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Age Of Empires Online


Mythos_Ruler
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The AOEO Beta recently removed it's NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) and enabled screenshots, so I took the liberty to go ahead and make some for you guys. I am not very far along, so I don't have many screenshots of advanced features, but here are some interesting tidbits:

Load Screen. "Press Any Key To Continue."

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Advisor.

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Town Center selected. More advice.

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House being built. Foundation/Scaffold is placed--builders start building causing a bunch of dust--house rises up into place.

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Occlusion.

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A "treasure."

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Berry bushes.

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Mines.

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Jumping Fish.

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A watch tower.

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Building destruction. (I don't like the explosive flames)

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Back at my Home City, after my mission is complete, I am able to use the items I found (Treasures) to equip my units.

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Back at my Home City, I am now able to use "Empire Points" (essentially experience points) to customize my tech tree for subsequent missions! This is much better than the Card system in AOE3, IMHO.

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Things I like:

- The Health Bars are player color. I think they did that in AOM and AOE3 as well.

- Customizing a persistent tech tree. I thought this was cooler than the AOE3 card decks.

- Finding rewards (treasures) that I can use in subsequent missions.

- The overall art-style is unique and fresh. I still wish they would have gone ultra-realistic with it though, because it's obvious the art team was TOP NOTCH.

- The soundscape for the entire game is very engaging. Every sound has at least a small amount of reverb (echo), adding a kind of epicness to it. Also, everything has a unique sound, from clicking a button to messages popping up informing you of your progress. There's sound sound sound everywhere.

- The "open" style of the single player experience. I prefer it to pretty much all of AOE's previous linear narrative campaigns. Ensemble Studio either sucked badly at writing single player campaigns (AOM) or could only muster up an 'ok' narrative (AOE3). So, I think Robot recognized their limitations and focused on something non-linear and non-narrative for once. I take that back, there's kind of a narrative, a general progression pushed by your advisor, but you can choose to obey this or not... kind of like those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books I used to read (and write) had a love child with an MMORPG.

Things I don't like:

- The minimap in the upper right corner. I kept looking down to the left corner and getting confused.

- The disjointed UI. I didn't find it "more immersive" at all. In fact I found it annoying and tedious.

- The units look super goofy (male villagers have super huge feet for some reason), and villagers prance around like ninnies (I'm serious). I'm surprised they don't since and dance.

- The fire particle effects look a little too stylized.

- Animals are super dumb and stand around waiting for you to stab them. I wish the environment was more interactive.

- Even though the graphics look cartoonish, AOEO still runs slower than 0 A.D. on my rig.

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Thanks for posting the screenshots! Good point about health bars, having them as player colour in 0AD would make a lot of sense.

The unit icons are fun, I like that they stick out of the GUI - Strangely some are more realistic looking than the units themselves :)

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Meh, I like some things, but Player Color Health Bars? Really? What would it add to the game that Player Color on units doesn't already do?

It's just an additional little feature that adds to unit recognition.

Here's another screenshot for you guys. I was sent on a mission to Mycenae to help some dirt-poor tradesman. The city medallion was pretty cool.

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When a building or ship is garrisoned one of these things floats (and spins slowly; everything's animated) above it.

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Was not too impressed with their Triremes.

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Found it amusing that the dock had a giant pelican sitting on it.

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Even though the graphics look cartoonish, AOEO still runs slower than 0 A.D. on my rig.

Cartoonish effects are usually more complex to render than the very simple approach 0 A.D. takes, so that's not particularly surprising :)

One thing I remember quite liking was having tooltips on loads of world objects (not just GUI objects), to tell you the brief important details of what things are or what actions you can take, without having to learn special icons or to click on units and search through the UI panels for important details.

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One thing I remember quite liking was having tooltips on loads of world objects (not just GUI objects), to tell you the brief important details of what things are or what actions you can take, without having to learn special icons or to click on units and search through the UI panels for important details.

I liked this too. An easier way to toggle these off and on (with a couple of levels of detail) would be nice without having to go through the Game Options menu.

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It's player color and black.

Ah.

And about that charcoal player color you have?

Kidding.:P But seriously, I don't see the need to step away from the established look. Seems I am the only one, though.

Edited by SMST
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I don't like the treasures with guardians so much in age of empires online. I also didn't like it in AOE3.

Treasures for 0 A.D ought to be 'realistic' IMO , f.e. salvaging wood from a shipwreck or stone from ruins in the landscape. Not 5 amphora's in perfect condition that happen to be standing somewhere :P

For example: Acropolis map ( supposed to be located in Greece) can have remains of mycenian cities ( like mycene, tiryns, ...) which you can salvage partly for stone. Or an 'unfinished greek temple' can be salvaged.

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I don't like the treasures with guardians so much in age of empires online. I also didn't like it in AOE3.

Treasures for 0 A.D ought to be 'realistic' IMO , f.e. salvaging wood from a shipwreck or stone from ruins in the landscape. Not 5 amphora's in perfect condition that happen to be standing somewhere :P

For example: Acropolis map ( supposed to be located in Greece) can have remains of mycenian cities ( like mycene, tiryns, ...) which you can salvage partly for stone. Or an 'unfinished greek temple' can be salvaged.

Well, the Amphorae don't have to be considered "abandoned" treasure. For instance, I'd probably just use the Amphorae treasure around the starting Civ Centre as a group of "supplies" brought by your settlers.

We also are going to have a "loot" feature, so let's say you come across a hut in the woods, you could destroy it and gain its "loot" value.

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I share the same opinion as gudo, i'd try to finish the job. But looking the fact as a spartan patriot, i'd like to humiliate other cultures at max, destroying an enemy's temple and using it's materials to build roads for my city is some kind of humiliation i'd like to see them suffer!!!

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