@korowizard said:
in 1997, the Roman and Macedonians didn’t exist.
1 Like
@sulphuric66 said:
The pathfinding in the game is terrible.
First off, Age of Empires Definitive Edition is a remaster of Age of Empires. It’s not a rewrite, it’s not a new engine, and that’s what we’ve been saying for almost a year. Age of Empires 1’s path finding was really bad, as most reviews point out:
https://gamespot.com/reviews/age-of-empires-the-rise-of-rome-review/1900-2532811/
This is the code we started with in DE. Not Age 2, not new code, but the original code which had a ton of flaws and quirks we had to learn about the hard way. This code was almost a quarter of a century old, and it showed. The original movement/pathing code was very weak to say the least. Yet entire complex systems above it (combat, AI, etc.) depended on this super quirky movement/pathing code. It took multiple Ensemble engineers several years of development to go from Age 1 to Age 2 level pathing.
We made a number of improvements to the path finding and unit movement code without breaking the original system. It must be emphasized that Age1’s pather and movement code is extremely tricky and hard to change without breaking a hundred things about the game or AI (sometimes in subtle ways). It was a very tricky balance. The current system still has problems with chokepoints, which can be fixed with more work, but we instead had to focus on multiplayer which had to basically be 85% rewritten.
Here’s a list of fixes made so far to DE’s pathing and movement code in the time I had, which was only like 2 months:
- DE’s pathing system’s findPath() function was speeded up by approx 3-4x faster vs. Age1’s
I performed around a dozen separate optimizations passes on the core pather. I implemented the A* early exploration optimization (eliminating 1 open list insertion/removal per iteration), and massively tuned the C++ code to generate reasonably efficient x64 assembly. We retested the pather and game thoroughly after each major optimization pass.- Age1’s pather’s A* implementation was outright broken (the open list management was flawed, so the cheapest node wasn’t always expanded upon during each iteration). DE’s pather fixes all these bugs and is a proper implementation of A*.
- DE’s pather gives up if after many thousands of iterations it can’t make forward progress towards the goal, to avoid spending CPU cycles on hopeless pathing unnecessarily. (It’s more complex than this, but that’s the gist of it.)
- Added multiple lane support to villager pathing.
- Villagers can use one of two collision sizes (either small or large), so if a villager bumps into another friendly villager we can immediately switch to the smaller radius to avoid stopping. So basically, villagers can get very close to each other, avoiding gathering slowdowns.
- Movement of units through single-tile openings was greatly improved and tested with all unit types. Age 1’s handling of single tile openings was so bad that players would exploit it:
Age of Empires strategies- The DE pather was modified to have a much higher max iteration count than Age1’s, so longer and more complex routes can be found.
- The per-turn pathing cap in Age1 was switched to short and long range pathing categories in DE. 8 short range paths can occur per turn, and for long range paths it supports up to 4 findPaths() per turn.
- For short range paths, straight line paths are preferred vs. the tile path returned by findPath() if the straight line path is safe to traverse.
- Boat movement was modified to have deceleration.
- Waypoints along a path can be skipped if a unit can safely move from its current position to the next waypoint
- Added support for 32-facing angles vs. Age’s original 8. Also, the unit direction/facing angle is interpolated in DE, instead of “snapped” to like in Age1. The interpolation is purposely disabled when units switch angles during combat.
- Added stuck unit detection logic to DE’s movement code, to automatically detect and fix permanently stuck units (rare, but possible).
- We ported Age2’s entire obstruction manager into DE, replacing the old bitmap system. Units use circular obstructions, and buildings use square obstructions.
- Added several new behaviors to the movement code to help with chokepoints: A “wait” behavior, that checks every second or so for up to 45 seconds to see if the unit can be moved to the destination, and a stuck unit “watchdog”, which watches to see if a unit hasn’t made forward progress and tries to switch behaviors to get the unit unstuck. Age1’s code would just give up at the slightest problem.
- The pather tries to path starting from the center of each tile, but this sometimes fails in tight spaces or with lots of units around. DE tries harder to find a good starting position, so movement through single tile openings isn’t broken.
- Path caching system: Villagers and boats can reuse previously found paths in DE, for efficiency.
- In situations that Age1’s pather would just outright give up and stop, DE’s pather tries a lot harder to get the unit where it needs to go using several randomized fallback behaviors.
Age1’s pathing/movement systems implements a form of randomized, emergent behavior. The units are basically like dumb ants. It’s imperfect in chokepoints, but it’s a continuation of the essence of what made Age 1 what it was. If all the units are moving in the same direction it can usually handle chokepoints (I tested this over and over with a wide variety of units on a pathing torture test scenario from MS before release). The fundamental behaviors the AI and combat systems expected were accurately preserved in DE’s pather, which was our goal.
