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on Gopher (inofficial)
URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI Web Server for AoE 1, 2 and 3 DE supporting LAN multiplayer 100% offline
apitman wrote 36 min ago:
What is the best option for playing LAN games over the internet these
days?
Hamachi appears to still be a thing, but I would prefer something open
source.
Tailscale sadly doesn't support multicast, which I'm assuming most
games use for LAN discovery.
ZeroTier maybe?
ziofill wrote 2 hours 50 min ago:
I'm not sure I understand: does one still need a copy of the game to
play or is it self-contained?
typh00n wrote 11 hours 5 min ago:
We tried this at a LAN-Party in December and couldn't get it to run.
I am happily trying it again for the next LAN-Party. Nice to see
development on this project. :-)
apitman wrote 3 hours 59 min ago:
Curious what your use case is as opposed to using the official LAN
support? For me, I'm trying to get it working completely without
internet, ie on a plane. It's so sad to me that built-in LAN requires
an internet connection.
typh00n wrote 14 min ago:
not all participants had an official copy of the game.
while i think that it is well worth it, i am not the person who
pressures other people to buy things for a single-digit-attendence
one-time get-to-gether LAN-party.
red_admiral wrote 11 hours 43 min ago:
AoE2 was released 1999 based on a 1997 game engine, and a new major DLC
is about to drop this spring in 2025 (for the definitive edition).
Sandy Petersen should be proud.
Seanambers wrote 12 hours 10 min ago:
Remember we used to have Aoe2 sessions on LANS when we were kids back
in the 00s and like 1 in 3 games just crashed after everyone had played
for like 2-3 hours.
In a way it was even better because then nobody had to loose, and
everyone believed they were winning.
matsemann wrote 10 hours 43 min ago:
And since everyone was "turtling" the games would almost never end
anyways.
rightbyte wrote 9 hours 8 min ago:
That is how kids play Monopoly too. It is part of the fun :)
matsemann wrote 8 hours 54 min ago:
Yeah, I know of turtling because we used to do it ourselves! Have
a pact that you can't attack in the start, then build an
impenetrable city until there are basically no more resources
left and then fight it off with having 10 castles and barracks
and stables mass-producing units right to the front.
nurettin wrote 14 hours 31 min ago:
Experimental
* AIX
I wonder how they got an AIX.
mrweasel wrote 13 hours 24 min ago:
Emulator maybe? It's a weird and intersting platform to target, but I
suspect that it's because Go supports it, so it might not be to much
hassle. On the other hand reading the article from yesterday
regarding porting Tailscale, it might be more involved that I
imagine.
nurettin wrote 8 hours 35 min ago:
Yeah go supports AIX. In fact I remember it having bash, and a
package manager so it felt like home. AS400 was an interesting
platform. I was fascinated with their almost assembly like
programs, alien UIs and decades old hardware. Almost got nerd
sniped. Unfortunately, I was told to use java. The jar I tested on
linux worked perfectly the first time, so I couldn't even learn
anything.
pjmlp wrote 14 hours 31 min ago:
I guess a few brownie points for making the case for compiled managed
languages in games, nice work.
whatever1 wrote 16 hours 11 min ago:
Voulomai
vkaku wrote 16 hours 54 min ago:
Excellent.
This seems to work with the Remasters as well. Even better :)
Please add AoM support as well.
o1o1o1 wrote 17 hours 12 min ago:
Thank you for sharing this, it is truly amazing.
While I like Steam for the convenience and also appreciate their
efforts in developing SteamOS I am concerned about the lock-in.
Projects like this really help to own more of what you paid for again,
luskaner is a hero for me.
Rohansi wrote 16 hours 39 min ago:
I feel like it is important to point out that Steam does not require
games to have any DRM. Not even Steam's DRM. It's entirely up to the
game developer and/or publisher. Many games on Steam are already
DRM-free where you can just back up the files and play without Steam.
o1o1o1 wrote 5 hours 42 min ago:
Thank you for pointing that out. I am afraid that AoE is probably
not one of them though?
