Blogs

We congratulate you for seven years of trustworthy and steady delivery of Half-Life, Steam and mod news to German fans and players. You have reported about Empires and its releases for our complete history of (nearly) 6 years now. Without you we might not have such a strong presence in Germany and Europe, as we do now. Without you I myself might have never found nor played Empires. I hope both our histories are going to keep running parallel and steady for a long time to come.

To summarize: Wir danken euch und wünschen alles gute zum Geburtstag!

So, we're on steam. Steam patch 1 can be expected any time now, with a number of important crash fixes, optimisation improvements, and now we are proud to announce things that will come with the second patch:

Some more  integration into steam itself, in the form of both Achievements, and some brand new features which Valve have personally helped us to implement.
So, for you, our dedicated, unrelenting community, We present you:

Hats!

Empires will, in the next version, receive a variety of hat unlocks, that will enable you to fit out your classes with their own unique touch. To complement this, we will be adding new player models for each class, which our modellers (Smithy and Mayama) have been hard at work on for several months. A minority of hats will be unlockable via achievements, however most of them will be purchasable from our very own Hat store. We have chosen not to include hat drops, crafting or trading, as we feel this may promote idling.

But we're not there yet. As it stands, we have just a small selection of hats. However, based off the huge support and contributions we've had to the voting for achievements (many of which we've used), we have decided to let you, the community, submit your hat ideas, for our modellers to create. You can find the submission page at: http://brutos.org/hats.php (Please keep images at 64x64).

And, as if this wasn't already fantastic news, Valve have agreed to put our venerable Brenodi Engineer hat, into TF2, unlockable by receiving a yet to be revealed achievement, in Empires. Here's a sneak preview from our Steamworks test account:

So, here's to more development. Thanks go to the dedicated guys behind the scenes, helping make this happen, as well as our dedicated community. If all goes well here, we may even expand into new items such as new weapons! And remember to submit your own hat ideas to get them in!

Fun Fact: We have received over 6000 votes on the achievements until today. 

Empires has been reviewed on modinformer.org:
http://www.modinformer.org/?p=847

Hotfix released, see download page

http://www.empiresmod.com/drupal/node/13

Changelog:

Empires v2.31
February 22, 2011

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Empires 2.31 Changes

Added:

• Basic stats sender on server.
• "Missing armor/engine" message in vehicle customization.
• Rank points for kill assists.
• Class loadouts are now saved for the duration of the game.

Removed:

• Support for DirectX levels lower than 90.

Modified:

• Revive icon now hovers above ragdoll instead of spot where player died.
• Vehicles can now have limited or unlimited ammo to experiment with higher-level weaponry having limited ammo and low-level weaponry having unlimited ammo.
• Walls, turrets and cameras are always recycleable.
• New dam area on emp_mvalley.
• New versions of Brenodi missile turrets level 1 and 2.

Fixed:

• Unstuck not detecting collisions with the world.
• Spawn points blocked by teammates.
• Second seat view getting stuck.
• emp_cyclopean.
• emp_crossroads.

  
Changelog:

Empires v2.30
November 21, 2010

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Empires 2.30 Changes

Balancing Changes:
+ Changed RPG speed to 1500.
+ Railgun clip size changed from 15 to 20.
+ High Explosive Cannon heat changed from 15 to 13.
+ Updated infantry weapons.
+ BEHR and BEAR positions in class selection screen switched.
+ Grenadier mine detection image replaced with Grenadier Armour.
+ Grenadier Bullet resist 0.0 -> 0.3 (30% resist to bullets. 40 damage weapon does 28 to Grenadier, etc).
+ Spawn ammo for Scout rifle 15 -> 10.
+ Max ammo for BEAR 90 -> 80.
+ Concussion Grenade timer 3 -> 4.
+ Seismic Grenade timer 6 -> 5 (May or may not make a difference, timer may be hardcoded).
+ HMG Damage 25 -> 30, HMG Falloff 1000 -> 1500.
+ Mortar Damage 120 -> 130.
+ Pistol 1 Damage 30 -> 28, Pistol 1 Minimal damage 23 -> 17, BE pistol clip size 15 -> 12 (NF pistol 1 was always 12).
+ BE Pistol 2 Minimal Damage 30 -> 25.
+ BEAR Minimal Damage 22 -> 22, BEAR DuckingSpreadMax 0.2 -> 0.3, BEAR ProneSpreadMax 0.1 -> 0.2, BEAR StandingSpreadIncrement 0.0050 -> 0.0055, BEAR DuckingSpreadIncrement 0.0040 -> 0.0045, BEAR ProneSPreadIncrement 0.0030 -> 0.0035, BEAR IronsightKick (Jumping, Standing, Ducking and Prone) 0.75 -> 0.5
+ BEHR Damage 40 -> 35, BEHR Minimal damage 27 -> 20, BEHR StandingSpreadModifier 0.05 -> 0.025, BEHR StandingSpreadDecrement 0.05 -> 0.03, Kick vertically was lowered considerably, but I'd have to paste a tonne of values just to show I lowered it.
+ Scout Rifle Falloff 8000 -> 6000 (This may or may not make any difference at all. If not, I'll lower it further next patch)
+ RPG damage 120 -> 130.
+ NFHR Damage 45 -> 40, NFHR Minimal Damage 30 -> 28, NFHR StandingSpreadModifier 0.1 -> 0.2, NFHR StandingSpread 0.005 -> 0.007, NFHR JumpingSpreadIncrement 0.01 -> 0.022, NFHR JumpingSpreadIncrement 0.008 -> 0.015, NFHR DuckingSpreadIncrement 0.006 -> 0.012, NFHR ProneSpreadIncrement 0.005 -> 0.01
+ NFAR Falloff 2000 -> 1500, NFAR FalloffBase 0.9 -> 0.85, NFAR Minimal Damage 24 -> 20

Added:
+ Muzzle flash effects for cannons, missiles and artillery cannons.
+ Draw distance set for most particles to 10k units.
+ Sudden death on urbanchaos after 45 minutes.

