A New, 3D Interface

[Slingshot]

Here is an idea for a new way to see the Civ III map. It should look like a 3D globe.



The controls would be something like:
- left-click and drag to rotate up/down/left/right
- right-click and drag to zoom in/out

Some cities are in orbit. They are outlined in yellow.

During zooming, elements would be representated by coloured dots (cities) or squares (units).

Big cities would have more dots clustered together.

After zooming, the map could regenerate cities and units to look more real.

I would take Real-time zooming and 256 colours over a flat map and 16-bit.

The benefit is that you don't need a second panel showing the world view... I found it wasn't too useful anyways, as the scale was funny.

So any suggestions or ideas?

[Youngsun]

Sligshot

It certainly looks good to me. Does it mean a farewell to the traditional square map?

In ToT, there was small panel showing the globe spinning slowly at upper right side and if I click the globe it became the flat map again. But this was not a true representation of the Globe anyway(You are right)

So how you going to define the basic land unit? Certainly not squares I reckon since their collection will be another hugh square.
Dots? how?(I'm not sure) or no more basic land unit at all?

Anyway good job slingshot. keep it up!

[MidKnight Lament]

I would have doubted the possibilities for this, but that pic looks good! After a bit more thought I guess it would be entirely possible that it could be done effectively.

However, I'm one of these people who wants Civ3 to run on old systems so I don't have to upgrade (I've got a PII 233 so i should be right.) And even if I could run it, I don't want it to slow down come mid-to-late-game. I'd prefer to see it run smoothly and with little waiting, than get a 3D map.

Besides, if you start having a 3D map, the customisers are going to have a fit unless they get a top class editor.

So... it would be nice, and it'll happen somewhere down the track, but I'm not sure that it's for Civ3.

[This message has been edited by MidKnight Lament (edited March 09, 2000).]

[Slingshot]

You Austrialians are all right!

Apolyton should be a medal for good feedback, and it should be called the "Spirit of Those Guys Downunder" Award.

Depending on the resolution, you should be able to fit polygons on the surface of the globe (pentagons, I think).

Maybe someone can help me here, but I believe the biggest processing obstacles to real-time zooming are:

- Just how "real-time" you want it (eg. smooth, with lots of regenerations versus choppy)

- The number of colours

- The resolution of surface-bound objects

One cool artistic trend is that Art-Deco look. Here, units would be mainly black and sepia (a brownish-yellow). A movie like GATACA, or a game like Fallout are examples of the style. Various highlights could be added that would use more primary colours. I think that this art syle could help optimize zooming, while keeping the art looking good.

Another option is simply to have objects represented by coloured blocks. All magnifications will look this way except for the Standard View. The magnification of the Standard view would be similar to what a Civer is used to.

The best part about a map on a sphere is how the relief (changes in elevation) would look.

Imagine your unit on the top of a mountain, with its field of view larger than if it were in a valley. And imagine that field of view being gradually darker with distance. This would really give Civ more of a 1st person, RPG feel.

I don't see why a lot of these effects could not be done on a Pentium II system!

Unexplored parts of the globe could be outlined with dotted polygons.

Imagine what a space launch would look like!

[MidKnight Lament]

Thanks for the praise, Slingshot

There's no doubt that 3D graphics would be cool. Again, after reading what you just wrote, it sounds even better. And if they can do it and keep the game fluid and fast without it being on a super-system, then I'm all for it. No doubt. I'm just not sure that they can.

Although the release will be far away yet, I'm thinking that perhaps they may have gone too far into their design to choose 3D now anyway. Unless they already have

Nice, but probably not feasible.

[Slingshot]

It is ideas like this that made me want to post a Civ IV section.

Maybe we could call it something else, like Super Civ ideas.

You never know. Firaxis probably won't put it in Civ III, and Activision definitely won't put it in CTP II, but maybe another company will create a civ-like game that will.

Maybe DanQ or MarkG could tell me what they think about a SuperCiv - Ideas thread. If they think it is stupid or irrelevant, I would like to hear that, too.
[This message has been edited by Slingshot (edited March 09, 2000).]

[Dienstag]

I really like the idea of a 3D world, but it's easy to forget that geometry only lets us get away with so much.

I was going to present a long impromptu geometry lesson, but hopefully you'll just take my word for it that there's no _simple_ way to make anything like a sphere out of polygons. Yes it can be done, but at the expense of being very hard to program and not very fun to play. If you really want proof of this, just say so and I'll do my best to show why.

It seems to me - and if anyone has a better idea I'd love to hear it - that we can't have anything like a spherical world based on any reasonable arrangement of polygons. The only way to have a spherical world then - and in this case it could be perfectly spherical - would be to do away with the polygons altogether. (Based on something someone who's name I forget said, I think they may have done this in the game Populous. Sorry haven't seen it).

