Fire Giant

Why ? Oh well... it would be much TOO complex. See, modelling, programming and documenting the whole Roman Empire would take centuries... also, I guess there would be so many possibilities what you could do (it should be almost like real life), that it won't be possible to do that just by standard coding... there would need to be some *real* artifical intelligence involved, cause otherwise such a game won't be handleable (at least I think so).

Lol You mean "Tag der offenen Tür" right ? Yes I guess you're not alone with that impression

LOL

Oh cool Of course I'll be there then... btw, do you guys already have The Titans ? Would be cool to attack each other with those baby titans

Oh, I just can't resist posting this... though it's OT Well, LANce went to Dresden in autumn 2002, because he is studying Music at the university there. He doesn't seem to have internet or time for surfing there - I only saw him online at Christmas 2002, when he got home for a couple of days. Now for his brother, the good old RitterWilliam, he was lead administrator when LANce left and still is - but he is at the army ("Bundeswehrmusikkorps" or something like this, the brothers seem to be quite good at music) now and only at home on the weekends. He's the guy I'm working with most time on AoMN.de - talking and planing on the weekends while I realize some of the planned things in the weekdays. Also, some old forumers you might still know are now out of school and have not time for the sites any more (examples: RH2k (sure you still know him! ), Mensch, Abd el Fadl, Dave_the_Wave, Aurelius and - for a month now - Gerry (don't know if you still remember him, he wasn't that active but was assistant administrator at AoMN.de for a long time).) Tell me names if you'd like to hear wheter they are still in the community

Oh... AoE2.de... that was the site I used to post all day in my late AoK times... until I got into AoMN.de That's really old times...

Uhm - is that 5 am German time ? *shrudders* I would like to attend, but I guess I won't be awake at that time

*I* still remember when a 5MB hard drive was state of the art, and I'm only in my early twenties. *feels old* Well, at *that* time, I did not even exist But I remember times when I heard "Wow, you have 80 MB ? I guess you can't fill that drive with data...." BTW @ DA: 160 Gigs here @Topic: I think 2 Terrabytes are realistic

Well, that's a nice thread I like those threads as long as my computer is still new Okay, here is the Super-Fire-self built-machine: - Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz, 800 MHz FSB with Hyperthreading - ASUS P4P800-Deluxe Mainboard with S-ATA, RAID, Firewire and everything you can imagine (it was pretty expensive...) - Nvidia Geforce 4 Ti4800 SE with 128 MB - 1024 MB DDR 333 RAM (yes, that's 1 GB ! Really rules if I use AoM, Photoshop and 3ds max at one time) - 120 GB WD Harddisk with 7200 upm - 40 GB WD Harddisk with 5400 upm - 24x10x40x CD Burner, but will replace it with a new one tomorrow - 24x CD-Drive (from an old PC) - 1.44 MB FDD - 17" standard monitor (soon to be an 18" TFT) - some cheap sound system - Noname keyboard but very good one - Noname mouse optical & wireless, great one (!) - Acer WLAN IEEE 802.11b USB - D-LINK 614+ Router I guess that's it... don't want to list my secondary PC now, too

Hmm... I guess I'd make something like a simulation of the Roman Empire. This would be playable in two views: You could be a citizen in Rome, and starting as 18 year old, you could choose your way of living and your carreer. Go to the Legions and follow the eagle ? Get commander of a cohort in a legion ? Or stay in a town and build up a "company" ? Try to get into the senate or be a rich man in rome ? Or even go to the Arena and get a Gladiator or wagon driver ? OR - the final goal - get emperor of Rome and rule the empire ! The other viewpoint would be the classical RTS one - building up the Roman Empire right from the beginning and trying to conquer Europe. Of course, the game would be in super-realistic 3d-graphics and with real simulation character, especially in battles (somewhat like the Rome - TW screenshots). That's just an idea... but IMO it's impossible to realize that

100 Posts here

The_Fire_Giant

Great summary. That's exactly what I like about RTS games (the only genre I really use to play). My gaming history isn't that long, but if I played a game, I mostly played it for a very long time. I started back in 1992 or 1993 with a game called "Das Erbe" (German, don't know the English word - Tim ?), which was released only in Germany and was about repairing and old house while using only nature-friendly materials. I played this game together with some friends some years, and somewhere in 1996 or 1997 we made it to win the game (notice, we were children of 8 or 9 then). Then I had other things in mind for some years, but got back to gaming in winter 1998, this time with Settlers 2. At that time, I also got my second PC (from ~ 1996 till 1998, I had an 386 with 16 MHz). While I enjoyed Settlers 2 on the weekends, I played the Win 3.1 games on my own PC until I couldn't see them any more. Then, a big event took place, an event that should influence my further life in a great way: I somehow got the demo version of a game called "Age of Empires". After some games, I really loved that game and bought it. Because it didn't run on my PC, I then started to gather money for my first self-payed PC and bought a used P II with 300 MHz in 1999. While AoE started to get more and more fun for me, I had the first contact with the internet, because our school had an "open house" day and I got into the computers room, where we had a 28k modem then. I searched the Internet for AoE websites and really found some. After that, I checked these AoE sites when I found time and a place with internet connection (only every 3 months or such). In early 2000, we got internet to our house (I had been successfully lamenting until my parents bought a modem). Wow, that was a feeling... surfing with 56k and having an own email adress (btw, that's the one I still have - Malte_Schwarzkopf@web.de). Not much later, I got AoE II. That game again fascinated me and I played it for hours. I also started some low-level scenario design there but never published a map. Well, to shorten the story: I got AoE II TC when it was just released, played it, searched for AoE 2 websites, found AoKH, found the mod section, found Rome at War there, was interested in the team which did that mod, visited the WFG forums, was impressed and started to visit these forums on a regular basis. Then, first signs of an upcoming news game by ES came. AoM looked quite cool to me and I followed it from the early screens till now - being a forumer on AoMH since christmas 2001. I also was one of the first forums of the best german AoM website (AoMN.de, the site where I'm now second administrator). While I was awaiting the AoM release, I did some AoK Modding and produced some nice Barbarian buildings with a little team which unfortunately broke up because there were not enough people to continue the mod. AoM was released and I bought it the first day it was in stores, playing it for nearly a year now. Because my PC couldn't run AoM, I had bought a new PC in summer 2002 (all from my own money, it was quite a funny system compared to what I have now... P4 1.6 GHz with 128 MB RAM and 32 MB graphics card). At the very start of AoM, I founded a German scenario design team (then still called AoMD), because I got impressions of the major English teams like ScnPunk, DGDN or TS. We worked out some storys, then changed the name to "MWD" and released some maps. Meanwhile, my interest in WFG had continued to grow and back in early 2003, I mailed Wijit because of a sudden idea and asked if I could help the team in some way. Some weeks later, I was a member of Wildfire Games - what I had never dreamt to be. Still I was active in the AoM community and got moderator at AoMN.de in this summer, after having been forumer there for a long time. But due to some happenings, some staff members quit there and just a month ago, I got appointed second administrator and got the task to test the marketing beta of "The Titans". Well - now we reached the present. I don't know about the future, but I guess there's nothing I could still try to reach: Being administrator on a large community website and being member of the greatest game design team on the world, the only thing - but that would be utopial of course - would be a job at ES .