Removed:

Modified:
+ Allow building refineries near enemy walls.
+ Restricted turrets during sudden death on maps without commander.
+ Disabled healing and squad heal during sudden death on maps without commander.
+ Sudden death causes ticket bleed that ends at 0 : 0.
+ Lowered speed of vehicles going out of vehicle factory.
+ Allow building vehicles when vehicle factory is restricted but there's enough wages to pay for vehicle.
+ Doubled health regeneration from health regeneration skill.
+ Increased stamina boost from stamina increase skill.
+ Added tone mapping controller to: emp_crossroads, emp_cyclopean, emp_escort and emp_isle.
+ Spawn protection is disabled after firing a weapon.

Fixed:
+ Server used wrong collision mask for unstuck check and teleported players that were not stuck.
+ Armory placed in Hammer and not built at start had working ammo and health crates.
+ Chat was reset during revive.
+ Player heard "vehicle constructed" sound instead of the commander.
+ Client vehicle machine gun firing each frame in prediction.
+ Commander not visible in death messages for kills from turrets.
+ Grenades sticking only to NF infantry.
+ Vehicle spawner checking if chassis was researched when told not to.
+ Ammo and health crates prediction bug.
+ Semi-automatic weapons being dependent on player latency.
+ Vehicles not being precached on map without command vehicle.

Let's get some more players for the mod, you'll need to register to vote. Also, anyone with badass screenshots, videos, etc. Now is the time to upload them. Do it here, and paste it anywhere else you can. Make your own trailers if you want and post them up here, we'll get the best one up as soon as possible. Please register if you vote, as your vote will be worth more.

Changes:

Empires v2.29
November 8, 2010

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Empires 2.29 Changes

Balancing Changes:

• Research time for Mediums reduced by 60 seconds.
• Research time for Heavies increased by 90 seconds.
• Base cost of Heavies increased.
• Base cost of Mediums decreased.
• Base cost of Artillery decreased.
• Max weight of Artillery increased (+50).
• All vehicle weapon costs halved.
• Salvo Homing Launcher is now a 3 slot weapon. Reload time changed from 10 s to 6 s.
• CV armor heat to target 0.14 -> 0.05.
• Tracking systems (precursor to Salvo and Homing) research time/cost increased from 60/60 to 120/400 respectively.

Added:

• Materials using parallax occlusion mapping.
• Custom vbsp.exe that is replacement for source2007/vbsp.exe for mappers that want to compile maps using LightmappedParallax.

Removed:

Modified:

• Reverted RPG speed to 1200.
• Updated particles.
• emp_escort
  • Added geometry to last flag, added back pathway from 2nd flag once BE caps.
  • Added pathway for BE at new tunnel on first flag.
  • Raised skybox so you can fire mortar upward in most sections of the map.
  • Added doors to the canal/tunnel on 4th flag that are opened when you build the bridges.
  • Reenabled level 3 turrets.
  • Brenodi starts with 1 million resources.
• emp_district402
  • Disabled bleed.
  • Enabled sudden death with no revive after 45 minutes.
  • Moved capture points to make defense at the back viable strategy.
  • Changed tickets to 150.
• emp_cyclopean
  • Shallowed water.
  • Fixed tree translucency.
  • New textures and new water included.
  • Flattened areas outside of main bases so barracks can fit.
  • Moved 1 of the center refineries.
  • Refineries start as built.
• Default values for cvars in server.cfg.
• Changed mortar reload animation rate from 27 FPS to 40 FPS.
• Can holster mortar at any time.
• Draw crosshair as red even hiding.
• Changed Brenodi chat color to closer to purple.
• Mortar shells don't collide with teammates.
• Disable revive and squad revive on non-commander maps when sudden death starts.
• Don't show scoreboard after game ends.
• Changed commander name color to show health of most damaged armor side and vehicle body.
• Removed stamina penalty for shooting scout rifle.
• Changed scout rifle clip size from 5 to 10.
• Reduced mortar reload speed significantly(almost half time).

Fixed:

• Simplified parallax shader to avoid BSOD caused by fault in graphics card driver.
• Enemy commander hearing about vehicle construction.
• Fixed incorrect player collision mask used on ladder.
• Prediction bug causing non-smooth movement in spectator mode.
• Don't show "Spawn blocked" when another player stands on spawn point.

Notice to Empires server owners, run hlds update tool on your servers to fix a few exploits that have been used to "DDOS' Empires servers.  It isn't an Empires specific update, just an engine update.

Go to Download Client for download links.