Ideas and Questions (long read)

First off, I want to express my gratitude for all the astonishing work the openage team already achieved so far! I am super excited about openage :)

While reading those interesting blogposts my brain kind of started thinking about possibilities, concepts, ideas and stuff, hence I thought I might make a post about it. While some of the things noted are probably already possible with nyan, others might be features which would need to be implemented (should it be of interest for the community). I am in no way a coder or anything of the sort, so sorry in advance if some things turn out to be unfeasible.

• Projectiles not passing through units:

I believe this is already possible with nyan. It could result in interesting game-play, like a formation of shield-wielding units protecting unarmored units behind them from powerful direct fire, while units firing in an arch can still shoot over the shield-wielders, albeit less powerful. Flanking the units would be another strategic possibility as well here, ofc.

• Graphical variations:

It would be quite immersive if it is possible to have several variations of graphics. For example, if a Paladin moves, the engine randomly selects one of several moving variations. The result is, that some of the Paladins are charging in with their arms raised, some horses have different fur and so on. There could, of course, also be variations for attacking, idle and so on.

In addition, variations depending on what kind of weapon the unit got killed by, could be immersive. Like a unit where the last hit was an arrow, gets struck down by an arrow in its animation, while the ones for blunt damage (treb/onager/...) or a sword look different. I believe this would require all units to have some dmg-type defined, hence I'm unsure how feasible it is.

Another interesting feature could be variations depending on current hp, resulting in units with less hp looking more worn down or bloody etc. Which might also be an interesting game mechanic as you can see the state a group of units is in, at a glance.

• Units which can create some kind of temporary area denial field

Unsure if this is already possible. Example would be a treb which shoots a jar of oil, creating a temporary field of fire in which units get damaged. (e.g. attacker tears down a wall to invade, but the attacked player uses this feature to hinder the advance).

• (Bonus) damage depending on the ...

... orientation of the targeted unit. E.g. if a unit gets attacked by another unit from behind, it takes bonus dmg.

... movement-state of the unit. E.g. if a unit is standing still it takes less damage than when its moving (sturdy stationary shield-wall anyone?)

... terrain the unit is on. E.g. A unit walking in shallow water takes more damage

• Units movement speed depending on...

the units current hp

the terrain a unit is on (E.g. the unit has to wade through shallow water)

• Day/night Cycle, Weather and Fog of War

I think I already saw that one somewhere on github. Making the Fog of War extend/reduce depending on the time of day might be a nice gameplay element (e.g. attacking at night is benefical since your units get detected later)

Having Fog of war around trees, as long as no own unit is in this specific fog of war, might be interesting as well, albeit more experimental I think. This way if trees are more scattered (walkable), it would be possible to hide your units in that fog of war and suprise your opponent.

That's all I came up with for now. Of course those are just ideas and some of them might not even fit into the gameplay of aoe2. In addition, as I already said, I have no idea about coding and it obviously would be a lot of work for graphical artists to create all those different variations, but it for sure would be interesting to have these possibilities. I'd consider these features more like hopes and dreams, and less crucial ;)

Since I already wrote this wall of text (sorry!), I figured it doesnt make a difference anymore if I ask two more questions:

1. In which format are the original .spl files converted to? I suppose .slps wont be used anymore, correct? If sequences of png-images (or similar) are used, how do you implement the player colours?

1. As far as I understand, you want to re-create the games assets because of copyright reasons. Should those look as close to the original assets as possible? If yes, wouldn't this clash with the so called "Substantial similarity"? Meaning, even if it's created without copying anything of the original assets, it would still be too similar to the original ones and hence being copyright infringmenet. I'm no lawyer or anything, but heard stories about this sort of stuff. If the aim is to create new, different looking assets, this isn't an issue of course.

Sorry for the awful long wall of text, I hope I expressed myself clear enough, if there is any ambiguity, please let me know :) Finally, once again, thank you so much for the awesome work!