Spherical world without polygons:

pros:
-extremely realistic
-looks really cool

cons:
-hard to program, entire game concept re-worked
-probably requires really good computer to do it justice.

Can anyone else think of more pros and cons for the polygonless spherical world? Can we really give up on a polygon based spherical world, or is it just me? Hope this adds to the discussion...

-Dienstag

[Gord McLeod]

The game you're thinking of is Populous - The Beginning. It uses a spherical planet and does so quite well - it would be great to see something like it for Civ3. There is terrain variation though, it's not just a pure sphere without heights or depths. To use something like this would change the way the game played, though... it's hard to tell just by playing the game, but it seems to me that they may have used a coordinate point system on the surface of the world rather than any sort of grid-like arrangement. Something similar would have to be done for Civ, I think.

[Slingshot]

Thanks for the feedback!

Dienstag:

We can crunch the math if you want.

But think of a soccer ball. It has a surface made up entirely out of pentagons.

Take a sphere and look at it from the North pole. That sphere, of course, is now a circle. The circle can be aproximated by any type of polygon. We now have lines of longitude for a grid.

Now if we look at the sphere from the equator, it is possible to draw lines of latitude in the same way.

Of course, a perspective must be generated, but this could be simplified by allowing only one light source directly behind the line of sight. This way, the center of the sphere is highlighted and the edges are increasingly dark.

I wonder if there is a programmer out there with experience in 3D rendering. My own experience is on AutoCAD, and it is quite limited. I am sure that there are many sub-routines out on the net for this sort of thing. I also think a lot could be done with pasting landscape graphics on each tile, and using some creative shading.

[Slingshot]

For comparison's sake:

Does anyone have the system requirements for these games:

Populous - The Beginning
Homeworld

That might help us see what the pros think.

[Dienstag]

Wow, I've never posted in the same thread twice in one night before. There may be something to this....

I don't know about you guys, but every "regular" soccer ball (I've seen a bunch of weird ones recently) is a combination of pentagons AND hexagons. Check me, but I'm pretty sure I'm right. This would make things harder, but even if they were all pentagons you'd only have what 20, 30 of them tops? Playing a game with only 20-30 spaces wouldn't work, and you can only cut up pentagons into triangles so that's not much help either. See what I mean?

As to Slingshot's idea with the lines of latitude and longitude: I think I see what you mean, but if I do it means having lots of different sized polygons. Am I right? Wouldn't the spaces get smaller toward the poles, and wouldn't this make things like movement unrealistic? ...just trying to figure this out.

Also, I don't think it will be much of a problem rendering the 3-D. The bigger problem will be having something to render.

Thanks for the info on Populous. That sounds like a neat way Civ III could go if Firaxis is willing to totally start fresh.

Slingshot-
I'm not entirely sure what math it was you were offering to crunch. Whatever it is, if you've got nothing better to do, go for it!

-Dienstag

[Gord McLeod]

Wouldn't you know it? I just happen to have the boxes for both Populous - The Beginning and Homeworld right here. How very convenient.

Populous:
P133 (recommended: 200 Mhz or higher)
100 MB HD space free (recommended: 110+)
16 megs RAM (recommended: 32 megs)
4x CD-ROM or better (recommended: 8x or faster)
Mouse, keyboard
Supports D3D on a variety of 3D cards, which they recommend using.

Homeworld:
PII 233 (recommended: PII 350)
32 megs RAM (recommended: 64 megs)
100 megs HD + 50 megs perm. swap (recommended: 400 megs full install)
4X CD-ROM
4 meg PCI video card (recommended: 12 meg 3D accelerated video card)

[Thunderfall]

It's a good idea. With that we could even put some satelites in the orbit and just point and click to control them using that globe screen. :-)

Maybe civ3 should allow players to build satlelite launch center in civ3... Such center would enable players to launch spy satelites, weather satlelites, etc. And if they introduce natural disasters in Civ3, satelites could monitor the earth and predict (some)disasters in advance, thus reducing the amount of damage the disasters. What do u think?

------------------
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Thunderfall
Civilization Fanatics' Center
http://members.xoom.com/wilsong
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

[Slingshot]

In my opinion, people really want an improved experience. Often we look at creating more realism through more sophisticated rules. I think that Publishers feel pressure to make better graphics, because it is easier to sell images.

Hopefully we have both here. Working on a globe could look cool, and also add some functionality (like perspective).

[korn469]

Slingshot,

i loved your little globe graphic! if they ever make a civ4 globes are a must...i think that this would be a much more realistic system, all i wonder if how does it look when you zoom in? would it be flat? i think it needs to be flat when you zoom in if that is possible

korn469