Open Sourcing Realm Of Empires code

We have decided to open-source the game engine that is used to create Realm Of Empires!

Realm of Empires launched in Friday June 13 2008, to a world of gamers eager for good quality independent games. Now in 2024, the world is over saturated with online games of all kind! Yet, Realm of Empires continues to enjoy a loyal following of die hard fans, and pure-strategy bad-asses! 

The one constant request we had from the player community, is for the community to be able to design realms as they see fit. We have tried to deliver this in a number of ways, with the latest feature allowing a design custom realms in 2019.

After much deliberation, the only natural step forward, is to open source the engine!

Anyone tech savvy, can now download the code, run the game and adjust it as you like it.

The engine can also be used to launch a brand new type of game, and the open source code includes an  (incomplete) "StarWars" theme that demonstrates this ability. 

You can use the engine to experiment, launch non-for-profit projects, even run commercial games. All that we ask in return, is that any changes to the code, are offered back to the open source community. 

The project comes with a simple HOW-TO but we can expand it at your request to show off the full configurability of the engine.

Check it out: https://github.com/GregBalajewicz/RealmOfEmpires-MMORTS-Game-Engine 

Announcing a big new feature!

 Hail Lords and Ladies!

We are pleased to announce an exciting new feature, debuting May 26 on realm 314!

One of the common complaints is that Realm of Empires is only a zero-sum game. That is – a game where one player has to always lose. Once you get into a battle with another player, one of you will eventually lose everything. While certainly exciting, you have asked many times to add more fun yet meaningful content to the game. Content that does not result in zero-sum outcome each time. Over the years, we have added features like Rebels and Raids. While fun, these are dumb targets. The skills required to take advantage of those, is minimal in comparison to the skills necessary to take on another player.

Also, we have heard that it is hard for new players to learn the battle skills when only attacking Rebel or abandoned villages. Practicing on real player is a daunting perspective!

But what if you had targets that would actually put up a fight? Targets that would be more lucrative than rebels? Requiring more skill to take, but would not leave you wondering if you are picking a fight that might be your last? Soon, you will be able to experience just that!

Introducing AI players!

We will be carefully trying out this new feature on Realm 314 opening May 26^th. This will be a limited release of between 25 to 50 such computer-controlled players. At this stage, these players will not attack you, but will defend when attacked. If you tell us that this is an interesting addition to the game, more skills will be added to their arsenal.

If you are wondering if this will perhaps be the end of the excitement of the zero-sum feature of the battles you engage in, please do not worry. Computer-controlled players will not take that away. But they will be a way for you to gain valuable (larger) villages early on, to teach new players new skills as you coordinate attacks or to try out new clan members on such targets, etc.

In the future... 

In future realms, we might have those players band into clan and support each other, thus making well planned coordinated attacks even more important. That will depend on your feedback. Could those players even attack back on some realms? Maybe. Again, will depend on your feedback. Maybe a few Tournament realms could feature such players and you can try your skills against a computer? The possibilities are endless!

If you think this has potential, then please reach out to old players, invite them back, so that we can continue to expend on this functionality!

Your questions are welcome in comments below, but please do not expect us to release all our secrets just yet 😊

"Community Realms" feature - Pilot 2 !

As you may remember, we've run our first pilot of community realms via player designed RX.

We are now proceeding with Pilot #2. You will now be able to design a full realms based on these parameters.

Because this pilot still involves a lot of manual work, we want to limit the submissions to only serious ideas, and we require that each players makes a donation in order to be able to design their own realms.

If you wish to proceed:

1. Make a $20 donation here

You will receive a confirmation email. Note the "Donation from:" email - it should be the email you entered in the donation page.

2. Send email to support@realmofempires.com. Include the email that appears in "Donation From:" We will get back to you with an invite to enter the parameters for your dream realm.

We will work with you to make your realm a reality.

If for some reason we do not run your realm, we will refund your donation.

"Community Realm" Feature is a-go! Pilot starting ASAP

Hail Warriors!

A few days ago, we've asked the player community if you want to be able to design and launch your own realms.

Basically, you will be able to decide on all parameter of the realm (speed, handicap, morale, duration, ages, age of cities, start date, end date, win criteria etc) and everyone will be able to join and play on your realm.

We had a positive response, and we've decided to give this a shot! Implementing this fully, is a significant investment on our end, so we will begin with a pilot program, where we will test the waters a bit. We will begin by allowing you to design the next RXs.

List of options for RXs is much more limited, but we hope it will be a good try!

Unfortunately, we have only 7 realms currently to work with. So only 7 people can build the realm in the first round. So the natural question is, how to decide which 7? Survey certainly hinted there are way more players interested in doing this.

Idea 1: first idea, was to allow you to add your name to the list of interested, and then have player community vote on the people they feel are the best to create a realm. This seems like the best option but was rejected due to complexity and would require development, which defeats the purpose of a pilot

Idea 2: allow you guys to bid on the 7 realms; top 7 bids win. We are afraid this would seem like a many grab, which is not the intention so we rejected this.

Idea 3: allow everyone to bid a small amount of servants, and randomly select 7 players from top bidders.

