This is probably a bit of a nerdy question. But what engine does Age of Empires Definitive Edition use?
http://www.forgottenempires.net/announcing-age-of-empires-definitive-edition
They seem to say that they built it “from the ground up”. I don’t know if that means they took the old engine and rebuilt large portions of it, or if they built an entire new engine to run the game on.
If they used the old engine, they almost certainly re-wrote large portions of it, so I think that’s probably a moot point.
Just an update to point to a post I found on the /r/aoe2 subreddit:
It seems as if this was built on top of the original engine.
After careful observation, I feel I can discuss some of this. All units appear to be brand new 3D models - which are then rendered real time with an orthographic camera. This allows the units 360 degrees of movement like in Age3 or AOM, without being limited to the 8 tile directions used in the earlier sprite-based engines. The terrain system is new, but probably just an adjustment from the age3 and aoeo terrain based on how the landscape textures are UV mapped on it.
Interestingly, I think the cliffs have used the same orthographic trick of the units, and are not built into the terrain mesh like they were in aoe3 - I suspect as the best way to get closer to the original game.
What I am interested in is if the trees and buildings are sprite renders of the new 3D models, or if they are being rendered using the same camera as the units. Currently I would guess the former pre-rendered sprite, as I can’t see proper interactions of shadows between parts of buildings and the terrain. If we ever get images of the buildings be destroyed, it will solve this mystery - I would hope that they have modern destructible meshes that crumble under a simple physics engine which would be easy from the model, and likely appear different each time , rather than rendering out the animation from a sprite, which would be a bit archaic of them.
The movement AI is also closer to that of age 3 or 2, rather than the aoe1 ai, which was restricted to 8 directions on the map grid.
Anyone else any ideas?
@“Captain Miguel” said:
All units appear to be brand new 3D models - which are then rendered real time with an orthographic camera. This allows the units 360 degrees of movement like in Age3 or AOM, without being limited to the 8 tile directions used in the earlier sprite-based engines.
Wow, this would be amazing if true. The 2D engine of AoE1 and 2 is one of the things that prevents me from being able to enjoy those games as much as Age 3 and AoM. If it’s being upgraded wholly or in part to a 3D game, that’s amazing!
@ZagorathAus said:
@“Captain Miguel” said:
All units appear to be brand new 3D models - which are then rendered real time with an orthographic camera. This allows the units 360 degrees of movement like in Age3 or AOM, without being limited to the 8 tile directions used in the earlier sprite-based engines.Wow, this would be amazing if true. The 2D engine of AoE1 and 2 is one of the things that prevents me from being able to enjoy those games as much as Age 3 and AoM. If it’s being upgraded wholly or in part to a 3D game, that’s amazing!
Howdy again, on further investigation, im afraid it looks like I’m wrong - the smooth turning is actually restricted to ~16 directions, so they just doubled the number of sprites used to get the smooth rotations.
It’s 2D only and forever. :neutral:
Genie from 1997
It’s the Genie engine. Used in AoE1/2 and Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, and it think that’s all