Instead of people saying “the pathing in DE sucks!”, I would much rather hear about the specific issues with movement/pathing, and actually constructive suggestions on how to improve the system without breaking the game or turning it into Age 2.
-Rich Geldreich
Former Senior Software Engineer - Halo Wars Engine Lead - Ensemble Studios
Lots of fancy words, but the game still sucks. You said the focus was on multiplayer and was the first mistake you guys did. Back there in 1997 almost no one had internet and everyone remember the single player campaigns. On beta you guys had to lock single player as everyone just wanted to play that. And guess what, everyone plays only it now. Focus where the players are. The campaign AI is horrendously difficulty or extremely easy…depends on how lucky you are. This should not be like that you can test yourselves not sit and wait the player (clients) to tell you what to fix.
As other guy said, you devs are too closed to suggestions anyway.
@korowizard said:
It’s a shame that the developers themselves are so closed, and they believe that by adding some type of formations this will become AOE 2.I think that the pathfinding will be solved at some point, because they are working on it, but leaving aside the organization of the big armies completely breaks the game.
I do not think it is a “characteristic of AOE 1” that in 1997 there was no possibility of add formations but Roman legions or Macedonians totally disorganized is a flaw, not a characteristic.It is not even necessary that the formations work as in AOK. If you send a group to a specific point, currently this happens:
When in reality this would have to happen:
I think that does not transform it into AOK, it’s logical. If you send a group of people to a point, the most normal thing is for them to gather around that point and NOT to keep their distance, even if they are barbarians of the stone age.
That is the only thing I would add to the game to make it more friendly with the new players, and I do not think that for this reason the spirit of nostalgia is lost.
Currently it is very uncomfortable to manage large armies, especially that they have increased both the population limit.
First ley them fix the issues… (pathfinding)
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@Helepolis said:
@korowizard said:
in 1997, the Roman and Macedonians didn’t exist.
ok, 1998. It’s the same. The expansion just added a couple of things, it’s almost the same as the original.
The Greeks, Persians and others also formed organized phalanges.
I think the reason they did not publish it via Steam is the same reason why the performance is such a grep.
The game is packed end encrypted in the MS-Store Format/UWP, so running in something like a virtual-machine “lite”. Every filehandle hast to be encrypted/decrypted each time, eating power from your cpu, decreasing performance.
Remember the days when Modding AoE was a common thing? Easy, funny and very popular. And now thats just ■■■■! Even if you use something like “UWPDumper.exe”.
And what is in 10 Years? Can we even play this game, WE PAID FOR? I can still run my Classic AoE CD-Rom Collection in Hyper-V or VMware. But this Game only as long M$ thinks to support the servers.
Can’t wait for a crack that converts this UWP-■■■■ into a normal unencrypted programm, with sandbox-free normal PE.
@“Cleglaw the mad” said:
@PEIBFC@sulphuric66 said:“Instead of people saying “the pathing in DE sucks!”, I would much rather hear about the specific issues with movement/pathing, and actually constructive suggestions on how to improve the system without breaking the game or turning it into Age 2.”
i think that phrase suggests otherwise. I encourage you to read whole posts before posting yours… For you know, to be able to discuss or comment on.
My English is so bad bro, did he say there wont be any changes in the pathfinding??
@PEIBFC said:
My English is so bad bro, did he say there wont be any changes in the pathfinding??
He did not say that there will be no changes, but there won’t be any major changes.
As far as Steam goes, MS was having issues and a lot of complaints about their store. One way to address those complaints was adding quality apps. I for one was extremely happy with MS releasing this game in their store only. However, after purchasing it I’ve been very disappointed. I keep reading they wanted to make this game very close to the original release. Fine, but why add the same “bad” things that plagued the original release? All you do is create bad reviews that just add to the store’s problems you’re trying to fix. It just doesn’t make sense.
I never play online and only play custom games. So, my experience is limited in that realm only.
Things that just drive me nuts about this game.
- I know its been discussed before, but NO GATES can be built in a wall?? Really Microsoft. NO GATES?? This one is just mind boggling to me.
- Path finding is pretty bad (as discussed earlier in this thread). One thing I’ve found weird is villagers that are cutting down trees. It just makes sense to cut trees down that are closest to the storage building. Instead, if you leave the tree cutting villagers alone, you’ll find them all over cutting trees down. They’ll pass standing trees to cut others down and then they have to walk around all the standing trees in order to get their arm full of wood back to the storage building. Causing way more time needed to fill your wood storage needs.
- Not sure if its part of path finding but formations. I’d never thought I’d miss that as much as I do. Formations are big and so what if they didn’t exist in the original game. If that is one of the down falls of the original, correct it before release.
