I was wondering if AoE 2 could use a new engine? I have no experience or knowledge about this topic but I have seen some games like Dota 2 updating their engine to work better with modern hardware.
Since, AoE 2 uses only a single core of the processor I think updating to a modern engine could solve a ton of performance issues and I believe AoE 2 will be able to run on low end computers better.
Any of you guys know if this is possible? If it is, FE(or whole World’s Edge) must consider it in future.
Ps: I know game engine update comes with changes in how game works, but it can be made much similar to what we have now, at least other games have managed to do so. Also, the current UI is really bad, I don’t know about everyone but it really annoys me. Does the UI also depend on the engine?
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I think if they wanna make a new engine, this had to be done before the game was released. It seems pretty hard to just update some 20 year old engine. It is not really easy to do, i think.
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AoE4 is the new engine, we’re stuck with what we’ve got, fairly sure during the beta period it was said that there were no plans to replace the current engine.
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Isn’t is possible to use some open source engine?
porting games from one engine to another can be really hard/tricky/time consuming from what I understand, especially if the game was not made to be ported to the chosen engine or the engine was not made for an easy port of the game.
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It certainly is.
But replicating everything 100% is a monumental amount of work, and chances are it still won’t feel the same.
There are open source engines that are working on this, OpenAge is one such project, it’s been in development since 2014 and doesn’t seem like it’s anywhere near ready for a production release: GitHub - SFTtech/openage: Free (as in freedom) open source clone of the Age of Empires II engine 🚀
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its not viable at this point, they would have to redo the entire game
its also not needed and would probably make the DE version worse. One of the most praised things about DE is how it keeps the classic AoE 2 feeling. DE is beautiful and smooth.
we expect a few more key improvements but the engine itself seems perfect for the job.
Also… Age 4 will be based on a similar period with a completely new engine and gameplay. We will see, but in my opinion they are doing it right in keeping DE this way and having a new AoE for that concept.
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Do you know the saying “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it?” That applies to engines. Redoing the engine while trying to keep it functioning like the original, all while trying to stay on schedule with your third remaster of a game for which most original design notes are now lost to the mist of time is a great way to introduce a lot of new bugs into a game.
Unfortunately, that’s not the amount of confidence I currently have in the development team.
this is not a refrigator, bud. it has been 20 years, not 5.
Dota 2 is still using Source-based engines. So their engine is just an upgraded Source.
Same goes for AOE2 DE.
The problem is, AOE2 DE is using an old engine that used 2D sprites (like id Tech 1 - Doom’s Engine) That’s why you can’t make it perform flawless. Technology has moved to 3D models. If they add 3D models, it will ruin the nostalgic feeling of the game.
You have Sandy Petersen, Lead Designer of AoC and that dude’s no joke
He probably knows whats up
He still remembers Doom’s designs.
I’d trust he will remember AoC’s design too.
I can tell you they will fix the bugs if they go that way, but they need either Sandy Petersen or AoK designer to help them.
But, there’s no need for that anyways.
I know it’s not broken, but the thing is it can be better. There are a ton of things that the devs should focus on first but updating the engine to use all the cores of the processor(parallel processing) should be possible without changing a ton of things. If we see some changes to the feel of the game, that can be fixed with some tweaks later.
Yeah, also I totally understand that the FE team is really small to do this, but it is not impossible assuming they have source code to the old Genie Engine. With MS’s support it is possible.
Maybe just open source the Genie Engine and the community can help over time?! I don’t know if that is even possible, it’s just that I love this game and when I see a possibility to make it better I can’t deny it.
I am pretty sure that if we get a new engine every mid-tear hardware PC should be able to run age at 4K since it is only about rendering 2D sprites. That is a huge boost, also making it run better on lower end hardware. That could possible result in merging most of the HD and DE community.