PolyCast Special on "Civ4Col" with Firaxis Games

[DanQ]

Lead Artist, Designer and Producer. These are the titles that Firaxis Games Mike Bates, Ed Piper and Jesse Smith hold respectively on the sequel to Colonization to be released worldwide next month. They are also the interviewees on "Focus: "Civilization IV: Colonization", a PolyCast (PC) special on the game running 70m35s in length. Regular PC co-host Daniel "DanQ" Quick is joined by Wouter "Locutus" Snijders and Ken "Impaler[WrG]" Ferland from sibling show ModCast (MC) to round out the panel. Firaxis Director of Marketing Kelley Gilmore makes a cameo while Marketing Manager Dennis Shirk assisted in recording the development team members' audio.

Topics cover the development team members themselves then Civ4Col's design, gameplay in three parts, combat, graphics and finally a set of miscellaneous questions. Not only does this feature disclose a lot of information about the game publicly for the first time, it also has the distinction of including the game's opening theme music throughout -- a worldwide premiere for this artistic work.

PolyCast is a bi-weekly audio production of Apolyton Civilization Site (ACS) in an ongoing effort to give the Civ community an interactive voice on game strategy; MC focuses on Civ modding. To date, ACS is the only known community on the Web to produce its own Civ podcasts.

[DanQ]

Summary of Topics

- 02m33s | People
Sixteen year industry veteran Mike Bates (Civ4Col Lead Artist), third-year Firaxis Games employee with seven years beta testing prior Ed Piper (Civ4Col Designer) and one-hundred-plus gaming title credits Jesse Smith (Civ4Col Producer).
- 11m10s | Design
When and why Firaxis decided to do a remake of Colonization, design philosophy for Civilization IV: Colonization, design familiarities to both Col and Civilization IV in the latter and interface work by Firaxis intern and longtime Civilization community member Ken "Impaler[WrG]" Ferland.
- 18m49s | Gameplay (1 of 3)
Primary gameplay differences between Col and Civ4Col, new and tweaked buildings and/or resources, tiers of super-specialists and notable abscence of a technology tree.
- 26m56s | Gameplay (2 of 3)
Colonies covering multiple tiles, targeting particular Founding Fathers by playstyle, religion's role, how the new Constitution feature works and the extensiveness of the game's Diplomacy mechanisms and how they compare to the game's predecessor.
- 36m20s | Gameplay (3 of 3)
Native tribe traits, colonial powers' leader traits, rationale for not including more than four colonial nations, behind the limited game length, resolving historical accuracy versus gameplay conflicts and in-game automation capabilities.
- 43m42s | Combat
Combat system mechanics, on siege units, addressing combat failings of Col, and what of naval warfare.
- 50m00s | Graphics
Art style targetted and responding to public criticisms already raised about the 'Colony' screen.
- 57m26s | Miscellaneous
Moddability including interoperability with CivIV, music selection (and the related worldwide exclusive on this show), (re-)playing the original Colonization, most difficult elements to design in Civ4Col, possibilities of covering other areas of so-called Age of Discovery next and what question hadn't been asked yet that should have been and its answer.

[Jaybe]

I've never played Colonization, and I was not interested in Civ4Col from the information previously available. Screenshots (despite their beauty), etc. did not entice me because of the "plot" of the game.

This podcast has almost certainly changed my position. I am also QUITE interested in the potential for the some of Civ4Col features being applied to Civ4! I want another Civ4 expansion with some of these items included.

[Niptium]

I really dug that ! I liked it and wow, enjoying is actually lowballing what I did.

Very interesting... is the least to say... the craphouse... I wonder what ressource it produces... manure for the fields around the colony ?

Who asked most of the questions - was that Locutus ? I thought at first it was an Hindou accent but it might just be the Dutch accent !

[DanQ]

Originally posted by Jaybe
I've never played Colonization, and I was not interested in Civ4Col from the information previously available. Screenshots (despite their beauty), etc. did not entice me because of the "plot" of the game.

This podcast has almost certainly changed my position. I am also QUITE interested in the potential for the some of Civ4Col features being applied to Civ4! I want another Civ4 expansion with some of these items included.

