[C4:AC][Writing] Defining mission statement

[Mart]

Then maybe something like this:

1) Create a basic mod of Civ4 - as close to SMAC as possible

2) Create one official mod - with improvements beyond what is now in SMAC

That should be already enough to design and work on.

I would have also two comments for the future, and something that everyone could consider and remember:

Choosing good Leaders is crucial. Good leaders are capable to work things out, so people working in the team agree and are motivated.

After we get all needed documents we agree on, we stick to the plan. This is something I have heard from a person that claims to be knowledgable in making games, and I think it is good point. Changes to things already done are possible, sometimes they are needed, though they always prolong projects and rather mostly waste time.

[Xian]

Originally posted by Lemmy


Basically, what i'm trying to say is, don't waste time coding things that you know will be different later on. Placeholder things excluded of course, but don't go out of your way recreating bugs that you don't even want in the final version.

Originally posted by PJayTycy
A question to the "pure clone" proponents: do you want to recreate for example the probe-rollover bug?


I would not do that. The intention should be to recreate SMACX as it was intended. Even if this means not including non-documented bugs. Stockpile Energy in queue would be the borderline I guess. Some will want this in, some will want this out, but I can't imagine anyone wants the probe roll-over bug in the game.

Excactly, places where its OBVIOUS what the designers original intent should be fixed

SMAX was not the be all end all perfectly balanced game that people are pretending it is. Nobody literally wants a literal clone - we all have the game and can play that. When people say clone AC they mean translate the game to the new engine with all the gameplay concepts intact

Anybody who wants things like the probe rollover bug and the SP retolling for free should not be playing a mod of SMAX they should just play the original. I highly doubt that many people like that exist to be honest.

Originally posted by Senethro
I'm going to chip in here and say "NO!". We recreate SMAC exactly as is, using the same building costs and exploits. Even the Cloudbase Academy will remain. (However, I wouldn't cry if we didn't include the alien factions in the first version, or any version at all for that manner.)

When we know it works, then we create a C4:AC v1.1 with all the bugfixes AND a "Balanced ruleset". The need to create a balanced ruleset is also while we'll be taking pains to make our own work clear and moddable

I agree with Lemmy in that this is ridiculously ambitous, you operating under the assumption that you will have the time to get it perfectly right on the first try, and of course nobody could do that. So I have to disagree here.

Originally posted by Illuminatus

I wonder if Civ 4 will live up to expectations in that part. Should we attempt to take over bargaining table? It might be tricky, given that we would need to study how it works and revalue SMAC items. I wouldn't be surprised if AIs held Industrial Automation as important as any other same leveled technology.

I'll make a draft in Wednesday, seeing that we are all in agreement.

To be fank with you i highly doubt well have a choice. The system in place will not likely be easily circumvented or ignored. You might just as well ask "will Civ 4 be as moddable as promised".

How ELSE will we be able to simulate diplomacy, seriously? If the game allows us to write a whole new diplomatic system should we? because if so we might as well just write our own game - following that logic we shouldnt be making a mod we should write code ourselves.

[binTravkin]

1.All this babble about bugs makes no sense guys.
Of course, if we will be able to solve the bug upon implementation we will do it. Noone will specially implement bugs if that's avoidable.

2.There will be bugs left after we implement clone. They will generally fit into 2 cathegories.
a) bugs that were implemented by cloning (I expect them to be less than 50% of original SMAX bugs)
b) bugs that are caused by engine incompatibility.

3.

Nobody literally wants a literal clone - we all have the game and can play that. When people say clone AC they mean translate the game to the new engine with all the gameplay concepts intact

By saying 'clone' most of us think not an exact copy but 'a copy which can be done without too much reprogramming'.
That effectively means our mod will have some cIV features in it as we won't have the resources to recode them.
I for one would like the feature 'allies share Secret Projects' in.

4.

How ELSE will we be able to simulate diplomacy, seriously? If the game allows us to write a whole new diplomatic system should we? because if so we might as well just write our own game - following that logic we shouldnt be making a mod we should write code ourselves.

EDIT: We need a cIV pre-release knowledge base.

[Gavin Berchler]

I have been thinking about this , (makes a change) I think we go for a clone as version 1. of the mod and then once we have that common basis we can build on it I still think that it would be silly to drop religion, however once we have a the code in front of us we can determine, if its a) possible to drop the religion side b) too much work to cut it out ie it simpler to keep it and bring it in. C) if we keep it in, does it "work" within the SMAC environment

I personally think that relgion element should be in version 1. of the mod but we need to apply that methodology to all potential divergences from smac.

ie a) is it possilbe b) simpler to bring it in c) would it work in SMAC. Not everyone will agree but once we have a common basis we can then all tweak to our hearts content.

[Fosse]

Is anything going to come from this? We have suggestions out there, but unless more of the team gives direction or picks something this whole thing will just languish. Not the most pressing thing in the world, but still.

[Senethro]

To be honest Fosse, I think you hit it first time. The problem is just that now most of us have nothing to do for the project prior to the release of Civ4.

I was trying to get the wiki in order to give people things to do but I've been too busy/sick recently to get on with it.

[Darsnan]

Originally posted by Senethro
The problem is just that now most of us have nothing to do for the project prior to the release of Civ4.

Yeah, I tend to agree. Not much else can be done until the release of cIV.

