It's coming. The 4th instalment in the hugely popular "Age of" series. This time Ensemble take us to the colonisation of the new world.
The Age of Empires III engine is a fully DX9, Shader 3.0 compliant engine with more technical bells and whistles than any other PC game to date. As you can see from the screenshots, we have a world that feels bright and sunny, but with a softness and depth that hasn't been seen before. From things like self-shadowing to HDR (high dynamic range) lighting to water that has proper Fresnel reflectance properties, this is a very high-end graphics engine.
We've also integrated physics into the game in a big way. When units are blown up by cannon fire, we use ragdolls to bounce them around the world, off of rooftops, and down cliffs. As buildings take artillery damage, pieces of the building realistically break off and fall down with proper collision modeling. When you throw in hundreds of integrated animations per unit, the overall effect is quite impressive.
