The Clash Forum Guestbook

[Brino]

First of all, I think this is a great game idea.
Second, I would like to help out and be a part of making this game if you need more help. I have experience in object-oriented programming, mainly C++, and I have experience coding websites (HTML, javascript, CSS, cgi, etc.). Send me a note if I can help out.

[Mark_Everson]

Brino:

Cool, we need all the willing workers we can get. I'll contact you by email as you suggested.

[Twinge]

Hmmm... Came over hear when I was looking for a copy of a Civ1 Tech Chart to send to a friend, and it looked interesting, as I've always liked the Civilization series... Depending on the quality of graphics, I might be able to help with some; I only know programming with VB so I couldn't help much with that, but I could defently playtest it.
I'll try Demo 4 after I post this =)
ICQ-7777579
Email-the_dark_twinge@hotmail.com

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Twinge:

Welcome to Clash!

Yeah, we could use help on art, nobody's doing any work on it at the moment. Why don't you poke around a bit, and if you're interested let me know what you see yourself doing to help out. Playtesting will be good when the next demo comes out, hopefully by the end of the year! Please also comment on the existing design wherever you feel appropriate.

-Mark

[Twinge]

Alright, I've made my initial comments (emailed them to you) Feel free to post them up for others to see.
Basically--It looks quite interesting, I like the tech tree concept, User Customization is key, and make sure you don't overcomplicate things; I'll make many more comments and such as soon as I read the rest of the models and Demo #5 comes out.

[Whitemage]

Hi all! Clash looks really coolJ… but on with the questions.

Richard’s:
1:RPG-like.
2:Ecology moil is fine, as long as it isn’t overly complex.
3:Not sure. It would probably be to complicated.
4:Cilider is fine; donut and flat should be available for scenarios, and you might wont
a option at the start-up.
5: I’d like to be able to leave it to a competent AI or control it myself.
Roquijad’s:
A: Around 5-6.
B: The stuff in the social model looks good; I don’t know if you should have a middle class or not.
C: Less control, but don’t take it to far(losing control of the military or the budget is just
To Much).
D: Very much so!
E: I don’t know…
F: Yes, I like what I see in the modals.
G: No, it would get to complicated.
H: Ethnicity’s.
I: Yes!
J: When It doesn’t interfere with gameplay:7. When it does:1 .
K:12 out of ten! MOST IMPORTANT!(I hope to start a thread on this soon.)
L: Yes; moderately detailed.
LGJ’s:
1a: Customizable Wonders( both in the game and in scenarios). Other than that, I’m not sure.
1b: Both!
2a: Yes
2b: Yes, but I’m not sure how to implement it.
2c;Political parties maybe?
2d: Not sure.
3a: Very much a part of the game.
3b: One quibble; I don’t think you should force a character to stay in one alignment bracket. It should be hard, but not impossible.
3c: I’ll have to think on that one…

Whew! A lot of typing! Before I forget, what does IMO mean? And if you’re really sending monthly updates to a newspaper, could you put them up on the web site in some obvious place?

[Twinge]

IMO=In my opinion, if theres an H in there it means humble...
Which reminds me, there were lots of other 2-3 letter acronyms used throughout clash... maybe there should be some sort of glossary of terms? I remember having a hard time understanding a few concepts because the relyed heavily on certain acronyms...
RP=Research Points...
OO=???
(Object Oriented?)
And there were several others which I didn't even have a guess at...
might be helpful.

On another note, I might also be able to make some sort of music or sound... if you give me some ideas of anything your looking for (and the style of the music, etc) I can see what I can do.

[Richard Bruns]

YMMV = Your Mileage may Vary; something that works for one person might not please another.
OOP = ocbect oriented programming
XP = extreme programming (modern programming method)
OOD = object oriented design (needed for the previous 2)

Things like the technology glossary will usually define the terms used in that model. I make sure that the model proposal defines all acronyms, later discussion referrs to those.

Music and sound would be really helpful. It would be great if you could go ahead and make sounds for the events that were in demo 4. Thanks.

[Twinge]

Well, as I've mentioned to Mike, I don't really like that style of program, written in Java (thats designed for non-internet)... Requiring defualt directorys and the like are always big downsides to me. That, tiled with low download speeds, low hard drive space, and other things, made me decide not to get any demos until 5 comes out. So, as I said earlier, If you could describe simple kinds of things your looking for, I'll see what I can do.

