New Close-up Screens at Gaming Horizon

[Kuciwalker]

First, it's a phrase people use.

Yes. It's a phrase used to convey someone's personal assurances about something. However, given that I don't put much stock in yours (I like Civ3, better than Civ2 or SMAC/X), the response "Why?" is still appropriate.

[yin26]

You do have my personal assurance, but that doesn't make a bit of difference to you, right? Next semantic move.

[AeonOfTime]

@yin26: trust me or don't trust me

Choices, choices... I preferred when you simply said 'trust me'

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Scaled-down units will be hard to distinguish within cities. Any sensible player will simply use filters instead of scaled-down units.

The reason why units are giants is because you can clearly manipulate them when the "unit" filter is active, i.e when you're dealing with the military aspect fo the game.

It seems to me that not only units, but trees are far out-scaled compared to city buildings, and some are already debating about comparing building to wonder, to terrain improvement (e.g. mill, farm, etc.).
*IF* they are separate graphical object, I'm quite confident they can be rescaled at our pleasure. Be able to do it with an "in game" control panel or by modding an XML file by hand will made the difference between a choice for every player or only one for dedicated and informed fans. Do you remember editing autoexec.bat and config.sys?

Filters are good options, but I'll like to see a kind of "unit raising" when my mouse fly over, like "tips" or "alt image tag" do for help in many programs. As far as I can see there is a unit in a city, I can point my mouse over it, let the unit "scale up" and check which unit it is before selecting it.
BTW, CIV 3 units *are* quite taller than cities.

[AeonOfTime]

@Adm.Naismith: some are already debating about comparing building to wonder, to terrain improvement (e.g. mill, farm, etc.).

Yes, that can happen if you want to look at scaling in Civ from a realistic point of view. If you want to do it realistically, then wonders would be huge on the map - and you nearly could not see your troops at all (ever seen a man stand besides a pyramid?).

The pyramids are enormous as are many other wonders. The map would soon be needlessly cluttered by all sorts of elements and look real funny.

You would also start having people suggest silly things like:

- movement cost over the tile(s) with the pyramids on it should be doubled, and the pyramids give a defensive bonus.

- enemy troops in the great library tile would start reading books and have an increased movement cost (but give those units a knowledge upgrade: it adds to the enemy's overall literacy rate)

- enemy troops would have a 10% chance of drowning in the hoover dam's artificial lake (but not if their civ has the great lighthouse wonder)

- troops moving onto the great lighthouse wonder tile would be blinded for two turns

- troops moving onto the apollo program wonder tile would stand a 20% chance of getting burned by rocket ignition tests

... just to show you on what kind of shaky ground realism can be in games

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by yin26
Trust me: Firaxis will regret this zoomable, 3D goofball of a graphics catastophe. Only the modders can save it now.

Yin, zooming is a powerful tool, and should be used wisely, a concept I bet someone is missing while taking screenshots of the game.

"Ehi, I did a great job rendering that unit uniform! Let's anyone know zooming on it to the death".
Anyone that ever looked at photos of collegues' vacation, know that feeling of someone on photo focus trashed by horrible background, forgotten by the photographer...

IMHO the power of the tool is that you can rotate and zoom out your way till the old "flat from the sky - Civ1" view. Take a look at the Screenshot and enjoy it!

Civ game is not properly 3D (mountains and hills effects are simulated), and it doesn't need a 3d strategy, that's right! Still, a good engine should open up more possibilities, not more limits.

A movie is still seen on a flat screen, at the theatre or at TV, still actors and special effects are fully 3D, AFAIK. That's widening director's opportunity, not limiting it.
Disney teams did great jobs with classic cartoon, using only flat cell animation, still not any great movie should be limited to this approach, IMHO.

Dear Yin, you are mudding the water because you want to love this game, but you are afraid to be disappointed as a young boy (or girl) at his (her) first date...
Relax, and wait 'till november release: I'm sure it's already too late to change any mind in Firaxis / Take2 team.

You can keep your cards near your chest for as long as... easter 2006, then brush up your "Yin's machine" and review the whole, patched game at your pleasure and teaching a few lesson here and there (I know you are able to fit the job seriusly, no kidding).
Well, may be will be too late for avid fans and casual players, but the truth and history need their time .

