Pleroma

Pleroma

Richard Moss | @MossRC@social.mossrc.me

Author of *The Secret History of Mac Gaming*, *Shareware Heroes: The renegades who redefined gaming at the dawn of the Internet*, *A Tale of Two Halves: The History of Football Video Games*, and a soon-to-be-published book on the creation of #AgeOfEmpires, plus various other books in progress.

Writer/director on TerrorBytes: The Evolution of Horror Gaming, a critically-acclaimed five-part docuseries about horror games. Producer/co-writer on FPSDOC, a 4.5-hour documentary film celebrating the first-person shooter genre (with an emphasis on the 90s/early-2000s golden age) that's guided by the developers themselves.

Creates The Life & Times of Video Games and Ludiphilia podcasts.

He/him.

rich@mossrc.me
@MossRC on Twitter and @mossrc.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Posts mainly about #gamedev and #indiegames histories and stories, #retrogaming/#retrogames, #retrocomputing, #classicmac, #shareware, #tombraider, and #videogamehistory.

Richard Moss MossRC

The Age of Empires tech tree from October 1995, two years before the game came out, was already much simpler than Rick Goodman's earliest attempts to distill ancient history into a research + upgrades progression system, but still way more complex than the final version—which was rooted in the idea of "ages" in history.

A massive R&D technology chart from early in Age of Empires 1 development. This was lead designer Rick Goodman's 13th attempt, but still it was far too complex.

Richard Moss MossRC

A render of the chariot unit from Age of Empires that was included with the E3/June 1997 press kit for the game. (The game was in beta at the time.)

A 3D render of a chariot on a white block. The block is forever rotating while the chariot loops its movement animation.

Richard Moss MossRC
@lunarloony Yep, I bet I could reel off a dozen examples exactly like that too. Long gone are the days of UI/UX based on scientific principles and user testing. Now everything must change every product cycle based on the whims of product managers.

Richard Moss MossRC

@DestructoDisk We just have to keep building and running our own intentional spaces and enforcing the cultural values we want within them. Fedi networks, self/independently-hosted blogs/newsletters and forums, small web, and so on. Be the change we want to see, carve out our own island oases, and pray that it's enough.

Richard Moss MossRC

Age of Empires dev milestone schedule from October 1996 (revision 14!). This is shortly after the game had been delayed six months, and shortly before it got delayed a further six months. Note that it doesn't mention the wonders anywhere, because they hadn't actually thought of wonders yet.

A milestone schedule document dated October 15, 1996, for the Ensemble Studios project Tribe (later renamed Age of Empires). This was revision 14 to the document, and it includes 7 milestones, with a planned "go date" of March 7th 1997, plus an eighth one that either has the wrong year (May 8th 1996) or that was mistakenly left in the document.

Richard Moss MossRC
Just realised the most personally affronting, painful thing about the rise of big tech and its accompanying horrors has been the feeling that they stole the future. That technology and innovation used to be driven by engineers, creative marketers, and tinkerers with dreams of a better future for all, but now it seems wholly controlled by soulless MBAs whose vision is not better tools or a better world or cool new ideas but bigger profits, more efficient resource extraction, and endless growth.

That the future we were building has been snatched away and replaced by chatbots, compulsive gambling, and permanent surveillance.

Richard Moss MossRC
@marceles_pixel Some of the old art is lost, sadly, but it's fascinating to see all the stuff that survived and I'll definitely be sharing more online. The game changed so much over the course of development, in both graphics and design.

Flipboard Tech Desk TechDesk@flipboard.social

A new study by MIT Media Lab suggests that outsourcing basic tasks to AI could reduce our brain activity by up to 55 percent. This “cognitive offloading” may affect our ability to solve problems, recall information, and even shape the language we use. However, there are three approaches you can introduce when using AI to help strengthen your critical thinking skills.

flip.it/Z1zlRH

Richard Moss MossRC

A collection of early pixel art buildings for Age of Empires, mostly dating back to late 1995. Ensemble soon switched to flattened 3D renders for better efficiency (and a neater fit with the skills of their art team). There'll be more of these in the "deluxe hardcover" edition of my book.

