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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Jul 6, 2014 14:52:27 GMT
The new cliff and fire graphics are worse than the original. The water is maybe a little better than the original, but even so.
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Post by HockeySam18 on Jul 6, 2014 18:30:06 GMT
Yeah, the HD cliffs and fire suck Fortunately there are lots of mods on the Workshop to change them, or you can delete the new cliff and fire files in your HD directory which will automatically restore the old graphics (without causing OOS issues), but still... I don't even like the water that much, plus they messed up the shoreless water big time--the color is all wrong and there are no animations--another graphical fix I've been pushing for, for many months now (the others being the cliffs and fire). Then there are a decent amount of performance issues still present. I can confirm that a lot of them will definitely be fixed in the next patch, but in both MP and SP, Userpatch performs better atm, which is frustrating. They changed the names of some of the terrains in the editor, which is unnecessary and annoying. They also haven't implemented many of the Userpatch fixes/additions. Plus sides: -The AoE2 community on Steam is pretty massive (active players number in the tens of thousands, count of players ingame at a single moment hit 12,000 a week ago). -LudaKRIS mapsize- aside from the foolish name, it is pretty awesome as it's 4x the size of the largest map in AoK/AoC, so you can design some quite epic scenarios. -Continued support by MS- even if there are still issues, at least they're still actively supporting the game, which hopefully bodes well for the future. -AoF is pretty cool. I worked on it, so I'm biased, but the new civs are cool and we added a lot of stuff to the editor, made new campaigns, and balance changes while maintaining backwards compatibility (scenarios from vanilla HD or the CD version are playable in AoF). You can of course get AoFE for free, but compared to AoF it's an alpha version. The downsides are that not many people play AoF in multiplayer, and there are still performance issues from the coding end (though it runs more smoothly and with less issues than vanilla HD). -There is a new default AI by Promiskuitiv that is far stronger than Petersen, but still not as strong as Userpatch AIs (because many UP features have not been implemented as mentioned earlier). -You can play Mare Nostrum (Basse's new RP scenario) So yeah, it's a mixed bag. There's lots of pros and cons, and also a lot of potential. If you don't have it yet, then wait to hear the opinions of the other folks here (Basse just got it recently, and I think Seb and Matt have it too). I've tried to be as honest and unbiased as possible, but I'd wait to hear the opinions of the others as well.
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Post by Basse on Jul 7, 2014 12:55:03 GMT
Now that there is a version of Trigger Studio that converts .scx2 files to .scx files, Mare Nostrum will actually be fully functioning with regular AOC as well! For me the appeal of AoKHD is mainly the multiplayer aspect. The multiplayer service is still far from perfect, but at least you don't have to go through all the hassle that third-party programs provide. Other than that it's a mixed bag. The scenario editor has received some improvements, like a "select area" option for the Change Object Name effect, but like Sam said they've also managed to screw up the shoreless water. They've also changed the way terrains mix for some reasons, which can make the terrain mixing in scenarios made for the original game look strange. They've somehow also managed to make the pathfinding worse, at least in multiplayer. The Steam Workshop is also a mixed bag: on one hand it has a very simple downloading system, where files are automatically located to their respective folders, but on the other hand you can't upload edited .drs files at all, meaning all old mods (like RoA) would have to be completely reworked, or be provided through an external download. I think it's worth buying AoKH if you want to play multiplayer. If you don't, then there's little point to it. I'm even more sceptical towards the AoF expansion, however. No offense, Sam. There is a ton of good stuff in it, but I don't like the fact that they're charging money for what's essentially a fan-made mod pack, with lots of graphics that are taken from other (not-for-profit) mods. I'm not complaining about the mod in itself, although the attitude of some of AoFE's creators towards AoKH was rather off-putting, but I don't see AoF as a legitimate expansion. I really just bought it to be able to look through AoF files uploaded to the Blacksmith. One thing that's pretty great about AoF, however, if the way the game's set up to handle switching between it and regular AoKHD. Simply press a button on the main menu and you change game versions. They should expand this to a (drop-down) menu including all data & graphical mods that you've downloaded from the Steam Workshop, and simultaneously allow for .drs and .dat uploads!
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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Jul 7, 2014 14:15:36 GMT
I'll probably hold off getting it then. The super big map size sounds interesting, but it would be difficult to fill up something that size with good quality.
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Post by HockeySam18 on Jul 7, 2014 14:56:16 GMT
No offense taken To be fair though, there is a lot more content in AoF than in AoFE, mostly on the singleplayer side of things (ludakris map, new campaigns with slides and artwork (AoFE only had an early version of Alaric in the custom campaign folder iirc) but no voice acting, and lots of new editor objects). Most of the old gfx are gradually being replaced. I can't comment much on the MS stuff because I'm under NDA, sorry I will forward your feedback though, and I can also confirm pathfinding fixes and lots of general performance fixes for the next patch. Basse, good news about Mare Nostrum also coming to AoC (Userpatch v1.4 maybe?). Hopefully we'll be able to test it on Gameranger without issue. Also, the all-out war that Voobly is waging on Steam is hilarious. Basically they're all butthurt since now both Gameranger and Steam have far larger MP communities
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