- Again, probably formations but, even on hard setting the enemy is pretty easy to defeat. They run into walls and just stand there taking hits from towers or archers until the die.
- Auto farms is another thing that is annoying but something I can live without if need be. I wish that would be addressed as well.
Friends call me a MS fanboy but this game is pretty hard defend even for a fanboy. I’m pretty disappointed. “If” MS is planning to address these issues then I’m willing to wait. However, if they just wanted this game too much like the original before releasing AOE II then I think MS did themselves and their store a disservice.
I just hate it. I wish I could get my money back. In the original I could play the computer on Easy for an easy win, or varying levels of difficulty up to hard, when it won all but one game. Here, even the easy settings defeat me, except when I once won with the wonder. It is far, far too hard. I just hate it.
@RadialLand75368 said:
I just hate it. I wish I could get my money back. In the original I could play the computer on Easy for an easy win, or varying levels of difficulty up to hard, when it won all but one game. Here, even the easy settings defeat me, except when I once won with the wonder. It is far, far too hard. I just hate it.
There is a bug that makes the AI too aggressive on the easier difficulties. It should be fixed soon. In the meanwhile, you can give yourself an AI as an ally and you should be able to win easily.
We can’t blame of thing for other. AoE DE is fantastic!
Not any version of AOE can disappoint me. They all deliver that same feeling of doing micro RTS with more or less additional macro stuff in a classic historical setting.
@qweytr24 They seemed to have fixed this in the latest release. Also while playing campaigns the set difficulty does reflect the chosen level more.
@PCS70 said:
@qweytr24 They seemed to have fixed this in the latest release. Also while playing campaigns the set difficulty does reflect the chosen level more.
Yes, that is fixed now.
Enters kinky
Sits 3-5min in freeze before ‘an error has appeard who knew’
Makes own lobby, freezes if you do anything
Pathfinding
GREAT GAME GUYS YEAH SO STABILE
what the ■■■■ did we pay for? Not this brokenass piece of trash.
If its on steam, origin, uplay, mss, I dont care. Yes I was biased about it but the MSS isnt a pile of ■■■■, like Xbox.
If you can’t even fix ur ■■■■■■■■ issues with ur game even with 4months postponement, dont ■■■■■ publish it like this. Good job, you ■■■■■■ it up. @Microsoft
@sulphuric66 I appreciate your valuable input (your blog has a lot of interesting info btw), however, I feel that the philosophy of keeping “clunky” pathfinding is good just because the old one was indeed not really good is the wrong perspective to look at. Most of people here can manage to play the old game with the original CDs on VM. We bought this not only for blind nostalgia, but also because we wanted a more comfortable game to enjoy what we really liked on the first AoE. I can live with no auto reseed, complex formations (I would enjoy a basic “reunion” of the units in a location though) and gates, but a decent pathfinfing would only do good (and even bring more people to the franchise)… Not being able to move units in a very open space only harms the quality of the game. I guess that the devs had some kind of disconnection on how we would react to an untouched concept on how a pathfinding should be on DE. Let’s keep in mind that it is hard to define if this game is a remake or if is a remaster (it feels something in between for me, IMHO).
Oh, off topic request, but since you have a lot of technical knowledge about the game, do you know if the no implementation of the ELO was a deliberate action or if it had some kind of technical impossibilitie? And you made a very nice post on your blog briefly commenting in a few lines about the super acceleration that a unit shows going downhill… Could you tell us one day more in depth about that? (even a topic regarding it would be very interesting, showing your side of the story of AoE: DE creation). I couldn’t see on how it really affects the combats on hilly areas… Maybe I’m missing something obvious. Have a nice day and thanks for joining the discussion.
I thought the acceleration was just an illusion. I guess you can test by having units walk across screen, one up hill, one down, and one on flat, too see if it does really speed up
How long for them to release a new patch?
I think aoe de is just a test for aoe 4.
I agree… who knows what the reason for not uploading on steam was but as the customers WE DESERVE THE EXPLANATION… I could honestly not care less about all the dozens of other useless posts like devs streaming and playing age of empires.
The biggest flaw in my eyes is 1. can’t play single player if you don’t have an internet connection and you gotta create a microsoft account and such. Seriously, eeeeeeeevery single company nowadays is asking you to create a special account on their special site. Maybe 2 accounts. Or 3. FFS
And why the ■■■■ is AI still just as stupid as in 1998? I created a scenario and the AI doesn’t do anything. Also, the scenario has not been improved at all, the list of units on the left side is just a huuuuuuge list without any filters. WTF. And the pathfinding is still horrible!!
Disappointing but meh.
I can’t post a topic which is really stupid so I’ll ask here… how do I change my in-game avatar? I changed the one on forums but it’s different than the one in-game. See here /stats/multiplayer/LiviuMarin