Wow, now I think Klaas is really right... oh my god, a female programmer ! Well, all girls I know from RTS communities are either scenario designers (and if so, often the best ones, what makes me having a lot of respect for female designers) or use to play the games the "I build up for 2 hours and then wait for an attack"-style At least some ones I know in real life play this way... and then they mostly get destroyed because they forgot to build a wall between some trees. Anyway, I only know 2 or 3 females who really play computer games, all others I know (ones from my school and such) only use the internet for chatting (MSN or ICQ) and mailing. Also, if it hits them that they forgot some homework, they use to message me in ICQ, but without asking if I have time to tell them how this or that maths homework works, just assuming I'm sitting there the whole day only waiting for people who want to get something taught (ok, that's a rather negative opinion, but it is what happened through the last year). To get back to the scenario designer females - as I already wrote, I have great respect for them. They are mostly very good mappers, have high computer skills and are very nice persons. Too bad there are no German female scenario designers...

I do not play many games... I have a "one and only" game mostly (for now, it's AoM:TT, before were AoM and AoK) which I use to play for years and in which community I'm very active. But every month or so, I use to test some other game that looks interesting (recently did with RoN and Praetorians and longer before even with ones like NOLF 2 or Neverwinter Nights). So I voted "2 games"

Hmm, what makes games so much fun ? Well, I started on computer games back in the mid-90's, because I liked the option to build up an empire (one of my favourite game was Settlers until I got into the Age series). So I guess the thing that pulls people into gaming is that they can realize their ideas or visions there, even if they aren't possible in real life

Welcome, akya ! Though I guess you will not know me, I'm happy to see you around here (it's always good to see map designers around ). But there's one fact I do not understand - why are there so many girls in the English speaking community ?! There is hardly any one in the German RTS community, but there are lots (well, at least some) on the design teams and HG forums (just to mention some: Sunshine at AoMH, Ana at TS, akya, Cat...).

Wow. I have read a pretty interesting book about that time and I actually know who Francis Marion is... they used to call him "swamp-fox", right ? From what I've read he was a tiny man but with great intelligence and courage. He raided the Britons a couple of years in South Carolina and finally made the way free for the battle at Yorktown where General Cornwallis was defeated and later they helped to drive the Britons out of Charleston which had been conquered two or three years before... anyone interested in the story ?

Denarii or Sestertii would be cool but not really fit with TLA <_

Rome: Total War... Age of Mythology: The Titans (ok, I already have that one )... and of course: 0 A.D. (yeah, that one is gonna rule...) !

Link, Malte ? Click... Note that there are two pages, ESO is being continued on the second one...

Cheezy, it is released in Germany on the 24th October... that's still quite a long way, isn't it ? Another fact is that I have the beta for already 5 day now... Also, I heard the English language release date is at 3rd October ?! Wijit - Surely they are not invincible, but I think they are powerful. I had two computer playing against each other today and the Atlantean won after a long fight. I guess it will be hard to counter them in the first weeks or even months, but later the gamers will see the weaknesses of them - which I personally see in the fact that they have only one villager at start and if this one gets killed, they are really thrown back. Also, they have overall less villagers and can get raided easier, IMO. Tim - just read my latest beta-diary article... it features Multiplayer and ESO (it's German, so others won't understand it, I think) Here are some little random TT-Screenies:

Hey all, as I told in another topic, I got the AoM Expansion "The Titans" Marketing Beta and I'm testing it for the premier German AoM Fansite (that's why I have not much time for WFG and other things right now). But if you guys have any questions, I will gladly answer it and post screenshots for you. Tim had the idea of opening a new topic for the discussion, and so I did My Beta-Diary (German) My general impression is that ES did a good job again and introduced some cool news features (some ones we also want to use for 0ad), just as the "Repeat Queue"-Function. Just tell me what you'd like to know and I will post it Fire Giant / Malte

That's not right IMO... I think the first computers were the "Z" series of the German professor Konrad Zuse... he already built a fully working computer in 1943 but lost it due to the bombardements on Germany and rebuilt it as Z4 later Just my 0.02 ...

Thanks - if you guys or maybe Cheezy have any questions regarding the Xpack, please tell me and I will see if I can answer them