Maybe the old AoE versions will be open-sourced one day, that would
be awesome.
pertymcpert wrote 2 hours 59 min ago:
Probably also because it's a multiplayer game and you want to try
to stop cheaters.
herewulf wrote 13 hours 7 min ago:
Does this apply to AoE? I never played it much in its hey-day but
it would be interesting to get into properly. I have no interest in
buying an old game with DRM given the obvious potential for
maintenance issues though.
Rohansi wrote 5 hours 42 min ago:
I haven't checked AoE myself. If you're concerned about DRM,
games using Steam DRM are usually the easiest to crack on your
own by just by replacing the Steam DLL that ships with the game
with one that emulates its functionality.
lionkor wrote 10 hours 21 min ago:
You could buy it and then download a cracked one
o1o1o1 wrote 5 hours 43 min ago:
I basically did that, bought AoE several times, back then on CD
and again on Steam. First I used virtual drives with ISO images
and later a cracked version.
Today I am only using the Steam version though because I can
easily join multiplayer games with friends all over the world.
Also, I really like all the additional features in the remakes
of AoE that you can get on Steam.
CursedSilicon wrote 17 hours 16 min ago:
Does anything like this exist for the original Age of Empires games?
Battle.Net has "PVPGN" that covers Diablo 2 up through Warcraft 3, and
the Westwood Online games (ish) but searching for an AoE equivalent
turned up nothing
apitman wrote 3 hours 55 min ago:
Check out Voobly. That seems to be a pretty big hub for people
playing the original games, I think mostly patched versions of the
originals with some nice features.
matsemann wrote 10 hours 40 min ago:
I've LANed them "online" many moons ago by using software that made a
virtual lan that we all installed and managed to find each other
ingame. "Hamachi" I think?
lightingthedark wrote 17 hours 10 min ago:
I believe the originals just supported offline LAN play. I remember
getting my friend to have his modem dial my modem so we could play
together, no Internet connection required.
red_admiral wrote 11 hours 47 min ago:
From memory, there was a patch that added a new-fangled option
"internet" as well as LAN play. I remember the days of fiddling
with port forwarding and then calling a friend over the telephone
to read out my IP address for them to type in.
cheeseomlit wrote 17 hours 39 min ago:
I'm sure the answer could be found in this repo somewhere but its above
my head- does aoe2 DE rely mostly on p2p for multiplayer? I assume it
does and the regional servers are just used for matchmaking, and all
the actual game logic is running on the clients. I base that on the
fact that map hacks are possible and that one player lagging lags the
game for everyone, but there are often conflicting claims when it's
brought up on aoe forums
red_admiral wrote 11 hours 39 min ago:
AFAIK, it's server-based rather than p2p for DE, but the way it works
is all clients/servers simulate the world in lockstep and hold a full
copy of the state. That's what makes map hacks possible.
You don't need anything paxos-like for this, the game desyncs and
stops if any machine messes up but you can usually restore from a
save point in that case.
Raudius wrote 13 hours 24 min ago:
In professional tournament games a server is chosen that lies between
the two players. For example, a Brazil-China match might be played in
an EU server.
Given this, I suspect the server is used as a central source of truth
between the clients where all game data goes through the server, with
all the calculations still being done client-side.
arbitrandomuser wrote 13 hours 42 min ago:
That was the old one , the DE version lags only for the player with
poor network ( cpu performance stutter of one player affect all
players though )
lightingthedark wrote 17 hours 5 min ago:
If you haven't read it, there's a great paper on the netcode of the
originals: [1] I'd be surprised if the definitive editions changed
the design significantly enough to move the netcode away from P2P,
but I don't know of any actual information on it.
URI [1]: https://zoo.cs.yale.edu/classes/cs538/readings/papers/terran...
brink wrote 18 hours 45 min ago:
I hope AoE2 lives as long as Chess does. It really is one of the
"perfect" games.
apitman wrote 3 hours 52 min ago:
I thought about almost this exact thing recently. I hope we're able
to keep the best games running forever.
For games that are fun I think you can leave in balance issues and
even features-not-bugs. It's trickier for things like netcode bugs
that are purely a negative.
