What format (s) do you want possible artwork (s) to be in? Is there a prefered program?
*!* Guide to current design status of Clash of Civilizations - comments anyone? *!*
Guide to the current design status of The Clash of Civilizations
Comments and criticism welcome
[Severely edited 5/13/00, since this had gotten Way out of date]
Welcome to the Clash of Civilizations project.For a Broad overview of Clash and the Clash Project see the Clash Web Page.
As of now, relatively little of the information for the project is in finalized form. However, we are quite far along in specifying high-level models in areas like: the Military; Economy; Government; Technology... We have also made some progress on the Main Interface; Map, Unit, and other Artwork; Culture; Customization; Diplomacy; and AI. Most of the better-developed areas have HTML documents on the web page that outline the main thrust in that. Some of these docs go down to a fairly detailed level. You'll find links to the threads that hold these docs, and the subsequent discussion about them, on the web page. In addition, the Apolyton forums have excellent search capability. If you'd like to know about some area that's not indicated on the web site, just click on the search link near the upper right of the main Clash forum page.
If you're a visitor, feel free to critique any area of interest you. We need Everyone's brainpower working here on evaluation of these models.* Are they too complicated?* Too hard to make an interface for?* Just plain Boring?* Great?...* Because we have already locked in the broad nature of the each game element, comments or criticisms are somewhat more valuable at the level of the details within these models. Note that many of the dukes (coordinators in charge of various areas) have had an increasing number of Real Life commitments over the last few months or so. Many of the discussions just stop at that point. However, your suggestions will still be of value when the final summaries are written up. Please put your suggestions for these areas In The Threads Themselves so that we keep some order in the discussion. So, let us have it.
Demos
What we're looking for out of the demos, is to allow people to test out many of the innovative features in Clash before development gets too far. This should allow us to identify "Turkey" aspects of our current design, and come up with something new to replace them. The latest demo, and a description of the feedback we're looking for on it, can always be found on the web page.
Tell us what you think... And as usual if there's something I need to put up here that I've missed, let me know.
-Mark
[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited May 14, 2000).]
What format (s) do you want possible artwork (s) to be in? Is there a prefered program?
Seeker:
Thanks for your interest. We are somewhat behind on things other than the map stuff which is in the post at top. 16-bit tiffs are probably a good choice for everything. I wrote Paul Crocker and asked him to start up a thread for this since I'm completely unqualified to decide such things. If you don't see the an answer you are happy with soon, bug me! We Really need graphical artists. If you have suggestions you'd like to make for the standards check in frequently, and we'll try to hammer them out asap. BTW what sort of thing were you thinking of contributing to?
BTW we also need art for a sexier web page...
Thanks for the query...
Mark
Just wanted to post a "Good Luck" and hope everything is coming along as you (& Civ Fans) would like.
Hi Sten Sture:
Well, Its not coming along as Fast as we'd like, but I'm fairly satisfied that When it comes out Clash will be a lot of Fun. Not being a professional product has its advantages. We can take the time to back up and get things right, rather than always having the monster deadline looming.
Hi Mark
I have both CivII and Civ CTP and I greatly enjoyed CivII, but I played Civ CTP twice and I'll get to the reasons later. And when I heard you wanted gammers input, I had to mention two very important areas that where greatly overlooked in CivII.
Ive read all the ideas on the civIII forums, and Id think these ideas will make a great game(I hope its will be clash!).
I play CivII much more because CTP animations made the game drag and the game atmosphere sucked and therefore I played twice and not since! It wasnt appealing. There was a poll on Apolyton (Im sure you've seen it) about buety or speed and ease and I think you got the idea of what the people want. What made CivII so great was the simplicity of the gameplay. I dont want a game that slows down in the later stages because of graphics and animations.
REVOLUTIONS AND CIVIL WARS!!! You've got to have these. And I dont mean revolutions to change governments. I mean like the American revolution where a group of cities wanted independence and (might, not always) have to fight for it. And a new civ should become of it. No barbarian cities! I realy dont know which category this would fit in so I just put it right here and maybe you could figure it out.
Thanks
Daniel
Hey Daniel:
We have both your items covered.
The graphics will be relatively simple, and look as great as we can manage.
Revolutions and civil wars will be handled in detail. Check out the Government and Social models. We'd like to hear what you think about our approaches to this issue.
If everyone would just comment about our approaches to the few things that are of most importance to them we'll get a lot of good constructive feedback to improve our models, and maybe some great new ideas too...
First I did a little reading on the progress of the game and so far it looks to be great. I have to say, the way things are shaping up I may be getting Clash instead of CivIII because CivIII(I have a feeling) wont venture too far from its base(a la civ2.5)I was wondering if you could answer a question for me about the game. CivII was approx. 400 turns, about how many turns does clash intend to be? Or am I asking a question prematurly(If so sorry)? I hated the fact that I would fly through antiquity in 10-15minutes and not do much interaction with another civ.
