H.O. Age of empires 2 . Este finde va a correr sangre Uruguaya y Gallega

[Icewind]

Voy a desenterrar el hilo por varias razones:

Primero, porque en Agosto me llega un PC nuevo con el que podré disfrutar del juego a 60 fps como Bergoglio manda.
Y segundo, para comentar que ha salido hace unos días el parche 2.5 de AoE2HD.


Resumen de lo que ha pasado en el desarrollo del juego desde principios de Junio hasta ahora:

Básicamente, mandaron a la mierda a los ineptos de Hidden Path y los han reemplazado con la gente de SkyBox Labs para seguir trabajando el juego.
Además, anunciaron una colaboración con los creadores del mod del AoE2 original, "Forgotten Empires"┬á .

Las mejoras mas importantes desde el parche 2.3 son las siguientes:

-Han incrementado la cantidad de unidades que puedes seleccionar. Ahora el máximo son 60 unidades.
-Muchas mejoras en el online del juego y la clasificación de jugadores. Desde la versión 2.5, la puntuación de todos los jugadores fue puesta a 0, ya que ha cambiado completamente el sistema (para bien).
-Como en Forgotten Empires, el juego ahora ahora va a 60 fps en lugar de a 20.
-Muchas otras mejoras en el rendimiento general del juego y bastantes bugs fueron solucionados.

También dijeron que durante el verano el juego se actualizará constantemente ya que reconocieron que todavía tienen muchos problemas que solucionar y cosas que cambiar.

Si quieren conocer todos los detalles les dejo las declaraciones originales posteadas en los foros de Steam:

Cita:Development Update - Adjusting Formations

Hello Age of Empires fans!

Greetings from the Microsoft Age of Empires team. Today I want to discuss some development changes coming to the Age of Empires II: HD production teams, give a peek into some of the processes involved in game development, and hopefully plant the seed of excitement for the future. Make sure to read through for some awesome announcements!
First off, I apologize for the delay in updates published for the title since 2.3. IÔÇÖve been just as restless as the community, but havenÔÇÖt been able to communicate whatÔÇÖs been happening until now. Fortunately with the floodgates opening here, we should be able to return to regular updates and a lot more information.


As many of you know, over the past year we have been working closely with Hidden Path Entertainment for the development of Age of Empires II: HD Edition. As an experienced studio located a short drive from our offices, with developers who worked on the original title, Hidden Path was the obvious choice to partner with. TheyÔÇÖve been a great partner, and it has been truly astonishing to observe how theyÔÇÖve managed to take such antiquated code and rebuild it for modern PCs.


However, development time isnÔÇÖt an infinite resource, and unfortunately Hidden PathÔÇÖs availability ended in May. Those who have been following Hidden Path may recall their Defense Grid 2 announcement, and weÔÇÖre incredibly excited to see that game come to life. While we are sad to see them go I do want to say that itÔÇÖs been a pleasure working with Hidden Path over the last year, and making this game a reality!


So what does this mean for Age of Empires II: HD? Through the spring as production and patch development have been cranking along, we looked at our upcoming schedule and determined that with the game maintaining a high level of popularity since it was announced, we wanted to do more. That meant finding a development team to pick up the torch from Hidden Path and carry it forward. It has been painful being unable to share details until everything was signed, but IÔÇÖm proud today to announce that weÔÇÖve been working with SkyBox Labs to ensure that AOE II HDÔÇÖs future is brighter than ever.


The SkyBox Labs team is comprised of industry veterans that have worked on hit RTS games in the past, including the Command & Conquer series. They are excited to be involved with the next chapter of the Age of Empires franchise and build off the great work from Hidden Path.


WeÔÇÖve already transitioned the latest code and processes between development teams, but I want to reiterate that weÔÇÖll continue providing patches and support for the product. During this overlap period, there has been be a delay in our update cycle as people get ramped up but we should see changes rolling out of the pipeline immediately.
ThereÔÇÖs a lot more weÔÇÖll be doing with the game; before we get to that, we wanted to take an opportunity to focus on the development teams. First, the following is from Hidden Path:

Hidden Path Entertainment ÔÇ£We were honored to be chosen to help with the development of Age of Empires II: HD. With members of the original development team here at our studio, it made this update very exciting for our team,ÔÇØ explained Jeff Pobst, CEO at Hidden Path Entertainment (http://www.hiddenpath.com). ÔÇØWe accomplished a lot during the scope of the project and are excited to hear that Microsoft has brought on SkyBox Labs to continue working on AOE II: HDÔÇØ

The team here at Microsoft was fortunate to work closely with Jeff and the rest of the folks at HPE throughout the project, and it has been a great experience. They have an incredible amount of talent within the studio, and we canÔÇÖt wait to see where they take Defense Grid 2!


