for 3D objects than isometric…

[gagp2p]

AOE 3 and AOM use the same engine, so it will be possible, aoe 3 de looks fine, better than aoe 4 - hope its based on the old engine same aoe 3 / aom

[AgeOfAwesomenes]

The original game was on the same engine as aoe 3 so I would think the retold edition will be on AoE 3 de engine, . Hopefully they don’t use aoe 4 engine

[TrickishBook405]

And you say this like speculation from nowhere.

Yes they are the same engine, but I don’t think you understand from a dev’s standpoint, it’d be a useless overhaul of extra work to downgrade AoE3’s changes and units down to AoM again, even if the basis is the same engine. AoE3 is sort of like a hackjob with few improvements and its own set of things.

Things they hardcoded in like unit snaring, design of units: with rifles, cannons, settlements and population system, etc. were all extensively changed to attempt to balance AoE3 in a different direction. So if you just modded that to ‘become AoM’ again it’d still take a lot more reversions and changes that would likely introduce more issues. I would imagine that units would likely have weird bugs that function differently and would have to be ‘fixed’ just to be like the original ones,etc.

The settlements system which is core of AoM’s balance and map control is like totally gone in AoE3, you’d have to like copy paste a lot of stuff. I’m sure with a few minutes, a whole list of needed changes would be full.

I’d like to see it redone properly but this suggestion seems like a waste of time.

It’s bad to even think about that it could be done that way because it’s just so bad an idea.

[CagierNebula24]

@gagp2p

aoe 3 de looks fine, better than aoe 4

The devs should be required to get that as a tattoo.

[LuminousBat543]

Speculation:

The problem is MS does not own the IP to use Relic’s engine for AOE 4. They do own it for AOE 1-3 and AOM, which is why the DEs have been so successful because its not a work for hire. To rehire Relic again to do AOM would be expensive since they would have to recreate everything in relic’s engine like they did for AOE4.

I think they’ll use the AOE 3 DE and keep it internal, in any case twitter still says its still in development, on the insider forum no updates have been made and no emails have been sent, Relic’s or Sega’s logo did not appear anywhere in the announcement leading me to believe, at this moment at least, this is an internal development.

My Observation from the reveal trailer:

Looks pretty similar to Forgotten Empires logo:

Could be coincidence.

[Artemisia7]

Or it could be their take (DE) on the design of the original AoM logo.

[Carlanga926253]

I hope they use the engine of AOE3:DE. Im not sure, but i think that AOM used the same engine that AOE3 20 years ago, so it should be easy to do the same work with AOM:DE

[CagierNebula24]

AOE4 engine is so pleasant to the eyes?

I suggest an urgent visit to your ophthalmologist.

[AssertiveWall20]

I’m really excited about them labeling it: “Retold”

I really like AOM but it came out during the transition from 2D to 3D and it feels really old when you play it. There are so many things that feel like compromises just to get it to run on people’s potatoes. I hope this turns out to be somewhere between AOM:DE and AOM:2.

On a side-note a lot of the innovation that AOE3 gets credit/blame for came first in AOM. In a lot of ways AOM and AOE3 are more similar to each other than AOE2/AOE3, and I would love to see them lean into that.

[CagierNebula24]

I think it will be next year before we hear anything.

I’d love an AOM based on the AOE3:DE engine. I think it looks great (better than 4, that’s for sure).

[EverybodysFoo1]

Seems very reasonable but I have to add in regards of the AoE4 theory that when I personally played it some stuff felt like AoM like they either took partly inspiration of AoM or they wanted to set a base for an already planned new AoM game. At least it felt like it when I played it.

[MatM1996]

@Carlanga926253

I hope they use the engine of AOE3:DE. Im not sure, but i think that AOM used the same engine that AOE3 20 years ago, so it should be easy to do the same work with AOM:DE

Yes,AoM uses the same engine of AoE 3…so Retold maybe will have more or less the same graphics of AoE 3 DE…

[IamDalv]

My guess is that it’s going to use the same Engine as the original AoM, but highly modified graphically, with redone textures and 3D models, just as the AOE 1, 2 and 3 DEs.

[cyberboy2060]

But aoe3de path fining is suck

[EverybodysFoo1]

Well let’s hope so. Something that gives the opportunity for more and good animations would be nice. Bethesda showed how much you can improve your old engine - well at least until a certain level and so it seems AoE3 did.

And about AoE4: I don’t think it’s ugly. I think the decision with the arrows was… odd. I think the environment (ground, flora, buildings) look really nice and already better than AoE3. The problem are the units and the arrows of AoE4 which I agree you have to get used to.

I also don’t understand (if they didn’t tweaked it) why the Ind elephants had a less satisfying attack than the AoM Egypt ones. That bothered me a bit.

But landscape wise I like the art style feels kinda like a drawing.

So I would personally speaking appreciate either a mix of both styles, a much more improved style of AoE3 or a completely different engine (which might be the case if we really get CA to develop it which I hope cause I love their monster design)

[Sok4R]

You spent way to much characters to tell people you have no idea about software development in general and game development in particular. What you suggest is just a whole lot of nonsense.

By your assumption, anything old can’t be remastered. Because, you know what has a even older and more oudated engine? Age of Empires. Got a DE. And Age of Empires 2. Also got a DE. With the old Genie Engine in its core, just more optimized and with lots of sparkels on top.
Porting a game into a new engine is not trivial, and will result in numerous problems. First the game wouldn’t “feel” the same. Specifics in the code, like how units react and pathing works, define how a game feels to the players. AoE1DE as inferiour path finding to AoE2DE, because its based on an older ########## and porting the version from AOE2 would change the game drastically. And this is just one aspect. You rarely can just copy code from on game or engine and it just works in another. Its often better to redo it from the ground up, instead of trying to make something work that is not meant for that environment.

Assets is another thing. For a proper Remaster, they would probably be completly redone from the ground up. So it has to fit with the engine used. Different engines use different definitions, file formats, memory layouts, etc., which make the very rarely compatible. Most engines use their own formats that fits their needs, converted from industry standards. Just because two assets look similar on the surface (like the farms), does not mean the files and data definitions are acutually comparable. AoE4 uses a physically based rendering engine, AoE3 is more traditional engine. This changes the way the assets have to be build from the ground up. And that is just one aspect, although a pretty important one.

You’re not mental, just don’t know anything about game development, but think you do.

[Skadidesu]

How hard would it be to bring AoM to the AoE3(DE) engine?
Many things from AoM are still there like AoE3 still having the code for god powers in the game (not sure if that’s also true for AoE3DE) but how about all the unique features of all the Mythological units. Is there still the code to turn units into stone for example?

If AoE3(DE) stripped most of the code required to make the AoM content work then it might be a better choice to go to a new engine right away that is still in active development, like the Engine of #### ### Company of Heroes 3 now).

It would definitely be a bad choice to try working with the old AoM engine.

Potentially they could use a completely different engine like Unity (Unreal is not that well suited for RTS I think). This way they can easily find new developers.
Using a well established engine makes development a lot easier.