Hi everyone, I’ve just managed to create several graphics mods for AoE1, these mods mimic the most popular mods of AoE2. These are pure graphics mods, so their presence do not affect any other player both gameplay and display. To the extent of my knowledge, these are the first graphics mods that directly manipulate the graphics files of the game. Right now, I’ve been able to make 3 mods, these are available in the official mod library:
1, Grid mod: Gridify the terrain, help you with better cognitive sense of the field.
2, Small trees: Replace trees with smaller version of themselves, improve vision and maneuverability.
3, High contrast fish: The original intent is to mimic the fish border mod of AoE2, however in AoE1 it seems that fish-shore and fish-salmon, fish-tuna share the same graphics, which makes it awkward to draw border for different-size units. So, I increase the contrast of the fish in accordance to the ocean background, help you easier notice fish while doing early food scouting.
The library I use to manipulate the slp files is here. Right now, it’s still quite messy and not beginner friendly. I’ll spend my upcoming weeks improving the usability of the library, so that everyone can create their own favourite mods. Any help or suggestion is more than welcome.
Instead of using the mentioned library you could use SLX Studio. It’s a very powerful tool to edit SLP and SMX files with a nice UI. You can download the latest version from the creator’s discord: https://discord.gg/qEGcVzK
Actually SLX Studio fails to recognize slp files of AoE1 DE, maybe because AoE1 DE use SLP 4.2P. And I failed to decode SLP files even after extracting the SLP 4.2P, somehow. Anyway I consider this as a toy project.
Smal trees mod is my favorite Age 2 mod ! I always wanted something like that in DE. In original aoe, trees were smaller than they are in DE.
The higher contrast fish also helps a lot.
I will try to use the Grid mod, ive seen some age 2 experts using it.
Would love to use this mod, looks great!
Any idea how to make it work with AoE 1 DE, downloaded from Microsoft Store?
I can’t even find SLP folder anywhere. Ty
As far as I’m concerned it is nontrivial to mod the MS store version since Windows apply strict security measures to apps from store to preserve their integrity. If you want to try the game folder is somewhere under “C:/Program Files/WindowsApps”.However I should warn you that attempt to modify game data directly might lead to invalidation of the game folder, or even the whole WindowsApps folder, which results in you not able to open AoE DE or even every other apps from Windows store, so be careful.
It is available on both Steam and MS Store. The trick is how to override MS Apps. For example, I can use other OS on the same PC to override system files easily.
I tried to install the grid mod as instructed and the game just crashed. The video tutorial is gone by the way. Any idea how I should manage this?
P. S. This work is awesome Mery!
When it could be available for MS platform?