EIT Introductions

[alms66]

Hi,

To Alt Civ regulars:

Empires in Time (EIT) is a new strategy game a group of programmers and artists who met on GameDev.net are beginning to develop. We have some design done already, though more is needed. We're moving discussions of the game here to this forum, so stay tuned.

To the dev team:

Until we hear back from Pepe or we decide to appoint a new project leader (if he never shows up again), we should let the others know a little about ourselves and what we'd like the final game to be, in more detail than we had on GameDev.

I am a C++ programmer (though I'm just beginning to learn DirectX), musician, and artist. I've done 2D artwork for civ2 scenarios in the past, but have never done sprites. I've never done music for a game before, but possibly could, if I can get a hold of the right equipment (which I should be able to). I've programmed for 3 game dev teams, all of which fell apart shortly after forming.

What I'd like to see this game become is an epic level strategy game, with 1 year turns stretching from 4000 b.c. to 2000 a.d., and possibly beyond. I'd like to be able to dictate how many civs are in the game, not have the game dictate how many civs I can have... if I want 300 civs in the game, I should be able to have 300. I've also grown tired of the unrealistic nature of the city system (a city in civ2 encompasses nearly 500,000 sq. km, if I remember the math correctly) in civilization-type games, and would like to move to a provincial-based (or regional-based, as some prefer to call it) model, though cities should still have a realistic strategic and economic importance in the game. In general, I'd like to see a more realistic game also. Not every minute detail should be modeled, of course, and not even to 100% historical reality, just enough to where it has a realistic feel to it.

Anyway, any team member who would like to see the design doc I have, just email me, and I'll be glad to send it to you. Keep in mind, however, that the design doc is nothing more than a list of general ideas that need to be modeled... not the actual modelling of it.

[alms66]

I just received word from Pepe, his computer got fried this weekend, so he'll be out of the loop until he can replace the parts, which he expects to be next week. He also said that Empires in Time is a good name, if noone objects to it, it will be the official name.

[Crousto]

I'm still interested in this project. I'm pretty good at C++ (which is not the case with VB ), and have already done a bit of DirectX. I managed to make some kind of 3D engine for a RPG project, but never finished the game (couldn't find enough people to help me with artwork...).

I like the idea of an unlimited number of civs, and a more realistic city system. But 1 year turns from 4000BC to 2000AD looks like a far too long game for me. Maybe we could just begin the game in 1AD, or make each turn 5 years long, otherwise finishing a game will take thousands hours!

You can send me your design doc, I'll take a look at it during the week-end

[alms66]

Crousto,

Yes, 6000 turns would make for a long game, but that's exactly what I wanted, and is what I meant by "an epic level strategy game." In Civ2 and CTP many time periods were sorely neglected, and I feel that having 1 year turns throughout the game is the only way to do every period justice. Even if we did 5 year turns throughout, that would be 1200 turns, more than double the length of Civ2, which I could live with, but I'd like the option of 1 year turns also.

As for starting at 1 AD, I'd have to say no. The Ancient period is my favorite, but I also like to play modern times, so I'd really like to have a game that stretches throughout civilized history.

A possible solution:
What we can do is have an "end turn" button, that when right-clicked brings up a small window allowing the player to set the number of years that get executed that turn (so our definition of a turn would be the number of years that passed, or got executed, whether it be 1 year or 100). This way, when there is a "dull" period (you basically have everything the way you want it, and would just like to advance a few years to consolidate what you have), you can right-click, set the number of years to 50 (or more), then left-click, causing 50 years to get executed. If something noteworthy occured during this time, the current year would be paused to allow the player to deal with it, and when done, if he chose to, he could continue to finish that 50 year execution or go back to 1 year turns, or 5, 7, or 15 year turns for that matter. If nothing noteworthy occured during the 50 years, then the player could either execute another turn at 50 years, or change the number of years again. Would this solution be acceptable to you?

[Crousto]

Yes, I like this "skip turns button" idea. But it will need a huge tech tree for the ancient period, and a lot of units...

[alms66]

For the military, I was thinking of having a build-your-own army system. You stockpile weapons/armor/equipment as they are made. When you need/want to raise an army, you go to the military advisor enter the number of men to raise, and what equipment they use. For example, you might raise an army of 3000 soldiers, and outfit them as follows:

Men Weapon Armor equipment
500 swords medium none
500 spears light none
500 bows light none
500 swords light horses
500 swords medium horses
500 spears medium none
**The equipment section is for things like horses, elephants, catapults, tanks, etc.

All the men raised will be taken out of your empire's population (so you can't just raise an army of 1,000,000 if your population is only 1,000,000). And raising the army wouldn't be immediate, it takes time to find and train the men. The army would be represented on the map as a single entity and would fight as one as well.

As for technology, I'm working on a system that would work very well with handling huge numbers of technologies, while being little hassle to the player. I'll post it here when I get more details.

