Do they have it? I was under the impression that they had to resort to hacks in order to release the recent remastered version.

The UserPatch mod for the older CD release is really interesting, as it modifies the binary to give a lot of new AI script functions. Some of the ones for customized targeting have almost a declarative, map/filter feeling to them, such as `up-filter-range`. [1]

I think the newer versions of the C++ compiler are much more optimizing today than compared to what what Age of Empires II released on. I'd imagine it wouldn't be possible, or perhaps a lot harder, to make these AI mods with the Steam re-releases.

[1] http://userpatch.aiscripters.net/reference.html

Definitely. AoE2 is a lifetime game for me. I played it in middle/high school, stopped for a while, picked it up in college for 2 years, stopped for 5 years, was amazed it was still a thing in late grad school (2013), stopped for 7 more years, and have just restarted playing again during the lockdown :) voobly is still a thing, and the best part is I’m still using my cd’s from 2002 with the free Aofe patch (pre-steam) from 2014 to play!

0ad is pretty good though. Not quite Age of Empires but still pretty decent.

https://play0ad.com/

I would have thought the commercial "remasters" mean no open sourcing, but EA is doing both, so I guess not.