Has Firaxis ever said anything about the possibility af a SMAC 2?

[Dis]

Originally posted by Sntml

No doubts.


From another point of view a question can be asked: why to do the seqel? Is the original game so bad(except bugs)? Grafics is too old and simple? Again, as we understand, TBS with 3D grafics as main feature is not for us.
Mmm.. and we already got almost the seqel - SMAX. IMHO. Nothing, but increase in quantity, nor quality (even decrase in it). And, at last, the experience, that says: thing, that already done well,.. it will not be done second time. How can we create Zakharov again? It will be just Aki-Zeta five. The prime-function . We cannot just take sand from the beach to produce new SMAC.. at least if humanity will not make nuclear war on Planet in AC system...

improvements in graphics and sound of course.

But the big one would be improvements in the AI.

[Mart]

Originally posted by Dissident
the problem is SMAC didn't sell that well considering all the great reviews it had. I'm sure they made a profit, but it wasn't a blockbuster title.

I remember seeing a few years ago a number of copies of SMAC sold. It was around 250,000 (two hundred and fifty thousands)

I payed for my game $35 just after release (price for Costco members) in stores it was like $40 i guess. Later game went cheaper. And it does not include recent releases by EA. So let us say it was like 250,000 times $20 more or less. We get 5 million dolars. It has to be split among developers, producers sellers, etc.

If we consider that the game took for development some months or years - that may be not much. It all depends how many people had to work on it and how long. Considering though there are a lot of movies, which make less than 5 million dollars, that is quite a number.

[GeoModder]

And back then (1998-1999) the dollar's value was higher as well.

[livid imp]

Originally posted by Sntml
why to do the seqel? Is the original game so bad(except bugs)? Grafics is too old and simple? Again, as we understand, TBS with 3D grafics as main feature is not for us.

The bugs aren't that bad, but the AI is. That is a big one for starters. Even Civ3's crappy AI would be an improvement.

I think we are all looking forward to additional gameplay features.

I personally would be just as happy if they just rehashed the old storyline (perferably without the progenators) as I would if they did something total new.

But most importantly, the game needs to be redesigned with up to date strategies in mind (Crawler farms, ICS, etc.) and some balancing of the game.

[fender]

This SMAC situation reminds me of another game that needed updating. I used to love to play a racing sim called Sports Car GT. I played it for years, and learned how to make cars for it, and the community for it is still huge to this day.

We were also talking, hoping and praying that ISI would put out SCGT 2, but they never did. Instead, they teamed up with EA Sports and did F1 2002 and F1 Challenge '99-'02. Both amazing F1 sims, but not GT racing.

As you may have guessed, the "community" modded the living crap out of the later game F1C, as it is easy to mod, and somewhat of F1 2002. The result is well over 70 different mods, each one is far better than any dream I every had of what SCGT 2 might be and some are just amazing, like the GTR mod.

My point is. I think this is the best chance for SMAC 2. A modded Civ game. I don't know which one, or even if there is one good enough to mod, as I don't play the Civ series. I really do think this is the answer though. There is hope.

[Dis]

Originally posted by fender
This SMAC situation reminds me of another game that needed updating. I used to love to play a racing sim called Sports Car GT. I played it for years, and learned how to make cars for it, and the community for it is still huge to this day.

We were also talking, hoping and praying that ISI would put out SCGT 2, but they never did. Instead, they teamed up with EA Sports and did F1 2002 and F1 Challenge '99-'02. Both amazing F1 sims, but not GT racing.

As you may have guessed, the "community" modded the living crap out of the later game F1C, as it is easy to mod, and somewhat of F1 2002. The result is well over 70 different mods, each one is far better than any dream I every had of what SCGT 2 might be and some are just amazing, like the GTR mod.

My point is. I think this is the best chance for SMAC 2. A modded Civ game. I don't know which one, or even if there is one good enough to mod, as I don't play the Civ series. I really do think this is the answer though. There is hope.

then get to the civ4 suggestions thread and demand they make the game more moddable.

[Googlie]

Originally posted by Dissident
then get to the civ4 suggestions thread and demand they make the game more moddable.

Sounds like your prayers are pre-answered:

PC gamer writes (in Jan 2005):

As if it didn't already offer a ton of things to do, Civ IV has been designed to fully support the mod community. The game is written using flexible XML data files and the Python scripting language so that modders will have no trouble at all creating their own personalized worlds, units, technologies, and historical events. Advanced modders will even be able to control the AI. It won't be long after the game's release before we start seeing mods posted online

[dacole]

Originally posted by livid imp
Pray to the Great Cosmic Muffin that Civ4 will include many of SMACs better features.

Maybe we should all spam Brian Renyolds with adoring, flattering requests to make SMAC2 for years on end

You got an email address for him so we can? I would be up for a campain to send him emails!

[Lord Nword]

I think, assuming that all the features promised for Civ4 are included, most of us will be happy as long as Firaxis includes a unit design method... like the one in AC...

