Is there any way for AoE2 engine to do better with water stuff? It’s looking nice, but just wondering. AoE3 does water quite a bit better, for obvious reasons, and felt it would be cool for AoE2 to get more improvements if possible, such as:
Water displacement effects as ships move?
Like normal map or whatever concentric ripples going out behind ships as AoE3 does:
Instead of the more simplistic effect of AoE2:
Improved look of shallow water. More interesting under water features, like the cool underwater look of AoE3 as it goes from shore to deep water. But also: aqua color, reefs, coral, rocks, plant-life, and such under water. And less noticeable boxy gradation from shallow to deep (visibly square tiles)
- Help show a more realistic shallow depth vs. deeper water color gradient
- Introduce more possible color gradients and contrasts when going from shallow to deep. Sometimes a map author may want to have a gradual transition; others might want steep dropoff to deep sea. Either and all would be cool possibilities.
- I see a ton of blue in AoE2 water maps, as if it’s the only color possible. I think the upcoming DLC will have some greens introduced, that’s cool. For tropical ocean water, I just hope it can be inspired more by AoE3 and real world someday… more greens/aqua colors would be nice, too, rather than always blue. Turquoise, as well
- I bet underwater-only perspective parallax probably wouldn’t be possible to help sell the look, even though that might look cool
Instead of AoE2:
(… which also has a weird darkened band of water right next to the shoreline)
Non-fishable fish or schools of little fish traveling across multiple grid units under water, and near shorelines
- Birds are able to fly over the map, so thought maybe it’s possible. I realize birds are probably done via a simplistic overlay(?), though, completely separate from the restrictive terrain grid. (No, not looking for fish to go across the whole screen in a straight line like birds.)
- I think AoE2 currently just has fishable fish, and they’re constrained to a grid unit or two
Deeper water look when using “3D Water” setting
With 3D Water disabled, you get dark deep waters which is ngreat. When enabled, everything looks pretty shallow:
I bet some things can be nicely faked in the non-3D AoE2 engine, I just don’t know how limiting the engine is. Or if a dev genius or two can someday break the barrier or constraints of whatever gets in the way of some of this stuff being possible in the AoE2 engine
It wouldn’t be the first time things have changed or evolved in the game en masse
