Smac X2 Mod-is the UN council a hint?

[Gavin Berchler]

With every day and every piece of News that comes through, another piece of the puzzle falls into place. Sid is creating tools to let us create a perfect SMAC2 Mod on the Civ 4 engine. Think about it

1. Custom Terrains- we can do
2. Custom Leaders-we can do.
3. Custom end scenarios- we can do
4. Custom Techtree- we can do
5. Custom Units- we can PARTIALLY do
6. Custom wonders-we can do
7. Diplomacy model - we can PARTIALLY do
and NOW COUNCIL- We can Partialy do (as current info)

The only aspects that are missing: which possibly can by pythoned in.

1. Interludes- likely easy mod

2. Custom unit builder- very unlikely to be able to create modulized units. but with some enterprising individuals out there who knows.
3. Forest and "fungus" growth- Unsure as to whether this model is in the game already or whether the games engine will allow for dynamic Terrain change. Instinctively I will say yes, its possible.

Unsure
Sea tiles and Sea Cities- Unlikely

I think we are looking at around 60-70% of features we can complete as of current information. That is a whopping huge amount! I am more convinced than ever that we can set up a SMAC MOD up and get it running. I know that no one will start this until at the least the mod kit comes out in January, however now would be the perfect time to build a collective email containing the features that we would like to have in the mod kit so we can make a kick ass update of smac or even make a smac 2. The more people we get to sign up to the email the greater the chance that firaxis will listen!

If anyone out there can set up a project home, I would happiliy sign up to work on creating this (after I get out of civ-rehab!) We have to find a way to go back to PLANET and see her in full 3d glory.

There are so many possibilities, so many exciting ideas we can do.

[GeoModder]

In case you didn't know so already, there is a group gathering in the SMAC section for looking in the possibility.

[Gavin Berchler]

OOPs

I am looking for a blushing smilie, but I can't find one!!


Please can you supply a link to the thread, I can't seem to find it anywhere!

[Senethro]

Heh, it always amuses me that people are independantly coming up with this idea. It must be a good thing.

I had the idea a bit less than a year ago after being frustrated with the inability to balance the game due to how much was hardcoded. A SMACX mod in Civ4 would be very moddable. I've whispered the idea in various forums since then as a sort of pre-recruitment drive. Theres no official thread at the moment but we make reference to it occaisonally. As the game is coming out end of october I was soon going to make the suggestion that we get organised, get a name, staff, a board or wiki and draw up an early design document and timetable.

[GeoModder]

And here I was looking in vane for a thread...
Thanks Senethro.

[Kinjiru]

The one aspect of SMAC that is missing, and not likely to be able to be modded in, is the raising/lowering of terrain. May not sound like much, but this was often a huge part of some of the more advanced strategies...

[Senethro]

Kinjuru: I disagree. It should be quite easy to mod in as it was just another property of the terrain. Although it gave you heights in 1000s of metres, really there was:

Ocean Trench
Ocean
Ocean Shelf
Land: 0-999
Land: 1000-1999
Land: 2000-2999
Land: >3000

I expect the last 3 digits of the land height were in fact randomly generated. There we have it. There are only 7 heights of land, not too hard to mod in. The difficulty will be how to represent these heights graphically.

[GeoModder]

There was more to the height of the land, Senethro. The game did recognize which tiles to 'drown' when certain land was lower then that the seemirror would raise, in addition to that any landsquare bordering the endangered tile had to be less then 1100 m. (tested this extensively with my Mars scenario)

[Gavin Berchler]

Smac x mod

Following your earlier post I have read up that everyone is speculating that a new smac may be in the pipeline for the next two years. Bearing in mind that its a continuity of civ 4 timescale this is a likely scenario. however smac was not nearly as popular as the civ4 franchise(flame me if I am wrong) so perhaps this could be an addition or an expansion to it.
Its my opinion that we can leave the smacx 2 discussion for later in January when I am sure we will have some good ideas about sids future plans. BUT there is no reason why we can't start working on an update for Smacx eg smacx 1.5 instead of 2. We have adequate source material to develope this and even though we may not get 100% we can get a good mix of the 2. We can use Smacx techno trees and graphics( updated with some photoshopping) and event the storyline plus integrate the new features such as religions (eg would university follow a futuristic scientology? or would Un Peacekeepers have a buddist like religion) or resouces: (fungus seeds- increases control over the city by inducing a drug like state or alien fossil fuels(aid production) or Planetstones increase psi control for city) Just think what animals you can put in( we know that PLANET had other lifeforms(from the wondermovies) Just image what wonderous wild animals we can have wondering the PLANET. (excluding the fungus creatures, which would be modded barbarian units)

My mouth is watering at the prospect.