Thus, one of the more feasible things we can do is beg for Firaxis to include a unit design workshop in Civ4, possibly as a module that can be turned on by modders...

Or depending on how moddable we think Civ4 will be, someone (or a group) could try mimicing parts of the SMAC unit design workshop using the Python language...

[Zoetrope]

Unit design like that in SMAC would be good, if they make the unit list quicker to navigate. (Perhaps i should reduce the number of designs i keep current, but the principle of planned convenience remains.)

All lists, e.g. the list of bases, should remember the last visited position, so i don't have to scroll through many pages every time to modify the next base. (Of course it would also be good if more could be done while in the base list.)

Stack-movement: the slowest unit in a stack should determine the rate of movement. Stack commands: as many of a stack of units as it makes sense for, should respond to a command. An obvious example is a stack of formers.

Graphics: units move fast when off-screen. They should also move quickly while visible, so the players don't have to wait for ages while a hundred units take the same journey (or different journeys). The only occasion when we want to dwell on an individual unit is when something significant and new occurs in its vicinity, such as spotting an enemy unit for the first time.

[livid imp]

Originally posted by Zoetrope

Stack-movement: the slowest unit in a stack should determine the rate of movement. Stack commands: as many of a stack of units as it makes sense for, should respond to a command. An obvious example is a stack of formers.

SMAC has stack movements. Hit "Shift-J" to assemble a group. Then either "J" to move the group to a specific tile, or "G" to get a list of bases to auto-move to.

Originally posted by Zoetrope

Graphics: units move fast when off-screen. They should also move quickly while visible, so the players don't have to wait for ages while a hundred units take the same journey (or different journeys). The only occasion when we want to dwell on an individual unit is when something significant and new occurs in its vicinity, such as spotting an enemy unit for the first time.

There is an option to turn on fast moving units under the preferences.

[Petek]

Originally posted by livid imp


SMAC has stack movements. Hit "Shift-J" to assemble a group. Then either "J" to move the group to a specific tile, or "G" to get a list of bases to auto-move to.

True, but I think Zoetrope's point was that the stack won't remain intact if the individual units have different movement points. It would be nice if you could keep your rovers and infantry together while the stack moves.

[Quezacotl06]

but consider the deeper philosophical question of whether there's another SMAC coming out:

How can you make another Alpha Centauri?

That game's one in a million and we'll probably never see something like it ever again. I'd rather play Galactic Civilizations instead of ruining the name of Alpha Centauri with disappointment.

[Zoetrope]

Petek: yes, that's getting close to what i have in mind. There is so much potential in the stack/grouping concept, intelligently implemented.

livid imp: with the J commands we can move 32 formers, but I don't want to see all 32 formers move. It's worse when each 1 pauses for any reason, waiting for me to give it advice on how to progress. I want to see 1 movement of 1 stack.

1 stack should be 1 unit. A compound unit, to be sure, and that's the aim: to be able to combine any number and variety of units into 1 object, an army as it were. An army that has a single graphical representation (a glyph), and that can be issued orders exactly as if it were 1 unit.

That's one way to remove many of the chores of micromanaging large numbers of units that, in the human mind, serve a common purpose. What is a chore? To give exactly the same instructions to a large number of units because the game doesn't provide a way to tell them all to act in unison.

I already think of each unit as a collective, as a conceptual shorthand for all the staff and machines that must really be involved. Why not enable us to create our own larger collective units?

Even if we only allow homogeneous stacks, it would be a great improvement. Then any number of former units can be instructed to merge into one "larger" former unit, and we can give it all the same commands as we now do a "single" former unit. Likewise, a fleet of needlejets could be sent on a single bombing mission, which would not involve sending each jet over in turn. Sure, this is just doing the same as giving each one the same command, but with _much less effort_. So it ceases to be micro-management, and begins to become a humanly controlled macro-management.

When the tedium is taken away, we see _more easily_ beyond the tactics to the strategy, as strategy becomes more worthwhile. It also makes the computer players stronger, because large scale combos automatically create a concept of concentration of force, which as we know is largely absent from the existing SMAC AI. Why? Because once the game designers provide the right tools, they will know how to design the AI to use them.

Heterogeneous stacks of a small size were implemented in Call To Power, so it can be done, though it would have to be done very well indeed to work cleverly for large numbers of diverse units. Imagine the AI that could handle a stack comprising spies, formers, infantry _and_ hovertanks, especially when one such stack comes under attack by another. Quite a programming task, but worth it if exceptionally well designed. The stack's behavior would have to be brilliantly (re)programmable by the player! I'd love to see that! And i do think it very possible, if sincerely planned for from the beginning of the game's design.

That's what I visualise. May it come to pass.

[Sntml]

...
How can you make another Alpha Centauri?
...
That game's one in a million and we'll probably never see something like it ever again.

100% agreed, man!

I'd rather play Galactic Civilizations instead of ruining the name of Alpha Centauri with disappointment.

Just to honor Michel Elly, BR, the game, game story and myself!