Prerequisites
- At least 50 GB of free hard drive space on the drive where you have AoE3:DE installed
- Own a copy of AoE3:DE purchased through Steam and installed on your computer
- Know your Steam username and password
- Some basic computer skills - we're going to use Windows Explorer to copy some files around and use a scary command prompt
- On some old versions of the game, some players reported cases where AoE3:DE spontaneously deleted files from their computer. Run old versions of the game at your own risk.
- If you mess something up in this process, you could easily mess up your game files and need to reinstall the game altogether, or if you are very poor at reading directions, you could accidentally delete all the files on your computer.
- I won't guarantee the accuracy of anything here. You might download a version and find out your recorded game still doesn't work with it. If that happens, let me know and I'll try to fix it.
- I am not the author of the DepotDownloader tool. It connects to Steam network using your Steam credentials. To my knowledge, your credentials are sent directly to Steam's official servers, but I haven't verified this. I do not believe Steam officially condones usage of such tools. Use third party software at your own risk.
1. Locate a recorded game you'd like to watch. If it's uploaded to ESOC, the version should be listed as "Definitive Edition <number>", as shown below. Currently there's no other tool available to identify the version, so you'll have to upload your recorded games.
(these are screenshots, don't try to click on them)
2. Using the table in the spoiler below, determine the "Steam Manifest ID" for the version of DE. If a manifest ID isn't listed yet, you'll have to reference this SteamDB page: https://steamdb.info/depot/933111/manifests/. The "SEEN DATE" column there should roughly correspond to the release date below (which I collected from the Age of Empires official blog, https://www.ageofempires.com/news/?page ... #newsPosts).
Spoiler
3. Download and unzip the latest depotdownloader-x.x.x.zip from this GitHub releases page: https://github.com/SteamRE/DepotDownloader/releases
4. Open the unzipped directory in Windows explorer, to get a window that looks something like this:
5. Copy the file path from the top bar of Windows Explorer. Note that I moved my folder into Program Files, but I don't recommend this unless you know what you're doing, as it will create some permissions problems.
6. Click your start menu, type "Command Prompt", and open the "Command Prompt" application. In the black window that appears, type cd, followed by a space, and paste in the path you copied earlier. Surround the path with quotes if your path has spaces in it. Press enter. Things should look like the screenshot below:
7. Run DepotDownloader by pasting in the following command, replacing the manifest ID with the one from the table above, and putting your steam username and password where appropriate:
Code: Select all
DepotDownloader.exe -app 933110 -depot 933111 -manifest 3502290014427690652 -username <steam username> -password <steam password>
8. Wait for it to download. It should show a percentage progress while it's running.
9. In Windows Explorer, navigate to wherever your Steam games are installed. On my computer, this is ""C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common". You can also find this by opening Steam, right clicking on AoE3:DE in your library, go to "Properties", "Local Files", and click "Browse".
10. Rename the folder "AoE3DE" to "AoE3DE_backup" or something similar.
11. In the DepotDownloader folder, it should have created nested sub folders called "depots" -> "933111" -> "<some number>". Drag and drop the last folder to where the "AoE3DE" folder was, and rename it to "AoE3DE". Your new "AoE3DE" folder should contain as "AoE3DE_s.exe".
12. Launch your game as you normally would. At the main menu, check the bottom left of the screen to confirm the version matches the version your wanted (just the second to last number, e.g., "v. 100.12.56860.0" is listed as 56860 above).
13. Watch your recorded game, and close the game when you're done.
14. Go back to the "AoE3DE" folder, and delete it (or rename with the version if you want to keep it around for watching more games - could rename "AoE3DE_56860" or something). Rename your "backup" folder back to "AoE3DE", and you should be able to play on the latest version again. If things don't work, in Steam, right click on the game in the library, go to "Local Files", and try "Verify integrity of game files".
If you successfully watch a recorded game and the manifest ID wasn't in the table, comment below with the manifest ID and version number, and I'll add it to the table.