Can we build a complete feature list to make an update of SMAC 1.5?

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by GeoModder
There was more to the height of the land, Senethro. The game did recognize which tiles to 'drown' when certain land was lower then that the seemirror would raise, in addition to that any landsquare bordering the endangered tile had to be less then 1100 m. (tested this extensively with my Mars scenario)

I had the same doubt you have, but you have so better explained, in a post a few weeks ago.
By modding Civ IV we can try a few tricks to get a SMAC like, but we need Firaxis to do the hard part of the work.

SMAC was less succesful than Civ II, but AFAIK a good source of money, and the main reason the publisher (that owned the Civilization franchise) had put back the Civ III project on Sid's hands.

While SMAC was vague for copyright reasons to any link/reference at Civ world, SMAC 2 can and should start and evolve from Civ classic "Alpha centauri" mission and back to help a post-catastrophe Earth (launching the Phoenix Project? ).

[Gavin Berchler]

smac

Smac was less successfuly but in my opinion far superior in many aspects even to civ3. I hope that civ 4 will address some of those deficiencies.

I just had a thought about raising lowering territory. -- We are going to have global warming, and raising of sea levels. So looks like we have got some hooks there. I am more optimistic than ever that it can be done. Settlers shall move mountains my friends. ( ps I didn;t really use it much in smac having a uniform flat territory was boring to me-+ I liked to have cities nestled on the edge of hills. Maybe I am just a poetic Smac addict

[Kinjiru]

Thinking more about the raising/lowering of land, do we have any info about whether or not actions on one tile can affect adjacent tiles?

We would need to make use of such links to replicate the terraforming from SMAC. Repeated raising/lowering of a tile needs to affect the surrounding tiles as well. And we would need to model the drying/saturating affects that creating a mountain/large hill creates in SMAC. Similiarly, constructing a borehole-type improvement needs to make the surrounding tiles 'wetter'.

Admittedly, I have not studied the available cIV info in great detail, but I don't recall seeing anything that would indicate the ability to link tiles together in terms of worker actions.

I hold out hope though, there are some very talented coders around here!

[Gavin Berchler]

tiles?

If I am not mistaken the terrain doesn't use the isometric tiles anymore in the way that previous incarnations did and uses partial 3d matching so a flat plain will raise up on one edge if there is a mountain range. It is also possible to have hills etc. . The terrain manager (inbuilt)should automatically adjust the adjacent tiles if there is a drop in altitude. From looking at the pictures. For those who don't believe me look at the tiles structure on any picture and look where there is a change of altitude. It looks more like a modernised smac tile structure, admittedly more artistic and stylised.

[Darsnan]

Re: Smac x mod

Originally posted by Gavin Berchler
Its my opinion that we can leave the smacx 2 discussion for later in January when I am sure we will have some good ideas about sids future plans.

I think this is the most practical approach. We let cIV come out, get a solid bead on what the game can (and can't) do, let a couple of patches come out, then start discussing/ working on a mod.

Originally posted by Gavin Berchler
BUT there is no reason why we can't start working on an update for Smacx eg smacx 1.5 instead of 2. We have adequate source material to develope this and even though we may not get 100% we can get a good mix of the 2.

I personally will disagree there. I am more in line with Senethro's comments that we should be able to come very close to a SMAC-like environment for the game, and even if we can't why our goal (at the outset at least) should be to build a SMAC(X)2.

Originally posted by Gavin Berchler
We can use Smacx techno trees and graphics( updated with some photoshopping) and event the storyline

What will you be able to contribute? It looks like we have several high quality programmers in bin Travkin, Senethro, and Chaos Theory, however it looks like we'll be lacking in the graphics area - any chance you'd be able to help there?

