Where is CtP3?

[epicivfreak]

All interesting and ambitious ideas, but who is going to put this all together...

(not me, I'm happy with what I have done in CTP2 Cradle and CTP2 LOTR)

As I said earlier, I've done mod and game development work before - mostly by myself, but also a few group projects. It's been 15 years since I've written a single line of code for a game, but again, I'm willing to dust off those old skills and get down to coding with this. Back then, when I was making games, I only did 2d stuff, so I'd have a bit of a steep learning curve to jump right in and start with the map. Also, as rusty and "out of the game" as I am in the game programming arena, I'd really like to have someone else take over as Lead Programmer of the project as soon as possible - I don't think it would be right for me to do it. Of course, with a day job and all, it would take me forever to do this by myself anyway, so I'm going to try to find help where I can.

I've done some 3d modeling before - I'm certainly not great at it, but I can make some passable placeholders if I had to. I've never done animating though, and I don't even know where to begin with that so I'd definitely need someone else to take over as Lead Artist. I can do some 2d artwork, again I'm not the greatest visual artist, but it can be passable placeholder art. On the other hand, I've been a musician for 20 years, so all I've got to do is hook up my keyboard and I can do most of the music and sound effects.

So the way I see it is we'd need a team that consists of Lead Programmer, Lead Artist, and a Lead Sound Designer at a minimum. Of course, we could pick up additional programmers and artists, maybe even sound designers along the way, but to get started that's what we need. I can contribute to programming and I can do some art, but IMO the only thing I'm really qualified to be Lead in is Sound. I don't see a need to specifically have "designers" on the team - the team needs to be made of of people with development skills, and we can all be designers. Also with 3 leads, it would be easy to hold a simple majority vote on issues we all didn't agree on outright, and quickly move on.

I know I've done much of the upfront "design" work, but I'm certainly open to changing anything if the Leads who join up want to. I'm not doing this to stoke my ego and have things my way, I just want to make (and then play, of course) a better game than what's currently available. While I'm sure Civ5 is going to be a nice game and all, I think it's still going to suffer from most of the problems that previous Civs have, and will get old rather quick.

Speaking about religion, could be enough to implement the already existing religions of the real world, although would be nice to give to the player the opportunity to design a custom religion, although I fear it would be quite hard to decide the eventual modalities.
Perhaps, if the game goes further to the modern era, it will be funny to invent new futuristic religions.

I tackled some religion last night. I found a neat idea over at civfanatics that featured a custom religion system and I pretty much just adopted that with some minor tweaks. Basically when you found a religion (not sure how yet), you get a pop-up to select any two bonuses and penalties you want, and you can even change the name of the religion, though by default I was planning on using real world religion names.

You can really be proud of what you did. I am playing CTP2 with your mod in those last days and I am really enjoying it! :-)

Oh yeah, I used to play cradle all the time...
Awesome mod, but it's getting a bit up there in age now.

[Oliviasdad]

Sorry I missed this thread earlier. A couple of thoughts though;

I would like to see something combining Paradoxes Victoria and CTP. I like the game play going by 1 day at a time, different pop types, pops needing/wanting different commodities to either live and or be happy. Also, I like the different political parties allow different types of game play.

I would like to add these, and a few others to CTP.

I'll have to post more ideas later when I have some more time.

One question in the mean time; I was watching a show last night about building Cathedrals and it was pointed out that some metal working techniques had to be reinvented. What do you think about so much being lost when Rome fell. Do you think a Dark Ages period should be included in a CTP game, or, should Civilizations be allowed to progress. If they are allowed to progress, should they be allowed to progress faster than what they really did. Think about China. What if they had not become isolationist, it's very likely that they may have colonized Australia and Western Americas before Europe came out of the Dark Ages.

If the Dark Ages should be modeled into the game, should random technologies be lost and have to be researched again?

Thanks

[St Jon]

Very sad but CtP1 came in for a lot of stick, some deserved such as the abysmal AI, but did offer so much that was not in CivII.

CtP2 was an utter failure, commercially, as it was released in direct competition with CivIII. The fact that, IMHO, CivIII was by far the weakest of the Civ series - to the extent that I could rarely be bothered to finish a game - is neither here nor there. It was Sid's Civ and as such CtP2 would have had to be earth-shatteringly good to stand a chance. Sadly v2 was not a vast improvement on v1, in many ways I preferred v1 as that was probably the very best MP strategy game I had played right up to the creation of PitBoss in CivIV.

There never will be a CtP3, I fear, as I reckon Activision got their fingers far too badly burnt on v2.

