Civ III Engine Proposal

[nah]

You're right Loki
I think this 3D problem speed is a false one and not the aim of the game at all. It just can be an detail improuvment.
For all : have a look to 3D animations of Call to Power...great for kids!!.. but can't make the game deeper, but perhaps ridiculous!
[This message has been edited by nah (edited May 28, 2000).]

[nah]

In my opignon, what'll make the game slower if you don't improuve your machine will come from the general calculator or engin program : try to count how many parameters have to be calcute when you play with 10 civs with 80 cities each and 300units etc....
For example I had only minors problems of slowness with my 200MMX & 4Mo video in playing the 2D card Operationnal Art of War game with the heavier options. That's not a visual game but not as quik as Civ2 & i'm sure the CivIII will heavier. Improuvment for old PC's will be necessary

[Father Beast]

Loki, I have to agree with raingoon on this. Graphics make the game pretty, they don't make it playable. sometimes they don't do a good job on making it pretty. check out TOT, for example.
I still play civ 1 from time to time. I keep coming back to civ 2. Why? it's not for the graphics and sounds. these actually put me off when I first tried the game. No, it's the gameplay. the game was vastly improved from civ 1, and I have to get back to the real game.
3D acceleration? come on. next you know, they'll be demanding 3D acceleration for chess.
I also have a low end computer, and would like to be able to play it. If it requires high end systems because it has fancy graphics and runs like a pregnant sloth on anything less than a Pentium 3/750, I AM GOING TO BI**H. on the other hand, if it has high requirements because of improved AI, gameplay, and player abilities, I'll beg upgrades of my friends.
[This message has been edited by Father Beast (edited May 28, 2000).]

[L o k i]

no no no, you have to manipulate graphics properly in order for graphics to be used to gameplays advantage. It's very hard to do! But that's art for ya! Thats why some artworks are priceless!

Half-Life did it quite well, The Longest Journey did it well, Monkey Island 2, Civ2 did it well through the use of the diplomatic screens, wonder movies and also the council.

It's actualy very hard to use graphics to a strategy games advantage, but I think Black and White will be the first to accomplish it very well.

It's clear to me now, that most of you are basing your thoughts on what has already happened, I'm basing my thoughts on what can happen.
[This message has been edited by L o k i (edited May 28, 2000).]

[UltraSonix]

What a vindictive guy!

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...

[L o k i]

LOL, I had to look that word up Ultra, and yes! I AM! But I can't help it, this is what you get when you mix Dutch blood and Scottish blood!

[jbvg]

Sounds Like what you are looking for Loki is Shadowbane - http://www.shadowbane.com

[L o k i]

Looks like a great game! that shadowbane, I remember going to that site months ago! But..It's not a civilization.

[Leonidas]

I am new here - so please pardon my intrusion on your discussion.

I seem to remember a game called Myth , and Myth II, etc - didn't that game supposedly have all the 3D graphics, rotatable camera angles, "immersive" view, etc - well, where is it now? And 4 years from now - who will remember it?

Name one game, with all the spiffy "new" and "latest" graphics and technology, that has captured the interest and imagination that Civ II has (a 4 year old game).

Age of Empires and Age of Kings are great games (still 2D) but they do not have the in-depth level of play that CivII does. I wish game companies would realize that the latest and greatest in techno-wizardry is NOT where it's at when it comes to certain games. OK in first-person shooters, racing games and sports games, you want great graphics. But on the scale of Civ II or III - and remember the scale here - this graphics intensive environment would change everything we love about Civ II.

For example, Battlecry (3D Real-Time world) will be a different game from Warlords IV (2D Turn-based). Or that PG3D (a 3D 1999 game) is different from PG2 (2D 1997 game) (the latter has garnered a far greater following than the former). Gee, I wonder why that is?

All Civ III needs is to IMPROVE upon WHAT is already there - some better graphics in cities, military units, etc. Lush terrain (but not too much - let us distinquish what we have on the ground). Great sounds, movie clips, greatly improved AI and diplomacy (via SMAC), a longer technology tree (let it take us longer to move from epoch to epoch), and improve upon the combat (not a "winner takes all" approach).

In short - take what makes Civ II great - tweak it, improve it, make it better - but don't change it...

And if you read through these forums and hear people talk - that is what Civ II players really are looking for. And if they ruin Civ III? (which I strongly doubt) then we will always have CivII for another 4 or 8 or 15 more years...



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Go tell the Spartans, passerby:
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

[L o k i]

Maybe the only reason why Civilization was great, is because it's the only game that lets you run a civilization, realisticaly.

Also, there aren't any games out there that prove that making Civilization into 3D a bad idea, you'd have to make Civilization into 3D in order to find out! So no one can come to me, and say, its a bad idea.

[UltraSonix]

Sorry for the late reply Loki, it was 'cause of the stupid cable connection here in Melbourne (Anyone reading from Australia - don't get Bigpond Advance).