Really grateful Id release their source eventually. Really hoping the
same will happen for AoE2 someday.
dominicrose wrote 12 hours 45 min ago:
It's a brilliant game for sure. The randomness, the fact that it's
not turned-based and the multiplayer also make it interesting
compared to chess.
However Chess has 1000x simpler rules that never change, and you
don't need high APM to play competitively.
sqrt_1 wrote 12 hours 48 min ago:
AoE2 is coming out on PS5 this year.
guappa wrote 15 hours 6 min ago:
In chess if you don't play 2 years and then come back to it, you
don't find out that all the rules have changed in the meanwhile.
Which is what currently happens with age of empires 2.
hackernewds wrote 18 hours 24 min ago:
It really is and they keep iterating on it. definitive edition has
more investment than some of the new AOE3 and 4 versions
the__alchemist wrote 19 hours 14 min ago:
13
LPisGood wrote 20 hours 9 min ago:
This is excellent.
I wonder if there any public documentation for AoE3âs API that was
used to make this or if this was all newly reverse engineered. Iâve
seen people ask about this kind of documentation before, but Iâve
never seen it.
hoten wrote 20 hours 10 min ago:
Bit confused on the webserver aspect of this. Is it just the match
making / game broadcast component of AoE multiplayer?
apitman wrote 3 hours 56 min ago:
While the game itself runs over LAN, my understanding is LAN play
requires internet for 2 reasons:
1. the game connecting to multiplayer services
2. coordination server for the LAN setup itself.
I think this covers #2. #1 appears to be more complicated
unfortunately, and involves tricking Steam into thinking you're
connected.
pininja wrote 19 hours 53 min ago:
I was curious about this too and enjoyed reading the routes file
URI [1]: https://github.com/luskaner/ageLANServer/blob/main/server/in...
486sx33 wrote 20 hours 11 min ago:
So how can I play AoE 3 the war chiefs online ?
CSMastermind wrote 19 hours 51 min ago:
If you're okay buying it then the definitive edition is on sale with
active servers and includes War Chiefs among other things.
There were some questionable changes to the names of things to make
them more politically correct but the game play is better than ever.
bigstrat2003 wrote 5 hours 24 min ago:
The censorship really annoys me. I would've happily paid for the
definitive edition (even though I already own the game), but I'm
not willing to support a rerelease which changes stuff about the
original game like that. If the devs want to make sure their new
content is politically correct then fine, but changing the original
content isn't cool.
Rendello wrote 20 hours 18 min ago:
Classic AoE-playing Hacker News-types might also enjoy 0 A.D.
It's free and fun, but definitely humbling if you consider yourself a
master strategist:
URI [1]: https://play0ad.com/
gsich wrote 8 hours 14 min ago:
8 player multiplayer is unplayable.
Rendello wrote 5 hours 29 min ago:
The lagging frames just give extra time to strategize ;)
RUnconcerned wrote 12 hours 23 min ago:
Wow, this is still being developed? I still recall the Heavengames
forum thread that spawned it...
Rendello wrote 5 hours 31 min ago:
It just had a big release in January even!
bryancrisso wrote 19 hours 4 min ago:
i love 0ad so much but it runs AWFULLY as soon as you get a fun
number of units on the map.
Dunedan wrote 12 hours 43 min ago:
Alpha 27 of 0 A.D. has a notable performance regression for a
subset of users, compared to earlier versions. Users not affected
by this regression should see improved performance, thanks to
improvements like the added Vulkan support.
The regression in performance seems to be caused by a change in
Spidermonkey. For details check out [1] That said, even without
this performance regression, 0 A.D. is prone to run slow in late
game when lots of units are on the map. There are several reasons
for that, but maybe the most intuitive one is that 0 A.D. is still
largely single-threaded and therefore doesn't make use of the
multi-core capabilities of modern CPUs. As you can imagine changing
that is no easy feat and takes a lot of effort. As the number of
volunteers to 0 A.D. is limited, nobody has picked up that topic
yet.
If you enjoy 0 A.D. and want to improve it: it's Open Source and
contributions are always welcome!
