Swgb/aoeii Engine


Herosmantle

Still Fresh
Joined
Sep 19, 2008
Messages
7
I'm very interested in writing an engine to clone the game Star Wars Galactic battlegrounds. As far as I'm aware, this game uses the same engine as Age of Empires II and uses the same/very similar resource formats etc.

Would be a big project but its a game I really enjoy, and it would be great to see it running on the Pandora!

Information is available to a certain extent from the various modding communities for SWGB/AOE (heavengames for example)

The Pandora is certainly capable of running something like this, take a look at the original system requirements:
QUOTE
Minimum:
Pentium II 233 MHz, 32 MB RAM, Windows 95/98/2000/XP, DirectX 8.0a, 2 MB DirectX-compatible video card, DirectX-compatible sound card, and 4x CD-ROM drive

Recommended:
Pentium II 266 MHz, 64 MB RAM, and 4 MB DirectX-compatible video card

What do you think?

Screenshots, if you've never seen the game before:
star-wars-galactic-battlegrounds-5.jpg

star-wars-galactic-battlegrounds-10.jpg
 
Please do! AoE II is my all-time favorite RTS!

EDIT: I'm hoping Ensamble will release the source for the engine when the close after Halo Wars, but I somehow doubt it. :(
 
Edit: Dammit, sorry. Didn't see the 'clone' there. Thought you wanted a port

(and rewriting the engine would be fine, but you would have to get your own artwork, as the game's art is under copyright)
 
OH.
MY.
GOD.

You really should do this, AOE2 and Battlegrounds were my favourite rts's ever. And for artwork, I'm sure some of the Modders at heavengames may let you use theirs.
I hope you can make an engine that can use the original data though, that would just be awesome 9you could also look into what data is available in the demo versions, so you can release with the demo shareware files).

You have my full support in this project.
 
Mattz said:
I hope you can make an engine that can use the original data though, that would just be awesome 9you could also look into what data is available in the demo versions, so you can release with the demo shareware files).
I've just downloaded the demo (SWGB), and it contains the models/sounds for two civs - rebel alliance and galactic empire. If its "ok" to use these, then at the very least we would have a game with two of the original civs, and possibly add more later.

Oh and although I fully intend to follow this through, don't expect it to happen any time soon!

I'll try to keep people up to date on whatever progress is being made though :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
We also need to start thinking about control schemes and how it should be displayed. I was thinking that since the engine is going to be programmed from scratch, extra features that weren't in the originals could be added. Such as Zooming in and out, and maybe even a mod managed built into the engine, so mods can be loaded and unloaded from the main menu.
 
Are you guys ok? Seriously your trying to recreate an engine that took many paid people to make. As much as good as your intentions are, this doesnt seem realistic.
Something realistic would be to create a modification to something that exists, create something for wargus for example.
 
QUOTE
Are you guys ok? Seriously your trying to recreate an engine that took many paid people to make. As much as good as your intentions are, this doesnt seem realistic.
Something realistic would be to create a modification to something that exists, create something for wargus for example.


I can be wrong (correct me if i am : ) but is wargus not an engine for a game made by paid devs as well? Not saying it will be easy, but just thinking...

Edit: Spelling
 
Hmmm, You'll definitely have your work cut out for you. Have you any experience with coding these types of games? Or game programming in general?

PS: Bos Wars/Wargus/Stargus all use the Stratagus engine.
 
Adventus said:
Hmmm, You'll definitely have your work cut out for you. Have you any experience with coding these types of games? Or game programming in general?

PS: Bos Wars/Wargus/Stargus all use the Stratagus engine.
(yes I know this was not aimed at me)

I'm fairly sure I could code the easy parts of the engine (rendering, movement, etc.), and I actually dabbled with cloning this very engine a while back (it was "test" code, nothing you'd want to look at even if I did still have it), but realized that pathfinding and AI (the hard stuff, IMO) were out of my league.

I consider myself to be an OK (ie, <Decent) programmer, so if he's got some experience, I suspect it could be pulled off, given enough time/support/dedication.

