ModCast #8: "Nice Nipples"

[Locutus]

The eighth episode of ModCast is here, an official podcast of Apolyton Civilization Site (ACS). "Nice Nipples" (46m03s) features the four core panelists Wouter "Locutus" Snijders, Tony "GarretSidzaka" Kiehl, Kenneth "Impaler[WrG]" Ferland and Oscar "Elhoim" Velzi as well as guest host James "NikNaks93" Nicholls.

ModCast is a bi-weekly ~45-minute audio production of Apolyton Civilization Site and is an ongoing effort to give the Civ community an interactive voice on Civilization modding; its sibling show PolyCast focuses on Civ strategy. To date, ACS is the only community on the web to produce its own Civilization podcasts.


Summary of Topics:

- 02m28s | News
  We talk about Brad Wardell, of Stardock and Galactic Civilizations II fame, being interviewed on GFW Radio (show of 04/02/2008) (detailed text summary).
- 12m31s | Artist Sketchpad
  Discussing NikNaks93's Meso-American and Native American Explorers, the Tuskaloosa leaderhead by johny smith (as well as a different version by mourndraken), and Ekmek's Akbar the Great leader and Venetian civilization.
- 31m51s | Code Corner
  Looking at a new map making tool called simply Civ4 Map Maker by sarysa and Shype's Vicinity Bonus mod (as well as the pronunciation of his name).
- **m**s | Spotlight
Unfortunately due to loss of net connection by our guest James "NikNaks93" Nicholls, the Spotlight on his modding work (which includes the World of Civilization Project) had to be canceled. We promise we'll try to get him back on the show soon!

[Murg]

In my opinion this wasn't a very good episode. The core issue is the same as in the early episodes, no one knows much about the articles they are discussing. So what you end up with is a group of guys randomly discussing topics with no real information. Its like overhearing a conversation at a bar.

Now granted the guys involved are fun to listen to, I really like Locutus, Oscar, Tony and Ken. But without any real insight to offer it makes me believe the audience will shrink instead of grow.

Secondly you guys don't cover mods very often. Covering mod tools is fine, but I would cover at least one mod every week to give listeners something to go download and play. You do that, they enjoy the game you recommended and you will grow your audience as well as civ4 players in general (and everyone wants that!). The highpoint of the shows so far was the episode with the Blood and Iron coverage. You covered 2 mods, got me excited to go try them and even talked with the developers. That remains the Modcast high water mark for me.

Lastly a more minor point. You may want to be a bit more aggresive with the editing. Though I love the tangents and the joking around (it wouldn't be fun without it), at the point where that exceeds the topic time something is going wrong. I suspect that may have been more apparent in this episode because of a lack of detailed information in the topics, so it will probably be fixed by covering the stuff I mentioned above.

Take it for what its worth. Im just one guy. But I definitly want you guys to succeed and I am always excited to see another modcast show up on my iPod. Im especially excited to hear seZ's interview in 2 weeks. So I don't mean to be critical, you guys are great.

[Locutus]

I agree with you that this wasn't our best episode, in fact it may have been the weakest one (although personally I thought our very first one was pretty weak as well). We had a lot of bad luck on this one. As much as we would like otherwise, I'm afraid they can't all be gems...

I disagree though that the problem was with us not having enough to say about the topics. In fact, in that area we probably did better than usual IMO (although there's still plenty of room for improvement): Tony, Oscar and I all know a fair bit about Brad Wardell and Stardock, we had 3 artists on to talk about the artwork of the week and I was of the opinion that we had quite a good discussion about the Map Maker tool -- for once an area where Tony and I share a lot of experience (and frustration).

