Alt civs and scenarios

[LDiCesare]

Okay this one is not civ2-oriented at all, but since this is the place for Scenario League too, here I go.

I am working on The Clash of Civilization, an alt civ project, and, as a course in the development of demo 7 (link above), we created a tutorial ("Dawn"). Adding the tutorial ment creating a scenario. Dale sketched a lot of the scenario ideas and text for us, and Gary Thomas added whatever was needed in the code to make it possible to get the scenario done.
Now we have, I believe, a framework that allows scenarios to be made quite easily. Well, we don't have map editors and such, but comparing civ txt files with what we have makes me think we have something good. I would like to hear opinions from scenario makers about it.

Are there anything obviously lacking? Is there anything in the files utterly impossible to understand? (Well, considering people managed to understand ToT units2 section, I doubt it but it may still be hard to get by).
In one word, do you think you could build something fun with what we've got already, and, if not, what do we need? I am not talking about things like governments and such, the game is under development, so basically there are only economics and units available yet, and very little sea units to boot. It is only a demo, but it demonstrates what we want to do in terms of moddability. Is it going the right way (in terms of capability - of course we would need a map editor-)?

I am not sure the doc explaining the files is in the zip. To look at how things go, open the zip (obviously), then open the .jar file with winzip/unzip/whatever you use to open zip files, and look at the resources and scenarios directories. There are files like dawn1.xml and military.xml which are what we use for "modding". Note they can either open cleanly in InternetExplorer (military) or not that well (dawn1 and others), so a text editor may be the best app to view them. If anyone is interested in looking at this and providing feedback, I will attach our documentation here.

[techumseh]

Can you tell us a bit about the game, and what stage it's at now? What are the main similarities and differences with Civ2? I think most of us would like to avoid having to catch up on 2 years worth of threads.

[LDiCesare]

Indeed, there are a few threads...
The idea (and current implementation) of the game is to be comething like civ2 but with simulated economics behind the scene instead of a simplistic model a la civ.

Main things (implemented) in common with civ:
Turn-based. Iso map, you control a civ, build units, give orders as to what you want to build, can build roads (but here we start differing as there are no settlers/workers). Terrain types (forest, sea, plains etc.) have different production/move cost (and graphics).

Things different (more or less):

Simultaneous turns: You give your orders, tehn click end turn and look everyone move at once (you and the AI).

Cities and orders (economy): Cities don't matter much as you control provinces instead. Actually, you can give orders at three levels: Entire civ, province or square. Orders include: Upkeep of units (computed automatically), building units, building roads, building farms, improving techs... (Also, the econ gui window is ugly. I ahve to be honest here.)
You don't have individual buildings but rather an infrastructure level. In the long term, it could be shown as buildings but it is not yet. From now on I only stress things as they are, not as we want them to be long term (to keep it short).

Technology is a bit different as you can invest in several techs at once, and some gain Research Points autoimatically (Military Tactics increase each time you wage fights for instance). Technology allows units to become available or obsolete. Technology also changes the values of units. For instance, Military Tactics makes attack and defense of all units increase slightly, so if you have a better tech, you have better units even though they are of the same kind. With current values, it doesn't make much of a difference, but that is one thing you can easily mod.

Military: Stacked units.
You see the path when you do some pathfinding. Only land combat is implemented. Sea transport works, but sea vessels are immune to fight right now. There are no city wall improvements. The fight model is much more detailed than in civ. Suffice it to say that having warriors and archers is generally better than warriors or archers alone. Fights are not necessarily to death. You can have an army that will retreat. Retreating takes some time, and they mey be harassed and not make it out of the square, but often they will try.

Settlers and Population:
You can attach settlers to an existing unit who will act as their guard, and you can drop them where you want in order to colonize. But your population will also expand automatically to neighboring squares. After a lot of turns, you can easily cover a lot of squares if you have good farming tech.
Population is counted by individuals, not abstract units worth 1 settler. Also, military units cost population to create.

Graphics: We use gif tiles with gif transparency for the background (for units).

[Henrik]

Now for the main question as far as I am concerned, is there a mac version?

[LDiCesare]

Well, this is coded in java so it should work on Mac. I don't think anyone tested, but I encourgae you to try.

[Jonicro]

Game like CoC really could be interesting platform for scenarios since it allows totally new features to be added during the development. Though getting CoC to Civ2 level in scenario making it would require event scripts and preferably cheat many too.

[Henrik]

Tried and what I got was a window called "Java Console" saying this:

Exception Occurred:
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/swing/UIManager
	at game.manager.Game.(Compiled Code)
	at game.manager.GameMain.main(GameMain.java:11)
	at com.apple.mrj.JManager.JMStaticMethodDispatcher.run(JMAWTContextImpl.java)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java)

Note:
To be able to launch the aplication at all (I cannot launch a .jar file right away) I had to use this program.

[LDiCesare]

Jonicro, there are already scripts of some sort. For instance:
___________________________________________
<!-- When horses technology reaches level three, -->
<!-- (or alternatively when Chariots become buildable) -->
<technologyevent>
<technology>Horses</technology>
<civilization>Natufian</civilization>
<level>3.0</level>
<bulletin>
<x>290</x>
<y>130</y>
<width>350</width>
<height>430</height>
<title>Chariot Unit Available</title>
<message>
" From the Military Advisor:

All our efforts have paid off, we can now build militarily useful chariots that have proven extremely potent in local skirmishes. I believe that with several units of Chariots at my command, that we will have a force that can face any reasonable challenge!

You can now build the Chariot unit just as you have Warriors by issuing economic orders. Chariots are an especially good unit because they are very powerful for the age, but use relatively little manpower for all that battlefield effect. This means you don't have to remove as many people from the normal economy to have an effective standing army. "
</message>
</bulletin>
<eventaction>
<condition>chariots</condition>
<delay></delay>
</eventaction>
<eventaction>
<condition>final horde</condition>
<delay>3</delay>
</eventaction>
<eventaction>
<condition>check final horde</condition>
<delay>4</delay>
</eventaction>
</technologyevent>
____________________________________________

Henrik: I'll check whether swing (the classes not found that gave the error message) works on Mac, and see if any special instructions are needed for it. Thanks for trying.

[Jonicro]

Interesting, looks like i better download CoC and try it out a bit.