8 Years Celebration
STAFF VIEW: LOCUTUS
Another birthday, another year gone by. It's unbelievable how the time
has flown. And what a time it's been... for me especially. The purpose
of this article should be to look back at the past year, but I can't
really do that. Firstly, I missed the last birthday celebration so I
really should be looking back at two years, and secondly and more
importantly, the reason I missed the last birthday was that I was too
busy working on Civ4, which was in crunch time around this time last
year and which is what I really need to look back on. For me the moment
I first got invited to join the Firaxis pre-beta test team more than 2
years ago to the moment Civ4 was released last November is really one
indivisble block of time; I can't look at the last year without also
looking at the year before that.
It all started innocently enough in April 2004 when I got an email from
Soren Johnson inviting me to join a 'small, focused group' to test
Civ4, in which he wanted me to represent the Call to Power fan base. We
had exchanged a few emails before so I wasn't all that
surprised to get an email from Soren (though it was still a rarity, it
certainly grabbed my attention) and when I read it I didn't know what
to think. I had been in a similar test group for Call to Power II,
which wasn't an overwhelming success (for reasons beyond the control of
any of the people immediately involved) and I also had (and still have)
a thorough disliking of Civ3, so I was a bit sceptical but at the same
time excited: which self-respecting Civ fan wouldn't want to be
involved in the development of the next game in the series? Especially
considering all the promising info Soren had already revealed two
months prior on the Game Developers Conference.
But where with the Call to Power II test group I was only involved once
the game was almost done and really only had a minor impact on the game
(as usually happens when developers involve fans in the process), with
Civ4 I and about 10-15 other people were involved almost from the
beginning and had a very major and very direct impact on the game.
There was already a playable build with most of the core game concepts
in place (like tiles, units, cities, resources, religions, civics,
great people, health, maintenace, promotion system, etc), there was a
working main screen interface (though no other screens yet) and there
was even a very rudimentary AI, but that was about it. The Ancient Era
was implemented but beyond the Renaissance there was nothing there yet.
We got a new build every other week (later on every week and in some
phases even several times a week) and as a group we had a very big say
in the design of the game. Many concepts in the first build were
implemented very differently compared to how they are in the release
version, and it was for a large part thanks to our feedback that they
were changed. Some concepts were added by our suggestion, others
removed. It gave a great rush to make a completely wild 'out there'
(but well-argumented) suggestion for something and to two weeks later
see that suggestion actually implemented in the new build. Of course as
time went by the design became more solidified, so the changes made
became less radical, though not less important. Every aspect of the
game, every single mechanism and statistic was tested over and over and
over again and fine-tuned until it was perfect. And then something else
would change elsewhere in the design that would indirectly affect that
and we had to start all over again... The group of testers also
steadily grew (to over 150 testers towards the end), providing more
viewpoints and more ideas on how to improve the game. I can't know for
sure, but I don't think there's ever been a game in which fans were so
directly involved in the development process and had such a big impact
on the final result. And that's a great thing to be involved in.
Of course as a modder I had a special interest in that aspect of the
game. Soren had already told me at the very start that he intended to
make Civ4 the most moddable Civ-type game to date, more moddable even
than the Call to Power series. That's where my background was really
useful, as I was the only one who had had previous experience in
modding something as powerful as Call to Power. That came in quite
handy, especially for the Python stuff, as the early builds weren't
nearly as moddable as the Firaxians thought they were 
Unfortunately the best way to test the moddability of a game though is
by actually going out and modding it, but when at the same time the
default game is changing radically from week to week that's a very
frustrating and painstaking thing to do. It's like shooting at a
fast-moving target, but worse. By the spring of 2005 the game became
more stable (although that was a relative thing: things were still
changing a lot, especially under the hood which is what affects modders
most) and after some other initiatives failed a small group of some of
the most experienced modders in the test group were asked to design
some scenarios to ship with the game -- intended to both test and
improve the existing moddability of the game and to showcase to
end-users (i.e. you) what the game engine is capable of. I was one of
the people involved and co-designed the Desert War scenario as well as
did some coding on Greek World (and gave Rhye advice on his own coding
for that and other scenarios). Of course, the game's release was only a
few months out at that point, which meant we had to work very, very,
very hard in the period July to October to get everything done in time
-- which meant I had to miss out on Apolyton's 7th birthday (among
other things) and also missed pretty much everything else that was
going on in the fan community at that time.
After the game was done it was time for a more-than-deserved vacation,
which at least in my case meant not doing anything Civ-related at all
for a while (for the first time in 7 years), so all-in-all I also
missed out a lot of what happened in 8th year of Apolyton's history. I
only properly came back to Apolyton around March or so, by which time
the development of Warlords was already underway which also took up a
fair bit of my time. At the same time I was offered a tester position
on CivCity: Rome, another game Firaxis has been involved in developing
which was released at the same time as Warlords. So my direct
involvement with Apolyton has in the past year been less than ever
before, but I still found myself coming back every day no matter how
busy I was, to at least read the news and lurk the forums. Over the
years this site has become a home for me, maybe even more so than my
physical home (the fact that I've moved around a few times in the last
years also contributed to that). Past, present or future, no matter how
much other stuff I have to do I'll always find some time to check
Apolyton, even if it's just to lurk -- a testament to the site's owners
and everyone else who's contributed to it over the past 8 years.
These last two years have without a doubt been the best of my life (of
course, I'm only 25 so that's not saying too much yet, but still...) I
would like to say it was a dream come to true that I was able to
participate on the development of Civ4, even if it was in a pretty
minor way, but it's not: I never even dared to dream of such a thing.
Thanks to Apolyton though that undreamt dream became a reality: thanks
to the many friends I made here, thanks to all the mods and articles I
was able to download and publish and thanks to the many, many posts I
was able to read and make over the past 7 years that I've been here.
Nothing I can say or do can properly express the graditude I feel to
Markos and Dan for making all that possible. Thanks guys, for all
you've done!
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