URI [1]: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/issues/7714
nophunphil wrote 14 hours 22 min ago:
Same here. I use a modern Windows 10 PC (Ryzen 5600x, RTX 3070Ti)
when playing games. I wonder if the performance is better on Linux
for some reason.
Rendello wrote 18 hours 29 min ago:
I haven't had an issue with that personally (played on and off for
almost 10 years), though I imagine it could be an issue on some
older hardware. Massed units will cause lag in big team games where
there's 4 armies clashing, though that might be more of a network
thing.
yohannesk wrote 16 hours 39 min ago:
I am curious as a non game developer, are these types of games
deterministic? If so if I send to the server that I moved huge
units to attack another huge units, can the server determine what
the end will be? Why do we face a network issue?
arlort wrote 14 hours 36 min ago:
They can be deterministic but I think you might be confused
about the kind of game
In RTS games like 0AD or AoE you don't just send a single huge
unit to attack and wait for the result, you send many tens of
individual units near enemy units, then the "battle" goes on in
real time and you can micromanage units to influence the
outcome. You can't just simulate it on the server because the
server can't simulate the thought process of the players
vasco wrote 14 hours 17 min ago:
AoE2 battles are all about the micromanagement. Last minute
splitting the onslaught of trash units against your opponents
treb micro shot can change everything.
Kind of old but lots of micro tactics per unit here:
URI [1]: https://youtu.be/hjUgisPD_C4?si=F-UvzDOTsWRZhZSq
matsemann wrote 15 hours 1 min ago:
This article is a classic, 1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network
Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond [1] Edit: original
where the pictures work [2] > Rather than passing the status of
each unit in the game, the expectation was to run the exact
same simulation on each machine, passing each an identical set
of commands that were issued by the users at the same time. The
PCs would basically synchronize their game watches in best
war-movie tradition, allow players to issue commands, and then
execute in exactly the same way at the same time and have
identical games.
URI [1]: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/1500-archers...
URI [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20180719170411/https://www...
IshKebab wrote 14 hours 12 min ago:
Which was great until there's a bug and it just says "sync
error" and your 3 hour game is gone.
doublerabbit wrote 10 hours 27 min ago:
Same with RA2/YR.
All it took was for some salty player to activate a trainer
or prez IFS and kill the game.
I like that the lobbies were ran over IRCd.
Dreamforge IRCd with the server password being
"supersecret".
immibis wrote 11 hours 52 min ago:
When this happens in Factorio, the game pauses, one player
(the server?) saves the game and sends it to all other
players who load the savefile and the game resumes when
that's done. It's not a nice experience, but it's a lot
better than "you can't play today, goodbye!"
HideousKojima wrote 16 hours 28 min ago:
Many (not all) RTS games use a networking method called
lockstep synchronization that requires the gameplay to be
deterministic, but has its own downsides. One of those being
that if one player lags, everyone lags. I know AOE 1 and 2 use
it, and I assume 3 as well
NortySpock wrote 5 hours 51 min ago:
For Beyond All Reason, it seems the Spring/Recoil engine
will eventually decide to "close the action window", so that
if one player is lagging hard, they simply submitted no
actions for that "round" and the rest of the players keep
going.
I know because I've gotten to the point in the late game
where my computer can't simulate at realtime, and I can no
longer control my units, but everyone else keeps playing.
Conveniently you can even still sort of chat in this state,
and ask a teammate to assume control of your army on your
behalf.
littlestymaar wrote 15 hours 6 min ago:
The good thing being that you get replay for free.
gsich wrote 8 hours 13 min ago:
You get that with any type of networking.
Panzer04 wrote 12 hours 40 min ago:
It's got downsides. There's often no way to recover game
state without actually running the simulation, and often no
way to go backwards either. If you miss a moment in the
replay you gotta watch the whole damn thing all over gain.
abigail95 wrote 20 hours 20 min ago:
How do you put a Terms of Use with an AGPL license? Isn't this a
"further restriction" which the license says you can remove?
anamexis wrote 19 hours 48 min ago:
Seems more like a CYA thing to prevent takedowns
shash7 wrote 18 hours 27 min ago:
What's CYA?
pacificmint wrote 18 hours 21 min ago:
It stands for "Cover Your Ass".