[axi]

Yo Team!

I'm here if you want anything from me. Let me see some action and I'll be posting in an instant!

Since I have just replied to one of Mark's inquiring e-mails , I thought I should honor the original purpose of the thread and declare my presence, silent as it may be.

VENCEREMOS!



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"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell

[roquijad]

"VENCEREMOS!": I just love how much of a communist Axi is!!!

[axi]

***bump***

Yes, that WAS a sticky thread, but with the recent malady that ACS has undergone, it has lost it's sticky status and has sunk in it's proper position. I hope that everything is ok with the Clash Team's accounts (alot of accounts in Apolyton were messed up).

This brings back the issue if we have a backup of some sort, of the most important threads for the development of Clash. Mark?

------------------
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell

[Mark_Everson]

Hi All:

Well, the discussion in this extremely useful thread has died off, after getting us lots of good information from beyond our small circle. There are two possible conclusions. Either we only had four lurkers to start with, or we are intimidating them again because of the huge size of our discussions. My guess is the latter. I have a remedy to propose..

If you are interested, I think it would be valuable for the unindicted co-conspirators that participated in this thread to start a new one afresh. Put all the old polling questions at the top, and then see if we get some more input. The first poster should of course put in a link to this thread. I think the poll questions need to be extremely short, like a sentence or two. Any further information for those who are more interested should be linked to IMO. Perhaps whoever starts out the thread should also state that the discussion of each item should be relatively short, and encourage people to post long answers in one of the regular threads.

Anyway, that's my proposal. If you like it, we can start up the new thread, and I'll ask Markos to make it the sticky one.

[jandreu]

Hello to all:

I downloaded some days ago the Clash Demo 4 and I started to play quicly after downloading it. But the game disappointed me, as I was looking forward more. But, it is a demo and it is logical.

After playing two games and be defeated both times, I started to read more detailed the website and most of the things I read were very good, so I go on reading and finally I decided to help because I think the general idea: Good AI, historical accuracy and lots of variables to make the game complex.

I do not know what is the best forum this mail suit better because I would like to write some general ideas.

Being a wargamer, I started to play Sid's Meier Civilization (the first one long time ago) thinking it would be the same than the Avalon Hill Civilzation. They aren't. They only share the name and the year of starting. Avalon's Hill ones is funnier and you must think a lot to win the game, but you need 5 or 6 more players.

Sid Meier's one is very adictive turn-based game, but extremely inaccurate, but with a great potential because it has some very good ideas. The next civilizations have some technologies, units, more, but the general ideas are the same without improving some of the faults.

The first and main problem of the game I think it is the time a turn last. In a great scale game with economy/technology research, etc... the game turn should be long enough to be able to see changes (as the turn in Civilization), but then it is very difficult to simulate other things like wars, production, etc...

So my idea is to make two time for turn. One for the war and other in technology and economics ... I don't know exactly how much time a turn is suppossed to be, but even if it is a year (and then you have a 5000 turn-length game) the units can move a lot (even the ancients can win or lose wars of several battles in one year, and in modern war, things are much more quicker. On the othe hand, another topics, such as economy or trade (I haven't read anything about it, where is in the website?) can be handled in a more spacious turn.

So my idea is a 5 years turn divided in 3 months war-turns: at the beginning of the 5 years turn all decissions (economics , diplomatic, etc..) are made, and also some military: what number of armies are mobilized for these 5 years and if declaring the war in which war-turn is done.

If nobody wants war (remember that an empire cannot start many wars) the 5 years past quickly and start another turn. If somebody wants war (for example at the middle of the turn) The clocks ticks until there and a more tactical game starts with a 3 months turn and allowing players control of several factors: Now more armies can be raised, etc...

These are some of my ideas after playing several wargames (some like Imperium Romanum II are more a historical simulation than a game) and comparing with the different civilization types approaches.

I hope these ideas help and sorry if it si not the exact thread of the topic.

Jorge

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Jorge!

Glad you're interested in working on the project! I have only a few moments before I need to leave for work. On military vs econ turns we've taken a somewhat different approach from yours, but there are similarities also. At least for now what we're trying is:
1. there's only one turn, But...
2. a month worth of military action takes place during it
3. a variable amount of economic or other action happens during it.

You can find more on the topic if you use the search function looking for maybe 'military economic turn' or something similar.

Later,

Mark