3.Color contrast
In OG AOE the color contrast is very strong. It means, gold is gold, white is white.
For example the chariot, the crew wears a pair of gold greave. Also ,the horse wears gold decorations.
The color is bright and pleasing, meanwhile the readability of this unit is very good.
When it turns to ROR and DE，the color become dim and dirty.
As a result,the readability of this unit reduces sharply and disastrously.
In OG AOE， you can tell a cavalry just by one glimps from a mass of people.
But in ROR and DE, it won’t happen because the white horse is not white anymore.
Same situation happens to the buildings.
In OG AOE the color contrast is very strong.
In ROR and DE, maybe devs want the building looks more real and quaint so they add too many variegation to it.
Unfortunately, they failed to find the fine line between reality and readability.
If you ask me , I prefer what Petroglpyh Games did to CNC1 remastered.
They enhanced the graphic without missing any detail such as decaying effect and unit animations.
The readability increases rather than reduces.
In another word, they only add things, and add it in a smart way.
So at the end, every one is happy.
I don’t agree.
AoE1DE and RoR look really good.
Yes some details are not that nice like the spires look blurry and some animations are not as good.
But it looks miles better then the CnC remaster.
AoE always tried to look realistic. AoEO was the only time they tried a different style and it failed massively.
If you have played the old graphics for 25 years you can obviously read things a lot better then in a new game that you have to learn to read first.
Hmmm, some of this I agree with, e.g. the elephant archer looks silly – aside from the rider just being a composite bowman, the elephant is too small (even for an African forest elephant), so the rider looks massive in comparison. The lack of skeletons is a fairly common criticism of AoE2DE – I’d always assumed it was done to avoid being banned in China, but if it is a ratings thing, maybe the old skeletons are ok because they’re less realistic than remastered ones would be.
On the other hand, I don’t buy the readability stuff. No way does anyone find it hard to identify a chariot because the gold and white don’t quite contrast as much as they used to, or think that horses that aren’t bright white are invisible.
Interesting – the original AoE2 was PEGI 3+ (not sure about AoE1, but I can’t see why it would be different). I wonder why the rating went up.
Which mod is this? Why not use screenshots from the original game, if you’re trying to persuade people that the original looked better?
Yes, in AoEO you don’t have the skeletons, but you have graves/tombstones when the units die…
Yes, I have CNC Remastered and the units maintain the same animations of the original games, you can also change graphics just by pressing space button…
AoEO failed because it came out with very little launch content and because you had to buy all the civs (ergo it was very pay to win)… now with Project Celeste it is a rounder and more complete game…
Yeah maybe op could have used og game screenshots. The sprites in the mod have been scaled up to Aoe 2 size so they are not 100% like the originals. Although it might be easier to do comparisons by disabling and enabling the mod for same scenario…
this thread is SUPERB. Kudos to the op
I do miss the skeletons from the original AoE. Especially the elephant skeletons which appeared after wild elephant carcasses decayed. Wish they would make a comeback.
About those elephants:
Thanks. I think they’re still to small though. They look about the same height as the composite bowman at the shoulder (the elephant’s shoulder, not the bowman’s).
Agree, the elephant looks really tiny. I think they should try to fix it.
They were a very small subspecies of elephant. Similar to the forest elephant in size.
The ROR/AOE1DE elephants have a rider who looks way too big or a ridiculous clownish composite bowmen standing in the howdah. The camels and horses are too big relative to the elephant!
Doesn’t that match the size of the North African Forest Elephant though?
Not that it’s the right unit for an Asian civ.
I still think it’s too small, but it’s not clear. According to Wikipedia, these north African forests elephants were “very small elephants, perhaps 2.5 metres (8 ft 2 in) at the shoulder”. The AoE1/RoR elephants are almost exactly the same height as a villager at the shoulder, at most 6 foot – so they should probably be at least 33% bigger than they are now.
And, of course, Lac Viet (and Persians, I think) would have used Asian elephants anyway.
Totally agree on javelins.
Regarding the spears Academy units hold tho, in OG they remind me of medieval jousting, while the spears in DE remind me actual Hoplites of the antiquity. No armpit posture happened for spear or sarissa holders in antiquity, ever. Hoplite posture in DE is fixed.
Sarrisa was hold with two hand anyway and shield was much smaller than hoplite shield.
Thanks for the correction guys.
Im gonna showcase another regression: marching animations
(I know bashing RoR and DE wont help anybody, but comparing the games is fun… )
Here you see how in the OG version, foot soldiers swing their arms expressively. This is how soldiers maintain rhythm while marching, to this day. Although weapons wouldn’t really be in their hands to stab accidentally the person in front :D.
Having been been a conscript myself, I know how difficult it is to maintain rhythm as a unit if person in front does not swing their arms… Units in DE and RoR, could not maintain rhythm. Cherry on cake, i belive it looks unnatural to be so stiff. Because the game uses formations one would expect them to walk like they are marching in formation.
edit: Wow, look what I found, shows walking very nice (i have too much time)
