Reynolds Interview

[Verrucosus]

In the context of discussing the development of multiplayer for Civ2 (see the news item), Brian Reynolds made a passing comment about SMAC:

"... On my own team’s next product, Alpha Centauri, we also put multiplayer in at great expense of time and energy, but I really don’t think it did much for the ultimate success of the product, and if I had it to do over again I’d have spent all of that time making the solo play a lot better. ..."

If you count succession games as single player games, I've played SMAC (and any other computer game for that matter) exclusively as a solo game, so personally I gave a sigh of agreement when I read that. However, Maniac's poll shows that a significant number of members still enjoy multiplayer games.

Of course, it would have been great to have had the best of both worlds, but if you had to trade one for the other, are you glad that SMAC came out with multiplayer right from the start (who knows if and when it would have been added otherwise?) or do you agree with Mr Reynolds?

[Darsnan]

Re: Reynolds Interview

Originally posted by Verrucosus
are you glad that SMAC came out with multiplayer right from the start (who knows if and when it would have been added otherwise?) or do you agree with Mr Reynolds?

PBEM'ing, definately, as each human has their own approaches to the game, adding a level of variety (and surprises!) that increases the enjoyability of the game exponentially: there are just too many perterbations and avenues in the game for the AI to effectively navigate, even if more time had been invested into it.

D

[Flubber]

PBEM is where this game came alive for me . I still enjoy solo play but do not play it with nearly the same intensity

[Mart]

I still play SMAC because of multiplayer. I enjoy solo, but the real challenge is against another human player

Any turn based game design for me now would start from multiplayer.

[vyeh]

Most MP games have some AI factions. If Brian Reynolds meant that the AI would be better (and perhaps the governors would also be better), there might have been a greater base of players and maybe we would have seen a SMAC 2.

I agree with Brian Reynolds sentiment that if the time put into the multiplayer component had been put into making the solo player better, the commercial success of SMAC would have benefited.

There are many irritating limitations in the user interface that could have been addressed. SMAC is a great game from a design point. If it had been executed as well and had more intelligent AI, it might have caught on with a whole lot of gamers.

[Alinestra Covelia]

From a commercial standpoint, maybe they could have blitzed on the single player game for the first release and then focused more time on MP for SMAX.

But I'm glad they have MP in the end. That would have been a loss if it were missing.

[Hercules]

From a commercial standpoint, maybe they could have blitzed on the single player game for the first release and then focused more time on MP for SMAX.

Agree. By the time I made my way up through all the levels to transcend I was then ready for MP.

[Mart]

Just reading the six questions with answers on civfanatics:
Link
A very interesting information, that Reynolds gives is that:

"The fact that Civ 2 came out right after Windows 95 was adopted, and “ran well on anything” is I think a little-appreciated fact in its success. These days the graphics card manufacturers have led us back down the garden path of hardware/driver incompatibilities to the point where many players have such a hard time getting Windows games to run on their systems that they give up and go play console games—but for a brief and shining moment there was Windows 95 which gave PC-owners the closest thing they ever had to a stable gaming platform."

This information comes from a professional with many years of experience. It should be one of the basis for Windows PC game developers, when designing a new game. I support idea of using only hardware capabilities that are available to most machines.

[Chaos Theory]

I actually had some grief getting the Civ 2 expansions to run on Win98.

[CEO Aaron]

While Sid's comments are somewhat true, the 'Garden Path' points towards vendor-specific technologies that have not yet been adopted as 'standards'. Certainly, if you want to make a sprite-based PC game that will run on any PC-based platform, I'm confident you'd have no more trouble making it now than you would in 1995.

The trouble comes knocking when developers want access to new graphical knobs and whistles that come with the latest video hardware. Anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, and other new technologies were all features that chipset developers alike NVidia and ATI used to attract users and software developers to their products, allowing them to make newer, more graphically detailed games.

The nature of this competition, while forcing developers to work harder to make cross-platform compatible content, allowed the incredible amounts of innovative hardware to become available at reasonable prices to the consumer. Put bluntly: Without the cutthroat competition between NVidia and ATI, and 3DFx before them, there WOULD be no consoles, or at least none as feature rich as those we come by today.

The real driver behind the migration from PC to console is that developers cannot afford to populate games with the content that top of the line hardware can now produce. Sure, your top of the line Radeon or GeForce card can tear through graphics at terrifying speed, but the rate at which 3d artists can produce those images hasn't improved nearly as quickly.

The end result? More development time is required to produce less game. With that in mind, it's easy to see the allure of the console to your average game developer. Static hardware requirements take far less dev time, and the lower graphics requirements let your limited art direction staff push out bigger games (in terms of gameplay) while putting in less time (in terms of man-hours making 3d wireframes, skins and bump-maps).

[Straybow]

I'd rather have Civ2 graphics and a better game.

When I first got SMAC, it ran so slowly on my PII that I literally fell asleep waiting for the AI turn once. The 3D graphics did nothing for me.

[Sikander]

Good post Aaron, and so true. I'm another who would trade graphics for gameplay. Even an old game like SMAC could lose its caviars without a wimper from me, they looked like crap anyway and are a severe impediment to modding.

[Whoha]

SMAC/X would definately go better with 2d gfx. I have a monster computer that can actually do the gfx for a massive ICS sprawl/crawler farm of doom, but the cpu is so just barely supported by the game for being so new(runs fairly well, but don't even think about ironman).

As to the article the tcp/ip mode of internet play probably was effort that could have gone to better use elsewhere. PBEM/hotseat though is definately a requirement.

[Kataphraktoi]

SmacPBEM multiplayer in general well i enjoy single play so much more...and besides then i can cheat and bs and stop playing the game for a month without someone yelling at me. Really, i have always enjoyed solo play much more than MP. I would, without second thought, leave out multiplayer from a game i would make. I can just think of so many things to do with those misallocated resources. Why would i spend 1\3 of my budget on something 1\100 of my customers will use??

I used to play RTS and shooter gamesalot online, esspecially uneal tournament and age of kings, like 6 hoursa day,lol. It was always utter insanity micromanaging a zillion things and strugging to get some edge on the opponent, i would be sweating alot by the time the game was over and quite tired ,more so if it was a particularily good enemy.

Now, i prefer to relax and contemplate my empire. Whats the hurry?