Gamespot has new preview

[Zanzin]

"As far as actual graphics are concerned, in the two years Firaxis has been working on Civilization III, the art team has produced more than 12,000 tiles to give map screens a much smoother and more natural look"

This is from the preview. 12,000 different graphical tiles have been produced, and the screenshots we've seen are the best they can come up with? What the hell is going on over at Firaxis?

[SerapisIV]

quote: Originally posted by horg on 05-16-2001 07:43 PM i am a maniac of civ 1 and civ 2,,, but i need to know if the litlle animated seqence with the evolution of your civ on the world map that was there in the first vresion will be back... ho and what about bring back the news paper NEWS with the music of the nation ... i was loving this in civ 1

Firaxis's own website confirmed the animation.

About newspapers, no comment in previews or Firaxis

[Adm.Naismith]

quote: Originally posted by Zanzin on 05-16-2001 10:05 PM "As far as actual graphics are concerned, in the two years Firaxis has been working on Civilization III, the art team has produced more than 12,000 tiles to give map screens a much smoother and more natural look" This is from the preview. 12,000 different graphical tiles have been produced, and the screenshots we've seen are the best they can come up with? What the hell is going on over at Firaxis?

My same first reaction!
Ok, many sources spoke about Firaxis started developing the game using old Civ II tiles over SMAC map engine.
This mix probably required to flatten all surface, hence the flat world we are looking in available "alpha" screenshoots.

Many info mentioned another new and fresh engine is in development, and it seems very strange to me it looks so flat and Civ II like as we have seen so far.

Deduction and hope: they are putting lot of effort into a separate engine that, so far, isn't merged to other part of game (do you noted "only haf work is done"? ).
If this is true, we are probably waiting for a very big surprise on graphics and eye-candy: 12 thousand tiles can't be all wrong!

Please come on Firaxis Team, can someone at least confirm my guess about real engine still hidden so far? It's not as you will reveal a real secret...


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A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind. The mind was the first and final battleground, the stuff in between was just noise.
- Admiral Naismith

[Maxxes]

To back your theory, this quote is from the Firaxis website:

quote: The terrain system is completely new and we think it's the best-looking terrain that has ever been seen in a Civilization game. We're not quite ready to show it off yet, but to answer your question, terrain features will definitely not be flat.

Considering this quote the screenshots we've seen so far is not what you would expect...

On the other hand why would they release so many screenshots if the haven't even finished the engine?

[The Rusty Gamer]

You're probably seeing too much into it all. AC has a flat-map mode and so I guess Civ3 does too. They happened to use that mode when they took the snapshots. They probably thought it would be easier to illustrate the various points that were being made about gameplay, that's all.

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"If you post something often enough, people will start to read it"