Another open source game engine has been advancing recently, this time it's openage [Official Site, GitHub], the game engine for playing games like Age of Empires, Age of Empires II (HD) and Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds.
Shared on reddit was this video showing off some of the progress:
Direct Link
I should note, that this is a test recording showing only progress that's actually visible. I've been told by the developers that the next version should be quite interesting, with it supporting game state, unit stats and technologies. On top of that, they've been working on what they're calling the "nyan API", which aims to be a highly versatile API for modders to easily alter, create and integrate new content into the engine.
Looks like it's really starting to come together, which is awesome. As someone who spent hours playing AoE, this project is really exciting to me. Who knows, in another year perhaps this might be quite playable? Looks a bit rough right now of course, but very interesting to see the state of it right now.
Much like OpenMW (Morrowind), OpenRA (Red Alert, Command & Conquer, Dune 2000) and others, it aims to be an engine reimplementation that requires the original game assets. According to a comment from a developer, they're targetting Age of Empires II first, with Age of Empires and Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds to follow.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
P.S : Liam, you wrote Done 2000 instead of Dune 2000 :-p
Kuduzkehpan 19 Oct 2017
Sir_Diealot 19 Oct 2017
cRaZy-bisCuiT 19 Oct 2017
Sir_Diealot 19 Oct 2017
Maybe it could be fun for a LAN. But I don't see it will be seriously playable. Around Age of Empires II HD there's a new competitive scene and it's much fun to compete online. I think this will never happen for a open engine like this.OpenRA has a competitive scene. RAGL season 4 happened recently: http://www.openra.net/news/ragls4-registrations/
Here is one video, there are plenty more if you look for OpenRA and RAGL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM8VAZh3Au4
There also were twitch streams during the tournament and all that.
These projects aren't that well known, which is about the only reason why their competitive scene is relatively small.
Last edited by Sir_Diealot on 19 Oct 2017 at 8:13 am UTC
hardpenguin 19 Oct 2017
I wish AoE2:HD available on Steam supported Linux :P
cRaZy-bisCuiT 19 Oct 2017
I usually just play the AoE2 original using Wine, but this might be a cool way to enjoy the game, too!Which unfortunately will most likely never happen since the rights still belongs to Microsoft.
I wish AoE2:HD available on Steam supported Linux :P
Last edited by cRaZy-bisCuiT on 19 Oct 2017 at 9:42 am UTC
Philadelphus 19 Oct 2017
Would be cool. I do own AoE2HD... being able to play it would be coolSame. I got Age of Empires II on CD when I was maybe 12, and it was the first computer game I was completely and utterly hooked on, so much so that I bought the HD version when it came out even knowing I was planning on switching from Windows to Linux in a year or so and wouldn't be able to play it natively anymore.
I also loved Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, so that'd be cool to see as well! :)
cRaZy-bisCuiT 20 Oct 2017
Would be cool if they took the assets from the new AoE-Windows10-Store-only game so that a lot more people could play it with modern graphics.But that is AOE 1 - does the engine support this? Also: You might need to own the game yourself to get those assets - no matter if AOE1 / 2 / HD / 1 4k.
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