Civiliza Demo 4 Is Out!

[dexter4dxm]

demo 4b has been ready for a couple days and now that apolyton appears to be back up, i will be able to release it (pretty pointless updating the web site without letting you all know).

[dexter4dxm]

Demo 4B is out.

UPDATED FROM DEMO 4:
-Added DirectSound support
-Added unit attacking sounds.
-Fixed timing after unit moves (both player and AI).
-Added button sound, load/save game sounds, and build city sound.
-Fixed timing after unit attacks (both player and AI).
-Icons for 8 players re-added.
-Fixed bug with aircraft movement where air units were actually
using terrain movement data.
-Fixed bug where player could build roads on ocean tiles.
-Fixed graphical glitches with fighters, helicopters, and
jungle terrain.
-Fixed tech links for some structures.
-Unlinked unused/pointless units and structures to their
respective techs.
-Iron Working now requires Masonry instead of Trade (to help
make Swordsmen come earlier in the game, where they should be).
-Fixed delay between AI turns when they have no units to move,
which GREATLY increases the speed of the game
-Fixed obsolete data for units that were connected to
unlinked units.
-Fixed bug which wouldn't show you what tech you just researched.
-Fixed bug where you would be asked to pick a new tech even though
there are none to pick from (already researched all techs).
-Changed mecha sound because it was way too long.
-Fixed graphical glitch which caused north-south highways/circuits
to not connect right.
-Fixed bug where age graphics would revert after an alt-tab.
-Re-wrote Save/Load game routines. Working perfect so far...
-Added extended AI road building routine.
-Changed AI pathfinding to use the whole map.
-Fixed AI pathfinding CTD bug.
-Fixed bug where build city sound would play even though
a city was not successfully built.
-Added unit stats to unit selection screen.
-Fixed starting screen to center on starting settler.
-Fixed bug where aircraft would have their view blocked by
terrain.
-Fixed bug where roads would link to tiles off the map.
-Fixed bug which prevented players and AI's from getting
past the middile ages.
-Made the map grid look a bit better. That cyan color I
picked earlier was horrible.
-Added blinking for selected unit icon and for end of turn text.
-Leadership now requires Conscription instead of Chivalry.
-Added tech restriction based on what age you are in.
-Added AI selection of city improvements to build.
-Changed attack/defence (firepower/hitpoints) values for
many of the land units.
-Changed build-times for nearly all the units.
-Added ability for barracks to give units an extra
hit-point if they are in the city (they need not be
built there, they simply must begin one turn there).
-Added ability for barracks/harbor/airport to heal
land/sea/air units.
-Catapults/cannons/artillery/howitzer have all been
temporarily removed from the game.
-Added cities category to demographics screen.
-Added AI targeting debugging info.
-Fixed AI pathfinding typo bug, where AI players would
negate the use of highways/circuits completely.
-Changed unit displaying so that only one unit is displayed
per tile (not the entire stack overlapping each other). The
unit with the highest amount of hitpoints will be shown,
unless there is a unit selected, in which case it will be
shown over all others until its turn is over.
-Changed unit combat so that the unit with the highest
amount of hitpoints defends first.
-Added population caps for cities without aqueduct (size 12),
sewers (size 25), and land fill (size 60).
-AI units now move accross highways at double the speed,
and accross circuits at triple the speed.
-Added numbers to represent number of units stacked on a tile.
-Fixed bug that prevented player from ending their turn
if they were selecting a new unit/improvement to build in
one of their cities, and they closed the city window before
making their selection.
-Fixed bug that allowed the player to end their turn after
their turn was over but they selected a sentried/fortified unit.
-Added different city graphics for all the different eras.
-Changed population caps for aqueduct/sewers/landfill (they
are now 20, 40, and 60)
-Added automatic clearing of worked city land tiles for
cities that have reached their max population.
-Fixed bug that prevented cities north and/or west of the capitol
from being linked to the capitol.
-Linked disease to techs and improvements.
-Fixed bug where building a city on highways or better would
replace it with roads.
-Fixed bug where building a city on farmland or better would
replace it with irrigation.

This is the first version of civiliza to have independent editable art files, as well as sound effects. NO art files were downsampled for this release because it is likely that you will only have to download them once. Future updates will only replace the somewhat small exe file, unless of course their is a major art update. Even so, only a couple files would need to be downloaded again. Anyways, the total size of this release is about 3.4 megabytes. I have forgotten how long this takes to download using a 56krap modem

http://www.geocities.com/dexter4dxm/

[dexter4dxm]

with 4b, you can do a sort of "ai watch mode", where you sit back and watch the ai players play. you can see how the ai works and it's great for debugging.
first, start a new game and press 'k' when your starting settler is selected. this will kill that unit, and next turn you will be ejected from the game. at this point, the ai's will begin to take their turns as fast as they can, and since just about all the map is covered in shroud there are nearly no delays at all. you can press F9 to uncover all the shroud on the map so you can see every single move the ai players make; however this makes the game take a long time. at any time you can press F8 to re-cover the map with shroud. do this when you want to speed the game ahead. one last key you'll want to press is F3, which is the demographics/ info screen. you can view constantly updated stats about all the ai players.

[dexter4dxm]

coming soon, diplomacy and random map-generator.

[dexter4dxm]

i will be releasing a small update soon which will include the map-generator and bug fixes. i have to kill a bug which is causing all the units on the screen to disappear for a second. it's really annoying, and i'm not sure yet what is causing it. if you can isolate it before i can, i'd appreciate the help.

[dexter4dxm]

just finished the routine that handles converting and drawing the beaches. about half of the beach tiles are actually converted to already drawn tiles, and the rest are drawn in.

this new method of handling beaches renders the ol' map-editor obsolete. i'm pretty sure you'll see strange stuff if you use it, however you could just figure out what edge pieces to leave out. anyways, who needs the stupid map editor anyways? map generation is much better.

screen shot time.

[dexter4dxm]

here's the intro screen, for those of you who haven't seen it yet

[dexter4dxm]

...and the map generator screen

[dexter4dxm]

obviously i did the new graphics myself...

they'll do for now..

[dexter4dxm]

Demo 4c is here. It's an update, you will need the full version of 4B to use it.

http://www.geocities.com/dexter4dxm/

[Mark_Everson]

Hey dexter:

Lookin' Good. I'll check it out sometime when I'm not terribly functional

Cya,

Mark

[dexter4dxm]

thanks mark. i'll be getting around to clash d6 as well


a few quick notes regarding demo 4c.
there are 2 pretty bad bugs still in the game. the first one being that the map-generator sometimes leaves players out of the game, including the player himself! the other bug is the annoying little disappearing units bug. i think it may be caused by more than one thing, and I'm going to have to spend some time tracking it down.
one more thing. when making a new map, it's a good idea to put as many players as you can (preferably 8) and have land mass at least at 5, that way you end up with one big continent (transports don't exist yet).

here's a shot of the latest build.
finally... city names!

[axi]

Man, you've put every single developper on Alt. Civs to shame with your progress...

As it goes, in two months you will have a pretty much full game. I hope that you will continue from there and turn civiliza into more than just a copy of civ2.

Keep up the good work!

[tishco]

getting 4c
its going well

[dexter4dxm]

a new bad bug has been found in 4c. i should have cought it earlier, but i don't have much time for debugging right now. there is some diplomacy code in the game right now, but it is only the beginning of a whole section i need to write. well, a small part of this code made it so you couldn't use most of the F-keys after just a short while of playing. this bug has been fixed and the demo 4c update has been, well, updated. if you already downloaded 4c and you want to use the F-keys throughout the whole game (including saving and loading!), download 4c again.