Looking forward, weÔÇÖre excited to be working with SkyBox Labs to continue improving AOE II HD.

SkyBox Labs (http://www.skyboxlabs.com) is a game studio headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, that develops for console, mobile, tablet, and PC. The studio has over 30 industry experts on staff with experience in developing RTS, Sports and Racing games. SkyBox LabsÔÇÖ first new IP, Dragon Arena, is planned for release this summer.


You asked, We Heard

After looking through the communityÔÇÖs desires, there are a number of areas weÔÇÖd like to focus on with future development. To help us do so, we are thrilled to announce a new partnership with the team behind the community driven Forgotten Empires project. WeÔÇÖll be providing an official announcement with specifics in the coming weeks, but this an exciting time to be an Age of Empires fan! Development teams spend quite a bit of time creating games, but there have been dedicated community members tinkering under the hood for the last decade. Working with the FE team will allow us to focus on improving what the community has deemed most important over the years!

From Bert ÔÇ£CysionÔÇØ Beeckman and the FE team:

Cita:"Almost 2 years ago, a group of long-standing fans of the game started to explore the limits of the AOE II engine and discovered that those limits had not been reached yet. With a good portion of confidence we expanded our unofficial project with talent around the globe as more people joined our quest to breathe new life into the game. Starting from a group of passionate hobbyists, we expanded our approach into a streamlined development cycle. However, one key player was missing in this whole story, Microsoft.

Once we felt like we had created something truly unique, we went ahead and approached Redmond. Little did we know they had a rekindled interest in AOE II as well, with AOE2 HD already under development behind the scenes. Thanks to the shared excitement for the franchise between both parties, we are thrilled to have an opportunity to bring the communityÔÇÖs expertise to AOE II HD!ÔÇØ

Aging up ÔÇô bring on the new technologies!

You will be able to see things happening immediately. Throughout the summer weÔÇÖll be providing a series of patches to the core title to continue improving the game, fix bugs, improve performance, and more. We are currently doing some internal testing with some updated builds (beta patch 2.4) as part of the transition to SkyBox and today will be opening it up to the public. In this beta patch we are looking at a few issues introduced previously (control group hotkeys), several game bugs (tech tree scaling), and experimenting with some technically challenging, but often requested features (much larger unit select sizes, changes to internal framerates, pixel vs tile scrolling, etc). Because of the extent of this update, weÔÇÖll likely keep it in beta to get your feedback, then focus on optimizing it with 2.5 to push out to everyone.

Cita:Beta Patch 2.5

WeÔÇÖre excited to announce our next beta patch, 2.5, now available for download. WeÔÇÖre expecting to be pushing this out to everyone to replace 2.3 over the next week or so as we iron out a few last quirks, but wanted to give you the opportunity to check it out immediately!

Ladders & Rankings
Since launch, the ranking system on AOE II HD wasnÔÇÖt as good as we wanted it to be, and weÔÇÖve been spending some time working with the FE team to make a number of improvements. Due to the changes, 2.5 beta onward will be using entirely new ladders, so youÔÇÖll be starting fresh. When we go from beta to the masses, weÔÇÖll reset the boards so everyone starts as a level footing.

How will the new leaderboards be organized? The core functionality will operate on a ranked ELO system, something most competitive players have grown accustomed to over the years. Winning a game will grant you elo points, with the amount depending on the skill level of your opponent. Over time weÔÇÖll be investigating some additional techniques to keep the leaderboards interesting, and with 2.6 and beyond may see implementations of new short term ÔÇ£challengeÔÇØ boards we reset from time to time, decay systems, and more. For now though our focus is on implementing a meaningful competitive leaderboard.

To do so, we are separating RM and DM leaderboards into separate rankings, so every player will have multiple ELO scores associated with their profile. WeÔÇÖre seeing some exciting developments from 3rd parties in creating complex sites for leaderboards and ratings, and are really looking forward to seeing what they do with the new ladders.

Launcher Updates
Our game launcher has been a useful way to provide some patch update notifications, but we havenÔÇÖt been updating it with the frequency or agility that weÔÇÖd like. To improve that, there have been some significant changes to how weÔÇÖre handle information processing in the launcher. Most of these are under the hood, but will allow us to put up new information easier, and even create live streams right into the launcher. This particular piece will be finalized once we push 2.5 out to the public.