Thanks
Daniel
Well, number of turns is TBD, but right now I start at 1000BC and go at 1 turn/yr! The reason I can do that is that the AI is pretty good (for what it has to do so far), and you can just turn your civ over to it for moderate periods of time. Say I have an enemy crushed but its not quite done. Then I turn it over to the AI for the mopping-up operation. Of course things ain't perfect yet and the version we have now is Very simple, so you can fly thru at 1 sec/turn when not doing anything. It will probably be more like 10-20s for a minimum turn in the release version.
In the final release I imagine we could leave the player in charge of the years-per-turn profile as the game progresses. So someone who wants to get to modern stuff asap would compress the ancient and medieval stuff, and someone like you could leave it as is, or even lengthen the turns for the ancient period.
Ohhh, great!
The games gettting better by the minute!
Daniel
[This message has been edited by Yakopepper (edited October 10, 1999).]
[This message has been edited by Yakopepper (edited October 10, 1999).]
I think we should revive and update this old thread for the following purposes:
1) Provide a place for people to post updates on the status of their models.
2) Provide a place for people to ask general questions and make general comments about Clash.
I'll start:
Technology:
The equations for turning RP into tech levels have been finalized and the tech tree generation utility is currently being coded. I have a rough draft of the technologies themselves and will put them into the tech tree generator when it is finished. This will take a couple weeks, at least, and I can't start until the utility is coded. Interface issues and the exact process of RP generation have not yet been decided upon. Also, we have to work on a system of tags that will allow the AI to deal with technology.
Ecology: This is still in the planning stage. I have a rough draft, and would like to get more input on it.
I have been mostly working on technical details for the economics model. My focus for the near-term is to get the new economics coder, Laurent, set up with the model details he needs to do the demo 5 implementation. I'll post some of the technical issues I've been working on as soon as possible, since some of them enter into gameplay and interface issues, and I would like to hear people's thoughts about them.
Coincidentally, I contacted a couple of the model leads yesterday asking what was going on in their areas. Rodrigo hoped to have something soon on the government model. He is also doing the social model now since TK didn't expect to have the time to work on it in the near future. (And also there is a lot of interaction between the government and social models). I also bugged Harli on the status of the military model, but haven't heard back yet. Darren is going to be focusing on interface coding as soon as he gets the diplomacy package neatened up enough to pass on to the new diplomacy coder, Leandro. Hopefully everyone I have mentioned will check in at this thread and give you their own more detailed version on what they are doing.
My focus for the near and intermediate term is on demo 5. So if an issue doesn't have much to do with the main demo 5 areas (Military, Economics, Technology, Diplomacy, and Interfaces) I'm going to try to stay out of it... My apologies to those working in the other areas, but I think I have to push the demo above everything else.
Technologies:
Basically as rich said, were waiting for the tech insetion program to be finished, once its done we'll be putting our current techs we have down in there.
Characters:
At pretty much a standstill and will probably be that way till most other models are done.
Wonders and Achievements:
Currently at a standstill. Don't know what Chris has to say since I haven't heard from him in a while, well since I posted the current model.
How long would puting the techs in the utility take? If it's a very tedius yet simple operation then I'd be happy to help out, although I'm no coder
LOGO: Thanks for the offer. Unfortunately, you probably won't be able to do the initial entry work because e-mailing the stuff to you in a format you could work with would take as much effort as entering the stuff myself. You could still proofread the final work and make suggestions, however.
LGJ,
Regarding the Wonders/Achievement model, I've been busy recenetly as I just started exams, but I think that it can wait a while longer until we can see how the other models are evolving and we get a coder.
Chris
Nothing new has happened with the technology model.
The ecology model continues to develop and improve as more people give their input. We are trying to iron out its relationship with the new economy model Mark posted, and more input regarding this would be helpful.
The other current hot topic is the size and structure of provinces and the overall characteristics of the map.
I think in addition to the status of the existing models, I think we need to list what is pretty much set in stone (Stone meaning it can change, but only slightly unless it just totally won't work). I'm saying this in light of the recent occurance that happened with the provinces, ecology and map size discussion. This way everyone can atleast have someplace to go to easily find this stuff out.
Currently. of the 3 models I'm working on only the Technology/Research/Social Advancement model is is pretty much set in stone. The formulas may change slightly tor balance purposes. Also we will be adding the stuff for the social modfiiers and how they act, but the social/cultural model needs to be pretty much done as far as the modifiers for differnt culures and religions and such are figured out before this part can be worked on.
