A Scenario That Lets You Colonise Mars....

[alley_cat]

Red stuff factory (where Red Stuff is the metrial that the surface of mars is made of. Lets say that this metrial is excellent for weapons).
Universal Bank
Mars tourist fun expedition (in case you didn't understand, this increases money)
Mutant
Marsian (or however you spell a native creature from Mars). This creature Wouldn't need Oxygen to breath and will have bonus in movement

[Immortal Wombat]

To all who care: The SLIC is going well, and hopefully I should have a beta out by the middle of next week, assuming Omni can upload, my wonder-unit mod isn't up yet, and I mailed it about 2 weeks ago.

Anyway...
I played a few turns, and I realised that civ on Mars is hard, but then so would life be in real life. But I thought, we would have Earth as back-up, so I'm implementing code to grant advances to players every few turns (not too often, but enough to simulate a good civ-empire back on earth).
These triggers are also disabled by a destruction of earth.

I just had a sudden thought, the SLIC is working, the text files are mostly done, but there is one that I could do with some help with (hee hee).

Its boring, its laborious, its not much fun, but does anyone want to write me a turnlength.txt ?

It consists of a list of turn numbers, followed by their dates and years, eg.
1,May 2020
2,June 2020
3,July 2020

exactly like that, only I need about 200 turns...

And does anyone have any futuristic building graphics?

Ben

PS. A native creature of Mars is a Martian

Thanks everyone for all the help.

[Fuzzball]

Awesome ideas. Love your work .slic drives me nuts lately too, so I can totally sympathise there. I wasn't going to edit much of it in my scenario, but there's always a few more little things i want to fix up that just can't be done without writing some .slic documents....
I think I might have some graphics around somewhere you could probably use. I can edit the formats to tga's and tiff's for you in any size you want. 96x72, 160x120, and 72x72 ya? I'll send you some sample's in a few days or so, ok? I'd send them today or tomorrow, but I have to hunt them up, and I seriously have to sort out some sounds and stuff here too. I'd offer to animate the work for you, but you read my thread about the .spr animation. Call me a dumbass, but sprites hate me
I'd be happy to be one of the game testers for you too dude, if that's cool. Cheers.

[Immortal Wombat]

Wow, thanks a lot, I was about to release a beta version, in the next few days. I solved most problems with it now, just the AI I'm not sure whether it will work or not. I think that I can hold it a little while longer for some decent graphics

Fuzz, if you need some simple slic help, mail me, I might be able to help solve it.

PLAYTESTERS:
Hassan
alley_cat
Fuzzball
Hexagonian (or should I ask first? )

anyone else want to playtest next week ?

Oh yeah, and check out my screenshot from my most recent "game" :
http://member.aol.com/wvrs4

Notice:
City graphics, colonist, city build, sciences, date, terrain (the water I added myself), crowdedness.

[hexagonian]

Sure, but I might not be able to get to the testing until later in the week. I have been pretty busy lately - most of my file alteration work has been done at work during slow times (can't play though, because I work off a Mac) and I had had only a couple hours in the last two weeks at home to do any playing - other than tesing your great SLIC additions to my mod.
[This message has been edited by hexagonian (edited April 21, 2001).]

[Immortal Wombat]

Cool, the stuff is all flooding in to my inbox...
Martin G kindly did a turnlength.txt up to 2050, giving 360 turns to work in. As its small map, you will probably have found some way to win by then.
Fuzzball also sent me some pictures that will be included as well.

The scenario is very difficult, as Mars is very inhospitible. At the very start, the research will be slow, but to speed it up, you could risk starvation, as the Martian terrain is not known for its farming ability
A new batch of colonists will arrive every year and a half, so the planet's best city spots get filled up very soon. After that, it is a race to terraform the desert of Mars into terrain that you can live on.
I'm afraid for all the warmongering type players, you will find it very hard. If you declare war with one of your earth "enemies" (eg. USA declares war on China) then all your Public works and gold supply from earth will stop, and if you are at war too long, then earth will be destroyed, or the space programme forgotten about, and no more settlers will come either. Then you are stuck, all alone on Mars...
If you like micromanagemnt to get each city producing the best it can, then this will probably be quite fun for you.

The thing I like best about the scenario is that I have added a way to terraform the land into water, after researching the "H2O Synthesis" advance. I also added that into the AI texts, so the AI should be able to use it as well.

After the beta is out, I will try to make the AI more suited to the scenario, as I would think at the moment, it will not be much of a challenge.

Thanks to everyone who helped.

Ben

EDIT: Hex, I was going to use that location field when I was king meany
[This message has been edited by Immortal Wombat (edited April 22, 2001).]

[Martin Gühmann]

"Must Playtest!" That would be something different compared to city sprite making. I finished CityMod2 nearly, therefore I will have more time to test it. By the way do you consdered a name of your scenario? What about Colonisation of Mars in a Colonisation of Space scenario pack. Then we could make a senario that lets you colonise one of the ice moons in our solarsystem. Live there would be harder than on Mars.

360 turns: Mmm I will find a way not to win by then. But I am afraid that the same is true for 720 turns. I should translate it.

-Martin

[Immortal Wombat]

I emailed it to Omni, but then got it returned later because his mailbox is too full or something. So I can't get it up to the database. I'll email it to everyone who posted here.

The scenario is entitled: Mars: 2020.

2016 is the next launch window for landing on Mars, and I figured on a 4 year trip.

I guess a scenario pack of all the planets would be good, but a little repetitive after a while. If there was a way of making it so you have to have completed Mars to get to the Belt, then that to get to Europa, or Titan or whatever.
Actually, if there was someway of encyrypting a password into a messagebox, then I could make that an entry requirement for subsequent scenarios. But I digress...

When I have the time, I will maybe do that, but I have to go back to school now, and then I have exams in 6 weeks (aaaagh)

Its been a good easter. Thanks everyone.

Ben