[toblo]

Me too!



I'm making a battle system for my game ("Leviathan" http://www.toblo.homestead.com/files ) that allows the player to 'compose' his armies

men: 100
shields: 50 (+50% of max shield-protection)
swords: 70 (+70% of max sword-attack bonus)
horses: 80 (+80% of increase in travel speed from horses)
..etc..

How is Your thing working out?
Mine seems to work pretty well, but I'm not really pleased with the battle-resolution code yet.. it can get pretty complex!

[Darkknight]

BEWARE!

Get a lot of interested programmers.

I've been involved in a couple of projects that have fallen through form lack of programmers We've only got one programmer who doesn't have much spare time right now.

Probably the best thing to do at the start is to set out a production schedule and stick to it!
It's good to have 2-3 months of getting everyones ideas in and getting a general idea of what the game will be. for example what kind of maps; hexagons, 3D globes etc. and then to start with a basic program that uses placeholder graphics and just basically serves as a testing area for ideas.

Then when you've figured out what you can and most importantly what you can't do you start implementing all the ideas into one paakage and get decent graphics and work on that for several months.
Then finally you make the shipping graphics and run final tests and get some people to playtest the game and around then go find yourself a publisher that's sells TBS games.

In 'humankind' we've gottne to the initial programming stage. We've got a working map system running but it's really slowed down

Anyway... need sleep.

[alms66]

toblo,

I had a look at your site, and I must say, Leviathan looks like a nice game, you're doing a good job.
As for how our design-your-own system is working... it's not. We haven't begun any programming yet. We're just discussing what the final game is going to be like here (general ideas, not implementation), to get a feel for it, so when we do start programming it, we don't encounter too many surprises.

Darkknight,

Those are good words of wisdom... you must have done this a few times, haven't you? Fortunatly, I've done this a few times also, and I basiclly had the same plan. I've learned that the only way to keep these internet-based projects going is to show progress, and show it often!!

[toblo]

Well, for better or worse I'm (still) the sole member of my dev-team - Self is best slave

When people jump on and off like that there probably needs to be a "lead programmer" with high commitment - who knows where all the wires go, and can manage the more fickle participants - I've seen some net-project groups where entire areas of development have repeatedly been remade because the new programmers don't like (or maybe understand) the code left by defectors

Programming-wise, I'd like to make a plug for Allegro - a game-development library with support for sound and graphics (www.allegro.cc) - I use it so I don't have to get that DirectX-gook on my hands

My project is pretty "explorative" - I want to see what I Can do and what I Want to do.. usually I just hack away, BUT I take time every now and then to concilidate the code so it doesn't become too undisciplined - improving the architecture to make all those ad-hoc solutions fit into the larger framework.. it's working pretty well!

God willing, I might even be able to trick some artist into joining me

"Demo or die!" MIT Medialab dogma

[dexter4dxm]

Originally posted by toblo
Well, for better or worse I'm (still) the sole member of my dev-team - Self is best slave

Same here. I've never been a part of an actual dev team, but working alone certainly does have its advantages.

Programming-wise, I'd like to make a plug for Allegro - a game-development library with support for sound and graphics (www.allegro.cc) - I use it so I don't have to get that DirectX-gook on my hands

I know what you mean. After working with it for awhile the gook goes away though...

My project is pretty "explorative" - I want to see what I Can do and what I Want to do.. usually I just hack away, BUT I take time every now and then to concilidate the code so it doesn't become too undisciplined - improving the architecture to make all those ad-hoc solutions fit into the larger framework.. it's working pretty well!

that's sounds just like me!

God willing, I might even be able to trick some artist into joining me

If you ever pull that off, tell me your secret!

[alms66]

So what kind of map are we going to use? I assumed we would use a map just like in civilization (isometric tile-based, square tiles), do you agree with this?

[Crousto]

Why not an isometric map with an altitude for each tile, like in Alpha Centauri? Technically, I think I could do that. It's interesting for gameplay too, for instance higher tiles produce more "shields" but less food, or great difference in level reduce armies speed.

[jimmyh]

Perhaps the higher you go you could increase the view range for that unit, also if a unit would slow down going up hills then maybe you could also increase it's defense.

[alms66]

I've actually never played SMAC, but I have seen screenshots of it however, and I don't like it for 3 reasons:

1. It seems nearly impossible to show mountains on such a map, without making the mountains or the map itself ridiculously large (because you would have to elevate the land, you couldn't use a mountain tile).
2. The distortion of the tile graphics on the "rise" of the higher land is very unappealing.
3. There are other games out there that use the same style of map (SimCity 3000 & Age of Empires), that I have played, and they are fine in that setting because they are only showing a small piece of a world, I just don't think it fits right in a global map, such as we are doing.

So, my vote is no. But if you and Pepe want to do it that way, I'll go along with it.