Just my $0.02.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Pickle said:
Are you guys ok? Seriously your trying to recreate an engine that took many paid people to make. As much as good as your intentions are, this doesnt seem realistic.
Something realistic would be to create a modification to something that exists, create something for wargus for example.
Yes I know how big a task this is, does it put me off? No. Is it unrealistic? Maybe. But I'll still learn some things trying and probably enjoy myself along the way.

I do not want to go down the modification route because that kind of eliminates the point. The idea is to create as faithful a recreation as possible.
closetwam said:
http://freeempires.yoll.net/GG/index.html

You might as well get together with this project "Gambas Genie". They have already started developing a Genie (the AoE engine) clone for Linux.


This looks interesting, I'll try to get in touch with them and see what they say.
closetwam said:
Or make a game that uses the Bos Wars engine. http://www.boswars.org/
This would do a lot to show off the 3D capabilites of the Panda. :)


The engine I want to create is isometric - this looks not quite so, correct me if I'm wrong?
Adventus said:
Hmmm, You'll definitely have your work cut out for you. Have you any experience with coding these types of games? Or game programming in general?
I have a working knowledge of C++ and have dabbled in making homebrew games for the DS, but never anything like this.

Capn_Fish said:
Adventus said:
Hmmm, You'll definitely have your work cut out for you. Have you any experience with coding these types of games? Or game programming in general?

PS: Bos Wars/Wargus/Stargus all use the Stratagus engine.
(yes I know this was not aimed at me)

I'm fairly sure I could code the easy parts of the engine (rendering, movement, etc.), and I actually dabbled with cloning this very engine a while back (it was "test" code, nothing you'd want to look at even if I did still have it), but realized that pathfinding and AI (the hard stuff, IMO) were out of my league.

I consider myself to be an OK (ie, <Decent) programmer, so if he's got some experience, I suspect it could be pulled off, given enough time/support/dedication.

Just my $0.02.

That would be great if you could help out, first step would just be to write a bitmap loader for the original .DRS files. Can't be too hard, because there's already viewers out there:
DRS Viewer

And I'm a he lol!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
My apologies! I try not to offend people and look what happens... :p

I'd be happy to help, but with a few notes/questions:

-What language/toolkit are you planning to use? I know C++ and can get by with C, SDL, and some very basic OpenGL.
-As I said above, I'll be all but useless when it comes to pathfinding and/or AI
-I've never actually collaborated on a project with anybody to any extent (I do try to write readable/decently-commented code, though)

Anyway, if want help, I can probably provide it, though I may lose interest after a while, as tends to happen :(
 
Capn_Fish said:
My apologies! I try not to offend people and look what happens... :p

I'd be happy to help, but with a few notes/questions:

-What language/toolkit are you planning to use? I know C++ and can get by with C, SDL, and some very basic OpenGL.
-As I said above, I'll be all but useless when it comes to pathfinding and/or AI
-I've never actually collaborated on a project with anybody to any extent (I do try to write readable/decently-commented code, though)

Anyway, if want help, I can probably provide it, though I may lose interest after a while, as tends to happen :(
Will be using C++, but at present I don't have a set-up specific to the pandora. Will most likely be using SDL, although OpenGL(ES?) is certainly an option. As for never collaborating, me either!

For now this is very much in planning stages, I'm trying to plan things out before jumping in and starting to code things. One issue so far is going to be about writing a loader for the original data files. I've linked a document I found which is aimed at the Age of Empires data files, but the ones in SWGB are also very much the same kind of format.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
...wouldn't the spring engine (Total Annihilation clone... has many mods supports shaders for nice graphics) or glest (its own engine... not a clone) engine work for this?
 
cb88 said:
...wouldn't the spring engine (Total Annihilation clone... has many mods supports shaders for nice graphics) or glest (its own engine... not a clone) engine work for this?
No. It's a different engine.

EDIT: I think that's even 3D as opposed to AoE II, which is 2D.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Back
Top