The biggest problems were Ken showing up very late again and missing much of the show, and NikNaks unfortunately dropping out before we could really dive into his background, modding experiences and current projects (such as World of Civilization, which would've been the mod you were looking for). Ken does add a lot of dynamic to the host interaction and the Spotlight should be the heart of our show, having to cancel it forced us to leave in a lot of art/news discussion that would otherwise have been cut. Unfortunately these were unforeseen events that couldn't have been handled differently, we can only hope this won't happen again too often (but unfortunately Ken already missed the entire show we recorded this weekend )

In the past we have on occasion just moved up the recording a week if people didn't show up or dropped out, but we can't do that every week as it's *extremely* stressful for especially Tony who does most of the post-production (and we already did that fairly recently). To mitigate the issue of guests dropping out, we do intend to from now on record the Spotlight before any other segment. That way if we lose a guest again at least we'll hopefully still have the most important section covered. FWIW, I think our interview with seZereth was our best one yet (although of course it remains to be seen how it comes out after editing), so next show will hopefully be a good one.

As for covering more actual full mods, again, in this case the problem was with NikNaks dropping out before we could get to his (non-art) work, we hope to bring him back in the near future so we can still cover that. In general though, I agree we've been a little art-heavy. A big part of that is that Tony is booking our guests and he's an artist himself, that's the people he knows best/know him best and are easiest to get on the show. We're getting more and more requests from other modders as well though, we definitely hope to balance things out a little better in the future. However, discussions on major mods take a LOT of preparation, so doing more than one of those per show isn't really feasible: we have one site admin, one very active modder/artist and two 'real' game designers (one indy, one mainstream) on our panel, we just have limited time to prep the shows and actually play the mods we want to talk about...

For ep 10 though (providing Ken actually shows up this time ) we should have a fairly 'mod-heavy' show with a large Code Corner, a decent Cartography Room, a discussion on modular civs, and a small or even no Artist Sketchpad. We don't have a guest confirmed yet but most of the people on our immediate wish list have made (more or less) finished and playable 'proper' mods, not just art, tools or designs that largely only exist in someone's head. So hopefully that will satisfy the needs of those looking for playable mods to try out


Thanks for your feedback, keep it coming We can only make this show better if we know what our listeners want from us, so you've given us exactly what we need.

[Murg]

I had no doubt I was preaching to the choir with the things I was pointing out. I speak only as a huge fan and I agree with your analysis, you are dead on correct.

Im really excited to hear the seZereth interview and the future coverage of playable mods (rather than just art and tools).

[GarretSidzaka]

Yeah, it doesn't look like we have anyone for next weekend, so NikNaks93 could very easily come back for this episode

We might have Maniac next month.

But if you are at all interested in the show, and are somehow related to modding, come PM us and have some fun

[Murg]

Maniac will be awesome! Be sure to play Planetfall before he comes on so you can really go over it. I tinkered around with a really early version but haven't tried it in forever so Im excited to hear about progress and such.

Im glad to help out if you'd like me to join for a podcast. Im probably one of the few people that played Locutus's BtS scenario (which was looking to be very cool, I was sorry to see Locutus get busy and not be able to follow up on it).

I just sent a PM to Vehem, creator of the Fall Further mod (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=264496). He would be a great guy to have on the show and his mod is excellent if you enjoy fantasy.

[Locutus]

Wait, you're Derek? How did I not know that? Posting under a different username, you sneaky little bastard

(And that scenario isn't necessarily dead just yet, just in the freezer for now )

[Murg]

Originally posted by Locutus
Wait, you're Derek? How did I not know that? Posting under a different username, you sneaky little bastard

(And that scenario isn't necessarily dead just yet, just in the freezer for now )

Yeah, I think my CivFantics nick was already taken on this forum when I signed up here a few years ago.

[Wiglaf]

Will need to add real pornography, the erotic name simply doesn't make up for the next hour of libido kill.

[Maniac]

Originally posted by GarretSidzaka
We might have Maniac next month.

I doubt that. I'm not available when you're recording, and you're not recording when I'm available.

[Heraclitus]

I don't know, on the one hand it was ok listening to the episode on the other I'm slightly disapointed since some of the topics sounded interesting enough to make a much better episode.

Its still ok though. Well, sort of.