Does anyone else think they should've used the Black & White Engine in Civ4?

[Asher]

Yin, what do you think?

[Robert]

Nah, I prefer colored games

[Harovan]

No, but they should use one in Vista. Perhaps so they can avoid the teletubbieland look of XP on release.

[Reader81]

you mean Black and White 2

[FrostyBoy]

No, The B&W2 (or B&W1) engine is not suitable.


but..

WoW engine or Oblivion + Civ = :drool:


I don't want Civ Chess board, I want Immersive Civness. Who remembers that Simpsons episode of Lisa putting on the VR glasses and she finds herself in the middle of a Genghis Khan battle? That's what I'm talking about!

[Senethro]

No, definitely not what Oblivion runs on
Much as I love ES games the 3D engines they run on are horrible.

(don't they both run on heavily modified gamebryos anyway?)

[FrostyBoy]

Well, I don't know a lot about Oblivion, but I'm sure WoW is suitable.

Can you imagine your little tribal village nestled in the Tauren lands? (I forget the names, been 1 year)

And can you also imagine a 10,000 man army running down that hill from the desert, towards your pathetic little village?

I can. But that's the problem, I can ONLY imagine.

[yin26]

Hmmm, that's a great question. I played BW1 and am impressed with the BW2 screens. I think what impresses me most there is the feeling of scale and height of mountains, etc. Another engine like this is the Heroes of Might and Magic 5 engine.

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2005/187/reviews/927207_20050707_screen001.jpg

This, of course, begins to push Civ toward a kind of first-person perspective, which is something we've debated before. I suppose as long as you could zoom way out like you can in Civ4, this approach might be kind of fun. In fact, why not keep the battle sequences like you have them in HoMM? Or why not have Great Leaders with adaptive AI like you have in BW.

Imagine smacking Ceaser upside the head when he razes that village!

[Atahualpa]

Licensing a new engine costs a lot of money and additionally requires work to get known to.
They already licensed and used the Gamebryo engine, so that required them less work on graphics and more work towards the game-mechanics.

Since Civilization was never really about eye-candy, I think that's a good descision. Also check out the poll on the firaxis website.

4. Graphics or Gameplay?
2% It’s gotta be pretty
50% Balance is the key
48% Who cares about graphics?

[LordTheRon]

Nah, I think there's always a better engine to think of, but this one suits the game just fine.

I really liked the engine for Pirates and I think it will work very well for Civ IV.

[Asher]

Who was it that said like 6 years ago that Civ3 should've used the B&W engine? I made fun of him for a while.

[Nikolai]

B&W2 goes Civ4? I think not.

[Volstag]

Civ IV doesn't really need a blistering graphics engine. Additionally, Firaxis is already using a different engine, and I'm not sure if Lionhead is even licensing their B&W engine.

[vovan]

Re: Does anyone else think they should've used the Black & White Engine in Civ4?

No. I don't think it would work at all, although maybe if they did use it, they could implement terrain elevation to give still more depth to combat.

[Sava]

I dunno about the B&W engine... I have never played the game...

but that game is not a TBS game, I don't see how it would be good for Civ4