History book as an ending of the game

[Youngsun]

Thanks Sligshot and Sirotnicov for your imaginitive ideas

Especailly Sirotnicov, wow your presentation looks so beautiful I like it

Maybe Australia should import many Merkavas(late version) from Israel since our front line MBTs are nearly obsolete(Leopard I)
[This message has been edited by Youngsun (edited March 13, 2000).]

[MidKnight Lament]

Youngsun - (pssst... Don't let anyone know. It's a secret!)

[Youngsun]

Anyone who played Steel panther2 would know our secret though I used to edit the armour and AP power of LeopardI for my favour

[Sirotnikov]

Thank you for the nice responses. I put alot of time and effort into the picture. I actually work alot with computer graphics and sound in my free time so It was just annoying to do that.

Youngsun - Shhh... many don't know, but we are actually making ALL THE THINGS IN THE WORLD here. were bigger than microsoft. which is also a branch of ours . Just kidding. no reason to be paranoid. yet .

Actually I am proud to be living in the town where the MMX chipset was invented. And we do have nice uzis and weapon systems (but I don't get to play with them in real life like I do in civ )

I played SMAC today for the 4th time ever, and to my surprise it was a very nice game. I had discovered that when you have absolutely no idea how things work and what things mean in a game, you shouldn't start at high levels. so I played citizen. for over 3 hours. I'm king of the world!!! well, almost. hey, I dare you to guess which civ do I play there? A clue is in my signature that I rarely use (but used before). Meanwhile, back ot my point, the end is nice, I chose to retire to see it. It's ahm... nice... not very much. Oh, and if there is really a thing that annoys me is the landmark thing. We had the palace in civI and we had the throne room in 2. the landmark is a good idea, but it's annoying every time you do something whoops.. there goes your resolution changing and loading pcx graphics all to tell you that you had your very first city \ unit \ battle \ victory \ city.... (I have 32MB RAM you see. I upgrade piece by piece. Taxes are really high here.)

But the landmark idea is nice. The end replay should be slowed down, made more specific, with zooming, and options for fast forward and rewind. And I can save it as AVI (ok, I'm getting carried away here, stop me at will) and have a report and stuff.

and an OT question: how do you check your relationship with other nations in SMAC? I mean, what do they think, Am I reliable.. let me rephrase that, do they think they can trust me? you know, that thing that was under "foreign advisor" in civ2.

ok, gotta go post in other threads now. I'll come back soon.

[Yuvo]

Actually, I was thinking that instead of a book, you could have a full-screen timeline that you could scroll along and see major events marked on it.
Btw, Sirotnikov's image might be too complicated for the game to make up for every event. Wheras with the timeline there could be just a simple image accompanied by a sentence or two.

[Slingshot]

Sirotnikov,

Thanks for putting words into a cool picture. That picture is worth a thousand posts!

[Youngsun]

Yovo

The "book" suggestion is much compromised one from my original thought which includes 30 minutes epic film that tells about my civs' history,achivements and impacts on other civs,etc.(documentary style narration with nice rich voice)

Don't you think we need little bit of reward after hours/days of hard works.

I used to feel some sort of vacancy in my mind after finishing the game which can't be fully fulfilled by mere replay thing.

But there is always great tool for this kind of disagreement "Option"! . We may be able to choose when we begin the game to record history either as a book or simpler/faster replay.

Sirotnicov

Do not regard Australia as poorly defended nation because of that outdated MBT things. We have impressive array of weaponry in both the Air Force and Navy.(I won't tell ya this time what they are ) Since the continent is fully under control of Australia,the army has not given the highest priority to upgrade its heavy equipments but I believe there will be lots of modernisation of the army equipments soon especially after what happend in East Timor.

Anyway "Merkava" is one of my favourite MBTs and it is the outcome of all the accumulation of the Israeli experinces in armoured warfare.

[Adm.Naismith]

Some months ago, on the now died .owo. forum, me too posted on the need of a better replay.

I agree with you that after a very long game we need a better way to end and share our accomplishment with friends (and Apolytoners too ).

I think that a better "events log" is needed to keep track of a civilization evolution. I'm not only thinking about the end of game phase, where you should see the whole world, but also as a feature to recall your last moves when you go back to an old "save" of the game (without spoiling the game revealing other CIV "unknow" info).

IMO, we should divide facts&figures from graphics: first we must decide which events are useful to remember, then which kind of graphics is more appropriate to reproduce them.
In this way, we can divide the effort, may be we also can have options for players (or to cope with PC limits: no 3D cards = no slow and jerky animation) or simply let more room for Firaxis artists .

Looking first to the fact, we can realize if we are really biting more than we can chew (looking at a text list of ten thousand of minor event we'll be forced to use some sort of scissors ).

My draft of events to log:
City foundations (name, when, where - if name of place will be available -)
Technologies discovered (name, when, first applied - unit build or building founded)
Main trade and diplomatic pacts (with whom, when, the subject)
Start and end of wars (first battle, winner, last battle, winner, total losses)
Long revolt (lasted more than one turn) and city loss (where, when, a fictional why)
Wonders built
and other main results as enemy Civ destroyed or annexed, the launch of the Starship and the like.