Building art used early in development of Age of Empires 1, provided to me by lead artist Brad Crow (although much of this would have been drawn by David Deen). These were later replaced by 3D renders that got flattened to 2D and touched up by hand.

Richard Moss MossRC

But by this point, already, they were shifting towards something faster. The first playable prototype felt too slow, and Rick was grappling with the challenge of how to find the fun — of how to streamline and whittle down their extensive ideation into a great game.

(I don't want to spoil the story, but the answer came from one of the programmers, Tim Deen.)

An internal memo from Rick Goodman to his Ensemble colleagues about the prototype build v.02, in which he shares his notes from playing the build. The key quote is "My principle concern right now is that I spend a lot of time just looking at the game at the start."

Richard Moss MossRC

The vision for Age of Empires evolved considerably over time. Here you can see a hint of how much more geared they were early on towards Sid Meier's Civilization and other slower-paced strategy and simulation games. Initial plans were akin to a modern survival sim colony builder with Civ elements.

A design document discussing visions of a game starting near the end of an ice age, and needing to survive as the ice recedes during the early portions of the campaign. Designer Rick Goodman is critiquing the idea, questioning what it will add to the player's experience and where it might all fall apart.

Richard Moss MossRC

I'm going to post semi-random dev materials from Age of Empires 1 every day from today until the end of the KS campaign (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gabedurham/age-of-empires-how-ensemble-studios-made-history) for my book about the creation of the game. First up, the cover and a page from one of lead designer Rick Goodman's earliest design docs.

Dawn of Civilization! Game Design Document, October 13, 1995. Company Confidential, Copyright Ensemble Corporation. Note: All changes to this Design Document implemented since Sept 1st have been italicized. [Handwritten] Includes Revisions to Tech Chart Page 28 of the design doc, including the tail end of a section about natural disasters as well as a brief note about the game commencing at the end of an ice age, a short section pondering the inclusion of scenarios, and the beginning of a section about the game's interface.

SimCity2000 Traffic Helicopter sc2000@mastodon.social

Hanford
November 2, 3830

Hanford (patcoston/hanfordville.sc2)

Richard Moss MossRC
My latest book is much more than the story of how Age of Empires (1) was made; it's a story of brothers, camaraderie, innovation, and dreams — the cost of chasing them, the passion that drives them, and the joy when they come true. Now available for preorder from Boss Fight Books.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gabedurham/age-of-empires-how-ensemble-studios-made-history

LucasArts Places lucasarts_places@mastodon.social

Loom (DOS EGA)

Room 006: Loom Island - Dye Hut Interior

Richard Moss MossRC
This essay about refusing genAI in journalism is fantastic. Great reporting — and great writing more broadly — is irreducibly human. And not just the final prose, but rather the whole process that leads there — including ideation, research, and *every* phase of editing. https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/refusing-to-accept-big-tech-s-ai-poisoned-future-of-journalism

Richard Moss MossRC
@jfaulken Likewise. When Gabe was briefing for the cover design, I said something like "it'd be cool if it could involve a priest" but was eager to see whatever resonated with the artist. And right from the first draft I loved their idea and the core composition of the artwork.

Richard Moss MossRC
My latest book is much more than the story of how Age of Empires (1) was made; it's a story of brothers, camaraderie, innovation, and dreams — the cost of chasing them, the passion that drives them, and the joy when they come true. Now available for preorder from Boss Fight Books.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gabedurham/age-of-empires-how-ensemble-studios-made-history

Richard Moss MossRC
Update: Figured out how to release the tabs holding it together and get the back cover off, thanks to some guides for other PDAs at https://www.ifixit.com/Device/PDA

Thanks to @wolfinpdx for the link.
The back over removed from a Toshiba e570 PDA, with swollen battery now exposed.

Richard Moss MossRC
@wolfinpdx There don't appear to be any Toshiba models in there, but I got a few ideas for things to try from looking through the guides for PDAs from the same era.

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