Hi Clashers, introduction to OpenCiv3

[VetLegion]

Hello clash enthusiasts!

I am familiar with Clash of civs project for some time now. I sporadicly checked the forums, and I have demo 4 on my machine. (thanks for help installing it )

Recently, from civ3-suggestions forum idea emerged to program another civ, civ3, and to try to implement the best of suggestions in it. I have modest programing expirience, and this is first time, I got involved in a large, internet based project.

Our first decision is to be open-source.
Secondly, we agreed we want to take maximum advantage of every material we can access, in order to make our game as good as possible.

That is actually the reason for this post.

I am aware that many civ projects are going on right now. Besides commercial, there are Clash and FreeCiv (transfering to c++ now, a mayor breakthrough to that game).

Many of our ideas (and some code) overlap. Since OpenCiv3 is just a month old, it is still in very much design phase. I want you to know Clash forums are a great source of inspiration and information to me. I am fairly indifferent to design discussions (I gave up having Ideas when I downloaded 500 pages of The List ).
However, I find stuff about code design here that is very interesting to me, in particular some older discussions by Blade_Runner (macro language), F_Smith (OO code design), your multiplayer discussions and similar...

Let me know whether you think that is ok or not.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi VetLegion:

Sure, check out the forum all you want. I'm probably much more likely to play OC3 than I am to play Civ3, since they are going in all the wrong directions IMO. If you spot any areas for active collaboration, let us know!

Good Luck to you and the rest of your team,

Mark

[VetLegion]

Thank you for your good wishes, I wish the best to Clash team too.
I hope that in time we will get the kind of momentum Clash has.

I am mostly interested in multiplayer model. If I understood things good, Mark, you had to rewrite&adapt a big part of the code at least once. That is our primary concern, and we are trying to avoid it by design-first, code-later (yes, the cathedral approach ).

So I have a few questions, tell me if you want me to ask in the adequate(old) threads.

Firaxis Civ3 going the wrong way? Do you know something I dont?
I know they are probably doing a 3d engine, and that itself will be enough to jump away from CTP2 competition. I think that is a good move.

[Mark_Everson]

Well, personally I'm not sure that our multiplayer model is all that well thought out. So although you are welcome to read it and think about it, I don't claim it's necessarily a model of something you should consider using. For instance we talked a lot about peer-to-peer models, when a client/server model might actually be better because of scalability issues.

In terms of major reorganizations, what we have had so far is dramatically changing the package structure, and ditching my old economics model. I certainly do believe in planning ahead as much as possible. But I think so many things are difficult to foresee in a game project of this scope, that too much planning before the coding starts to get into diminishing returns fairly soon.

You can go ahead and ask questions, but if answering them isn't core to getting the Clash project going then my answers will be very brief of necessity. If you don't think your questions or comments will be of use to the Clash project, then it would probably be better if you just e-mailed me your questions. I'll respond as time permits.

On civ 3... I'm sure we differ on this, but I actually don't really much care what it looks like. I want a game that is smart, and that I can play without drowning in micromanagement. From what I have seen civ 3 will be neither of these. So I don't anticipate buying it.