Roadmap

The 1999 game plays end to end: random maps, campaigns, scenarios, the scenario editor, saved and recorded games, multiplayer and computer players, on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iPhone and iPad, and the Nintendo Switch. What remains is the last of the editor and campaigns, the computer players' finer play, and polish.

Done

• Engine: deterministic fixed-point simulation, lockstep multiplayer, the headless self-check.
• Data: everything read from the 1999 CD (rules, art, sounds, music, movies, text, map and AI scripts), prepared at build time.
• World: random maps from the original scripts, terrain blending, elevation, cliffs, water, fog of war; units sent to one point standing round it, each in a place of its own.
• Rules: economy, production and research, combat, garrisons, monks and relics, siege, walls and gates, the navy, trade, tribute, diplomacy, victory conditions, Regicide and Death Match, cheat codes.
• Computer players: the original AI scripts, run by an interpreter, at every difficulty, up to seven at a table.
• Interface: the menus, the battlefield interface, the tech tree, the Achievements screens, the start-up movies, campaigns with their narration and pictures, Custom Campaign; the scenario editor with Map Copy, garrisons and the personalities, and the Campaign Editor; the multiplayer menu and lobby, with games found on the local network or joined by address, chat and ready checks; locked formations and Disband Formation. Beyond the original: zoom, the minimap's fog of war, no selection limit, populations up to 1000 and the rest listed in Improvements on the original.
• Performance: the stress scenario in the self-check, eight computer players on a giant map in the Imperial Age with nearly three thousand units and buildings, runs at about a third of a millisecond a tick on a desktop.
• Linux: built and checked on Debian 13 (GCC 14).
• Windows: 64-bit, built with MinGW-w64 (windows/build.sh) and released as a folder to unzip; the data prepared from the CD on first start.
• Android: touch controls, larger interface options, widescreen.
• iPhone and iPad: the same touch controls, built by CI and released as an IPA to sideload.
• Nintendo Switch: homebrew, with the touch controls and the controller played as a mouse and the game's hotkeys.

Next

1. Computer players
   • Their units on the way somewhere turning on an attacker they would choose as a target, after which the priority of the order they were on (sn-zero-priority-distance) decides whether a response may take them.
   • Their economy on water maps: more wood in the Feudal Age, and more warships.
2. Performance on phones and the Switch: fewer draw calls for the world's sprites, which each graphic's own texture keeps apart, and the chase routes of large fights.
3. The Conquerors: the 2000 expansion, played from the player's own copy when its files are in original_game_1999/, with the 1999 game unchanged.
   • Its data: the dat, the expansion's archives and strings, its scenarios and campaigns, its random map and AI scripts.
   • The rules it changed, each matched to the expansion's own game: farms reseeded from the Mill, villagers gathering after building a drop site, King of the Hill, Wonder Race and Defend the Wonder, its interface.

Known issues

• In-game music. The original plays its in-game music from the CD's audio tracks, which are not files and are not copied with the CD's files. Rip the tracks to original_game_1999/GAME/SOUND/STREAM/MUSIC1.MP3, MUSIC2.MP3, ... to hear them; menu, civilisation and campaign music play from the files as they are.
• Computer players are slow to advance. On the standard test map the hardest reach the Feudal Age at minutes 17 and 18, their scripts' plans holding them in the Dark Age to 20 or 25 villagers.
• 57 graphics are missing from the 1999 data; the game draws without them.
• On the Switch, network games from the multiplayer menu are not yet tested.