Wikipedia explains it as "an activity done by individuals to
protect themselves from possible subsequent criticism, legal
penalties, or other repercussions, usually in a work-related or
bureaucratic context."[1]
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_your_ass
HeatrayEnjoyer wrote 18 hours 29 min ago:
It's CYA if it's meaningless.
recycledmatt wrote 20 hours 38 min ago:
Awesome to see AoE, and games in general being future proofed. Sad when
functionality is lost because someone turned off a server.
slightlygrilled wrote 3 hours 28 min ago:
This happened with supreme commander.
The company shut down and turned the servers off, but luckily someone
created an implementation of the match making server.
And even to this day the community is fully alive and growing, they
even continue to develop the game, and have taken it far beyond the
original.
Itâs called Forged Alliance Forever.
apitman wrote 2 hours 54 min ago:
That's awesome. What sort of changes have they made? I feel like
that's got to be a tricky line to walk for a classic game.
4gotunameagain wrote 14 hours 47 min ago:
Imo this should be legislated. Do you provide a service necessary to
use your product ? Great. But if you decide to deprecate said
service, rendering said product inoperable or partially operable, you
should be obligated to release an implementation & documentation.
princevegeta89 wrote 15 hours 32 min ago:
As someone who spent an immeasurable amount of time on AOE 2 online
multiplayer, it has been a steadily refreshing experiencing the rise
of AOE2 DE over the recent years.
The game not only received updates that brought in the total
civilization count to 50+, but also a ton of visual enhancements and
improvements in the overall gameplay and performance.
This is nothing short of stunning to see new developments happening
for these games, especially in the open-source community.
moduspol wrote 5 hours 14 min ago:
It probably won't matter. When I play a "random civ" game with my
friends, I always get Vikings. On maps with no oceans.
For real, though, it's really great to see this game continue to
live on.
princevegeta89 wrote 3 hours 51 min ago:
The Vikings are an incredible civilization. Berserks are one of
my most favorite units. Not sure where they are today, but they
totally matched Paladins in terms of attack strength back in the
day.
reactormonk wrote 5 hours 2 min ago:
Vikings are a very good archer civ, full tree and the free
handcart is a top-tier eco-boost.
lippihom wrote 2 hours 52 min ago:
Good candidate for the next civ split after this next release.
Curious to see what happens.
moduspol wrote 4 hours 39 min ago:
I just distinctly remember getting slaughtered by Paladins, and
having very few good options to counter.
pertymcpert wrote 3 hours 0 min ago:
With non-unique units paladins can only be countered by
upgraded halberdier, heavy camels or a huge mass of
arbalesters. Monks counter them in small numbers but in late
game when they're massed they're almost unstoppable unless
you have halb/camel in equal numbers.
princevegeta89 wrote 3 hours 50 min ago:
Note that the Viking Pikemen have a lot of extra HP though.
_the_inflator wrote 11 hours 30 min ago:
Imagine AoE being owned by Nintendo. :D
A no small wonder. I never thought that MS, as the IP owner, would
allow such an open community to grow and thrive. MS is notoriously
bad at game community growth development.
I remember that right after the acquisition of ES through MS in
2001, Microsoft went on a rigid IP enforcement role and, for
example, targeted people at MFO.
The story of DBD_Jinx losing his account to MS
Legendary DBD_Jinx lost his account and had to start anew under
_IamJinx because MS suspended his ZONE account due to copyright
infringement for using MS trademarks without a license.
What did he do?
He advertised at MFO to help people increase their early game
through his academy training, which offered advice on
micro-management, game planning, strategy, and scouting.
Together with a couple of other 2000+ Zone Rating dudes from the
US, they started to make a few bucks on the side using AoE as a
vehicle.
What a knee-jerk reaction from MS back then.
And today? Red Bull Wololo - I hardly can hold my pants compared to
2001.
I hope this keeps going, even though I am a purist "old-schooler"
who prefers the AoE 2 classics game.
Cheers + gl + hf!
_CN
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