Stronghold 4 shows how beatutiful AOE5 could look like in Unreal Engine

[GoldenArmorX]

Let’s talk about the history of Age of Empires Franchise engine, so people don’t get the wrong idea about why Age of Empires 4 uses its own graphics engine:

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1999 - 2009 – Ensemble Studios – Graphic Motors

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Originally, Microsoft already had its own graphics engine for RTS games: the Genie Engine and the Bang Engine.

Game	Graphics Engine
Age of Empires	Genie Engine
Age of Empires II	Genie Engine (improved)
Age of Mythology	Bang! Engine (evolution of Genie)
Age of Empires III	Completely revamped BANG! Engine
Age of Empires Online	Engine derived from the BANG! Engine
Age of Empires IV	Essence Engine

However, in 2009 Microsoft shut down Ensemble Studios, the developer of the Age of Empires franchise, under the bad assumption or rumors that high-quality PC games and RTS were going to fail, Consoles will be the only future, and that they would now only sell cheap-low-end indie games; even canceling an MMORPG in development (Titan), believing that World of Warcraft games would also be a failure too.

And yes, it was a terrible decision, since just three years later, Steam became so popular that its creator became rich, PC master race could compete with consoles, and Starcraft 2 revived confidence in new RTS games.

Sandy Pettersen talk about this in Twitter, now Xs:

Sandy Petersen 🪔 (@SandyofCthulhu) on X

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2013 – 2019 – The Franchise Resurrection

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So, Microsoft has to recognize their mistakes, and try to revive the franchise in 2013. They saw that fans were creating mods for Age of Empires II (AoE2). And since Microsoft isn’t Nintendo, instead of suing them, they approved their fan-made mod (AoE2: Forgotten) and made it canon, calling it AoE2: HD (2013). They also named these fandoms new developers, forming “Forgotten Empires”.

Sales were so good in the following years that they finally considered making Age of Empires IV (AoE4) starting in 2016… and, while they were at it, remastering other titles in the franchise.

BUT: Microsoft was in a problem, because its graphics engines were “Obsolete” for newer technologies and computers, and they never updated them because they shut down their creators, Ensemble, in 2009. So, they needed another engine for the future AoE4.

Therefore, while planning Age of Empires 4, they remastered older games, using THE SAME graphics engine from 25 years ago:

Game	Graphics Engine
AoE2: DE (2019)	Genie Engine (improved) (2001)
AoE3: DE (2020)	BANG! Engine completely revamped (2005)

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2016 – Age of Empires IV development

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Now, when this game, AoE4, was planned in 2016, there were many engines:

• The “Essence Engine” was a pretty good graphics engine for making RTS games (Company of Heroes, Warhammer 400,000,000,000, Dawn of War II), and it belonged to Relic.

• Unreal Engine, on the other hand, was still in its infancy and had performance issues; it wasn’t made for real-time RTS games. Betting on using an experimental graphics engine, with the possibility that its creators would later charge an exorbitant warranty fee (10%? 20%? 50%?) was a true it was a real dangerous expeculation they couldn’t ignore.

• The Starcraft II graphics engine, let’s call it the “Blizzard Engine,” belonged to Blizzard and was their trade secret, and it was a Microsoft’s rival.

And so, they decided to entrust Relic with the development of Age of Empires 4.

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2021-2026 - Present Day

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And well, here we are. We’ve been through a global pandemic, FIFA not allowing Russia to compete in the World Cup supposedly because of its belligerence (*But they did allow Israel, the USA, Eritrea, etc., etc., etc.*), and Age of Empires 4 is still around.

Unreal Engine, at the end, didn’t become the tyrant that was predicted, but only charges a 5% commission if your game earns more than $1 million.

The TRUE COST of Unreal Engine 5

And well, we have a beautiful game with AoE4, which has been improving with patches, and well, yes, the graphics quality is something we’ve had to keep asking them to improve, and they have, at least in parts.

I don’t think that simply changing the graphics engine automatically improves the graphics; that’s not how it works.

The work depends on the developers. If they want to optimize the game, they can, but it’s another matter if they aren’t given incentives to do so, or if they’re lazy, or if corporate decisions prevent them from doing so.

MAFIUS explains this well, although the video is in Spanish, you can use the Youtube Auto-Translator Subs:

Unreal Engine 5 está ARRUINANDO los VIDEOJUEGOS

[zeppelino24]

I think your analysis regarding the graphics engines for AoE is really good. I just have one question: why wasn’t the graphics engine from AoE III and AoM: Retold used to create AoE IV? I mean, the Retold engine is excellent and very well optimized. I feel they could have saved a huge amount of money by simply using the AoE III engine—albeit improved, like they did for Retold—and they wouldn’t have needed to hand AoE IV over to Relic; that way, the title would have stayed truer to the franchise as a whole.

[zeppelino24]

The franchise’s developers and executives should have followed the natural logic of “if it works, why change it? You’ll only break it.”