Gameplay Changes / Updates
Beta 2.4 was an experimental patch for us in many ways, we wanted to push the bounds and tried a few things we didn't know if it would make sense to put into 2.5. Because we weren't pushing it out as an official patch, this meant we were able to be a bit riskier on some changes. For the most part the results were positive, and it allowed us to identify a number of issues to fix that would otherwise not have been apparent.

One of the biggest modifications in beta patch 2.4 was the unit selection size. While the 40 from the original game was often cited as restrictive, in upping the limit to 200 we ran into several new challenges. Such a drastic increase has an inherent effect on DM types of gameplay, where unit micro is critical for successful battles. Reducing some of the unnecessary APM for moving a large army wasn't on its own an issue, but combined with the second challenge it affected gameplay more than we were comfortable with.

The second issue has to do with unit formations and movement AI. Over a decade ago the command structure and pathing for the game was handled in a way designed for 28.8 or 56k modems and Pentium CPUs popular at the turn of the century. The movement logic is something we're delving into, but with 200 units in a single formation there were a number of unexpected and quirky behaviors. Because of this we've backed down the max unit selection size to a more moderate 60 units. This should provide a utility boost over the 40 previously available, while avoiding the negative performance and game effects from our experimentation.

Lobby Changes
The existing lobby system provides some basic information, but weÔÇÖve had a number of requests and weÔÇÖre exploring different ways to improve it. You will see a few changes being placed into 2.5 already, just select one of the games and some information about the included players will be displayed, including their ELO for that ladder.
The biggest lobby request weÔÇÖve heard is unfortunately surprisingly tough due to the steam matchmaking API. WeÔÇÖre not able to get ping numbers directly through steam, and it doesnÔÇÖt show up until youÔÇÖve fully connected into a game. To save space, IÔÇÖll talk about this more on the live stream tomorrow about what challenges we face, and some of the things we are looking into, but to help you select your games better, weÔÇÖve added in a lobby filter titled ÔÇ£regionÔÇØ with several settings.

Cita:AOE II HD Patch 2.5 Release

TodayÔÇÖs the day! Patch 2.5 is LIVE!

Steam should automatically update your game from 2.3 to 2.5 the next time you restart your steam client. If you have been running the 2.5 beta, the beta will disappear today and you will be moving to official 2.5 directly (Verify the game cache if you donÔÇÖt see an update downloaded). As always, if you have any issues ÔÇô first try creating a new player profile from within the game.

IÔÇÖve been jumping between 2.3 and 2.5 quite a bit over the last few days, and I think a lot of players will see some great improvements to the game. Again all of the patch notes below are between 2.3 and 2.5 since the vast majority of players will be making this jump next time they sign in. For the particularly astute, there are a few changes between beta 2.5 and the official release as well, including a performance improvement aimed squarely at the command lag. This feels like one of the most significant non-beta patches weÔÇÖve had since launch and weÔÇÖre excited to have you check it out!


Full list of Patch Notes (from 2.3)

Tech tree:
Implementation of unique unit with purple legend entry, and purple boxes for all unique units. Make sure any unique unit is not visible by more than one civ.
Tech tree should show up properly at all scales on both the left and right side. There were several clipping bugs when the window was at a 4:3 aspect ratio.
Scrolling to the left or right in windowed mode should feel right. Before it would only scroll in some cases when you were well outside the window boundaries.
Scrolling should be disabled when you are close to the bottom of the window so it doesnÔÇÖt interfere with resizing.
Scroll and close buttons are always centered now in any resolution/aspect ratio.

Gameplay
Maximum Selection Size Increased from 40 (2.3) to 60 (2.5). Backed down from 200 in 2.4beta due to aforementioned reasons
Hotkeys Reverted hotkey changes from 2.3 that caused incorrectly functioning shift + alt control group commands
You can now hotkey groups 0-9. (An added control group over the original 1-9)
The hotkey reset button will not scroll the menu to the top of the screen anymore
Clicking reset hotkeys will restore the key to the default instead of making there be no hotkey for the item.

Localization
English strings are no longer locked inside language.dll, but use language_base.txt. Other languages will be converted to this new system in upcoming patches.
Steam Stats / Achievements Single Battle Buildings Razed stat and Single Battle Buildings Lost stat was incorrectly using units lost and has been corrected. These stats/achievements will be reset on the official 2.5 release

Cheats
From 2.3, cheats for wood, food, gold, and stone are now 10,000 instead of 1,000 and should reduce the wear and tear on your ctrl + v keys.