I myself have only played about 1 1/2 hours of the original Col, and at a friend's house no less, and that was about ~10-11 years ago.

Originally posted by Niptium
I really dug that !

Very interesting... is the least to say... the craphouse... I wonder what ressource it produces... manure for the fields around the colony ?

Who asked most of the questions - was that Locutus ?

That's correct.

I thought at first it was an Hindou accent but it might just be the Dutch accent !

Dutch.

[Krill]

OK, I'll probably have to download this and listen to it on monday...

[DanQ]

Originally posted by Krill
OK, I'll probably have to download this and listen to it on monday...

Sounds good.

[Verrucosus]

Another packed episode with lots of information and clarifications. The combat section was very interesting; I had not read anything specific about this aspect. The most important bit for me was the confirmation that there will be no tech tree. I had been worried about that ever since the article at http://news.bigdownload.com/2008/07...v-colonization/ had mentioned technology trading.

P.S.: Thanks for the SMAC namedrop. Friendly routine nagging is all we can do at this point. Sorry to have caused a bit of a stir in the questions thread.

[Maniac]

Does Ed Piper know any programming?
What does a 'designer' like him do all day?

[DanQ]

Originally posted by Verrucosus
Another packed episode with lots of information and clarifications.

The combat section was very interesting; I had not read anything specific about this aspect.

Neither had I.

P.S.: Thanks for the SMAC namedrop.

Welcome.

Sorry to have caused a bit of a stir in the questions thread.

No apologies necessary.

Originally posted by Maniac
Does Ed Piper know any programming?

I don't know.

What does a 'designer' like him do all day?

I don't know any day-to-day specific task examples.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Maniac
Does Ed Piper know any programming?
What does a 'designer' like him do all day?

Yes, pretty much everyone at any kind of hands-on position over at Firaxis can code, even the producers. Ed programmed (and designed) the tutorial for Civ4 and several scenarios in Warlords and BtS -- off the top of my head the Alexander, Rise of Rome and Vikings scenarios in Warlords and Defense and Gods of Old in BtS (but don't hold me to that).

As lead designer Ed's job description is fairly comparable with that of a lead modder for a major mod, like Kael for FFH or you for Planetfall (except that lead modders tend to also fulfill the role of producer, which a game designer doesn't have to worry about): he spends most of his time working out what features should be in the game, how they should work gameplay-wise, and figuring out the game balance. In a lot of game companies that's most of what a designer does, but Firaxis tends to have a lot of overlap between design and programming.

So in practice Ed probably spent most of his time on (a) playtesting the game over and over and over... as well as collecting feedback from everyone else playing it, (b) implementing and tweaking all the XML code and (c) designing and implementing the maps and map scripts (although some or even all of that may have been done by other designers). For most game developers the interface design is closely tied to game design as well, but Firaxis tends to decouple this a bit I think; still, the lead designer will have to at least communicate a lot with the interface guys as well (i.e. Impaler and the interface artists). The programming team will have done the bulk of the C++ programming, both implementing the major features and basic structures like art and MP code as well as bug hunting and performance tuning once everything's in place, but Ed will likely have fine-tuned some of the specifics of that code to fit his latest design ideas.

[Maniac]

Thanks for the explanation.
Sounds like a dream job.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Locutus's explanation is close but Ed's arrived at his position via the Tester route and doesn't actually do much if any programming. This is more typical for the rest of the industry but atypical for Firaxis ware designers typical come from the Programming department (I believe this is a Sid legacy). As such most Firaxis designers write the AI code themselves, in Colonization the AI was done by Blake.

[MontyLaremane]

Another enjoyable and informative PolyCast I specifically like being able to hear the perspective of the Firaxians on why things were done as they were. The gameplay and art design choices were very interesting to listen to. If there were any doubts in my mind about buying the game, they have gone now (even though I can't play the king and make the colonists pull, er, kiss my finger).

P.S. Embarrassingly enough, I felt a teensy bit of nostalgia hearing DanQ and Locutus in the same episode again. Perhaps I have listened to too much . . .

[Heraclitus]

I enjoyed this a lot.


It was very interesting and well put together, I really think the trend of polycast making specials like this is a good one.