[BureauBert]

As I look at it, the Apolyton Edition has every potential of being made into "CTP3", possibly into the best, the ultimate civ-type game of all times. Having the source code on our hands, it is in theory possible to develop it further endlessly. But we cannot expect from Martin Gühmann to fulfill each and every wish. Currently, this entire, great project depends on one single man's effort and I have a lot of respect for Martin's fidelity and dedication regarding this game. It's a pity that so many others lost their interest (or simply became too busy with other things), but unless other programmers rediscover this project and join Martin in his work, I think the best we may currently hope for is that Martin on his part will not become exhausted before he is able to achieve the things he is aiming for. I on my part will certainly be perfectly happy with a stable, final release of the Apolyton Edition -- when Martin says it's finished it's finished

[Lynx777]

The best thing in Call to Power series was the ability to just group units with a mouse click or two. I played Call to Power 1 and 2 before I bought Civilization 3. I liked Civ 3, but the inability to group units without having to build an army unit was disappointing. If someone made Call to Power 3 that had advanced graphics, the depth of CTP 1 & 2, the ability to go far into the future and have future tech, the ability to simply group units like CTP 1 and CTP 2, and a separate battle screen for battles (maybe not needed with advanced graphics), and the game was marketed properly, it would sell. Also, the feature of CTP 2 having flanking units and all units fought together at same time was much better than 1 unit at a time fighting. I didn't purchase Civ 4 and Civ 5 because of the inability to simply group units and the 1 on 1 fighting of Civ series instead of epic battles like CTP series.

[gregoryrw]

Still alive?

I'm coming a little late to this thread, but are people still thinking on this? For that matter, Apolyton is a bit different than what I remember. Is there a dedicated forum devoted to "wish lists" for future games? Besides the CTP project, FreeCiv and FreeCol are there other open source projects around?

There are a number of features in several of these CIV-type games that I'd to see simultaneously in one game. Way back when, I fooled around with CIVII, CIVII-Test of Time (TOT) and CTPI, and these days I've done the same with FreeCol. (The first 3 had .txt files, while FreeCol has an .XML.) This usually consisted of new units and goods, as well as buildings and wonders (though the latter two were based on pre-existing ones.)


Some items on my wish-list:

Multiple maps, as in TOT. (Hard-coded)
The space "layer" as in CTP. (It'd be cool to see an "underground" layer as well.) (Hard-coded)
Differentiated ocean terrain (continental shelf, rift, etc.) as in CTP. (Hard-coded)
Various requirements for constructing units, buildings and wonders, as in COL/FreeCol. (CIV might require 600 "shields" for a Factory. My FreeCol mod requires "hammers," tools, rope, leather, whale oil, coal, and stone for an Iron Works, which is a "Factory-Level" building. This was easily done in FreeCol's XML file.)

All of these should be optional at the start of the game for those who prefer.

Just a few thoughts out of several. My take-home point would be to make options available, rather than just saying "No" to an entire concept. Anyone else thinking along these lines?

[jayflame2004]

Hi all,

I have just re-installed CTP2 after playing CIV5 and got bored with it.
I recall the joy I had playing CTP2, along with some of the Mods and senarios that people like yourselves created.

I have to add, that out of all the CIVs, CTP2 is my favourite, though is now very out dated.

It is a shame that there is no way to get an organisation to create CTP3.
If there were a way to combine CTP1 and 2, with the latest graphics, I sure it would be fantastic.
Maybe even have a MOD that would allow intergalactic growth, taking the CIV and CTP series to a new level of gaming.
Lets not forget, that the concept of CTP is not just through military might, but other stratagies too, and these should all be considred in any new version of this game.
Bringing some of the concepts of Star Trek and Star Wars into the new version would interest a wider audience.
I'm sure this would take a long time to create, and really stretch someones budget.

Its a shame that most of the gaming community appears to now be on consoles rather than PC or laptops.

I like all the ideas that everyone has put forward, and eagerly await the new version.
Until then, back to CTP2 for some happy gaming ;-)

[DarkCloud]

Wishlists, sadly not currently.
As far as FreeCiv and FreeCol, those are elsewhere. The other Civ 'recreation' mods have either retired or moved. Hexagonian, who did a lot of modding for CTP hangs out here now: http://www.weplayciv.com/forums/index.php

Good luck!

[slowmotionlight]

I think the things to really be improved that don't add needless layers of micromanaging are diplomacy, trade, battle and AI. To my mind everything else is window dressing. Things like wars over resources, needing to source certain resources for your civ, trade wars etc. AIs that don't just default to hostility and actually remove their units when they say so. Diplomacy that is more than just agree to this, lol. Regarding battle, maybe some sort of tactical battle screen where you can move your units around and use actual tactics perhaps. That kind of thing.

How to implement this? No idea sorry.

[Dinner]

EA abandoned CTP2 right after the game was released; they only released one tiny patch for it and then they fired the whole development team and killed the game so I doubt they have any interest in making a CTP3. On a different note modders are still releasing improvement mods for CTP2 10 years after the game was released. Check out this new mod which is the culmination of years of effort: http://apolyton.net/content.php/352-...gamod-released!

[Yolky]

It was Activision who made the game. There was 2 patches made for CtP2 and then it was abonded. Talk ill about activison all you like, but they did release the source code so the modders can still work on the game.

If Activison is was the Evil people say they were, (maybe now but not so much back then) we would never have the Apolyton mods we have now.

So you do have to give Activsion some kudos for releasing the source code.