Age of Empires Heaven (original) (raw)

But I was just going to do the Christmas wishes! I had half a post drafted and everything! And now I have to follow up on that...

So first of all, since Phatfish is saying farewell to the AoE community, I guess I will be the first to thank him for everything he has done: The hard work he has put in not just to keep AoE Heaven afloat but also heading multiple redesigns, leaving us as perhaps the most modern HG site today despite hosting the most ancient game, his amazing scenarios like Night of the Dragon which almost seem like witchcraft to us mortals who only dare play around in the editor, the multitude of mods he created and all other projects which he assisted with his wisdom and technical knowledge. Oh and not to forget his one of a kind work with documenting everything he could about the game's development, culminating with his most recent Christmas gift to us.

It's hard not to feel like the lesser Seraph compared to him. I'm almost always around but I put nowhere near that amount of passion in keeping the site alive and putting out new content. That said I still have my occasional bursts of nostalgia, during which I like to think back to a time when I was just one of a dozen little nerds putting out content for a game which was already then an old relic. Arriving to the site in 2007 I was a bit too late to experience the golden age of HeavenGames or multiplayer on The MSN Gaming Zone. But I was just in time to witness Andrea Rosa's last release and to be part of the last few scenario design contests hosted on AoEH. I guess I'm quite unique in that my nostalgia for Age of Empires 1 centers mostly in the period around 2010.

Which finally brings us to my Christmas gift for you all. Recently I've been digging through an old hard drive from that time and I found what I was looking for. I always felt a little weird about the prospect of leaking this to you given that I had been teasing my own unreleased campaign to you all for over 8 years. But now I finally feel like the time to share this with you all has come.

I think there are few tales from the Bible which lend themselves quite as well to Age of Empires scenarios as those of the first kings of Israel. Captured before in the all time classic David Saga by Imhotep or Helelix's excellent Samuel 2:20, I can assure you that Gumble's two scenarios focusing on the rise and fall of Israel's first king Saul bring a unique experience, maybe one of the most impressive created for Rise of Rome. From the awestriking effects depicting the wrath of God to the unique experience of raising cities from pre-placed foundations (a trick at the time just made possible through Zapdotep's Composite Editor), these scenarios conceived by Gumble in 2010 may very well present the peak of the scenario design craft for AoE: Rise of Rome, while also being so typical of Gumble's style of design and the time period they were drafted in. So without further ado I bring you:

As I see how Phatty has thoroughly tracked down lost media from the game's official development through the years, I find myself wondering, what about all the user made content? Who else might have had projects like this, practically finished, or still in development, which never got shared to our Granary? What happened to those campaigns others sent screenshots of in the Designer's board on the forums? Where are those contest entries that we seemingly just lost track of after they were judged? To anyone still holding on to pieces like this, I just want to say, I would be very interested to see them.

Merry Christmas to you all!