[OperaticShip743]

There are things the AOE-3 engine can’t do, like limited vision due to obstacles, units attacking while moving (I don’t know if this could be done in AOE-3), and units on top of walls. It also has better pathfinding.

Although, as you say, perhaps an overhaul would allow these kinds of things, but I don’t know. I’m pretty clueless about it.

[GorbMort]

@zeppelino24

The franchise’s developers and executives should have followed the natural logic of “if it works, why change it? You’ll only break it.”

If it worked for the game they wanted to make, they’d have used it. The decision to use a separate developer and a different engine won’t ever be one taken lightly, because of the cost involved.

It also depends on how much experience World’s Edge had at the time - bear in mind they were also supporting AoE II: DE and actively building AoE III: DE in the same timespan. Retold came afterwards, when AoE IV was in already post-launch support.

[marcoracosta205]

Games five years ago looked a thousand times better than aoe4 at launch, HELL even 2019 AOE4 looked better than aoe4 today!

[marcoracosta205]

Changing the graphic engine to the industry standard allows you to have better graphics without having to modify your own in pre-production to ensure releasing a game with the visual fidelity they expect, this translates to a faster development cycle, and since we are talking about unreal engine, it often also translates into a better looking game. Of course manual optimization needs to be done in order for unreal engine games to look both good and play good with no performance issues as the engine even if it can optimize a lot of things for you with technologies like lumen or nanite (Disclaimer, this will not work in RTS games), you still need to do some work to ensure it plays smooth, automatic optimizations are great but they dont do wonders. And yes, the graphic fidelity depends on whatever the developers decide to do, but the point here is that this engine has almost no top roof, that means there are no limitations for how good a game can look, while in essence engine it is clear that the engine cannot handle such fidelity without suffering from performance issues in a game as BIG in scale as it aoe4, because remember the engine was made for smaller scale RTS’s, a developer doesnt downgrade their game like they did for aoe4 if its not needed, im talking about making models look like straight out from ps2, the streltsy model for example, you can count its polygons just by looking at it. 2019 aoe4 looked amazing compared to today’s aoe4. And i dont fall for the readibility excuse they gave people, because to make units readable you need to give them unique shapes, not reduce their polygon number.

But i wouldnt say unreal engine is ruining video games or anything, thats just a wild rumor straight out of conclusions taken out of 3 or 4 games that have flopped due to performance issues that didnt have anything to do with the engine it self, it was developer’s fault for not applying the required manual optimization, unreal engine can optimize things good enough for you, take lumen or nanite (the ones i mentioned earlier) for example, but you still need to do some work, the engine cannot optimize the entire game for you. The people who criticize unreal engine seem to ignore the fact that some of the best games in the last decade have all been made in unreal engine. Hell, even in the strategy genre we have seen some amazingly good looking games with incredible performance, take for example Manor Lords, one of the most beautiful strategy games ever released. And now of course, Stronghold 4.

[GoldenArmorX]

@zeppelino24

I think your analysis regarding the graphics engines for AoE is really good. I just have one question: why wasn’t the graphics engine from AoE III and AoM: Retold used to create AoE IV? I mean, the Retold engine is excellent and very well optimized…

Good question.

The answer is “Workforce”:

As I mentioned, Microsoft only revived the franchise in 2013. And the new studio that was formed, Forgotten Empires, was 100% focused on releasing DLC ​​for AoE2.

In 2016, there were plans to revive all the games in the franchise, both AoE3 and AoE1, and create a remastered version of AoE2 with a new graphics engine.

However, that’s a lot of work:

• 1. Update 2 old graphics engines
• 2. Create 3 remastered versions of older games with updated engines.
• 3. Create a new game for the franchise (AoE4), with a team that isn’t nostalgic for the previous games (to don´t be a copy of the remakes) and, if possible, with an “already updated” RTS engine.

But Microsoft only have 1 Studio, which were using a graphic engine of 1999 for a 2D game (Forgotten).

They need another two, one to help them with the graphic engine (Tantalus) and other without connection with the saga (Relic enterntainment).

You can see the result in this organizational chart:

[GorbMort]

@marcoracosta205

Games five years ago looked a thousand times better than aoe4 at launch, HELL even 2019 AOE4 looked better than aoe4 today!

Always a problem with locking in marketing material, and then making changes.

[marcoracosta205]

Sure, but the changes in this case were drastic and the reaction of the player base was absolutely fair considering how bad aoe4 looked at launch, the ground & cliffs looked literally blurry and the water was comparable to a puddle of piss that fermented and turned blue IMO. It really didnt look like water, thank god relic did make changes and brought aoe4 graphics to the point where it is now, the point where we can all say it looks good, but it could look even better

[HoopThrower]

Because they hired Relic to make that game and Relic had their in house engine.

