The Forgotten, the first official expansion to Age of Empires II: HD Edition, releases tomorrow! To celebrate, we'll be hosting a special livestream event. Join the developers tomorrow, Thursday November 7th at 11 AM Pacific (GMT-8) at http://www.twitch.tv/ageofempires! We'll be showing off the new features of The Forgotten by streaming live gameplay, a Q&A session with members of the team as well other surprises. See you there!

The Forgotten, the first official expansion to Age of Empires II: HD Edition, releases tomorrow! To celebrate, we'll be hosting a special livestream event. Join the developers tomorrow, Thursday November 7th at 11 AM Pacific (GMT-8) at http://www.twitch.tv/ageofempires! We'll be showing off the new features of The Forgotten by streaming live gameplay, a Q&A session with members of the team as well other surprises. See you there!

Throughout history, colorful articles of clothing were symbolic of power, wealth and social standing. Red is often associated with the Romans while green was a very important color to the Egyptians. It seems only fitting as we prepare for the official launch of the Age of Empires II HD – The Forgotten expansion pack, you have a chance of winning a piece of history with a collection of brilliantly colored bandanas representing the five different civilizations found in the expansion.

The Sweepstakes starts at 9 am PST on November 7th, and ends at 1 pm PST November 11th (“Entry Period”). Only entries received within the Entry Period will be eligible to win. During the Entry Period of the sweepstakes you must post the name of your favorite of the 5 civilizations featured in Age of Empires – The Forgotten to one of the listed social feeds to enter. The 5 featured civilizations are Inca, Indian, Italian, Magyar, or Slavs.

Facebook

Google+

Twitter

On or around seven days following the end of the Entry Period, we will randomly select ten winners from among all eligible entries received for each channel (Twitter, Facebook, and Google+) and award them a complete set of 5 Age of Empires 2 HD – The Forgotten bandanas.

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For the complete set of official rules for the Age of Empires 2 HD – The Forgotten Launch sweepstakes, please visit the following <a href="http://forums.ageofempiresonline.com/forums/thread/376337.aspx">website</a>.

The day is nearly upon us. The looming battle draws near.

Prepare arms.

Throughout history, colorful articles of clothing were symbolic of power, wealth and social standing. Red is often associated with the Romans while green was a very important color to the Egyptians. It seems only fitting as we prepare for the official launch of the Age of Empires II HD – The Forgotten expansion pack, you have a chance of winning a piece of history with a collection of brilliantly colored bandanas representing the five different civilizations found in the expansion.

The Sweepstakes starts at 9 am PST on November 7th, and ends at 1 pm PST November 11th (“Entry Period”). Only entries received within the Entry Period will be eligible to win. During the Entry Period of the sweepstakes you must post the name of your favorite of the 5 civilizations featured in Age of Empires – The Forgotten to one of the listed social feeds to enter. The 5 featured civilizations are Inca, Indian, Italian, Magyar, or Slavs.

Facebook

Google+

Twitter

On or around seven days following the end of the Entry Period, we will randomly select ten winners from among all eligible entries received for each channel (Twitter, Facebook, and Google+) and award them a complete set of 5 Age of Empires 2 HD – The Forgotten bandanas.

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For the complete set of official rules for the Age of Empires 2 HD – The Forgotten Launch sweepstakes, please visit the following website.

The day is nearly upon us. The looming battle draws near.

Prepare arms.

The latest developer diary contains interesting information regarding player profiles and how they will be handled in Age of Empires II HD and The Forgotten expansion pack. Ryz0n also mentions a neat trick with the game’s soundtrack files you may find worth listening to.

Check it out <a href="http://steamcommunity.com/app/221380/discussions/0/684839199715888828/">here</a>.

Be sure to stop back by tomorrow to hear how you can win cool swag we’ll be giving away to promote the upcoming release of The Forgotten.

The villagers are getting restless. Only a few days to go.

The latest developer diary contains interesting information regarding player profiles and how they will be handled in Age of Empires II HD and The Forgotten expansion pack. Ryz0n also mentions a neat trick with the game’s soundtrack files you may find worth listening to.

Check it out here.

Be sure to stop back by tomorrow to hear how you can win cool swag we’ll be giving away to promote the upcoming release of The Forgotten.

The villagers are getting restless. Only a few days to go.

The weekend is nearly here and this time next week hopefully you all will be playing The Forgotten. Until then we thought we’d share a rather insightful and lively developer biography featuring Cysion, who provides an excellent summary of how this project originated and evolved into an official expansion pack for Age of Empires II HD.

<center><img src = "http://compass.xboxlive.com/assets/04/d4/04d41680-a89d-46d4-87f6-4fcc528171b8.jpg?n=Cysion.jpg"></center>

The post was so long it had to be posted in the forums – but you don’t want to miss it as it offers never seen before commentary directly from the development team and also provided us the opportunity to share one of the new Age of Empires Steam trading cards to celebrate the new Capture the Relic game mode.

