Age Of Empires Source Code
Michele Firmasyah
I like what happened to one of my favorite games, Quake 3. Its developers released the source code to the public, and then some people released source ports to enhance gameplay, add lots of features, fix bugs, add more compatibility options, and even revive the whole experience, as well as opening a new path to worldwide modding. The game (with source ports) can now be enjoyed more than any other time in its history.
In several of the cases listed here, the game's developers released the source code expressly to prevent their work from becoming lost. Such source code is often released under varying (free and non-free, commercial and non-commercial) software licenses to the games' communities or the public; artwork and data are often released under a different license than the source code, as the copyright situation is different or more complicated. The source code may be pushed by the developers to public repositories (e.g. SourceForge or GitHub), or given to selected game community members, or sold with the game, or become available by other means. The game may be written in an interpreted language such as BASIC or Python, and distributed as raw source code without being compiled; early software was often distributed in text form, as in the book BASIC Computer Games. In some cases when a game's source code is not available by other means, the game's community "reconstructs" source code from compiled binary files through time-demanding reverse engineering techniques.
The table below with available source code resulted not from official releases by companies or IP holders but from unclear release situations, like lost and found games, and leaks of unclear legality (e.g. by an individual developer on end-of-product-life) or undeleted content.[75]
Once games, or software in general, become an obsolete product for a company, the tools and source code required to re-create the game are often lost or even actively destroyed and deleted.[265][266][267][268][269][270][271] For instance, with the closure of Atari in Sunnyvale, California, in 1996, the original source codes of several milestones of video game history such as Asteroids and Centipede were all thrown out as trash.[272][273]
When much time and manual work is invested, it is still possible to recover or restore a source code variant which replicates the program's functions accurately from the binary program. Techniques used to accomplish this are decompiling, disassembling, and reverse engineering the binary executable. This approach typically does not result in the exact original source code but rather a divergent version, as a binary program does not contain all of the information originally carried in the source code. For example, comments and function names cannot be restored if the program was compiled without additional debug information.
Using the techniques listed above within a "bottom-up" development methodology process, the re-created source-code of a game is able to replicate the behavior of the original game exactly, often being "clock-cycle accurate", and/or "pixel-per-pixel accurate". This approach is in contrast to that used by game engine recreations, which are often made using a "top-down" development methodology, and which can result in duplicating the general features provided by a game engine, but not necessarily an accurate representation of the original game.
After a wild two-year ride that saw it forced off Steam over allegations of source code theft, the "multiplayer war sandbox game" Myth of Empires is set to launch on Steam on February 21. For those who want to see what the game behind the kerfuffle is really all about, a closed technical test is now underway and set to run until January 30.
Angela Game denied the allegation, but even so Steam gave Myth of Empires the boot following a formal complaint from Studio Wildcard. Angela Game quickly filed a lawsuit to get it back on Steam, at which point the whole thing fell into a hole filled with lawyers, where it remained until a settlement was reached in October 2023.
Correction: The story originally indicated that everyone who applies for access to the playtest will be admitted, but Angela Game now says that players will be invited as capacity allows, so some may not get in.
Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill."}), " -0-10/js/authorBio.js"); } else console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); Andy ChalkSocial Links NavigationAndy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.
For those who didn't know a remaster of the original Command and Conquer games is out on June 5th and they've done some interesting work on putting it all together. There are other people out there who have done this before of course but EA seem to have decided it's worth giving it official support. What they've done though which completely took me by surprise is they've posted up the entire source code of both Tiberium Dawn and Red Alert in C#.
For anyone who is at all interested in how RTS games especially the older variety were made be sure to check this out, I'm even thinking about having a look at how they've done their AI. This will be invaluable for me like when I found the Age of Empires 2 skirmish computer code, I recommend checking it out.
Edit: In this section they even have the building placement code which is fantastic, this is going to be very useful for me. Also this explains so much of how they do it, they use zones on the terrain and run checks to see what's in there. This is fantastic, I can easily see this being transferable to C# using modern colliders and so on.
Dependency Walker - useful to get the .dlls that your .dll depends on (and the functions that it need from there), exported functions, .... The bad thing is that last version is from 2006. A more actual replacement (written in .NET): [GitHub]: lucasg/Dependencies - Dependencies - An open-source modern Dependency Walker
[HeavenTools]: PE.Explorer - a nice tool (I'm not saying it's the best) that lists lots of info about the dll (sections, resources, ...) and it also has a disassembler (this reverse engineers the .dll and displays it in the form of assembly code). If you understand the assembly code you can then modify it (by modifying the corresponding bytes in your .dll), but that's for experts only. The problem is that it only handles 32bit (x86) .dlls, and the latest version is from 2009 :(
Most likely it was written in C. The tools I listed can tell you more. You can also look with a text viewer at the .dll, inside it there might be references to source files (among all those unreadable symbols)
When you have located GameSource.zip, extract it to a folder on your computer to access the game source code. If you are maintaining a mod, you should check that your changes are still compatible with the latest source code as updates of the game are released.
To access the GameSource.zip in the game install folder you will first need to unlock the game folder in the protected WindowsApps folder. As this process can be complicated and depends on the version of Windows you have installed, you should search online for a guide on how to do this.
Looking at the implementation of other mods is a great way to learn about modding. An easy way to do this is to subscribe to a mod and enable it in Paradox Launcher. This will download the mod zip archive somewhere on your computer. The location of the zip archive will depend on which platform you are running on and which modding service you are using.
When you play the game, all enabled mod archives are extracted to the game's Mods folder in the Cache subfolder. After you run the game with a mod enabled you can take a look at the extracted files for the mod in the Cache folder.
This allows you to enter commands and simple Lua scripts which are then executed immediately. This console gives you full access to the entire Lua scripting state of the game which is extremely useful for inspecting variables and running test scripts during gameplay. Any warnings or errors that are generated during runtime will also be displayed in the console log.
When developer mode is enabled a Player.log file is generated every time the game is run. The info messages, warnings and errors in this text file are very helpful during development. The Player.log file is located in the same folder where the Mods folder is located.
Lua files are always placed somewhere inside the Lua subfolder of your mod. For example if you wanted to add a new lua file you might place it in Assets/Mods/MyMod/Lua/Scripts/Mission/ModsMissions.lua. This reflects the key Scripts.Mission.ModMissions you would use to require the file in Lua.
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