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As here, XML is ten times slower than a binary format, at least for very simple data files that don't get processed much after being read (which are very common in what I've been using XML for). It's still pretty fast, but the speed does become a problem when there are hundreds of files loaded at once. Age of Mythology also uses XMB, so presumably they encountered the same performance problem.

America's Army is sponsored by Uncle Sam, and is therefore patriotic and American and all that (apologies if the poster is not in the US).

Failing that, there's always Lords of Conquest or Master of Orion 2 if you want to kick it old school.

America's Army is sponsored by Uncle Sam, and is therefore patriotic and American and all that (apologies if the poster is not in the US).

Failing that, there's always Lords of Conquest or Master of Orion 2 if you want to kick it old school.

First, it was never ECA. It was always EA.

You refer to the box-sphere-pyramid logo of Electronic Arts before the company began to use the EA Sports logo company-wide. It has been suggested that the sphere represented a G: "Electronic Gaming Arts" or something. Others have suggested that the logo change (from box-sphere-pyramid to EA Sports) represents when EA jumped the shark.

I know that praising any of Micro$oft's products on /. is flamebait but...

The creators ofAge of Mythology have been very good at implementing tools and utilites for fans to create their own scenarios and campaigns. This is somewhat of a surprise from Micro$oft, who isn't exactly a big supporter of anything that gives their users much room for freedom or input in their software, (I assume that it saves them money for fans to devolop certain parts of the game in this instance without giving them enough freedom to truly modify it), but I'm surprised that it's easier to customize than Blizzard's WCIII. With Ensamble promoting fan websites by handing out "fan site web kits" I've found it very easy to find about 4 or 5 websites that offer quality custom single player scenarios for download. Some of the best campaigns I played for Age of Empires II were written by fans, many of them even rivaled Ensamble in quality. What's ironic is that I'm actually enjoying a Micro$oft because it's so easy to implement user modifications into.

If Microsoft weren't distributing this game, I'm sure it would have a much larger /. fan base but I think it is worth mentioning Ensemble Studios Age of Mythology, the next game in the series after Age of Kings.

I think the game looks absolutely beautiful and am eagerly waiting for a beta or demo version so I may judge its worth for myself. I already burned far too many hours playing the last two games in the series :)

Check out the ensemble webpage for AoM here and if you have a decent amount of bandwidth available to you, also have a look at the downloadable movies from the game here or, read more buzz at AoM Heaven.

-AP

If Microsoft weren't distributing this game, I'm sure it would have a much larger /. fan base but I think it is worth mentioning Ensemble Studios Age of Mythology, the next game in the series after Age of Kings.

I think the game looks absolutely beautiful and am eagerly waiting for a beta or demo version so I may judge its worth for myself. I already burned far too many hours playing the last two games in the series :)

Check out the ensemble webpage for AoM here and if you have a decent amount of bandwidth available to you, also have a look at the downloadable movies from the game here or, read more buzz at AoM Heaven.

-AP

Age of Conquerors (the Age of Kings Expansion)..that will let you cheat on www.zone.com in Death Match rooms. Yeah, I know people have come up with trainers, but they do not work on Multiplayer mode when you are playing on the zone, the damn game developers or Microsoft, I don't know which one, do some sort of a check on the size of your dat files which holds game data during game play, i.e. like 10000 gold, 20000 food, 10000 stone etc etc, and if your file size is greater, it is what is called a "Sync Error" ... and now with AOC it tells you who caused the SYNC ERROR..well if these dudes can actually write something that will give me infinite resources and not sync out...I will think they are doing there job, until then, they are worthless

Here is a really good link from the people who made Age of Kings: http://www.ensemblestudios.com/openjournal2/story/ 18.shtml

Most of you probably know that Daily Radar is made up of a lot of people from PC Gamer magazine. In an ad run by babbages (and its associated companies) in the January issue of PC Gamer, a graphic was used from Age of Empires. I run an Age of Empires fan site, and it is pretty common for the game's promotional images put out by Ensemble Studios and Microsoft to be available for use in promoting the game.

Anyway, the picture used in the ad was of a rider on a horse, waving a sword in the air. The problem was that the picture was obviously lifted directly from my web site, because I noticed a few obvious changes I had made to the graphic in order to fit the site. Age of Empires Heaven has a "heaven" theme to it, so I stuck wings on the rider's back, and some artist idiot at babbages/gamestop.com/software etc. lifted this graphic and stuck it into the ad, despite the fact that there are no winged riders in the game.

Here's what I'm talking about. It will show both pictures. I'm not exactly sure what the legal issues are with that, because I didn't create the rider, I just made the wings. Obviously, they shouldn't have used it, though.

I got a good laugh out of it, and an apology from babbages, btw.