To keep the statistics maneageble, I suggest they will be summarized into sort of "superturns", age of time that can better underline the whole timeline. Something in the line of

quote: "From 3500bc to 3600 bc the Romans Monarchy of Queen Elena founded the city of Praga, Milano and Berna on the fertile plain of Center Europe. Meantime, it ended the wars with the Republic of North Africa with a pact, after the end of the naval battle in south Mediterranum Sea. The war lasted 15 years, with the loss of 4 fleets of trireme, against 1 fleet sinked to the Republic of North Africa"

On the "graphics" side, I have different suggestions:
1) to create it as a modern history book with mainly text, some predefined picture the program will add where appropriate (wonders, units) chosing from which are already available by Civilopedia or intro/cut scene, or adding short movies and sounds as a more "documentary film", but as we will write / shoot on modern time (actual History book or TV special).

2) to change the look and feel of the report by the age you look at: start with written tablet, then papers; draw, then sepia photos, colour photos, then movies, as in a Museum collection.

Mainly I'm thinking of a graphic library ready to use (extensible by downloading new items by Internet Firaxis and fans' sites), that the program can easily link to the text generated by log.

In my opinion it's not a program feature as difficult to build as it appeared on first view, but I will like any other opinion.

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Adm.Naismith AKA mcostant

[Sirotnikov]

Youngsun, I'm sorry if I let you understand that I in any way do not have sufficient regard for australia. I tried to be most carefull with words. I try to see as many documentaries as I can about war and armies (and politics, and social things and history, all the things related to civ) on our science / history channel. And AFIAK the australian army is a very good one. Israel's main problem that the country has a small budget. less than 4 bilion american dollars. and only some of that goes to the defense ministry. In this sence australia is much more capable. not to mention that australia's main fron line is the sea, while israel has no such problem so our top priorities are different.

Adm.Naismith, I think your outline for the replay is very good. Just one thing, it must have a scaled down map of the world with X marks showing when decribing major battles or new citys, and maybe colors showing country borders. Perhaps in big battles, the map will be a close up of the immidiate area with graphical units like I did in the picture. I did it on a large scale, but it would be best on a province or city teritory scale (only neares city\ies showing).

Maybe some of you had heard about the new version of "Risc" for the PC. there you have a zoom option which doesn't give you anytihng, but it is very pretty to watch. I think we take this and add small scale detail that can't appear on the global map.

what do you think?

[Youngsun]

Admiral

Your suggestion is very thorough and practical. I actually don't mind not using book as a main interface as long as I can enjoy all the goodies of my civ's history.

Sirotnicov

Don't be so sensible about what I said. I just said that to prevent any possible misunderstanding about Australia not that I was offended by your words. There is really no need to be sorry about.

[Sirotnikov]

Youngsun, I sometimes have a tendancy towards being overcomplicated. don't mind that

Ahm, ... I said ahm! Is anybody adding this to "the list"? I think Adm.Naismith covered the subject pretty well and this should be added formally to the list.

Is anybody listening?


Anybody home?

...

[OrangeSfwr]

Your going to give Sid grey hairs!! Wow, I don't know how they could put together a 30 minute movie with narration about your civ, but man that would be impressive. Of course so would a book or timeline. It'll just be hard to script it all. I do miss the replay given in Civ I though, at least that needs to come back...and a few extras would be nice.

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~~~I am who I am, who I am - but who am I?~~~

[Youngsun]

Sirotnicov

I'm here. You are right let's support Admiral's idea to be added into the game!

OrangeSfwr

The more grey hairs he gets the better CIVIII will be!(Sorry Sid)

[Adm.Naismith]

OrangeSfwr, 30 minutes of movie will probably be too much, you are right. It can be difficult to keep it interesting after the fifth game you play and resume: graphics library or not you can't have enough different movie scenes to keep things fresh every time.

Still, as in a museum tour, we can suppose some movies will run only if we click on the appropriate button.
New player (and game reviewer ) will enjoy and be impressed as required, veterans can skip the repetitive parts.
Instead, a good text generator is a must, IMHO, but we haven't so much concepts to handle, so Firaxis can cope with them.

By my previus example:

From [arbitrary slot of years here] the [name of civ here] of [name of civ leader here] founded the cities of [put here the list of cities founded into that slot of time, if any] on the [chose a terrain attribute by the average on the area] of [name of region if available].

Meantime, it ended the war with [name of enemy civ] with a [result of the war: cease fire, pact, victory, etc.], after the end of the [last battle here] in [name of region if available].

The war lasted [maths here] years, with the loss of [statistics here] fleets of trireme, against [statistics here] fleets sinked to the [enemy civ again here].

We have some problem with counters to keep, but we can also resume more (e.g. reducing units loss to global by slot of time, not specific by Civ wars).

Playing with the synonims and the order of the words, we can put some difference between similar sentences, just to keep things interesting.

Map snapshot shouldn't be a big problem if we keep them not too much detailed (not many info to save)

About adding this idea to The List, I'm not sure there will be another version (someone suggested the previus 500+ pages already kill ed half of the Firaxis staff ), and the main concept of a better replay already appeared on Essential Civ 3 Poll.

I thank you for your support (wow, from Australia, Israel and Pennsylvania, more global support than Italian President got ), but I also hope someone of you will correct my bad english and my mistakes, before putting this into any kind of "official suggestion for Firaxis" form

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Adm.Naismith AKA mcostant

[This message has been edited by Adm.Naismith (edited March 27, 2000).]

[Sirotnikov]

lol
I always use 'fast typing' as an excuse for mistakes. most of them are actually a result of fast typing, but some aren't. english is my 3rd language. not first. and i'm now studying my 4th and 5th. so if i start writing words in russian, hebrew, arabic, or german, please let me know.

Auf wiederzeign!