I am back. This is an excellent suggestion.

Is there any legal reason that it cannot be done? Make it GPL then it's cool.

I believe AOW1 is still selling in bargain price; while the publishers/developers aren't really depending of AOW1 profits for their survival.

Why not make it as a promotional gag? Free marketing for publisher/developers.

It would be quite a promotional gag. Make it a contest? That way you could conceivably retain the copyrights if that's important.

As for creating competition for SM, I would contend that most people who will buy SM while it's sold at a price where the publisher still makes money will have done at the time AoW 1.5 would be done. Since the new project (at least of TS) supposedly is not related to AoW and hence also likely not related to Fantsy TBS, AoW 1.5 wouldn't be competition for their next product.

TBS isn't a really big market with a big press, so people would hear about it through sites like AoWHeaven, though possibly it would get a column in a game magazin or two, like PC Gamer's Extended Play here in the US.

Already sounds like a hugely ambitious, indeed daunting task, but I would be willing to help, mostly withsuggestion and debate, as I have the programming skills of a drunken sloth suffering from indigestion following the conssumption of a monkey, fur and all (coincidentally, said monkey was halfway through hamlet...)

Quoted from ZombieEater:

Indeed, such a game would have a lifespan of years. One problem that comes to mind is the graphics engine. Wasn't AOW1 designed around a different hex system? That influences gameplay, movement, and everything else. Was perhaps some of the appeal of AOW1 related to the fact that moving from one side of the map to the other was a longer process (at least, that's how I remember it, it's been years)? If so, would it be possible to combine elements of the AOW1 and AOWSM codes, or would such a venture require designing a whole new game from the ground up using concepts from each? I dunno, just asking. It's a great idea.

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ID Software tends to release source code. And thanks to that, we can now play Doom hot-seat multiplayer ( http://legacy.newdoom.com/)

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No doubt! It wouldn't be something to crank out over a weekend. I'd imagine a month or so of studying the code, at least the parts that would likely change, e.g. the movement and attack code to see how bad it would be to port the 3/2/1 strikes depending on remaining movement of AoW2.

In parallel I'd hope somebody could gather input from the community. Hopefully that person would also have an inkling of how to programm, so s/he could take what the partner understands in the code and use that to make some judgement calls on those suggestions.

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I would say the height bonus and penalty are out of reach, as is the more involved city development you had in AoW2. Rewriting the GFX engine and make use of it would be a tremendous effort, way past what a few people could do, unless they are all experienced GFX wizards.

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True. It looks like it's similar, though. I fired AoW up yesterday, so I have a fresh memory of it. The maps are smaller overall I think.

The changes that could be tackled for this project wouldn't be monumental. I'd imagine it be pretty hard to implement something like Domains in AoWI, unfortunately, though some lesser form might be possible. E.g. something that would allow some limited Spell Casting in a siege, even without a Spell Casting Hero present.

There are a few items that come to mind that were really ground breaking for AoW2, e.g. the Domains and the movement idea. The focus would be on finding those ideas and figuring out how hard it would be to make AoW do those things.

Quoted from ZombieEater:

What is "the movement idea"?

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That you can move your Units.

Sorry, it was a short for number of strikes/shots depends on remaining movement for a particular Unit.

This was the great change that made a high-level Hero much less of a super Unit. My impression was that most people really liked that idea.

well i like to play original directly from the orginal dev team. they "just" need to be convienced to the glory of aow1 and make true remake of aow1. .....sometime in the future.... i mean westwood made a remake of dune too, was mainly a graphics and engine update. with nice features added but nothing taken away.

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That would be too strong a statement.

You can say they took away unlimited retaliations and limit the number of shots a Ranged Attacker gets depending on remaining movement, where almost everybody agrees that those are huge improvements in AoW2 over AoW.

The glass may be half-full for me, but it's half-empty for you.

Also, would a GFX remake really entice you to get another AoW installment if nothing else is added? If they'd add some cool features to AoWI, but left the GFX would you be interested?

While I like the GFX of AoW2 I like the AoW GFX just as much.

i didn't mean to skip the real improvements made in aow2, like limited retaliation strike. so the glass is still full for me.

[This message has been edited by DarkMystery (edited 05-19-2004 @ 01:52 PM).]

An RMG would entice me to purchase the origional AOW1. Fancy graphics are ok, but, never the meat of any game. I liked the option of leader onboard/offboard of AOW1 and the amount of races on the map at one time (12). The rest can have their AOWII and AOW:SM, I still prefer the first AOW, and you know what they say, "You always remember your first" hehe And the main thing I saw that needed improvement on the AI was it's back n forth movement without any real direction and splitting up it's armies in the face of danger. But, heh, AOW:SM AI does that as well. So where's the improvement?? lol

UPDATE:

SmurfHero started a similar thread in the AoW I Forum here.

Aid his efforts and send him an email that you support the source release.

Make every vote count!

[This message has been edited by ZombieEater (edited 07-06-2004 @ 03:36 PM).]

Good Idea Zombie, I could turn AOW:SM into a decent game if I had an open editor to the AI and game overall. Though all I'd really change is the leader on, leader off option, probably do away with that stupid wizard altogether and script more AI personalities, like to trash and burn, and be more aggressive, and perhaps work on it's build structure and make it where it can build pioneers and settle other cities.

Spartan has a very nice editing feature for improving the AI, I can really make that AI shine in that game, be as aggressive as I want and adjust diplomatic relationships for 100 different nations. Some new things I learned in scripting the AI for Spartan are added features like threatlocalstrength, threatopportunity, resthreat (resourses needed and how easy to obtain), threatboundary, battletrust% decrease to popularity (sort of like a badboy feature), threatlocalstrength(offensive), threatlocalstrength(defensive).

There are some kewl features to really create a challenging AI. And that's just a handful of them, there are many more. Oh and I can also give it build and research priorities, thus having it create some rather healthy and strong armies not too far into the game.

I can even make a "WARLORDS" game out of it by changing all the diplomatic relations to 10, heh, every nation hates every other nation, talk about extreme warlords, 100 nations all vying for greek and parts of asia conquest.

Are those AI features documented, or has the community figured them out? Are those values modified via spreadsheets, or is there an actual GUI?

MoO3 had a similar approach, opening up some of the parameters controlling the AI to user mods. Unfortunately, not everything was accessible, nothing was really documented, and the AI out of the box was..., questionable.

I don't know how the AI for AoW is coded up, driven by easily accessible parameters, or hard coded. Depending on that it could be anywhere from moderately difficult to near impossible to change the AI behavior.

I actually had my sights set lower, just adding some of AoW2's and SM's features to AoW, which may not be too hard.