Announcement

**tishco** · December 15, 2001, 11:01

yayy

**dexter4dxm** · December 17, 2001, 21:34

regarding moding/editing the text data files included in this demo - obviously nothing is layed out in understandable format, and it is very hard to tell what the numbers are for. changing the wrong numbers can very seriously screw up the game. i suggest just waiting for a future version of civiliza or asking me for a description of the file you want to edit.

and one more thing: the latest build of civiliza has sound

**Dale** · December 17, 2001, 22:20

Dex:
My text files are a little more readable than yours.

BTW, I put a new build with unit movement finished, complete.

**dexter4dxm** · December 18, 2001, 09:44

Originally posted by Dale
Dex:
My text files are a little more readable than yours.

BTW, I put a new build with unit movement finished, complete.

we're not competing, are we?

**dexter4dxm** · December 19, 2001, 21:33

well tischo, no comments, nothing?

anyways, demo 4b will be out by this weekend i think. it will include sound, many very important bug fixes, and finally a small exe with the editable art files placed in the directory. resource use, city improvement use, and diplomacy are high on the list right now, so you may see these things added soon and thankfully you won't have to download an exe that is 2+ megabytes. oh, and i would also like to either update the map editor or write a random map generator. anyone have info about the latter?

**Dale** · December 20, 2001, 01:46

we're not competing, are we?

Sorry dude, no offense intended. I'd sorta hope we're all working together, not against.

I've had a go at demo4, and must say it's looking good. I like how you can see all the resources at once without having to flick through a heap of eco-screens. It took me a little while to work it out the commands and stuff (used to civ/ctp) but once I saw what was going on it's pretty easy to do stuff. That's what we need in out games, ease-of-use.

As for random map-generator, take a look at the Clash of Civs page. They used to have a good idea for random generation.

**dexter4dxm** · December 20, 2001, 19:35

Originally posted by Dale
Sorry dude, no offense intended. I'd sorta hope we're all working together, not against.

yeah, some things are better in one game and some things are better in another. i hope we can help each other focus on going forward with our respective projects. i'm all for cooperation.

That's what we need in out games, ease-of-use.

definitally.

As for random map-generator, take a look at the Clash of Civs page. They used to have a good idea for random generation.

thanks, i'll check it out.

**dexter4dxm** · December 20, 2001, 21:56

although i have yet to get a single bug report, i have been playing some full games of civiliza myself, and coming up with my own list. i'm making good progress killing important bugs. i'm stressing important because these bugs do a big part in killing potential gameplay. and i don't just mean like the building roads on ocean one

(......oops)

even if you got sick of civiliza demo 4 after playing it for 5 minutes, please play demo 4b when it comes out

**Miznia** · December 21, 2001, 15:08

Map Generator

Dexter, in case you don't have the info you're looking for yet, I'll tell you what I know (and hope I'm not saying anything obvious).

It's really, really easy to make a map generator distinguishing only land and ocean. Well, and mountains... because probably the easiest method is to base it on elevation. Assign a random elevation to every tile on a map, and do a certain number of passes over the whole map "levelling" it. I think there's more than one way to do the levelling. One way is, (for each pass) for every tile, alter its elevation by averaging it with a randomly selected adjacent tile. (That may not be the most efficient, but that's how I've done it.)

The results, for me, are generally that the more passes you do, the more likely it is that you'll get a big continent or two; if you do fewer passes, you'll get a lot more islands and patches of inland water. Of course it depends how you do it.

What I have implemented right now is a kind of "volcanic" generator that makes blob islands like Hawaii. (This is what made the map in the little pic I posted awhile ago.)

Terrain is harder. In the "volcanic" generator, based entirely on elevation it creates Mountains, Hills, Desert, Plains, and Grassland. Presently it randomly throws in single tiles of Forest and Jungle. Arctic is assigned based on latitude.

I'd like to come up with a better way of placing desert... Latitude and distance from water are important, but I don't know how to get the Namibian desert. One thing I did do, possibly useful here, is to make another system, like the elevation but with more variables, to determine "luxury zones," e.g. tobacco zones, sugar zones, etc. "Desert zones" or "jungle zones" might work.

I also don't know a great way of doing rivers. It seems that it's fair to just pick a random starting point and wander around with it until you hit the ocean. I think you do have to keep track of the flow of the river, though, rather than just marking "river in this tile," "river in this tile." I say this because it might look bad if the source of the river is adjacent to the ocean, with the river flowing parallel to the coast: Unless the flow is stored, the river will appear to flow into the ocean from every tile.

