Empires Mod

If it doesn't fit elsewhere, it should go here
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HAPPYFACES
Posts: 524
Joined: 02 Jun 2012, 03:40

Post » 07 Feb 2014, 09:58

While looking for something to do with my significant other (Due to the fact we've been separated and now only maintain communication via interwebs.) I uncovered a rather old and unrefined gem amidst the slurry of mods featured in ModDB.

Empires, in a nutshell, is an RTS - FPS hybrid. Something I've been dreaming of for a long time and did not know it existed for free in this mod. (I've heard of other games but apparently they weren't very good)
http://www.moddb.com/mods/empires

Now, since this mod has more or less been abandoned, there is no one currently playing it or with even a server up. But since finding and downloading it (It does take a bit to set up because the SteamPipe update AND the switch of Half-Life 2 to the OB Source engine broke this thing to all hell. I'll explain how to get it up and running below if anyone is interested.) I've been itching to get a good game going.

So to make sure there isn't much confusion if you are interested in playing;
What I'm asking for here is someone with hardware capable of running a dedicated server, and the ISP able to handle it. As it stands, I'm on a laptop from the Vista line of Dell XPS computers running x32 bit Win7, in an apartment rigged with Cumshit (Comcast). The worst combination for any gamer ever and I could imagine a tech head ripping their eyes out if they ever saw me playing a game on this.

If anyone is able and willing to do this... Holy crap thank you so much you get a heart <3
Anyone else? If you wanna join here's how you get the game running;
Go to the store, search it up "Empires" with the items set to "Mods".
And download it... Derp.
Now, the tricky bit here is that when it's done downloading do not start it.
You also need to get Source SDK 2007, if you haven't already, and run that first.
After you've run SSDK'07, exit, go to its launch settings and put in:

-game "C:\Program Files\Steam\Steamapps\common\empires\empires"

With the quotation marks. (Some of you might have done something like this before but... just pointing out the obvious crap for obvious reasons. Also you might need to do this part often.)
Alright, now that you have that all set up...
Because of the fact SteamPipe isn't set up for this game you most likely need to add these .GCF files to your steamapps folder. I don't know if it works without them, I haven't tried and don't care to because the game is running fine for me with them. Linkies.

Once you have all this set up, Don't use Empires to run the mod.
Go to SDK'07 and run it from there with the game parameters set for launch. You won't get a valve opening logo BUT, you DO get the game.

As for the dedicated server software?
I'm not sure how that all is going to work considering you need to do that other crap just to get the client working. I imagine it's just like any other server stuff, except you need to download the software from ModDB. If you can get it running I will love you long time.
(Update on that striked bit: Not all of that is true. It's a little bit complicated, rather needing to use something like SteamCMD which I think is discontinued. I found the wiki, and it has a page dedicated to getting the dedicated server running. Otherwise, you know, we could always just do a listen server.)

AAAANYWAYS
Once we've got all that organized and well done, that is if anyone is interested in playing, we can then coordinate times to rip each other's teams apart.
Happy modding, everyone. And if you're just taking a look-see, give this mod a thought eh? :3 The dev's have almost given up because of the problems Valve has caused, and there might never be another release.

(On a side note if you don't have TeamSpeak I suggest you get it and someone please either make a Stabby Chat Room or give me a link to one that already exists. I know I'm sounding pretty demanding in this thread but Oh my god you don't know how long I've been dreaming of a game like this... Even if I'm not the best in RTS)

Update: I suppose if no one is up for playing Saso can go ahead and delete this post...

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