History of CtP modmaking and the release of the source code

[Locutus]

Thanks to the brilliant insight of some of Activision's (former) game developers, the most distinctive feature about the Call to Power games is without a doubt their customizability. Of course, now that the source code has been released, this has feature has become infinitely stronger than it already was. The community that has been modmaking and customizing these two games and that has lobbied for the release of the code has a history going back 5 years. But only a handful of people have been regulars at Apolyton since the site's inception, so many people are probably not aware of some or most of this history. In this article I will dive into the deepest corners of my mind to try and tell the tale of the CtP modmaking community, and how the release of the source code came to be. (I apologize in advance for leaving out any important people, mods, events, etc -- my memory has more holes than Swiss cheese, so I probably didn't mean to.)

Note: This post is under construction, to get this old content into the new Apolyton Civilization Site.

[MarkG]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CTP2 (3 years since the release of Call to Power 2)

actually it was yestrerday

http://apolyton.net/news/search.php?Category=CtP2&LookFor=both&Find1=SHIPPING+EARLY&AndOr=and&Find2=

[Maquiladora]

Still life in the old dog yet.

[Gilgamensch]

It ain't dead...........

And hopefully will live for ever

Happy birthday CTP2 (and thanks Activision for giving us this great game!)

[MarkG]

our anniversary feature is up!

http://ctp2files.apolyton.net/3years/history1.php

thanks to Locutus!!

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by MarkG
our anniversary feature is up!

http://ctp2files.apolyton.net/3years/history1.php

Awesome!

Happy birthday CtP2

[Alexander's Horse]

I really should give this game another try.

[Peter Triggs]

Nice one Locutus,

It's hard to believe how fast the years have flown by.

What will next year bring?

[Alexander's Horse]

Does multiplayer work now?

[Peter Triggs]

Nothing really serious has been done yet. There's 1.8 million lines of non-commented c++ code. It may take a while.

[Maquiladora]

MP does work as good as any other, in fact it has less cheats than Civ2. The non-working things i see in CTP2 MP is resynchs, and how they mess up the graphs and the city style bug for the non-host.

[child of Thor]

Nice article Locutus

Its a crying shame that a game this old is still basicaly the cutting edge of the TBS genre - still atleast with the code the community can keep it alive and kicking

[Gilgamensch]

Locutus,

a not to bad job

BUT,

you might have wanted to emphasis that for such a game it was the first time it happened, the release of the source (IIRC).

And I am still waiting for our new CTP2 :doitnow: (although there is some progress in view )

[Flinx]

Wow, three years!

[Caranorn]

Locutus, you also forgot all the artists who created sprites and graphics for CTP1 (which we still use now in CTP2). I think that was also an important part of CTP's modmaking history. Unfortunatelly, those people seem to have dropped away from the game(s) now so that we haven't had any new (original) sprites for a while now.

Otherwise good article;-)

Marc aka Caran...

P.S.: Odd how I've become a graphics freak with CTP, usually I'm more of the "forget all the fancy art, make the game challenging" type. But I guess many of the original Activision sprites were too ugly or unrealistic for me to accept (and the fan made sprites just the opposite).