<center><img src = "http://compass.xboxlive.com/assets/bd/68/bd681384-9431-4951-8062-2cf772763d09.png?n=capturetherelic.png"></center>
Check out Cysion’s full developer biography post <a href="http://steamcommunity.com/app/221380/discussions/1/684839199366149892">here</a>.

The weekend is nearly here and this time next week hopefully you all will be playing The Forgotten. Until then we thought we’d share a rather insightful and lively developer biography featuring Cysion, who provides an excellent summary of how this project originated and evolved into an official expansion pack for Age of Empires II HD.

<center></center>

The post was so long it had to be posted in the forums – but you don’t want to miss it as it offers never seen before commentary directly from the development team and also provided us the opportunity to share one of the new Age of Empires Steam trading cards to celebrate the new Capture the Relic game mode.

<center></center>
Check out Cysion’s full developer biography post here.

With a fairly active mod community we periodically field questions about creating custom content. And while it might be premature to start talking about modifying content that hasn’t been released yet, this developer diary discusses the naming convention scheme used by The Forgotten.

<b>AoF: Game Saves & Scenarios</b>

Age of Empires as a franchise has seen a number of expansions or content updates. In fact every PC title has seen at least one major addition over its lifetime. Fundamentally when there’s a new expansion, there are changes to how a game file is saved or a scenario created. Some of these may be content changes to account for new units or civilizations. In other cases, it could be something small like having a value field change between 8 bit and 32 bit to accommodate negative values or large numbers. The end result is a difference in file versions that inhibit off the shelf compatibility. In other words, AoF saves, replays, and scenarios won’t be backwards compatible or loaded using just AOE II HD.

Those familiar with the franchise may recognize that with a title such as AOE III, expansion content usually would take on a letter at the end (X for The War Chiefs, and Y for Asian Dynasties). Likewise, AOE II HD inherited scX and gaX from AoC since we included the expansion in release. But The Forgotten is an expansion to AOE II HD, not directly to AoK and AoC. So, we’ve switched up the naming scheme slightly, and will be labeling AoF files with a 2 appended. For example, creating a scenario in the scenario editor when you’re in AoF will result in a file named scenario.scx2, and a campaign’s extension is cpx2. AIs are also .ai2 and .per2.

So specifically how does does interoperability work? Items created in AoF will of course require AoF to play. After all someone running AOE II HD without the expansion wouldn’t have the new content referenced by the new data files. What about the other way? Single player and multiplayer saves you’ll want to load in the version you saved them in. Likewise, replay files should be loaded in whichever version the file extension denotes. Campaigns, scenarios, and AI files can be forward-loaded. So, for example, if you find a sweet scenario you like, but want to play it in the expansion, you shouldn’t have any issue loading it in. Switching between the base game and expansion is a single click of a button from the main menu, so even if you forget everything above it will be easy to get playing.

-Ryan
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Given The Forgotten originated as a fan-made mod, it will be exciting to see how the community will use this expansion pack to create new content, especially since it will offer new units and larger maps.

With a fairly active mod community we periodically field questions about creating custom content. And while it might be premature to start talking about modifying content that hasn’t been released yet, this developer diary discusses the naming convention scheme used by The Forgotten.

AoF: Game Saves & Scenarios

Age of Empires as a franchise has seen a number of expansions or content updates. In fact every PC title has seen at least one major addition over its lifetime. Fundamentally when there’s a new expansion, there are changes to how a game file is saved or a scenario created. Some of these may be content changes to account for new units or civilizations. In other cases, it could be something small like having a value field change between 8 bit and 32 bit to accommodate negative values or large numbers. The end result is a difference in file versions that inhibit off the shelf compatibility. In other words, AoF saves, replays, and scenarios won’t be backwards compatible or loaded using just AOE II HD.

Those familiar with the franchise may recognize that with a title such as AOE III, expansion content usually would take on a letter at the end (X for The War Chiefs, and Y for Asian Dynasties). Likewise, AOE II HD inherited scX and gaX from AoC since we included the expansion in release. But The Forgotten is an expansion to AOE II HD, not directly to AoK and AoC. So, we’ve switched up the naming scheme slightly, and will be labeling AoF files with a 2 appended. For example, creating a scenario in the scenario editor when you’re in AoF will result in a file named scenario.scx2, and a campaign’s extension is cpx2. AIs are also .ai2 and .per2.

So specifically how does does interoperability work? Items created in AoF will of course require AoF to play. After all someone running AOE II HD without the expansion wouldn’t have the new content referenced by the new data files. What about the other way? Single player and multiplayer saves you’ll want to load in the version you saved them in. Likewise, replay files should be loaded in whichever version the file extension denotes. Campaigns, scenarios, and AI files can be forward-loaded. So, for example, if you find a sweet scenario you like, but want to play it in the expansion, you shouldn’t have any issue loading it in. Switching between the base game and expansion is a single click of a button from the main menu, so even if you forget everything above it will be easy to get playing.

-Ryan
<HR WIDTH="80%">
Given The Forgotten originated as a fan-made mod, it will be exciting to see how the community will use this expansion pack to create new content, especially since it will offer new units and larger maps.