FrankenCiv: a hypothetical

[Aeson]

melonJS might be a good starting point. MIT license (do just about anything you want as long as you leave attribution)

http://melonjs.org/gallery.html

This game was made with melonJS ...

http://linkclone.netai.net/

[Aeson]

Free (donation accepted) tiled map editor for use with melonJS:

http://www.mapeditor.org/

[Sava]

http://melonjs.org/gallery.html

I think we should make a Civ-themed Flappy Bird clone.

only, instead of a bird, we use wiglaf

[self biased]

I think we should make a Civ-themed Flappy Bird clone.

only, instead of a bird, we use wiglaf

genius idea.

[Sava]

The "obstacles" could be crowds of gays, blacks, women, and homeless people!

[Ben Kenobi]

Would the Oerdin version have Mexicans?

[Sava]

yes

and thai sluts

[Elok]

MelonJS looks just fine to me, though I don't know the technical details enough for my opinion to matter much.

[Elok]

Question: does "isometric tilemap support" mean "you can do isometric or standard with equal ease" or "there's nothing to prevent you from jury-rigging this into isometric"? I assume the former, just checking.

[onodera]

Question: does "isometric tilemap support" mean "you can do isometric or standard with equal ease" or "there's nothing to prevent you from jury-rigging this into isometric"? I assume the former, just checking.

Tiled lets you do flat iso maps with ease. Not so sure about SMAC-style maps.

[Elok]

I always found SMAC's maps to be a PITA anyway. I turn on "flattened terrain" every game, so I don't have to squint to figure out what a tile on the wrong slope of a hill is like.

So, how would the browsergame aspect work with the moddable aspect? If I make a mod for this game, are the mod files stored on the client side or the server side?

[Felch]

That up to the designers.

I think the easiest way to do it would be to make it multiplayer only, so that we wouldn't have to worry about AI. In that case, mods would be stored server side. Aeson could host it, if he wished, and it could be a nice way to differentiate Apolyton from those lesser sites.

[Elok]

The problem with multiplayer only is, what if you have two players who want to play a WWII scenario, for example? One gets to be Roosevelt, one gets to be Hitler--do they wrangle up some poor SOBs to spend hours playing as Franco, Mussolini, whoever the hell was in charge of Switzerland, etc., or just have those guys be completely static and nonresponsive? If we're going to include barbarians or what-have-you, we'll need some sort of AI for any games at all. I know, AI is a tremendous nuisance to program. Are there "shortcuts" we can take there?

[Felch]

A stupid AI isn't much of a problem. The problem is making an AI that doesn't rely heavily on cheating.

[Elok]

What kind of cheating? "AI gets absurd production and research advantages" cheating, or "AI has units magically teleport into boats" cheating? Either way, a cheating rat bastard AI is better than none at all IMO. Could you compensate by including scripting tools, so the scenario designer can include hand-holding instructions for a specific map, game and power? I'm thinking of the way old CivII designers used to spam MoveUnit commands to overcome the AI's tactical glue-sniffing proclivities. I also thought it'd be nice to include something like a macro (don't know if that's the right term); you know how a lot of players say, "at point X, I typically go for impact rovers while building up production in my three best bases" or whatever? It sounds feasible to give the AI limited instructions that way.