Age of Empires II 1.0.1 released

Last month Bold by Destineer offered its freshman title for Macintosh enthusiasts — the long awaited strategy game Age of Empires II Gold Edition. A new version, 1.0.1 is now available for download to correct some shortcomings in the initial release.

Developed by Ensemble Studios and brought to the Mac by Westlake Interactive, Age of Empires II Gold Edition is a compendium that combines the original Age of Empires II: Age of Kings with its add-on expansion pack, called The Conquerors Expansion. The Gold Edition of the game was released for the PC this past fall, and Bold by Destineer released the Mac version of game to retailers and pre-order customers at the end of October.

In Age of Empires II Gold Edition, you assume the role of the leader of a civilization following the fall of Rome. You must guide your people through the Dark Ages to the Middle Ages, developing technology, diplomacy and culture as you defend your land from the constant threat of foreign invasion. The game combines together the deep play of games like Civilization II with the real-time strategy challenge of games like Warcraft and Starcraft. In addition to a rich single-player mode, Age of Empires II Gold Edition features multiplayer support against other Macintosh gamers online.

While Age of Empires II Gold Edition has been enthusiastically embraced by Mac gamers, there has been a steady stream of complaints from some gamers in online forums who are having trouble with the title. Changes in the new update include:

Fixed the bug with the unit text in the scenario editor being white on a white background.

Fixed the colored fog effects, e.g. red flashing buildings.

Fixed several bugs in the pathfinding logic. Units should now move in a more expected direction.

Fixed a crash when loading saved games that contained a wonder.

Increased width of instruction panel text and reduced the font size to accommodate German.

Fixed a bug for users with a disk named Data. It conflicted with the game’s Data folder.

Added a check for CarbonLib 1.4. If the CarbonLib installer is present on your CD, it will be installed. Otherwise, you will be required to acquire and install CarbonLib from Apple.

Multiplayer and Out of Sync save file names were too long for the Mac file system.

Fixed problem where you could enter save file names longer than acceptable on the Mac.

Increased preferred memory partition size to 120MB.

The in-game cursor was disappearing after certain dialogs were displayed (the hot keys dialog, for example).

The StuffIt-compressed archive contains a Read Me file and an updater application that will patch the Age of Empires II application to version 1.0.1. The 1.7MB archive can be downloaded from the link above. General details about Age of Empires 2 can be found at Bold by Destineer’s Web site.