Genie

The Genie Engine is a game engine developed by Ensemble Studios and used in several computer games, such as Age of Empires, Age of Empires II and its expansions (but is not used in other Ensemble Studios games) and Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. Some of those games have been ported to the Apple Mac. Development The Genie engine was developed as the basis for Ensemble Studios' first game, Age of Empires which had the development name of "Dawn of Man". The designers received much of their inspiration from the game Civilization, with its proven historical setting; this was noted among reviewers as something positive. Age of Empires was designed by Bruce Shelley, Tony Goodman (in charge of the game's artwork), Dave Pottinger (in charge of the game's artificial intelligence), and Matt Pritchard (in charge of the game's graphics). The game was described as "Civilization II meets Warcraft II" and this shows in the game's engine design. Like Warcraft it is real time strategy but unlike Warcraft and like Civilization II it is historical and has an isometric perspective. The design team for the sequel, The Age of Kings, intended to complete the game within a year by using code from the original and reusing the game engine. Several months into the process they found they would not be able to complete a game of the quality they sought in that time. Ensemble Studios informed Microsoft they would need another year and instead created Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome, an easily developed expansion pack of Age of Empires, as a compromise which could be released for Christmas 1998. To help meet the next year's deadline, additional programmers, artists, and designers were employed. The original Age of Empires had been criticized for its artificial intelligence (AI). Because the original AI did not "cheat" by attributing itself extra resources or using other techniques the human player could not, it was easier to defeat than in many other real-time strategy games. For The Age of Kings, Ensemble Studios attempted to develop a more powerful AI system that did not compromise by cheating. Industry veteran Mario Grimani led Ensemble Studios in the creation of the new system. To overcome another significant objection to Age of Empires—that of path finding—the team completely redesigned the game engine's movement system.