That isn't to say it's near completion. Just the interal structure is set up basically. The external, or actuall technologies and advances aren't done and can be easily changed.
The wonder model i would like to say should be something along the lines I have it as, but its far from being "set in stone."
The character model is still very fluid. Basically the only things "set in stone" for it is the fact that characters will be optional and they can be of differnt numbers and can be allowed change aspects of the game via. how they are used. The other thing is that it is optional, but the player can assign most, not all, (or atleast attempt to) characters to differn't positions within the government or hire them out (like privateers). This isn't manditory that you even do it once, and their will be risks and rewards for doing such.
As for the dynasty part, the only thing set in that is that dynasty's should slowly get worse. That and the fact that people seem to be leaning toward an optional player dynasty instead of a god-like character in all the other civs who lives forever.
One of the things I like most about Clash is this character idea. It now gives you a new idea...if you're at war with Spain, rather than needing to wipe them out to attain peace, perhaps you could wait for the current king to pop his clogs and hope his son, or whatever, is more friendly to you...
It also gives you the possibility to have a rebellious prince decide that he wants his kingdom RIGHT NOW and cause a minor civil war. The possibilities are amazing and it doesn't take too much to string together a few possible random events so that one minute you could be laughing at the prince fighting his king, the next find yourself with an irate governor marching on your palace with his own personal army, demanding a change...
Problem with such an idea is that the time element needs to be considered. After all, a King's lifespan could be as small as 3yrs or as long as 35. Who knows? Naturally this is a slight problem in the early stages of the game.
Taking the Civ model of time passage, it's something like 100 turns maybe until 0 BC. However, you jump in 20yr increments. Fine, but that means a all characters change every turn...it would be impossibly complicated, especially for new users.
However, if you tone it down to 1yr intervals, you'd have to wait 4000 turns until you got to 0 BC. Unless the game is horribly slow, by that stage you'd probably be considering which planet to colonise, which isn't going to help realism.
Also, what's the use of hiring a particularly good general if he's gone in two turns? You'd want him for at least 20-30 or you might not even find a use for him. I'd be interested to know what the current trade-off between time/characters is...
On Things That Are Locked in:
Since we have discussing province sizes and map squares sizes recently I will just paste the information in here on what is locked in and the main reasons why it is so .
Provinces:
1. Give player and AI reasonably small number of empire subdivisions to work with (ideally 10 or less, Max 20 over the long haul) Primary use of subdivisions is for govt and econ.
2. your A,B, C above.
3. Ideally 20-50 squares. (Size of historical large provinces)
4. Since empires are expected to grow, with conquest and technology, provinces should be dynamic to satisfy 1.
Map Squares:
100km /60 mile squares (this will be the standard, which can be overridden by players and scenario designers when desired)
1. military: some tactical flavor remains esp for modern warfare;
2. AI: can't have too many squares to deal with;
3. graphics: get slow above this with target comp (may be a bit too much anyway when we get all the map levels going)
Military: [added 8/17/00]
Task forces exist on the map, and can move at the individual square level. Those that don't like this amount of management can put the AI in charge of their military and handle their input through broad directives to the AI generals.
I'll try to post some similar information on the econ area soon.
The Diamond:
Ummm... you really should put these comments in the current character thread where they belong. This thread should be pretty much used only for high-level issues. I think we have satisfactory answers for your problem, although they might not have made it into the summary. Last I recall (LGJ, please correct me if I'm giving bad information) we have two reasonable ways out of the dilemma. For multiyear timespans in a single turn we will either use the dynasties idea, where you rent/use a dynasty rather than just a single character, or simply make the characters arbitrarily have lifespan something like 20-30 turns. The basic notion is that when good gameplay conflicts with reality, screw reality...
[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited August 17, 2000).]
We are making progress on the integration of the econ and ecology models. I have recently posted a proposal in the ecology thread that involves the impact of society and technology on decisions that impact the environment. I hope to get a lot of feedback so I can improve the idea or make a better one.
I am making a spreadsheet that models technology growth so we can test the tech system.
Government,Social and Riots models: New versions just released. Currently starting discussions about them in forums.
Current coding progress level: 0%
Rodrigo
I have developed a population model that uses age based cohorts to model the people in the civ. I am currently working on the OO implementation of this model.
I have finished the spreadsheet that models the technology equations. We are currently working on the methods for handling social technologies and the impact of social factors on the standard technologies. My next task is to create a revised tech system with OO object structure.
The ecology model has been dormant for a while, but the plans for cooperation between the ecology and disaster models have been finalized. The model will not be implemented in the near future, and is a low priority compared to the other models. In a few weeks I should have Version 3 of the model, which will include OO design.
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