Age of Empires IV’s minimum spec mode gives more players more opportunities to play

For nearly 25 years, the Age of Empires series has delighted millions of RTS fans around the world. With a focus on actual historical events dating back to the Stone Age, the series tasks players with determining how those events unfolded, allowing them to experience the story as it was or create a new story of their own. It has clearly resonated with fans, selling millions of copies over the years.

With that in mind, the teams at developer World’s Edge and Relic Entertainment knew they had big shoes to fill to develop the next Age of Empires IV. However, they knew that it was not enough to create a game that not only ticked all the required RTS boxes, but also provided an experience that exceeded fan expectations. Teams knew they had to go the extra mile to allow more people to play than ever.

Enter minimum specification mode, which will allow players of older and lower powered machines to experiment Age of Empires IV. This mode is activated through a combination of in-game settings, which are created with the help of an automatic detection system when you first launch the game and can be referenced or modified from the settings menu.

“When we looked to bring this new game to the franchise, we knew we needed to support a diverse set of PC configurations,” said Michael Mann, Executive Producer of World’s Edge. “Even looking ahead to the next few years, we expect 50% or more of our player base to play on machines that use the low-spec renderer.”

A large part of that player base continues to play games like Age of Empires II and Age of Empires III, which were released in 1999 and 2005, respectively. Age of Empires is also a very global franchise and machine specifications vary widely around the world. Some regions that are very active playing the Age franchise also tend to have lower spec machines for a variety of reasons. Southeast Asia and Latin America are two regions that have very passionate and still thriving Age of Empires communities, and the developers wanted to make sure that the people who still play Age of Empires II and Age of Empires III today I can enjoy Age of Empires IV.

During your technical planning for Age of Empires IV, the team found that a significant number of the Age of Empires community still play those older Age of Empires games on older laptops or desktops with integrated, discrete graphics processing units (GPUs). Since they wanted to reach the largest possible player base, that meant they had to take into account both the configurations and the layout for GPUs that have their own RAM, as well as those that use some of the system’s RAM.

The former was much easier to design, as they had a good idea of ​​how much RAM a given discrete GPU would have at its disposal. Integrated GPUs, on the other hand, were more difficult to design and plan as there were more variables that were taken into account to ensure that GPU usage did not collapse the entire system. To prevent that from happening they created a low spec renderer.

Of course, doing it was not easy, at least at first. Your biggest technical hurdle? “Time. Just the time,” said Joel Pritchett, World’s Edge technical director. “The low-spec renderer is equivalent to what we would have built for an Xbox 360. We know how to do it. We just needed time to get it right. The art, on the other hand, I had different challenges, like building multiple sets of assets, for example. “

Naturally, there are trade-offs for playing the game in Min Spec mode. As with most PC games, Age of Empires IV has a recommended spec that the Relic and World’s Edge development teams suggest as the ideal way for everyone to experience the game. Some examples of what to expect while playing a machine with these specs include a high number of units, high-resolution models, lots of detailed explosions, and 8-player battles.

Since the Min Spec mode was designed for laptops and desktops that use integrated GPUs, the most important thing for the developers was making sure that fans could play the campaign with lower resolution textures, less destruction, simpler lighting, less frills. visual and 4 player battles. . You won’t get the added spectacle of the biggest player battles or the high-end image and texture quality, but you’ll still get a great one without spending a ton of money to upgrade your gaming desktop or laptop. It’s a trade-off that even players with more powerful machines might want to try. “It’s worth noting that some of our competitive testers preferred the low-spec renderer because it is visually clearer and you get a better frame rate,” Pritchett said. “So you may want to try different settings when you play for the first time.”

The minimum specification mode is not all the team has done to make the game more accessible. “With the launch of Game Pass for PC from day one, we wanted to ensure broad hardware support so that new users could enjoy Age IV. We’ve taken existing and new players into account throughout development, ”Mann said. “Not only in terms of their ability to play on their machines, but also with in-game features like our Art of War tutorial and challenge missions.”

However, if this team has shown us something, it is that they are never satisfied and are always looking for ways to improve the player experience. They have made dozens (if not hundreds) of tweaks and changes to the game during public and private beta releases in recent years. Most importantly, they are ready to go next week when the game launches to ensure everyone has a great experience.

“We will be looking for feedback as soon as we release on all elements of the game, so we want to hear about the game experiences. We also have our customer support team on standby to help all players get the help they may need to get going, ”Mann said. “We can’t wait for 28 and we can’t wait for people to start playing. Age of Empires IV. “