FrankenCiv: a hypothetical

[Lorizael]

I never got to play around with COBOL. One of my high school comp sci teachers knew it, though.

[Aeson]

FrankenCiv is a very fitting name. Of course that's doubling down on the copyright issues in a way ...

There's been at least a few projects like this undertaken by other groups here at Apolyton. Maybe Velociryx and some of the others who's names aren't springing to mind might be interested in this sort of thing as well.

I think this type of project lends itself well to not stepping on others' toes so long as there's at least one person who's committed to making a complete game on their own if necessary. (I'll volunteer, though I can't guarantee I won't just hire some Filipino/Indian/Vietnamese to do it.) Each contributor can choose what's in their build from the sum total of contributions. So if two people are working on a UI and want to take it separate ways, they can. This will actually help in regards to keeping the project on course since then we are testing the mod capabilities and making sure it's going to handle the things people want to do with it.

And when someone comes up with something so cool that everyone puts it in their build ... then it's a "core" feature

There are some areas where we'll have to make sure everyone is on the same page ...

[Aeson]

I keep checking up on this thread because this sounds like a lot of fun. That said, I suspect I shouldn't commit to the project, because I should really be putting the majority of my energy into that whole getting a degree thing. Instead I'll just be a cheerleader. You go, guys!

Well, no commitment necessary I'd say. If at some point in the process you have an idea and would like to be involved in implementing it, you could jump right in for as long as you'd like.

[Elok]

Come to think of it, it shouldn't be named "Game 1," it should be named (for example) "Lorizael_Build7-15-14," ideally with robust documentation for which build it was based on and what changes he made. With this many people, it's probably essential to have clear records so we don't do too much of the same work twice, no?

At this point, I assume everybody's either too busy to commit at the moment or else waiting for somebody else to get the ball rolling. I can give it a crack, but I really need to learn the language first. That'll be a cumbersome process--long story why--so I wouldn't expect me to start before, say, halfway through June.

Also, "FrankenCiv" would only have one copyright issue. If any relation of Shelley's had the power to enforce copyright, there would be far fewer crappy movies in this world.

[Lorizael]

I also have to learn the language. I have a rudimentary knowledge of HTML, no knowledge of CSS, and I'm ~1/3 of the way through codecademy's JS tutorial. The syntax of JS is pretty familiar to me, though, so it's not a terribly steep learning curve. But I imagine it's going to take a lot more than this tutorial to get to the level of programming a civ game. Plus, I have to get acquainted with melonJS's library.

[onodera]

Come to think of it, it shouldn't be named "Game 1," it should be named (for example) "Lorizael_Build7-15-14," ideally with robust documentation for which build it was based on and what changes he made. With this many people, it's probably essential to have clear records so we don't do too much of the same work twice, no?

At this point, I assume everybody's either too busy to commit at the moment or else waiting for somebody else to get the ball rolling. I can give it a crack, but I really need to learn the language first. That'll be a cumbersome process--long story why--so I wouldn't expect me to start before, say, halfway through June.

Also, "FrankenCiv" would only have one copyright issue. If any relation of Shelley's had the power to enforce copyright, there would be far fewer crappy movies in this world.

You're talking about version control, there are enough programs to help with that, no need to reinvent the wheel. I guess Aeson could set up a git server for the development.

[Elok]

About 80% done with the HTML/CSS tutorial. Question: is there a special reason for CSS's class/id distinction? It said that ids are meant to be used only once, for specific objects, but you could do that with a class too. The two can be used together, as in (pretend the brackets are correct):

[p class="burger" id="withcheese"]

but since withcheese is only supposed to be used once, I don't get the logistical advantage over just making "withcheese" a class with the attributes of both. Can anyone explain?

[Aeson]

My understanding is that using an ID makes it obvious that X is only supposed to be used once. This tells other people who might be working on the project not to use it for multiple elements. That becomes very important later when you start modifying properties of specific elements through javascript. You don't want a function to hide a .class element that's acting as #id hiding lots of other .class elements because some other developer thought .class was just a regular class and used it for other elements on the page that shouldn't be hidden by the function.

Also there are times when you want to override specific attributes of a class for just one element without tossing all the other attributes and functions you've designed for that class. Adding #id makes it easy to do that because width in #id will override width in .class for instance. You can do it other ways, but they are more prone to errors or more work.

I've never really read about it, so I could be off on why it actually is.

[Aeson]

You're talking about version control, there are enough programs to help with that, no need to reinvent the wheel. I guess Aeson could set up a git server for the development.

Yah, we can have a git server.

[self biased]

i have an opinion about tiles and the implementation of a spherical-ish map. i don't really have the wherewithal to actually explain it coherently.

and by wherewithal i mean the knowledge of geometry.

[Aeson]

Is this it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldberg_polyhedron

A map like that could be done. You'd just want to make those 12 tiles ones you can't move on since they would have funky movement different from the rest of the tiles.

[onodera]

i have an opinion about tiles and the implementation of a spherical-ish map. i don't really have the wherewithal to actually explain it coherently.

and by wherewithal i mean the knowledge of geometry.

I'm currently prototyping randomly dispersed tiles forming a Voronoi tessellation of the sphere. This way the funkiness is also spread throughout the whole map.

[self biased]

Is this it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldberg_polyhedron

A map like that could be done. You'd just want to make those 12 tiles ones you can't move on since they would have funky movement different from the rest of the tiles.

yes, but breaking the hexagons and pentagons down to their constituent triangles. Units would move along edges and come to rest at vertices, surrounded by 5-6 triangular tiles that would form a larger tile of that unit's zone of control.

[Elok]

Is this something you'd want to see integrated into FrankenCiv, or just an idea you had?

Finished codecademy's HTML/CSS tutorial, though I still need practice getting all the pieces together. I think they have widgets for practice with that sort of thing. Started with Java anyway; I think the library has books I can borrow too, since I know there's more to learn about HTML, at least.

[Lorizael]

I just returned a book on Java and got out books on HTML/XHTML/CSS and JavaScript.