BTW, I'll have the opportunity to read real gamers reviews from USA, before the game will reach the game shops here in Italy in a couple of weeks.
How to change a commercial nuisance into a safe buy

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by AeonOfTime
- enemy troops in the great library tile would start reading books and have an increased movement cost (but give those units a knowledge upgrade: it adds to the enemy's overall literacy rate)

... just to show you on what kind of shaky ground realism can be in games

Not to mentioning the Internet Wonder and the Apolyton's side effects: population and productivity drop because too many people spend way too much time arguing about game and not working or "playing with partner"...

BTW, my point was to simply consider a mild rescale as an option, while the game engine should "pop-up" any element under your mouse pointer, for better player awareness of units kind and strenght.

[AeonOfTime]

@Adm.Naismith: BTW, my point was to simply consider a mild rescale as an option

And I agree to that. Somehow, I have a hunch that option is in, as the units scale is the biggest issue that has been discussed over and over since the first screenshots. The guys at firaxis have surely gotten wind of that... And if they haven't, I know for a fact that they mentioned scale being easily editable in the XML - making it easy to change for everyone with a decent text editor.

[Robert]

Ah, that's the civ veteran in you talking

May I remember you guys that yin is anybody but a civ veteran.
Yin26 became "big" in the civ community since he managed the civ3-list. In a very very good way, I must add.

Things went wrong when Firaxis loved the "The list" idea so much that they asked Yin to move it from Poly to the Firaxis website. Yin was very eager to do this.

Though Firaxis screwed something up during this movement, and yin became angry at them. I agreed with yin and supported him by e-mailing a few times with Dan Magaha.
Things never worked out between Firaxis and yin, so the entire "list on firaxis.com" idea failed in the end.

Yin never was capable to let the past rest and kept hating Firaxis from that moment on.
From that moment on Yin became the pessimist, blackmouthing anything Firaxis said and did in advance.

Don't take the guy too serious.
He's never been a good civ player.
He's a very good list-manager though. chears for that yin! Now let the past go and stop this board polluting please.

You have your opinion. We know about this opinion.
We knew your opinion already before you voiced it here.

It's clear, you don't like civ. Now please leave and never come back. There's no need to keep wasting your and our time, is it. It's not as if I'm on the doom3-messageboards all the time telling how much doom3 sucks etc.

It's a pitty thouh, yin, that you could've been a great name in Apolyton history since, like I said, you did a REALLY GOOD JOB on the list in those days.
Though from now on we will not remember the great yin26.

to bad. I liked that yin much more.

kind regards anyway,

CyberShy

[Ninot]

Originally posted by CyberShy

It's clear, you don't like civ. Now please leave and never come back. There's no need to keep wasting your and our time, is it.

Although I disagree with Yin's pessimism, he makes many great points, and isn't too stubborn to ignore when he's been proven wrong. He's an intelligent poster.

Why would we want him to leave?

[Shogun Gunner]

Agreed. Who is to say that yin isn't bringing up good ideas now?

It's always healthy to have different perspectives.

Not being a "great Civ3" player doesn't preclude someone from having insight to the game and future development.

[AeonOfTime]

@CyberShy: Don't take [yin26] too serious

I respect yin for a lot of things he said in this forum. I'm thinking of the future for america/europe and the rest of the world in particular... While it is true that he radiates pessimism like a supernova, it's not like he can't be reasoned with.

Spiffor even got him to agree on an issue recently:

In reply to Spiffor: Bravo on a very sensible post. Believe it or not, I'm eager to see what comes of Civ 4, and I do hope it will impress

And there still seems to be some hope for his pessimism:

In reply to Aro: I'm going to try to adopt more of your positive energy. It's catchy.

In response to Imran: I am officially dropping my Defcon number down 1.

Even though it took quite some convincing And if you want to approach the issue from a theological standpoint, you could say that we civers are the yang - and without yin there's no fun

[Unspeakable Horror]

I don´t want him to leave.

There´s too much optimism in the board

It's always healthy to have different perspectives.

QFT!

[Robert]

@CyberShy: Don't take [yin26] too serious

That's exactly what I was trying to say.
Don't take him too serious.
It's all been based on the old argument/fight he got with Firaxis. He's not a civ vet. And he's not anticipating any new civ game anyway.

AND I added to that that he did some great stuff in the past as well.

[Imran Siddiqui]

And there still seems to be some hope for his pessimism

Don't delude yourself. He said similar things before Civ3 came out, but when it did, he reverted to attack mode .