That last idea is was we decided to go with, as having some monetary skin in the game, will result in only more serious submissions, a very rich player cannot outbid you since there is a max you can bid, and if money is an issue, you can get a group of friends, transfer servants and thus poll resources together. We hope the latter case will naturally allow us to select players with biggest community backing.

We are setting the maximum bid at 300 servants

Facebook login problems and workaround

Hello Realm of Empire players!

Realm of empires is not accessible on Facebook for a moment, but there is a work around

Details

We were contacted by Facebook on Saturday morning of a violation of our of their policies and were giving until July 22 12noon PST to fix the issue.

We have fixed the issue that same day where the warning was received, and have attempted, unsuccessfully to contact their support to alert them of the fix.

Well, Facebook decided to suspend the app early and the game it temporarily not accessible until our appeal is address which Facebook promises to be "by the end of the next business day". 

Unfortunately, this is the 2nd time we had this happen to us, and it took a week and multiple apologies from Facebook to unlock the game.

Workaround 

Fortunately, there is a work around, follow the steps here

CRITICAL : Facebook login problems and work around.

Facebook is still not responding to our appeal from April 8th, despite their promise to respond within one business day

The reason for suspension, was that the game was opening by default in full-screen mode. We’ve fixed the problem almost immediately when warned, but a couple of weeks later, they still suspended us. Most probably because whoever was testing it, had a cookie in their browser that instructed ROE to open in full screen mode.

We filed an appeal immediately after suspension but are still waiting for a response from them. We've tried to contact them in other ways ( user groups etc) with no results. Facebook does not have any other way for developer to contact them.

Important messages we want to share: 

1. There is a desktop login work around
2. There is a mobile login work around
3. There is a way to fully protect your account from Facebook in the future. 

DESKTOP LOGIN WORK AROUND. 
The work around, ironically, is to open the game in full screen mode! Steps:

1. Try to enter the game, until you get the notification that the app is unavailable
2. Then access this link : https://www.realmofempires.com/fullscreen.aspx 

MOBILE LOGIN WORK AROUND
We are not sure this will work for everyone one, but for at least some it does work:

1. Uninstall the mobile app 
2. Install it again
3. When asked how you would like to login, say you are an existing user, then select Facebook. 

If this does not work, read on. 

PERMANENTLY PROTECT YOUR ACCOUNT

To permanently protect your self from Facebook's outages, we have a way to convert your Facebook account to our own Tactica account. However, read careful what this entails before you do this. 

We do recommend that all players convert their accounts. We have no idea if the above work around will continue to work. Covert your account

Facebook to Tactica conversion

Realm of empires celebrated 10 years on Facebook in 2018. Throughout those years, we've had a number of Facebook outages that prevented players from logging in.

Because of this, we allow our Facebook veterans to convert their account to our Tactica Account.

All this means, is that rather than logging into Facebook to access ROE, you will enter your email and chosen password.

You will however, lose all Facebook functions like the ability to invite friends or send and receive gifts.

Also, for old veteran players who still use the old user interface (UI) - you will, permanently, lose access to this old UI.

If you want to proceed and convert your account, login to ROE via Facebook with this browser, then come back here and click here to start the process

Frequently asked question & common problems

1. Will I lose my progress? 
   
   No, your account will be intact
   
   
2. Will I be able to send or receive gifts?
   
   No, you will not be able to use any of the Facebook functions. 
   
   
3. I made the conversation, but now I am asked to login as a new player - I get an intro. What do I do?
   
   This can happen if, during the conversion, you have ROE opened in another tab, or on mobile device. All that happened, is that a brand new account was automatically created for you, however, your old account is not lost. Simply close all tabs, then click here to reset your login, and when asked how you would like to login, choose "Tactica" and login with your email and password. 
   
   
4. How do I login via mobile devices?
   
   On both Android and iOS, if you already had the app installed and logged in via Facebook, the easiest thing to do is simply uninstall the app, and install it again. When asked how you would like to login, choose "Tactica" and login with your email and password. 
   
   
5. Can I use the same email that I am using now?
   
   In most cases yes. Unless, at some point in time, you've created another ROE account and used that email there. Then you will have to use a different email address
   
   
6. It tells me that my email is already in use. What do I do? 
   
   You will have to use a different email. You can easily create a new gmail account. 
   
   
7. I did the conversion, but the login does not work?
   
   If you enter your user name and password correctly, and it does not work, it is possible that the conversion did not work. It happens once to us in testing but we were not able to reproduce it. In that case, you should try logging in via Facebook again. You can do so, by first resetting your login method, by clicking this link, then select "Facebook" as your login method, and try to enter the game. Remember the temporary fix (https://www.realmofempires.com/fullscreen.aspx) to enter via Facebook. If you are back in your account, then conversion did not work. We suggest you contact support. If you are not back in your account, but get an introduction video, that means conversion worked out and you should again reset your login method, select Tactica, and follow the steps to reset your password. Contact support if you continue to experience trouble
   
   
8. Why I will lose access to old UI?
   
   Yes. There is a technical reason for it. Basically, old UI is tied to Facebook login and cannot support any other login. This is partly the reason why there are no more old-ui-only realms as we once hoped. There is nothing we can do - old UI is only accessible via Facebook. 

In case of trouble, contact support via Support@RealmOfEmpires.com