[HN Gopher] Web Server for AoE 1, 2 and 3 DE supporting LAN mult...
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Web Server for AoE 1, 2 and 3 DE supporting LAN multiplayer 100%
offline
Author : apitman
Score : 425 points
Date : 2025-04-02 23:10 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| recycledmatt wrote:
| Awesome to see AoE, and games in general being future proofed.
| Sad when functionality is lost because someone turned off a
| server.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| 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.
| _the_inflator wrote:
| 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
| moduspol wrote:
| 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.
| reactormonk wrote:
| Vikings are a very good archer civ, full tree and the free
| handcart is a top-tier eco-boost.
| moduspol wrote:
| I just distinctly remember getting slaughtered by
| Paladins, and having very few good options to counter.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Note that the Viking Pikemen have a lot of extra HP
| though.
| pertymcpert wrote:
| 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.
| lippihom wrote:
| Good candidate for the next civ split after this next
| release. Curious to see what happens.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| 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.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| 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.
| slightlygrilled wrote:
| 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.
|
| It's called Forged Alliance Forever.
| apitman wrote:
| 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.
| abigail95 wrote:
| 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:
| Seems more like a CYA thing to prevent takedowns
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| It's CYA if it's meaningless.
| shash7 wrote:
| What's CYA?
| pacificmint wrote:
| 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]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_your_ass
| Rendello wrote:
| 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:
|
| https://play0ad.com/
| bryancrisso wrote:
| i love 0ad so much but it runs AWFULLY as soon as you get a fun
| number of units on the map.
| Rendello wrote:
| 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:
| 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?
| HideousKojima wrote:
| 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
| littlestymaar wrote:
| The good thing being that you get replay for free.
| Panzer04 wrote:
| 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.
| gsich wrote:
| You get that with any type of networking.
| NortySpock wrote:
| 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.
| matsemann wrote:
| This article is a classic, 1500 Archers on a 28.8:
| Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond
|
| https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/1500-archers-
| on-a-...
|
| Edit: original where the pictures work https://web.archiv
| e.org/web/20180719170411/https://www.gamas...
|
| > _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._
| IshKebab wrote:
| Which was great until there's a bug and it just says
| "sync error" and your 3 hour game is gone.
| immibis wrote:
| 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!"
| doublerabbit wrote:
| 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".
| arlort wrote:
| 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:
| 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:
| https://youtu.be/hjUgisPD_C4?si=F-UvzDOTsWRZhZSq
| nophunphil wrote:
| 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.
| Dunedan wrote:
| 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
| https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/issues/7714
|
| 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!
| RUnconcerned wrote:
| Wow, this is still being developed? I still recall the
| Heavengames forum thread that spawned it...
| Rendello wrote:
| It just had a big release in January even!
| gsich wrote:
| 8 player multiplayer is unplayable.
| Rendello wrote:
| The lagging frames just give extra time to strategize ;)
| 486sx33 wrote:
| So how can I play AoE 3 the war chiefs online ?
| CSMastermind wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
| hoten wrote:
| Bit confused on the webserver aspect of this. Is it just the
| match making / game broadcast component of AoE multiplayer?
| pininja wrote:
| I was curious about this too and enjoyed reading the routes
| file
| https://github.com/luskaner/ageLANServer/blob/main/server/in...
| apitman wrote:
| 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.
| LPisGood wrote:
| This is excellent.
|
| I wonder if there any public documentation for AoE3's API that
| was used to make this or if this was all newly reverse
| engineered. I've seen people ask about this kind of documentation
| before, but I've never seen it.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| 13
| brink wrote:
| I hope AoE2 lives as long as Chess does. It really is one of the
| "perfect" games.
| hackernewds wrote:
| It really is and they keep iterating on it. definitive edition
| has more investment than some of the new AOE3 and 4 versions
| guappa wrote:
| 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.
| sqrt_1 wrote:
| AoE2 is coming out on PS5 this year.
| dominicrose wrote:
| 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.
| apitman wrote:
| 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.
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| 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
| lightingthedark wrote:
| If you haven't read it, there's a great paper on the netcode of
| the originals:
| https://zoo.cs.yale.edu/classes/cs538/readings/papers/terran...
|
| 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.
| arbitrandomuser wrote:
| 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 )
| Raudius wrote:
| 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.
| red_admiral wrote:
| 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.
| CursedSilicon wrote:
| 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
| lightingthedark wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
| matsemann wrote:
| 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?
| apitman wrote:
| 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.
| o1o1o1 wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
| herewulf wrote:
| 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.
| lionkor wrote:
| You could buy it and then download a cracked one
| o1o1o1 wrote:
| 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.
| Rohansi wrote:
| 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.
| o1o1o1 wrote:
| 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:
| Probably also because it's a multiplayer game and you want
| to try to stop cheaters.
| Rohansi wrote:
| Steam's DRM doesn't do anything to stop cheaters.
| vkaku wrote:
| Excellent.
|
| This seems to work with the Remasters as well. Even better :)
|
| Please add AoM support as well.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Voulomai
| pjmlp wrote:
| I guess a few brownie points for making the case for compiled
| managed languages in games, nice work.
| nurettin wrote:
| Experimental * AIX
|
| I wonder how they got an AIX.
| mrweasel wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
| Seanambers wrote:
| 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:
| And since everyone was "turtling" the games would almost never
| end anyways.
| rightbyte wrote:
| That is how kids play Monopoly too. It is part of the fun :)
| matsemann wrote:
| 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.
| red_admiral wrote:
| 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.
| typh00n wrote:
| 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:
| 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:
| 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.
| ziofill wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand: does one still need a copy of the game
| to play or is it self-contained?
| apitman wrote:
| 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?
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