The Implications Of Dinosaurs On Civ III

[SailorUranus]

What's best is to assess each of the four possible scenarios:

RTS/Scenario: Possibly a Gettysburg-like game. However, this game will get compared to War3 whether anyone likes it or not. If this is the plan, kill it or change it. Barring War3 falls well short of expectations, competing against it is practically suicidal, regardless of the quality of the final product.

RTS/Big World: A Railroad Tychoon-like game. From what the game sounds like, I think this is best direction for Sid to take. Perferably, the term "Big World" will imply the whole world. A big question mark though is how will competitors and the red "player" be handled.

TBS/Scenario: This idea doesn't sound too popular either. Players familiar with Sid's games like having thier accomplishments carry over from one stage to another. This format is the least likely to support that.

TBS/Big World: A CIV-style game. Could be interesting. Could fall flat on its face too. Here, the game will be very dependant on its depth. What matters is if the player says "So what's next?", "So what?", or "What the f---?!" while playing the game.

As to the SoT trilogy, Sid should clearify if this game is or is not a part of it, if the trilogy even exists in the first place.

Oh, and Novice, try to think before speaking. The reason I said birds evolved from dinosaurs is to correct bcr3. I never implied that caused the extinction.

[Slingshot]

Wouldn't it be great if Sid threw us another bone to chew on.

I don't mean another 256-colour or 16-bit graphics dilemma, either.

They say that lots of prototypes are built and then run. I would like to see some screenshots!

Screenshots are not nearly as fast or accurate as a slingshot. They probably take longer to load... But I bet they would be interesting to see, anyways.

[NoviceCEO]

quote: SailorUranus: RTS/Scenario: Possibly a Gettysburg-like game. However, this game will get compared to War3 whether anyone likes it or not. If this is the plan, kill it or change it. Barring War3 falls well short of expectations, competing against it is practically suicidal, regardless of the quality of the final product.

Would you mind reading my post next time?

quote: Oh, and Novice, try to think before speaking. The reason I said birds evolved from dinosaurs is to correct bcr3. I never implied that caused the extinction.

Thinking causes my head to ache. You said "dino's probably evolved into birds". For me, that means that dinosaurs "morphed" into birds. A quick change in the sentence and you may get misunderstood. I apologise though.

Sweep of time, IMHO, is the contrast between three different eras. It doesn't lead to game basis changes.

novice

[L o k i]

It's not actualy that difficult to link the games together, you just need some logic and imagination.


Obviously there already exists a link, because it has happened. Unfortunetly there's a large blank there which historians haven't really discovered yet.

However, that doesn't mean we can't come up with some logic reason.

In the Civs series there's not just one way, but a few ways to win.
In the Dinosaur game, it should be the other way around. You will have a few ways to die.
It could be starvation, it could be the Ice age or it could be a meteor.

During your game of Dinosaurs, you will shape the planet, and the ending death of dinosaurs will also shape the planet.
So when the humans have evolved enough they will live on this world that was created by the dinosaurs (I'm talking about eating the plants, spreading the plants, evolving into other animals, etc). And this is where you'll start as humans.

So instead of randomly creating your own world in the Civ game, your land will have changed by how you played in the Dino's game.

This is all if you want to play it AS a sweep of time game. (Where you go from beginning to end). Its quite obvious to me you won't HAVE to do this, you could play straight from Civ3 if you liked.

If this is the idea they use, what would be REALLY cool is to watch the animals and humans evolve to the point where they discover something important (and this is where you jump in).

So for example, your Dinosaurs game ends, and its the Ice Age that kills it. All your Dinosaurs die.
You sit back and watch for about 10 minutes (and you can speed it up if you wish). watching animals, plants, land evolve and the monkeys evolve into humans and where they live. Then suddenly one of them learns how to make fire, then this is where you jump into the game.

I would LOVE to start from that far back, back into the times of cavemen where they had just discovered fire.

as you can tell, I'm not that good at explaining things, I can do better graphicaly tho!

