I thought you'd probably be interested in what CIv3 will look like. PCGameplay has posted the first in-game screenshots. One of them shows the map view. You'll be very surprised to see that they're using something like our power circles! Grassland looks good, similar to what I'm working on but with softer colors. The forests and irrigations seem very ugly to me, however.

Civ3:
Ugh.. Somebody dropped a box of pixels there. This barely qualifies for a 'fog of war' map. Clash at least has trees instead of green stuff.
If the mess on the roads was irrigation, nobody's ever going to irrigate, just for aesthetic reasons. Thank god it's only a preview.

quote: Originally posted by Simon Loverix on 04-27-2001 06:47 AM Fiera: You did understand. The forest looks fine, you surely can do it for the other vegetation too.

OK, will try it...

Regarding Civ3, there's a a new map view screenshot, posted by MarkG here:
http://www.apolyton.net/civ3/images/screenshots/gameplay-incaesar2.jpg

It's clear that they're still making important changes. The irrigations look better now now, and the ocean is blue in this one, plus the PCs seem to be gone. However, there's a big circle around a Horse unit (or is it around a city? - could be a new representation of the City radius).

Some lessons I think we can extract from these screenshots for Clash:

- Colors are very important. The player instantaneously decides whether he likes the game colors and look or not. We have to be careful with that.

- Units must clearly stand off the background, and there must be remarkable differences among them at a glance, so you can quickly tell which unit is which in the map view.

- The new interface they're trying to implement just don't look right. But that just may be a matter of nostalgy.

Anything else?

- Those guys don't come outside anymore these days, do they? If they did, they would know water does NOT look blue, only the sea. I'd say, don't draw irrigation explicitly, only indicate farmed/not farmed for the small tiles on the square.

Thanks to my CAD class, I have developed some (limited) skills in 3-D modeling and rendering. I can now make replicas of various structures without much time or effort. You can see some screenshots here:
http://wcuvax1.wcu.edu/~RB22393/buildings.html

quote: Originally posted by Fiera on 05-05-2001 09:17 PM But, I wonder if there's really a purpose for these kind of rendered images in a turn based strategy game. I mean, what benefit can you take out of a 3d image when you can not actually "surround" it?

The benefit is that I can make these images faster than most people can make 2-D images. It only takes about 10-20 minutes to make one of these. And once I make the models, I can take many different shots from them from different angles.

That reminds me of another issue: the style of all the graphics in the game should be equal or comparable. A very good example of this is Imperialism. A very bad example of this are (too) many home-made civ2 scenarios. So using 3D pictures in a game with mostly 2D graphics could 'break' the style, unless it's a very small picture (like on the map) or when it's retouched to fit in.

Your new things look pretty cool! The only direct use I can think of for them offhand is as backgrounds either in skins, or behind character advisers. So when your adviser character pops up to tell you about the economy or what ever, some sort of commercial institution could appear behind them.

BTW, how is the tech stuff coming along using Gary's tech editor? Perhaps best to refer to this in the tech thread rather than here...

Fiera:

Any luck on the new art? Do you think we should try and put the new style tiles in demo five? If so, I need plains, mountains, hills, and swamp. That's all we are likely to use in demo 5.

Everything's great with me, the only thing is that I've been hopelessly busy with some papers I had to write.

quote: Originally posted by Mark_Everson on 05-12-2001 10:55 AM Any luck on the new art?

The only thing I've been able to put together is a new try on the farmed squares. Look at it here:
http://www.geocities.com/fiera_com/demo.html

The new squares are those at the right. I know it doesn't make that much of a difference, but I think it looks better know...

I've also tried something for the roads, but I don't like at all what I've got.

quote: Do you think we should try and put the new style tiles in demo five? If so, I need plains, mountains, hills, and swamp. That's all we are likely to use in demo 5.

I say let's go for it. I think everybody's happy with the plains and mountains that I already have, so I only need to work on the hills and swamps. I'll focus on it, leaving roads and rivers aside for the moment. Is that alright?

quote: There was a guy looking to help out on the art front, and I asked him to coordinate with you here, hopefully he will show up soon...

I like the pattern of unobtrusive basic terrain covered by little vegetation tiles. Perhaps the swamp could be a single color like the others. Then rivers and/or discrete vegetation would add the detail.

The thing I like about my idea is that when the land is drained we can do it just like deforestation -- gradually. But the player will see a big swampy area change over many turns into good farmland! This should give the player a sense of progress and ownership. And the best thing about it is that the player will achieve this without needing to move around many settlers by hand!

quote: Originally posted by Richard Bruns on 05-16-2001 09:30 PM I still have to squint to see the farmland. Could you make it stalks of wheat or something that stand out like the trees do?

Right, look at the new farmlands I've done. I think you'll like then now. They're here:
http://www.geocities.com/fiera_com/demo.html