Originally posted by Gavin Berchler
...plus integrate the new features such as religions (eg would university follow a futuristic scientology? or would Un Peacekeepers have a buddist like religion) or resouces: (fungus seeds- increases control over the city by inducing a drug like state or alien fossil fuels(aid production) or Planetstones increase psi control for city)

In keeping with the desire to build as close a version of SMAC(X) as possible, why I'd say just rip the religion software modules right out and be done with it.

Originally posted by Gavin Berchler
Just think what animals you can put in( we know that PLANET had other lifeforms(from the wondermovies) Just image what wonderous wild animals we can have wondering the PLANET. (excluding the fungus creatures, which would be modded barbarian units)

Now thats pretty cool!

Originally posted by Gavin Berchler
My mouth is watering at the prospect.

While I have to say I am very interested in exploring exactly what Firaxis has meant by the statement that cIV is "completely modable" and what that means to a SMAC(X) mod, why in RL I have been involved in several long term projects, and understand that a cIV--->SMAC(X) mod isn't something where a group of people sit down and hack something out in a month. I'm anticipating something on the order of a 7-8 month project, depending on what resources (re: people) are available, as well as the shape of the core game we will be modifying.

Originally posted by Gavin Berchler
Can we build a complete feature list to make an update of SMAC 1.5?

My thought is no, not for a SMAC(X)1.5, but possibly for a SMAC(X)2.

So, to summarize: yes, I am very interested in developing a cIV--->SMAC(X) mod, but I would rather not make the project any more difficult than it needs to be, and based on the following quote from the Gamespot Review , why I think it makes even more sense to wait a couple of months to ensure the game is really capable of supporting such an ambitious mod:

Gamespot Quote
Unfortunately, much of the later portions of the game are still in a working state, and missing textures and graphical glitches are much more numerous than in the early part of the game, so we're limited on the number of screenshots that we can show you. Considering the fact that the game is scheduled to ship late next month, Firaxis certainly has a lot of work to do between now and then.

Anyways, my thoughts on the subject....

D

[Gavin Berchler]

Re: Re: Smac x mod

Nice one Dars, I like the message. It looks like we agree with each other on almost everything, and disagree only on naming terms which is really great.

Originally posted by Darsnan

I personally will disagree there. I am more in line with Senethro's comments that we should be able to come very close to a SMAC-like environment for the game, and even if we can't why our goal (at the outset at least) should be to build a SMAC(X)2.

I think we are just talking terms here. According to versioning system, 1.5 is an update of the older version and 2 is a completely new game. By definition only firaxis with their source code access would be able to get a version 2 released. A 1.5 update would lnclude a graphics update, some extra functionality. So whether you call it 1.5 or 2, I believe we are talking about the same thing. Are you saying you would like to have a different storyline, so more a SMACX episode 2?

What will you be able to contribute? It looks like we have several high quality programmers in bin Travkin, Senethro, and Chaos Theory, however it looks like we'll be lacking in the graphics area - any chance you'd be able to help there?

Maybe I am misreading previous posts but no one has said that they would do anything. If other people expressed an interest, sure I would do some of the artwork. I started out as a graphics designer, but I do more programming now. Since I do both task in my day job, I could work on either/ both.

In keeping with the desire to build as close a version of SMAC(X) as possible, why I'd say just rip the religion software modules right out and be done with it.

I think that religion will play an important role in civ4 and I am sure that even on PLANET, new religions would have sprouted up. There were EVEN two religious factions in there whose basis was religion! I think that it is really something that Firaxis wanted to have in the original game and should go in the update, maybe we could call it belief system or something like that instead of religion, eg so you can have Science as a religion eg for University.

My thought is no, not for a SMAC(X)1.5, but possibly for a SMAC(X)2.

So, to summarize: yes, I am very interested in developing a cIV--->SMAC(X) mod, but I would rather not make the project any more difficult than it needs to be, and based on the following quote from the Gamespot Review , why I think it makes even more sense to wait a couple of months to ensure the game is really capable of supporting such an ambitious mod:

I agree but I don't see a reason why we can't build a "Functionlist on a wiki site" then we will have soimething to work from once we feel we are ready to proceed.