[Rusty Nail]

My guess is that Sid will link Dinos and civ3, as he controls both now. In his shoes, that is what I would do. Furthermore, to be consistent with the long-term "sweep of time" concept, I would at a later time also link civ3 directly with a new smac2. Sid could not do this with smac because he did not have control of civ2 (Micropose did). By link, I mean a direct carryover of your civ, units etc. as in the civ2 extended game, as an option. But you can also play each game independently. How he will do it is anybody's guess, but as LOKI says, it is only imagination that is required. There are theories and some (admittedly disputed) evidence that Man did in fact exist at the time of the dinos, and that earlier pre-history civilizations existed and were destroyed (Atlantis, Lemuria). There are also theories that the Earth was seeded by extraterrestrials, who may have arrived at the time of the dÃnos, and come back later. A logical link can be made. It would be consistent with Sid's style to do it. If you are reading this, Sid, and have not thought of it quite this way, then please consider the possibilities.

[Bearcat]

I think this game is very boring and is a whast of time, for me any way, why play it if it is dumb,why whast your valueable time that you could be doing something more non boring.

[pauli]

my money says dinosaurs becomes a mod that ships with civ3. it would be a great way to show off a flexible game engine... or as flexible as a tbs engine can get, anyway.

personally, i don't really see how dinosaurs could be turned into a compelling strategy game of any type. they worked ok as a gimmick in c&c, and the dinosaurs scenario for civ2 was nice, but a game at retail price? if others want it, that's their right, but it doesn't really interest me.

[L o k i]

I think it's a good idea, it's an idea that needs to be done. I think it would be better to start from the start, rather than the middle (Civ).

The only thing that will make THIS game good in my opinion is it's animations, so I hope it has good animations.

[MidKnight Lament]

Geez, everyone, give them a break! You think they'd be making two games if they didn't think they could make a lot of money off both of them?

The last couple of Dino Diaries have started to get me pretty interested. And if it's just Civ3 you're worried about, look at Sid's post. Seems to me that everything is looking relatively on top for a great game.

If they screw up with either of them, then we can bag the crap out of them for it, but until then, try to stay relatively optimistic. At least give them the credit that perhaps they're able to create two good games side by side.

I was so surprised to come back here after a while and see so much negativity! And no, you're not just going to be able to launch straight from the end of Dinos into Civ 3. I'll be very surprised if you can. They're two completely seperate games!

Firaxis, keep those diaries coming. Some people appreciate them, and the work you're doing. There's no way I believe that you'd put in so much of your time and effort if you were only aiming for sub-standard.

- MKL

[Steve Clark]

Here's an idea. Why not just play the Dinosaurs scenario in Civ2 and concentrate on Civ3? I will not buy Dinosaurs, esp. if its RTS or a hybrid.

[ScottN]

FWIW...

Anyone else here play the game "Evolution", from the Discovery Channel's foray into PC gaming? It's a "RTS" game (in that it's strategic and non-turn-based), but bears no resemblance to WC etc. You have to manage clades (evolutionary lineages) to take advantage of the available food sources, evolve into new species, etc. The object is to be the first player to evolve a sentient species (of which there are several available: humans, dinos, birds, elephants, and wombats, off the top of my head).

Anyway, it actually occurred to me that at that point (when Evolution ends), you could convert the map to Civ2 format and continue playing. The advantage would be that you would then have a map created through full simulation of tectonic continental drift, for added realism. I even sent an email to Greg Costikyan, one of the designers, suggesting this. He sent me a response saying that the designers had actually considered including this as a feature, but decided it was too complex to justify (Evolution uses an icosahedral projection of the globe, and may even use staggered sqares/hexes).

Anyway, this could be a possible point of connection for Dinos, or it may not (depending on the structure and goals of the Firaxis game).

[Herr Glockenspiel]

I'm not sure if I'd prefer Dinos and Civ III to be connected or unconnected. Connected, and you've got something unique from SMAC, but you've also got something that sounds silly from the get-go (and also sounds terribly similar to WarCraft III, with its six different races which are being offered). Unconnected, and you're left to wonder whether Civ III is going to be just like SMAC, and whether Firaxis is heading towards a great schism (producing two completely unrelated games at the same time is highly unusual in a small company).