Civiliza - work continues

[dexter4dxm]

Originally posted by Miznia
Dexter, what do you see as the role of "condemning" a war declaration? It's a brilliant idea...

currently it only affects attitudes between the user and the countries involved. i'm considering adding more effects in the future, like changes in emmigration and such. the whole condemning thing came to me while i was writing the diplomacy routines, so i just kind of threw it in there.

Based on your last screenshot, I'd like to suggest that you not have "The" anything. Even if you're set on using country names (e.g. "Canada") instead of the adjective/people ("Canadian/s"), it would still look better to omit "the." "Assyria declares war on The Hittites" - that looks awful to me. I'd prefer "...declares war on Hittites."

i agree with you on the whole "The" thing. the ones with "The" in front are just the ones that have country names i couldn't quickly figure out. for example, the norse. "Canada declares war on Norse" sounds pretty bad, perhaps i should go the civ3 route and put 'land' at the end? Like, "Canada declares war on Norseland". i don't know, what do u think?

Couple of spelling probs, too; "glorious" and "Scotland" at least...

Thanks for pointing those out.

I also have an attention-getting name for your conflict-centered game. The small number of civs on the board always makes it look like the players are really "civs" and not countries, so why not call such a game...

"RACE WAR: Cleanse The Earth!"

Miznia

(just a joke, by the way)

uhh, no comment

[Miznia]

i agree with you on the whole "The" thing. the ones with "The" in front are just the ones that have country names i couldn't quickly figure out. for example, the norse. "Canada declares war on Norse" sounds pretty bad, perhaps i should go the civ3 route and put 'land' at the end? Like, "Canada declares war on Norseland". i don't know, what do u think?

I don't think you should make up fake country names. Here's what I would do... Whenever countries are *listed*, never use "the," just use "Hittites," or whatever. Then, if you don't like a sentence like "...declares wars on Hittites" (which is, I guess, ugly, but it's better than having a capitalized "The" in there), you should make a flag that says whether "the" is necessary for a given civ, in order to be grammatical.

...Seems petty of me to write so much about it...

I like the city label graphic ("London 13"). It looks slightly cartoonish, or, in the spirit of Civ1. Civ3 city names look like they were screen capped from MS Word.

Miznia

[Miznia]

Oh, I have an idea. Maybe you'll think this is implement-able, especially if your diplomacy isn't too complicated yet:

People complain a lot about the inability (in Civ3, e.g.) to demand that a civ cease war with another civ. It sometimes happens that two of your friends get in a war with each other, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it, except beat the hell out of one side, or "creatively" assist one or the other...

There should be a unilateral, "I guarantee the independence of this civ" statement. I think EU has this. It's Monroe Doctrine-ish.

Your two friends would have to consider your guarantee. They might approach you with $$$ to convince you to rescind your guarantee...

This is a pretty slick solution, don't you think?

[dexter4dxm]

i know i was going on about being here to stay and everything, but i'm not really happy with the current state of the civiliza engine. it's got a lot of great features now, but there are some inconsistencies that are really annoying, mainly the crash-to-desktop bug that happens near the end of every long game. also, i'm constantly debugging and rewritting routines because the game is so unorganized. i have learned A LOT since i first started writing civiliza, and my efforts would be better put to use on something that isn't bound to the limits of this old code.

i like civiliza. i still enjoy playing it, and it's pretty good for being my first actual game, but i think it's time to move on.

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Dex, sorry to hear that!

Keeping up the organization and compartmentalization of the code is a real necessity indeed, one that I'm not so good at as I should be!

If you can't be convinced to reorganize and take another stab at civiliza, then please consider joining one of the C++ oriented alt-civs projects. They can all use coders who will really work, and I think you'd make a Very solid addition to either MD or GGS if either appeals to you.

One other alternative is to try writing AI for civ-evo. I think their AI API will let people write AI in C++.

Wish you the best in your future endeavors regardless

Cya,

Mark

[dexter4dxm]

maybe if civ3 didn't bore me to death so quickly (i think it lasted less than a month) i would be more excited to revive civiliza or join another project, but right now the interest level for this type of game is at zero.

maybe someday i will return, and if i do i will strongly consider joining an existing project team.

as for what i'm up to right now, i'm remaking another ol' favorite of mine. once again it is a strategy game, but this time it will for sure be real-time.

[Straybow]

dex, if you do decide to resurrect your project, I would suggest going to the archives and looking over the Civ3 List rather than starting with Civ3 and looking at some of the Civ4 wish lists.

Go back to the Civ that isn't broken.

[tishco]

sorry to see the project die, altho the c&c one will be cool
civ3 kinda ruined this forum for people like you

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Dex, good luck with the new project! I'd have thought civ 3 would have made you even more motivated to do civiliza . The fact that Civ 2 wasn't the huge advance of civ1 that I was expecting was part of what drove me to starting Clash of Civs. But in any case, if the motivation is gone, its best to give it up. This stuff is Waaay too much like work without a strong desire to push it that one step forward and achieve something really different and fun.

Again, may fortune smile upon you...

[dexter4dxm]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
But in any case, if the motivation is gone, its best to give it up. This stuff is Waaay too much like work without a strong desire to push it that one step forward and achieve something really different and fun.
Again, may fortune smile upon you...

so true, so true. and thanks for the encouragement mark. i wish you the best of luck as well. i'll stop by someday and see how things are going and maybe show off what i've got so far (although c&c has almost no place at apolyton , which reminds me, anyone know of a more fitting forum where i can find people to help guide me along this project and test demo's etc?)

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by dexter4dxm
i'll stop by someday and see how things are going and maybe show off what i've got so far (although c&c has almost no place at apolyton , which reminds me, anyone know of a more fitting forum where i can find people to help guide me along this project and test demo's etc?)

My guess would be either:
ask on OT, I'm sure there are some C&C mavens that'll be there
or do a web search and see which sites are the biggest.

Cya,

Mark

[dexter4dxm]

i suppose i can find some people at a big c&c forum like at planetcnc, but i don't really like the kids at those kinds of forums and i might get more hassle than what it's worth.

that 's what i'll miss about apolyton. great community and it's nice that they have a whole section for non-commercial developers

[dexter4dxm]

just a little side note here:
i ended up moving to the house where the win98 computer is located at, and i decided to do some testing of my new game on it. well well well, pink stuff, just like people said about civiliza on win98 computers.
at first i thought the problem might be video memory, but that doesn't make any sense, because not enough video memory means slower drawing, not less functionality.
it turns out that for some reason, the new directx/win98 doesn't like the color key i've chosen. if i change the code and art to use black, it works fine.
at some point i am going to go back through civiliza and make some changes for a final version, including this color key (transparency) code update. i don't think i ever released the latest version, the one with support for higher resolutions and 31 ai players, so i just makes sense. well, i guess i'm not doing it so much for the 2 people that might download it and play it, but more for my records - just so the game is more polished.

and btw, so far i am REALLY glad i started this 2nd project instead of continuing civiliza. i'm learning a lot, and i'm getting really far, and i even finally got A* pathfinding to work

[dexter4dxm]

sry just had to post again. it's about this color-key transparency thing. in my c&c game, i have to take all the gdi colors out of the image and replace them with the colors of whatever player owns that unit or structure. i have to constantly change the color-key and the color are definitally not (0,0,0) (black), which means the colors wont be converted on win98 machines, which means it will look like gdi owns the whole map, which means the game is unplayable.

ironically, command and conquer doesn't work for windows xp, and my command and conquer only works for windows xp.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Dex

That's why you should code in Java, so you don't have to worry about crap like that

Best of Luck,

Mark