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I've posted this over at CFC, and I thought I'd crosspost over here as well - can't do a community project without some of the community:
(Link to CFC thread)
Right... now we have the SDK it's time to get to work making Civ 4 into something very similar, only better. Firaxis have given us an excellent start, but there's only so much improvement they can justify for a commercial company.
The way I see it, what Civ 4 really needs is one large community project to enhance the default game, without actually changing the game. What I am proposing is a universal mod to improve the game - a sort of 'must-have' patch. This patch would improve the AI, the UI, as well as attempting to improve the performance of the game. The rules, however, should not be changed. Of course, mods which change the rules could be applied on top, but one big mod is going to be alot better than many small ones.
Tackling the points one at a time:
1) The AI - While it is good, there is always room for improvement. This part will probably take the longest, as each AI change will require extensive testing to make sure that it is actually an improvement over the already pretty damn clever AI. Probably the first step will have to be ask the community as a whole (especially the good players
) what they think is wrong with the AI, and then taking steps to improve it.
2) The UI - Work has already started on this, as most of the UI is implemented in python. Pretty much the same as it is at the moment - more info while avoiding too much clutter.
3) Performance - I think I read somewhere that the CTP 2 team managed to get the game to run perfectly on a system which was at half the minimum requirements when given access to the source code. We don't quite have all the source code, nor do we have access to the graphics engine, so I doubt we'll be able to manage this, but I'm sure there are improvements out there to be found.
Now it seems to be that 1) & 2) should have disable switches put in for the puritans amongst us, but I can't see anybody objecting to 3).
What I'm really looking for in this post are suggestions as to what people think I've got wrong/right here, as well as to sign up as many people who are willing to contribute to this project as I can.
As for myself, I've been looking with greedy eyes at the city AI for a few hours now, and I'd love to have a crack at fiddling with the rest of the AI scripts to tweak litte improvements here and there, although I'll say from the start that I probably can't really lead this project, as I don't have access to a compiler for 25 weeks a year.
So... any volenteers?
Already have a few people from CFC, and was wondering if anybody here was interested in helping. I'll probably set it up as SourceForge project some time later today.
(Link to CFC thread)
Right... now we have the SDK it's time to get to work making Civ 4 into something very similar, only better. Firaxis have given us an excellent start, but there's only so much improvement they can justify for a commercial company.
The way I see it, what Civ 4 really needs is one large community project to enhance the default game, without actually changing the game. What I am proposing is a universal mod to improve the game - a sort of 'must-have' patch. This patch would improve the AI, the UI, as well as attempting to improve the performance of the game. The rules, however, should not be changed. Of course, mods which change the rules could be applied on top, but one big mod is going to be alot better than many small ones.
Tackling the points one at a time:
1) The AI - While it is good, there is always room for improvement. This part will probably take the longest, as each AI change will require extensive testing to make sure that it is actually an improvement over the already pretty damn clever AI. Probably the first step will have to be ask the community as a whole (especially the good players
) what they think is wrong with the AI, and then taking steps to improve it.2) The UI - Work has already started on this, as most of the UI is implemented in python. Pretty much the same as it is at the moment - more info while avoiding too much clutter.
3) Performance - I think I read somewhere that the CTP 2 team managed to get the game to run perfectly on a system which was at half the minimum requirements when given access to the source code. We don't quite have all the source code, nor do we have access to the graphics engine, so I doubt we'll be able to manage this, but I'm sure there are improvements out there to be found.
Now it seems to be that 1) & 2) should have disable switches put in for the puritans amongst us, but I can't see anybody objecting to 3).
What I'm really looking for in this post are suggestions as to what people think I've got wrong/right here, as well as to sign up as many people who are willing to contribute to this project as I can.
As for myself, I've been looking with greedy eyes at the city AI for a few hours now, and I'd love to have a crack at fiddling with the rest of the AI scripts to tweak litte improvements here and there, although I'll say from the start that I probably can't really lead this project, as I don't have access to a compiler for 25 weeks a year.
So... any volenteers?
Already have a few people from CFC, and was wondering if anybody here was interested in helping. I'll probably set it up as SourceForge project some time later today.
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