Lobby / Quickmatch
Quickmatch should match players with the closest applicable ELO ratings and should use DM or RM ratings depending on which mode is selected.
You can now adjust the speed of quick match games. It was getting stuck on Normal whenever you readied yourself.
Lobby games are now sorted properly, with games on top reported closest to host according to Steam.
Regional settings for lobbies will be primarily based on your Steam download region settings, thus unsurprisingly it is recommended to select the download location closest to you.
You can filter lobbies and quickmatch by regional settings including:
Worldwide Shows everyone on the patch
Far Within a continent or two roughly.
Regional Your region and surrounding regions
Close Only games in the same region as you
Additional information in the lobby browser. Clicking once on a game will display added info including:
Names of players in game
ELO of players in game for the associated gametype
Indication of whether the game is RM or DM
Other misc information (i.e. scenario name)
Double click to join a game lobby

Performance changes from 2.3
Internal frame rate is capped at 60 (from 20).
User interface updates 10 times per second as opposed to once per second. (mini-map, progress bars, etc)
Introduced pixel smooth scrolling over ÔÇ£half-tileÔÇØ scrolling. You may want to adjust your scrolling speed options if you find it is too slow.
Reduced ÔÇ£Command LagÔÇØ. This is new to the final 2.5 build. Previous builds (including 2.5beta) presented an optimized terrain rendering issue any time a building completed construction or a farm was placed. Previously, it would trigger a full regeneration of the mapÔÇÖs 3D terrain. As a result, this was introducing a significant ÔÇ£command lagÔÇØ and undesirable performance tax. This was especially prevalent with rapid placement of farms. The official 2.5 patch has resolved the issue by regenerating only the affected terrain instead of the entire map.
If you encounter any issues with frame rate unlocks, you can revert to the original behavior by running the game with -ORIGFPS. You can right click on Age of Empires II: HD Edition in Steam, go to properties. Then click on Set Launch Options and enter -ORIGFPS. It will remember this setting, so you may eventually want to remove it later

Leaderboards & ELO Ratings
The ELO calculations have been completely rewritten from the live version in 2.3 and follow the old MS Zone calculations. These boards will be reset again at the go-live for 2.5. Here are the known rules
Leaderboard ELO calculations are only considered for games that contain exactly two teams and no AI players. Any other combinations of teams are not considered for ELO calculations, such as a 3 player free for all
There are two separate ranked leaderboards which encompass the following:
Deathmatch games will be ranked on the DM leaderboard.
Random Map, Turbo RM, King of the Hill, Regicide, Defend the Wonder, and Wonder Race are part of the RM leaderboard.
Any other mode will not be considered for ELO score calculations and is unranked, such as custom scenarios.
There is a minimum time that a ranked game requires before the game will be officially calculated on the leaderboard. 2 minutes for DM and 5 minutes for RM. Games under those time limits are considered pre-maturely completed and are not scored.
A pre-game penalty is deducted for starting any ranked match. The 3 points is refunded back at the end of the game whether you win, lose, resign, or quit, irregardless of the time limits for determining whether an
ELO calculation kicks in (5 minutes RM, 2 minutes DM). It is designed to penalize players that pull the network plug to avoid finishing games.
Any MP game that is saved and restored later will be considered an unranked game to avoid exploitation.
We are now tracking additional stats per leaderboard that will detect players that exploit disconnections. This information is accessible now to 3rd party websites, and may be displayed in future patches.

Crash Fixes
We have fixed a random crash affecting Windows XP users involving issuing move orders ÔÇô which could cause games to occasionally crash during gameplay.

Known Issues
It is highly recommended when moving to the beta build (or when upgrading between builds) to create a new player profile to avoid any potential conflicts during the upgrade. You can do so within the game by going to options, deleting the current profile, and creating a new one.
If you do a fresh install of AOE II HD after having the game on your system, in certain circumstances text may appear to vanish from in-game. This is a result of font files in the steam folder needing to be read on startup. (Windows thinks you got rid of the fonts and didnÔÇÖt initialize them again when you re-downloaded the game). Simply restart your machine and the text will re-appear.
We are tracking several rare crashes across multiple versions on windows XP during campaign play and will continue to investigate to improve stability.
For some players the steam overlay may present a significant framerate drop when visible. WeÔÇÖre looking into this, but if you wish to disable the overlay in the gameÔÇÖs properties simply uncheck ÔÇ£enable steam community in gameÔÇØ.
Please ensure you are using a copy legitimately purchased through official retail channels (Amazon, Steam, GameStop, etc) and downloaded through Steam when attempting to play AOE II HD. We cannot support issues that may crop up with other versions.

PD: Mono, ya puedes cambiar el título del hilo, que con los chicos del Forgotten Empires al mando tengo buenas vibraciones para el futuro de AoE2HD.┬á