If any of this isn't very clear, I'll explain more/better. I hope it may be useful, although I'm no expert.

And, P.S., I'll be trying your demo as soon as I install DirectX.

**dexter4dxm** · December 21, 2001, 22:44

Re: Map Generator

i understood everything you said, and i thank you for your help.

if you want to check out my game, you can go ahead and get demo 4 after you install DirectX, but i really want you to try demo 4b, which will be out soon.

**Miznia** · December 23, 2001, 15:05

Okay

Alright, I downloaded DirectX 8.1, I believe, or whatever Microsoft is offering at the moment.

To my surprise, Demo 3b still displays funny. No improvement after the DirectX installation... About half of every tile displays as pink. Like Civ2's units.gif transparency background, type of pink.

Demo 4, though, displays almost perfectly. The pink squares persist at every city (as though it is meant to be transparent), and around every unit while that unit is active. There's a very small pink block following the mouse pointer around, too. I wonder what's up?

Really pretty, though. I especially like the deserts and coasts. I'm curious though as to why you picked 640x480 resolution. Is it a question of performance?

It really feels like a game. What would really help, though, is if the pieces slid when they moved. It might help if the active unit blinked, as well. I imagine this is a bit tricky with an isometric view...

One thing I didn't quite get, and ended up deciding was a rules difference, was that sometimes when I attack a unit, it seems that neither unit is killed. Is it maybe a movement point thing? Without piece sliding it is hard to discern the status of my intended attack.

I didn't notice anything that seemed to be an outright bug, except for the one about not being able to end your turn. This doesn't seem to happen, though, if you use the interface in a consistent way.

I'm curious, more as a programmer, what the AI players are doing for path-finding. They seem to be somewhat slow at taking their turns compared to Civ2 players with the same number of units. Is this the "connection to capital" calculation? And if so, what does it presently affect?

The AI is pretty good at building roads. I was impressed by that. They're not quite so good at offense/defense, though; I often see them waltz out of a city that I'm about to attack, and they pretty much leave me alone if there's enough room between our possessions.

I was a bit confused about the population system. Cities max out at 99, but they seem to do so pretty quickly. Big cities also don't seem to be that much more valuable than small ones. What are the "X" and check-mark indicators in the city view, above the growth / trade / prod?

And that's all that comes to mind at the moment. Really nice to see all this progress!

**dexter4dxm** · December 24, 2001, 04:16

Re: Okay

Originally posted by Miznia
To my surprise, Demo 3b still displays funny. No improvement after the DirectX installation... About half of every tile displays as pink. Like Civ2's units.gif transparency background, type of pink.

Demo 4, though, displays almost perfectly. The pink squares persist at every city (as though it is meant to be transparent), and around every unit while that unit is active. There's a very small pink block following the mouse pointer around, too. I wonder what's up?

Well, as you know Civiliza runs at 640x480 in 16 bit color.
Some of the art files are down-sampled from 16-bit to 8-bit to save downloading time. That might be the problem, but I am not sure at all. I have absolutely no problems with transparencies not working. Civiliza 4b won't have any down-sampled graphics as the graphics will no longer be included in the exe and the user will only download them once (well, maybe except for a major update to art).

Really pretty, though. I especially like the deserts and coasts. I'm curious though as to why you picked 640x480 resolution. Is it a question of performance?

It's only pretty because I'm using "borrowed" art. All the art for the game is either modified art from the Civ series or art I download off free texture sites, which I also modify. Okay, some of the art i did myself, especially in 4b, but not much.
As for the use of only 640x480, I picked it for compatibility reasons and just because it's my first project and all. 1024x768 (or higher) would be nice, but definitally not a priority.

It really feels like a game. What would really help, though, is if the pieces slid when they moved. It might help if the active unit blinked, as well. I imagine this is a bit tricky with an isometric view...

The day I get sliding pieces in the game will probably be the day I get normal combat into the game (who knows when that will be). I hadn't really thought about unit piece sliding though, so thanks for the suggestion

As for the active unit blinking, that will be easy, I'll add it to the list

One thing I didn't quite get, and ended up deciding was a rules difference, was that sometimes when I attack a unit, it seems that neither unit is killed. Is it maybe a movement point thing? Without piece sliding it is hard to discern the status of my intended attack.

I realize that without any kind of hit-point display, it can be very confusing to see what actually happened in an attack. I'm not sure how I will approach this problem yet, however this is all just another reason to implement the real combat system. The way it works now is that a unit has a 100% chance of dealing damage to the unit it attacks, regardless of terrain. It's firepower is subtracted from the target's hitpoints. Defensive units like pikemen, muskateers, and infantry have lots of hitpoints, as well as modern units in general. I need a display of this information on the new unit selection screen, don't I?