Originally posted by Senethro
... but I've been too busy/sick recently

Wow, join the crowd. For the last two weeks my work project's customer has been in town for some intensive testing, and of course at the same time I come down with a virus of some sort....


D

[binTravkin]

Is anything going to come from this? We have suggestions out there, but unless more of the team gives direction or picks something this whole thing will just languish.

It won't, I for one am just waiting for discussion to end, to draw up some conclusion..

[Illuminatus]

I am working on a draft right now. Be sure to criticize it.

[Blake]

There's quite a lot we could be doing now. For example putting that making an exact clone nonsense aside we could be figuring out how to redesign certain systems to make them better and/or simpler. A prime example of this is the Ecodamage Formula. I trust we don't want to exactly reproduce that monotrosity.

[Illuminatus]

Draft of the Mission Statement

We, the project members agree to use all our talents and resources in order to create a modification of the Firaxis game Sid Meier's Civilization 4 which will attempt to emulate as accurately as possible all the aspects, the gameplay, the appearance and the atmosphere, of a previous Firaxis game, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. We do not wish to infringe on the Firaxis copyright while doing so and we will try to consult with Firaxis with the assistance of the Apolyton Civilization Site regarding the legal matters. We intend to call this project Civilization 4: Alpha Centauri.

Our goal is make an clone of the original game Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, and its expansion, Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire without changing or adding any gameplay elements. Our second goal is to correct the most obvious bugs in the original game and the expansion like social engineering rollover bugs.

We do not intend to make a SMAC 2 or make major changes to game mechanics of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri as everyone has his own vision of the needed changes. When completed, Civilization 4: Alpha Centauri will be the starting ground for user made SMAC sequels and remakes. When the project is completed, we intend to devote our time towards balancing and tuning of game mechanics.

As we believe this is the first total conversion for Sid Meier's Civilization 4, our progress will be documented to help any other Civilization 4 modders to follow our footsteps.

We will accept help from Civilization 4 modding community and we hope to coordinate our efforts with discoveries made by other modders in the Civilization 4 modding community. We hope for their assistance in making this project reality. We are grateful for the assistance that Apolyton Civilization Site has already provided us.

Our project will be public, and we shall gladly recieve input from others, although the developers reserve the right not to be bound by popular opinion.


Comments, suggestions?

[Senethro]

Blake, I think you're missing the reason why many of us favour the exact clone nonsense. If we start changing things then each of us will have a different idea as to how it should be done. For example, you would like to simplify eco damage to improve the game. I would like to disable the Planet Cult as a playable faction and change them to randomly generated barbarians appearing after 2150 allied with Planet's native life. Both are possible solutions to improving the rather ineffective and illogical fungus pops.

Rather than spend months disagreeing, lets just pick an easy goal that will benefit all of us. We can all make our own modifications later, although I'd rather we stayed as a group and incorporated all these ideas into a single mod.

Edit: Illu has also covered my reasons in his excellent mission statement

[Blake]

In my vision all factions, facilities, techs, chassis, weapons etc would be identical.

However we wont reproduce bugs unless they happened to create interesting, new tactics. Choppers wouldn't necessarily have attacks limited only by movement, you wouldn't necessarily need to force a pop before getting ecodamage reducing benefits from tree farms, orbitals might scale with map size, we'll make every reasonable effort to make the AI & automation play at "human level" and so on.

Have I completely lost all vestiges of common sense?

[binTravkin]

Illu, good but I guess we should add a bit more, so say 'for tha flavour'..

Blake and Senethro you're missing each others points IMO.

1.An exact clone is not possible, get over your illusions.

2.We are going to make a very close approximation to the SMAC using cIV engine and that, of course, includes the fact that we will need to be flexible with hardest-to or impossible-to-implement things.


Blake is talking about exactly this same nonsense, the fact that we simply can't do it 100% and he is offering to get rid of unnecessary and faulty things in game.

I for one think that making the ecodamage formula work will be close to impossible if possible at all, but we can of course do it as a second line task when we feel we have resources for it.
Meanwhile we will have to live with cIV pollution formula (I hope they've got it).

[Darsnan]

Originally posted by binTravkin
1.An exact clone is not possible, get over your illusions.

Ideally speaking, we should attempt a complete clone of the game.

Originally posted by binTravkin
2.We are going to make a very close approximation to the SMAC using cIV engine and that, of course, includes the fact that we will need to be flexible with hardest-to or impossible-to-implement things.

Practically speaking this is what we are going to end up with.

Originally posted by binTravkin
Blake is talking about exactly this same nonsense.

I don't consider the "clone" statement nonsense. Essentially if I scroll up thru the responses in this thread I see all sorts of ideas for items that aren't in the original version but people are stating they'd like to see in the mod. If we open this Pandora's Box only once, we risk all sorts of repurcussions as people start to diplomacize and stump/ harrangue/ argue for all of their own little pet peeves to be included into the game: we absolutely do not want to go there!
My approach has been, and always will be, that ideally speaking we will strive for a complete SMAC(X) clone. Will we actually end up with a complete clone? Absolutely not! However by making this an underlieing theme of how this project evolves we can avoid a lot of the pitfalls that I have seen bog down projects in RL.

Or, to put it slightly differently:

Originally posted by Blake
In my vision all factions, facilities, techs, chassis, weapons etc would be identical. However we wont reproduce bugs

I think this surmises my stance extremely well!


D