[Huge5000RTSFan]

Unreal, Frostbite and Unity aren’t RTS engines.
A single object might look cool, but you need one that can handle numbers and scale.

here for comparison Ground Control 2 from year 2004 ,
its 22 years and still better than most rts today

[KG19991380]

@Huge5000RTSFan

A single object might look cool, but you need one that can handle numbers and scale.

and this right here is smt unreal absolutely sucks at doing, most of the big mainstream engines do

RTS requires a very specific kind of engineering to a) not feel like shit to play and b) not shit the bed when numbers go up

you need an engine with god tier cpu multithreading execution (which btw unreal once again fails miserably at doing) and proper balance on visual side to not overwhelm the gpu with excessive poly counts and details the game gains nothing out of (another thing unreal on default settings is fundamentally incapable of doing)

[MatM1996]

@zeppelino24

I think your analysis regarding the graphics engines for AoE is really good. I just have one question: why wasn’t the graphics engine from AoE III and AoM: Retold used to create AoE IV? I mean, the Retold engine is excellent and very well optimized. I feel they could have saved a huge amount of money by simply using the AoE III engine—albeit improved, like they did for Retold—and they wouldn’t have needed to hand AoE IV over to Relic; that way, the title would have stayed truer to the franchise as a whole.

@OperaticShip743

There are things the AOE-3 engine can’t do, like limited vision due to obstacles, units attacking while moving (I don’t know if this could be done in AOE-3), and units on top of walls. It also has better pathfinding.

Yes, the Bang Engine is a very good graphics engine, but it’s still a 2002 engine with many limitations and difficult development…

@GorbMort

It also depends on how much experience World’s Edge had at the time - bear in mind they were also supporting AoE II: DE and actively building AoE III: DE in the same timespan. Retold came afterwards, when AoE IV was in already post-launch support.

@HoopThrower

Because they hired Relic to make that game and Relic had their in house engine.

Yes, it’s simply because Relic uses the Essence Engine; if Creative Assembly had done it, it would look like Halo Wars 2 or Total War Medieval 3…

[jimmy19846071]

How many job positions for Unreal 5 into Forgotten Empires

Forgotten Empires | LinkedIn

[KG19991380]

in all honesty as you said, bang is 2002 tech at its core, yes retold did wonders, but there’s still a lot the engine cannot do, example, god powers in aom are purely particle effects as it doesn’t support terrain deformations the kind you find in relic games like COH, imagine earthquake power combined with that

another that comes to mind is pathing engine and obviously a newer engine will support higher fidelity but this part imo has to be handled with care, i personally prefer mostly raw image with minimized post processing, most modern games don’t do this for whatever reason, i don’t want upscaling blur for instance, make whatever visual style is picked work properly on native resolution or don’t bother

[jimmy19846071]

@GorbMort

You’re better off looking at something like Godot, or if you really want to commit to Unreal, hire existing Unreal specialists, and modify to suit your needs. Which means, at that point, it’s not really Unreal anymore. It’s Unreal as a starting position + whatever customisations you need to make for your specific use case.

And Unreal specialists (like all engine and engine-adjacent programmers, particularly with C++ experience) are not cheap.

Quoting what Jez Corden said on his past video “the big issues they had with Age Of Empires 4, from what i heard, was Relic’s Engine and this engine and development pipeline was very difficult for them to work with and to adapt to the Age of empires, what people expect from Age of Empires. So they (World’s Edge) are moving to something more proprietary built on Unreal Engine though. Something more custom and things like that”

(https://www.youtube.com/live/-iRcYtswLDw?is=cMMhyuAhMROEzENV)

(From 2:11:00 - 2:14:00)

So, yes, It would be a modified version of Unreal Engine 5, as you said.

[KG19991380]

essentially like any reasonable person they want something thats actually purpose built for a game like this to avoid issues they likely had with 4

probably something similar to frost giant’s snowplay, custom tech with UE5 graphics pipeline on top, it won’t perform well, unless some miracle happens (translation, do not use any of stuff epic advertises and it might be better enough already) but as long as the cpu side is properly cared for i expect the tech to be sound regardless

after all, WE’s goal on this is making smt that works for aoe like RTS, and simultaniously works familiarly in its pipeline for hires with UE experience

i’d prefer if visual side was also inhouse tech but i can see this is a trend by now, everyone is offloading graphics development to epic while they focus on gameplay systems instead, the only issue with this approach, besides licensing, is epic’s self serving approach to graphics development

[GorbMort]

I remember asking for Corden’s sources, and I don’t think he has any. It’s common speculation, but just speculation.

Even if Essence was a joy to work with, Essence is still not an in-house engine. It requires Relic to help leverage. It makes sense to build something in-house regardless.

Beyond that, anything else is (even more) guesswork.

[jimmy19846071]

@GorbMort

I remember asking for Corden’s sources, and I don’t think he has any. It’s common speculation, but just speculation.

He never shared his sources. But he absolutely has sources inside XBOX. He write for Windows Central.