The juicy interview with Sid Meier is in mp3/ra at:
http://www.gemonthly.com/features/civ3/index.htm

In it he says stuff like how civ3 won't be using cutting edge graphics (quote:"3d extravaganza") so that many people would be able to play.

(Also posted in reply to Loki's question in the Buildings thread.)

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...

[Spekter@Home]

I have to agree with almost everyone else here. A 3D engine as detailed as the BW one is wasted in a game like Civ.

I don't understand how being forced to specify where every tank in the entire division is on the field improves the game. I honestly don't want that much detail in a strategy game. Civ (for me ) is about controlling large numbers of units over a large area with a lot of cities and seeing how they react with other civs. This does not require being able to see every millimetre of my world. Talk about micromanagement getting out of hand...

My standard map size is 115x105 (SMAC) or 105x95 (Civ 2) because that is the biggest map my computer (P266MMX laptop, 48MB RAM) can handle at a decent speed. If I could play 1150x1050 I would. Can you imagine how long a single turn in 2010 on BW style map would take to play at that size?

Loki doesn't seem to want to run his civ, he seems to want to be a tourist in it. That's all good, but that's not Civ. That's life, and I thought that that's what The Sims was about. I'm sorry Loki, but the BW scale just doesn't match the style of game Civ is.


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"We are all greater artists than we realize."
-Nietzsche

[amjayee]

I'd like to bring some technical ideas to the discussion. I hope this will prove it could be entirely possible to make an engine Loki suggests, and that is playable. Then you perhaps could leave poor Loki alone and not tease him anymore.

1. Even if we have a map of whole Earth in the scale used in B&W, it wouldn't be necessary to draw all of it for each frame, hust the protion the player sees. This way, at maximum only half of the globe would be needed to draw.
2. Even if the map has details 10x10 cm's wide, it wouldn't mean trillions of polygons in each frame. By adding some intelligent code, the level of detail would be decreased when the object is farther.
3. The objects that are not in the player's sight would be handled simply with numbers. Also it wouldn't be necessary to know where every one of the billions of your people are and what they are doing. If people in certain area are handled as a population, all we need to know is what portion of them is attending to what profession, and what the every-day routines of each profession are. Then when player is away, the behavior of each group of people, population, is determined with simple statistical maths. When player comes, can be shown people moving about their tasks. Since there are very many people in the civ and the scale is thousands of years, this is quite enough.
4. The player would not need to adjust each tank millimeter by millimeter. Instead, he could order the whole unit move to certain area, and they would handle themselves. Then the player could micromanage the units if he likes... good AI and automation are the key to handle the MM.
5. Since the game lasts for thousands of years, it's not wise to manage your empire day-by-day. That would take a long time. Instead the game speed could be adjusted, like in X-COM: Apocalypse. When something serious happens, the speed would pause or slow down automatically.

So, with clever programming and design, it would be entirely possible to make a playable and detailed system. But would it be wise, is entirely different thing. Frankly, in civ game so much detail is not necessarily needed, as so many people have said.

But I admit I'd like that kind of game, too. Perhaps it should be an entirely different game. And perhaps in that game the player wouldn't play a 6000 year game, but rather shorter scenarios, and perhaps with a limited playing area, as in Age of Empires.

I'm sure in future there might be games like that, but I have to say it would require a massive amount of work and time to make such a game.

Meanwhile, Loki and all the others wanting more depth in the game, check out the Openciv3 project. Our website is http://civ3.sourceforge.net. No, we don't yet have plans of making a system suggested by Loki, but in future we are going to make a 3d map, and since it is open source, anything is possible in the future. Until that, we will concentrate making the "basic civ" game system, but with more depth than earlier. It is a good intermediate point on the way to Black & White Civilization.

Once again sorry for my ads.
[This message has been edited by amjayee (edited June 04, 2000).]

[meriadoc]

I've been playing Civ games for years now, ever since the release of Civ1... for DOS. And in all of these years, only two problems have kept coming up. The first is that it sometimes is hard to keep track of everything, but that has been getting better with each version of Civ. The second is the AI - I'm still waiting for a challenging AI.

Graphics are great, and more power to them, as long as the game is challenging and fun. Remember, Civ is closer to a board game than it is an action game. The graphics in CTP are the best I've seen in Civ games so far, and they're enough to keep me happy for a long time - just make the gameplay better.

What I would truly like to see in CivIII is a game that makes me feel like my opponents are real people.
[This message has been edited by meriadoc (edited June 05, 2000).]

[UltraSonix]

I truly and 100% agree.

I mean, you should be able to do what the FreeCiv guys want to do --> design 2 different ai scripts that are so powerful that you'll be able to get an absorbing game just by pitting the two script against each other (as in with no humans).

Graphics is only a minor component.

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...