If you attack a unit and it doesn't dissapear, you either didn't take enough hit-points off of it to kill it or you really did kill it and another unit of its type was in the same tile.

I didn't notice anything that seemed to be an outright bug, except for the one about not being able to end your turn. This doesn't seem to happen, though, if you use the interface in a consistent way.

I think it may be caused by closing a city window while you're selecting new units or improvements, however I am not sure. Either way, I'm taking care of it and other things that may be responsible for this bug.

I'm curious, more as a programmer, what the AI players are doing for path-finding. They seem to be somewhat slow at taking their turns compared to Civ2 players with the same number of units. Is this the "connection to capital" calculation? And if so, what does it presently affect?

The AI is probably taking so long because it is randomly moving it's units (because it doesn't know where to go). Unfortunately, my AI is very limited right now. It looks about 5 squares or so in all directions around it to try to find an enemy. If it finds one, it moves towards it to attack. If it doesn't find a target, it randomly moves. I know this puts a huge delay in the game (mainly because the AI players in Civ3 do it too), and it is being taking care of. That might mean that they will just sentry themselves somewhere, I don't know yet. However, you thing that is helping this situation a lot is that the distance the AI checks for enemies has nearly quadrupled. Hopefully this will be okay on slower systems (i'm running at about 2 gigahertz here, so it's real hard for me to tell).
BTW, I often keep track of the AI's ability by clearing all the shroud (F9), then killing my starting settler (k). Unfortunately, you will still have to press enter/space every turn. This has been fixed in version 4b, and also the AI turns are MUCH MUCH faster due to a timing fix. I think that even with the expanded AI processing the turns will still be much faster will all the new fixes.

The AI is pretty good at building roads. I was impressed by that.

Yes, but they need to learn how to build connections between their cities and other players' cities (and upgrade them when the get the proper technologies). Whenever I play, I build the connections for them - it really adds to the gameplay. I love how the road system just links the cities and doesn't cover every single tile of the whole freakin continent like in Civ2/Civ3. You can purposesly blockade a road and it will actually mean something.

They're not quite so good at offense/defense, though; I often see them waltz out of a city that I'm about to attack, and they pretty much leave me alone if there's enough room between our possessions.

The increased targeting distance helps this a lot. When you see them waltzing out the cities you are about to attack, it's because the AI keeps a set amount of units sentried in the city, and then builds 'attacker' units that hunt down enemy units or randomly move. I know this is not the best way of doing things, but it works - for now. Adding diplomacy will rapidly change the way the AI players are handled, and diplomacy is coming. I'm open for suggestions.

I was a bit confused about the population system. Cities max out at 99, but they seem to do so pretty quickly. Big cities also don't seem to be that much more valuable than small ones. What are the "X" and check-mark indicators in the city view, above the growth / trade / prod?

The bigger the city is, the faster it will grow. This is especially true in the early game where decades pass by each turn. There will be structures you have to build to get by population caps, like aqueducts and sewers in Civ 2. These should make it into 4b. There is also disease, which although displayed, is not factored into the population growth yet. And finally there is population-sharing, which is a planned feature that will be implemented into the game a few different ways. Roads are the most basic utility for population-sharing between your cities, then there's railroad stations, highways, harbors, airports, and so on. Propaganda will take a role in population sharing between nations, but that won't be in for a long while.

I agree though, the population growth is way too high

And that's all that comes to mind at the moment. Really nice to see all this progress!

Thanks for the feedback!

I really appreciate it, and I will be keeping track of the growth of your project as well

**dexter4dxm** · December 26, 2001, 01:53

oh yeah, the checkmark/x thing in the city window is that city's connection to the capitol. it works most of the time, but there are apparently some bugs in the city-to-capitol connection function

**dexter4dxm** · December 26, 2001, 02:19

i wanted to get 4b out by now, but i don't think it will be ready for a least a couple days. the save game feature never worked perfectly, but now it's even worse

there's really bad bugs, which make it crash the game if you load a game that was saved after about 5 turns or so. I think I'm going to re-write the whole routine slowly, and make sure I get every little part right. Other than these bugs on my list here, the game is turning out pretty great. The map editor is working again, and the game runs smooth with all 8 players on the map. I will have to increase the map width/height later, probably in ver 5. I'm really starting to like this game, which I suppose is a good thing because I'm writting it

and I need to actually finish it.

Announcement

Civiliza Demo 4 Is Out!

Civiliza Demo 4 Is Out!

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