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openage, an open source clone of the Age of Empires II engine

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These are the types of projects I can really get behind. Much like CosixTH for Theme Hospital, openage is aiming to be a full open source engine for Age of Empires II.

It looks like they have already made good progress too. It's not playable yet, but you can compile it and screw around a little bit.

About the project (Official)
openage: a volunteer project to create a free engine clone of Age of Empires II, primarily aimed at POSIX platforms such as GNU/Linux, comparable in its goals to projects like OpenMW, OpenRA, OpenTTD and OpenRCT2

openage uses the original game assets (such as sounds and graphics), but (for obvious reasons) doesn't ship them. To play, you require an original AoE II : TC installation or AoE II: HD (Wine is your friend; in the near future, setup discs will be supported).

Their "Contributing" section especially made me chuckle:
QuoteBeing typical computer science students, we hate people.
Please don't contact us.
Nobody likes Age of Empires anyway.
None of you is interested in making openage more awesome anyway.
We don't want a community.
Don't even think about trying to help.

FYI: It's an obvious joke, as the next section has proper links to do it. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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8 comments

1mHfoksd1Z Dec 15, 2015
It's nice but I really hope they will make it compatible with AoE1 assets as well :D
I can play AoE2 in WINE very well, without any issue, but I can't say the same thing about AoE1... and well it's engine is very outdated anyway. AoE2's engine is, IMO, excellent for a 2D RTS.
If direct compatibility is not possible, then they could probably make the game engine more moddable and someone else could make a conversion tool... or a fork of the engine that works only with those.
Yes, I know there is already 0 A.D which some people claim it is like AoE1... well IMO it is not.


Last edited by 1mHfoksd1Z on 15 December 2015 at 10:01 pm UTC
thelimeydragon Dec 16, 2015
AOE1 and 2 work fine for me in WINE but I have to install no-cd cracks to get them to work. So an open source engine is great and hopefully progresses.
legluondunet Dec 16, 2015
AOE1 runs very well with Wine.
If you use the RIse of Rome extension, I advice you to use this patch:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/upatch-hd
to play in HD.

I have Age of Empire II on Steam, all work with a little tweaks but no videos.


Last edited by legluondunet on 16 December 2015 at 12:32 am UTC
ElectricPrism Dec 16, 2015
Looks nice, I prefer sprite based RTS games.

Definitely love that it uses AOE II assets.

Want to play.
Hamish Dec 16, 2015
Both AoE 1 and 2 work reasonably well through Wine for me, although you need to start a seperate timidity session in order to have music play with the first one and the CPU load is suprisingly high when running both.

That being said, trying to play multiplayer always failed outright, so if they can get that working I will certainly be game.
gbudny Dec 16, 2015
It is a great news that I do not have to use Wine in order to run Age of Empires II on Linux.

I noticed that Freeablo (Diablo 1) was not the actively developed project for the last two months, but a couple of days ago they have started to add some patches.

I like those projects, but many of them are developed slowly for many years e.g. AvP, OpenRaider, and many of them were abandoned by their authors e.g. Free in the Dark.


Last edited by gbudny on 16 December 2015 at 12:11 pm UTC
MayeulC Dec 20, 2015
Oh man, I hope it will be compatible with Star Wars galactic battlegrounds (+clone campaigns). I LOVED this game. Much more than any age of empires.
Hamish Dec 21, 2015
Quoting: MyeulCOh man, I hope it will be compatible with Star Wars galactic battlegrounds (+clone campaigns). I LOVED this game. Much more than any age of empires.
I see no reason why not, seeing as how from a technical perspective Galactic Battlegrounds was just a glorified Age of Kings TC anyway.


Last edited by Hamish on 21 December 2015 at 6:14 pm UTC
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