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As mentioned in a closed thread, a technical article related to Civ IV development is available on Game developer magazine http://www.gdmag.com/homepage.htm.
Thanks sn00py for the hint. OTOH... what are you doing wandering around Civ IV? Back to work at Humanitas, NOW!
Now, hoping not to cross line into some moderator censorship, I'll try to resume the main concept, just to give a review to anyone considering if buying the whole tech magazine is his/her cup of tea.
The article of course is about programming technics, so has a lot of technical detail and external books and manual reference.
IMHO, the juicy part for common player is that they (at Firaxis) are keeping their promise at a very high level, with the ability to tweak a very large part of the game, city view on map, user interface and AI included.
Some of modding ask for a quite high level of tecnical knowledge, but the ability to "hot plug" changed part, without recompile the whole source code, is a great way to help mod developers *and* quality assurance bugs crushers.
I expect an easy and quick resolution of any minor balancing issue or minor bugs, at least assuming they are exactly identified.
Another promising phrase of the Mustafa article mention how easy will be to expand and improve the game in new release, plugging and unplugging part of game code without destroying the stable part ("1/3 new, 1/3 old, 1/3 improved" mantra made easy?).
Interesting words are spent mentioning city building arrangement (to manage wonders, buildings and houses all inside a single tile both with small villages and large metropolis), and units formation (still I can't understand if they plan to link this concept to any game use, e.g. a tactical choice of a formation before a battle).
A box is dedicated to the choice (and technical problem solved) of wrapping a flat map around a half globe in globe view, texturing, meshing et al.
On a final note, on the credits part is aknowledged the effort of Nat Duca (Globeview and City layout), Bart Muzzin (Unit formation editor) and Nathan Mefford, Tom Whittaker, Kelley Gilmore for their contribution to the article.
Thanks sn00py for the hint. OTOH... what are you doing wandering around Civ IV? Back to work at Humanitas, NOW!
Now, hoping not to cross line into some moderator censorship, I'll try to resume the main concept, just to give a review to anyone considering if buying the whole tech magazine is his/her cup of tea.
The article of course is about programming technics, so has a lot of technical detail and external books and manual reference.
IMHO, the juicy part for common player is that they (at Firaxis) are keeping their promise at a very high level, with the ability to tweak a very large part of the game, city view on map, user interface and AI included.
Some of modding ask for a quite high level of tecnical knowledge, but the ability to "hot plug" changed part, without recompile the whole source code, is a great way to help mod developers *and* quality assurance bugs crushers.
I expect an easy and quick resolution of any minor balancing issue or minor bugs, at least assuming they are exactly identified.
Another promising phrase of the Mustafa article mention how easy will be to expand and improve the game in new release, plugging and unplugging part of game code without destroying the stable part ("1/3 new, 1/3 old, 1/3 improved" mantra made easy?).
Interesting words are spent mentioning city building arrangement (to manage wonders, buildings and houses all inside a single tile both with small villages and large metropolis), and units formation (still I can't understand if they plan to link this concept to any game use, e.g. a tactical choice of a formation before a battle).
A box is dedicated to the choice (and technical problem solved) of wrapping a flat map around a half globe in globe view, texturing, meshing et al.
On a final note, on the credits part is aknowledged the effort of Nat Duca (Globeview and City layout), Bart Muzzin (Unit formation editor) and Nathan Mefford, Tom Whittaker, Kelley Gilmore for their contribution to the article.
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