Patch 1.5 and "vanilla" experience for EEII+AoS
Posted: 03 Dec 2018, 18:51
Hi to the team!
I am happy I discovered the existence of the 1.5 "unofficial" patch - I started playing Empire Earth II recently and frankly, I believe I have found the true successor to the "classic" Age of Empires series (N.B.: I have yet to play Age of Empires III, that's for later - maybe in a couple of years). I only finished the tutorial and the Korean campaign so far but I can already tell that this RTS is up there with my best experiences in the genre. I would have been sad if the game had been completely "dead" at this point. Especially as I would like to make some nice single player scenarios (some historical, some fictional) in time, and one needs an audience (however small) for motivation!
I think I would be dumb not to take advantage of the 1.5 patch (note: screen resolution isn't a problem for me, I'm playing on a 1280x1024 monitor), seeing as it seemingly fixes pretty much all the bugs left after the last official patch (already very stable anyway, haven't noticed bugs so far apart from an invincible scout for the player in the last scenario of the tutorial campaign, but I always assumed that was a trigger-related bug), but I am interested in experiencing the game as close to "vanilla" as possible.
I know about the "Change UP1.5 Settings" button to switch option "Unlock UP1.5 units, buildings, models, sounds and camera settings in game" to "No" (and it seems the saves and settings can be carried over from the previous version of the game) so all good there, but I still have some specific questions:
- are "graphical improvements" still carried over no matter what? specifically, I mean the enhanced effects for the nuclear explosions (I didn't find other examples): I would prefer to leave them out for the purpose of my first complete vanilla playthrough (notably since I always write reviews of games in their "best official state" separately from community "enhanced visuals" efforts), though admittedly this isn't a big issue (I will "suffer" benefiting from better nuclear explosions lol, the vanilla ones are just OK)
- is the issue with the shadows of submerged submarines still showing on the water surface (using vanilla highest video settings, incl. complex shadows) corrected? that would be great
- regarding the AI: have there been improvements to how it works (I am happy with it in general, it does the minimum I expected from a "modern" RTS post-Age of Kings - the AI was also the factor that decided me to skip Empire Earth), and specifically, have there been improvements to how the AI reacts to War Plan proposals? From experience with the last official patch, I can't quite yet say if it actually works one way or the other (I might create a separate topic for this, detailing my experience so far). I would absolutely welcome improvements in this area!!
- are there improvements to the map editor?
Many thanks for your help! And cheers for doing this work for a game that was commercially successful, but ultimately overlooked seeing as this truly is one of the most interesting RTS titles in existence.
I am happy I discovered the existence of the 1.5 "unofficial" patch - I started playing Empire Earth II recently and frankly, I believe I have found the true successor to the "classic" Age of Empires series (N.B.: I have yet to play Age of Empires III, that's for later - maybe in a couple of years). I only finished the tutorial and the Korean campaign so far but I can already tell that this RTS is up there with my best experiences in the genre. I would have been sad if the game had been completely "dead" at this point. Especially as I would like to make some nice single player scenarios (some historical, some fictional) in time, and one needs an audience (however small) for motivation!
I think I would be dumb not to take advantage of the 1.5 patch (note: screen resolution isn't a problem for me, I'm playing on a 1280x1024 monitor), seeing as it seemingly fixes pretty much all the bugs left after the last official patch (already very stable anyway, haven't noticed bugs so far apart from an invincible scout for the player in the last scenario of the tutorial campaign, but I always assumed that was a trigger-related bug), but I am interested in experiencing the game as close to "vanilla" as possible.
I know about the "Change UP1.5 Settings" button to switch option "Unlock UP1.5 units, buildings, models, sounds and camera settings in game" to "No" (and it seems the saves and settings can be carried over from the previous version of the game) so all good there, but I still have some specific questions:
- are "graphical improvements" still carried over no matter what? specifically, I mean the enhanced effects for the nuclear explosions (I didn't find other examples): I would prefer to leave them out for the purpose of my first complete vanilla playthrough (notably since I always write reviews of games in their "best official state" separately from community "enhanced visuals" efforts), though admittedly this isn't a big issue (I will "suffer" benefiting from better nuclear explosions lol, the vanilla ones are just OK)
- is the issue with the shadows of submerged submarines still showing on the water surface (using vanilla highest video settings, incl. complex shadows) corrected? that would be great
- regarding the AI: have there been improvements to how it works (I am happy with it in general, it does the minimum I expected from a "modern" RTS post-Age of Kings - the AI was also the factor that decided me to skip Empire Earth), and specifically, have there been improvements to how the AI reacts to War Plan proposals? From experience with the last official patch, I can't quite yet say if it actually works one way or the other (I might create a separate topic for this, detailing my experience so far). I would absolutely welcome improvements in this area!!
- are there improvements to the map editor?
Many thanks for your help! And cheers for doing this work for a game that was commercially successful, but ultimately overlooked seeing as this truly is one of the most interesting RTS titles in existence.