Age of Empires Forums

There have been many forums dedicated to an Aoe4 on this site.  We ALL share this desire and see the potential.  I ask you to recall the famous scene in Robin Hood (the 1990 version not the recent gay remake) when the Hero says in response to the fear from the hoard “What is it that we need that the forest cannot provide?”

In other words – Man up! Be positive! Let’s take some ownership here!  We have what we need right here (In-house talent/resources)

I KNOW that with Musketeer, Metis, and a few others we HAVE the technical ability to take the existing AOE3 software engine, make the changes we want  to it in terms of reprogramming and make Age of Empires Four (AOEF) properly – the way it SHOULD be made!!  For forums administrator I guess we could let Jerom handle it.  It would involve incorporating the changes that have been proposed on several threads here, and some other balancing tweaks such as changing the melee damage area for cuirassier to maybe somewhere between 1.5-1.8 instead of 2.0 and perhaps allowing the Explorer and maybe even  his dog to ‘merge’ with the Fort in late game combining the hitpoints and damage of both for a very uber-building like the AOE equivalent of the deathstar.  Also the new ability to construct ‘bridges’ across water … which has been widely recognized is a miss in AOE3.

Would you guys be willing to help with this?  For starting money we could go with donations from all interested –and then go public with shares.  We would need some higher ranks to test civ’s for balancing but I and GS could help with that.  Lets get this puppy up and running and get it back on WCG for 2013!!  Is this timeline too aggressive?  Let me know so I can adjust schedule/resources if required.  Willie—can I count you in?  I also need Irja to work on new taunts.

Secondly, we can't mod our way into a AoE4 (for both legal reasons and because of engine limitations). AoE4 would need a new engine, and neither me nor Metis can make a game engine.

Also, what kind of abbreviation is AOEF for Age of Empires IV? If you're incapable of understanding Roman numerals... *sigh*

musketeer925:

*facepalm* Do you know ANYTHING about modding?

Secondly, we can't mod our way into a AoE4 (for both legal reasons and because of engine limitations). AoE4 would need a new engine, and neither me nor Metis can make a game engine.

Also, what kind of abbreviation is AOEF for Age of Empires IV? If you're incapable of understanding Roman numerals... *sigh*

ok Musk  ... sounds like you're in but just hashing over some of the details -- good -- we can work the details out ... the F also stood for FINAL because it was implicit that this would be done RIGHT and would thus be the last Aoe -- ya dig?!?!

Irja --- how are the taunts coming?

TomGR:

I wish I could see Ryan 's expression after he read this LOL

You don't like the deathstar concept?

Well woop-tee-doo Mr. "I think I'm so kewl"

Ryzon may WANT an opportunity like this to get in early before when we go public and shares skyrocket.  Ever think of that!??

You gotta look at all the angles

Musk -- I am willing to give you control of the forums to be a mod if that's what you want ... you can supervise Jerom.

But this isn't stupid.  This is what we've all been talking about -- it came to me and MS isn't going to care about legally coming after us -- we'll just use our screen names instead of real names on all of our documents so we're protected -- so forget about that.

Did you want to impose a limit on the length a bridge can extend into water?

Forget the bridges if you want but the cuirrassier has to be nerfed

You sound like Willie trying to persuade us that your idea is OP while we all know that it 's technically and legally imposible to work.

The only difference is that he just do it in order to troll us and have some fun while i think you 're actually believe you are right.

 EDIT: In other words i agree with musketer (not sure if trolling or just stupid).

musketeer925:

If you want to play a game where the developers allow derivative works using the game engine, look at Civ V. However, the Microsoft license clearly states that their game engines are not to be used to create derivative works. And Musketeer is right -- there is no way I know enough to program an RTS game engine; back in the day I was proficient at programming turn-key applications for relational database systems but that was many years ago.

Metis:

If you want to play a game where the developers allow and fully support derivative works look at Civ V. However, the Microsoft license clearly states that derivative works are not allowed for their RTS games.

hmmm... so this complicates things.  We were so close.

I don't want to break it to Jerom.

I'm going to keep thinking about this to find a way to make this work.

mfw

come on, you can't possibly be this naive.

There have been two or three major modifications made of AOE 3 but they fell flat due to people having other responsibilities or losing interest and drifting away from the project. Back in the 70s and 80s I got a kick out of programming little games for my friends but the days of the one-man game designer are over. It takes hundreds of salaried professionals to put out a modern computer game. Just look at how many people are credited for the basic AOE 3 game, and this doesn't include all the others who worked on bug fixes, patches and expansions nor those who programmed the underlying code used in the game engine that was purchased or licensed by Microsoft.

http://www.allgame.com/game.php?id=46730&tab=credits

Metis:

There have been two or three major modifications made of AOE 3 but they fell flat due to people having other responsibilities or losing interest and drifting away from the project. Back in the 70s and 80s I got a kick out of programming little games for my friends but the days of the one-man game designer are over. It takes hundreds of salaried professionals to put out a modern computer game. Just look at how many people are credited for the basic AOE 3 game, and this doesn't include all the others who worked on bug fixes, patches and expansions.

http://www.allgame.com/game.php?id=46730&tab=credits

 

Tell us something we dont know.. I mean what were you thinking sam!

Even if it was technically possible to create our own aoeIV (i think that now we can all understand that it clearly isnt), you cant just use the other people's work in order to create something new out of it. Its common sense.

I'd have to say Civilization IV would be more of that sort of style than Civilization V. CivV lost a lot of it's mod-ability due to their DLC-style pricing scheme, and the fact that it uses granny rather than the more open 3d-modeling used in CivIV.

the days of the one-man game designer are over

Though that certainly doesn't apply to an RTS -- RTS games are not made easily.

There have been two or three major modifications made of AOE 3 but they fell flat due to people having other responsibilities or losing interest and drifting away from the project.

Also, I wouldn't say that the mods are dead -- WotTA, NE, and KnB are all very alive. The WotTA forum, I would not hesitate to say, gets as much, if not more, traffic than AgeComm. The WotTA team is still hard at work in attempt to push out our Delta version.

So, @OP:

If you're really just this stupid and want to get involved with something, try a mod. Even without experience, mods are often looking for interns to do research and planning projects that require no modding ability.