I have just completed the wireframe work for a series of units to upgrade the mechanized warfare capabilities in CIV3.

The first unit is the Mobile Combat Engineer which is designed to accompany Mech Infantry and Modern Armor.

The unit is intended to have strong defensive characteristics and the smooth bore engineer's gun that can destroy improvements at short range as well as fire the 20,000 steel flechette beehive rounds if needed to help defend against an attack.

The unit has a hydraulic plow blade to build roads, destroy defenses, and/or help clear mines and also has a hydraulic lifting arm for retrieving damaged units or clearing terrain.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/mobile_comb_eng_proto.jpg

I have tested the unit in some games, and it works great, but the AI does not have the ability to use partial terraforming capabilities with a unit. The only way to engage terraforming as an AI strategy is to have all the terraforming jobs engaged. My intent was only to give this unit the ability to build roads and fortifications in addition to its defensive power and shortrange bombardment strength (Yes, Virginia, steel flechettes are lethal).

I have a good working 3D model but have not yet figure out how to project shadows in the CIV3 compatible colors and I want to try and avoid having to hand edit the shadows to be the correct color to work with the CIV3 Flcs. Any tips on projecting the correct shadow colors or simple conversions of the shadows using JASC software??

well, keep working...

d00d. That looks awesome. It could be like an upgrade of the Worker or something like that.

whatever happened to this?

Its done.

I have been play testing it for about 2 weeks now.

Since it is a part of a package with 20 complete and fully animated original units, I have not yet figured out how to distribute the package appropriately. There have been some unresolved copyright issues that have been nagging the forum as well as a lingering need to address some of the underlying cost issues associated with just the licensing of the 3d animation packages that make these units possible.

The whole package of advanced mechanize warfare units creates quite an extension of the game and in many cases the AI players will actually build and use the units to a reasonable effect.

With this unit, the primary stumbling block to effective AI use in the game is realted to how Firaxis has the terraforming functions programmed as an all or nothing decision process. For the AI to use the unit to build improvements to support combat activities (roads, railroads, fortifications) you must also allow the unit to build irrigation, mines, and colonies as well as plant forests and clear jungles etc. SOmetimes the AI gets sidetracked and uses your combat engineers to do dopey farmer tasks because once a unit has been built, the AI does not consider the cost of the unit in its decision as to whether the task assigned to the unit represents a cost effective use of resources. A 140 shield cost combat engineer will be assigned to irrigate desert right along side a 10 shield worker if the AI makes that proximity decision.

So, you are going to try and sell your "package"? If so, that's lame IMO. Your units look really cool, and I know it's time consuming, and I'm sorry if it's expensive, but f*cking hell...

Haven't figured out what to do yet. That's why you don't have any of the units including the ones you haven't seen previews of.

I had access to buy a $3,000 professional animation software package for $650 because of my educational contacts. Expecting me to give you the benefits of that purchase just because you think you are special is Lame IMO.

The primary dufoushead work is still in converting the animations to match a CIV3 pallet standard. We gladdly do all these extra labor type things as our contribution to the community and to expand or gamming enjoyment.

A couple of people helped with the upfront purchase costs for the software and they already have received the benefits in the animations and sound effects files. It's sort of like buying a chainsaw, if you go in together and buy the saw then you all get to cut wood. TO have groups of people say I don't need to contribute to buying the chainsaw because I can always just borrow yours. That's lame with practice. JMHO.

We wanted to make sure all the unit development work would be potentially compatible with RON and xMAP even if we could or could not find a reasonable way to distribute it to other for CIV3.

oops double post :(

Cracker; I like your work, and first things first this is not a moan, so don't get upset.

I am unemployed at the moment. I finished University last year And for the last twelve months Iv'e been working as a temp, Lame pay and lame conditions, with little or no prospect of promotion, cos Iv'e been trying to get a job in graphic design/ advertising etc.. Since Sept 11th all the creatives are at the sharp end of the stick, no ones hiring and those who are can take their pick of experienced designers who have just lost their job somewhere else. I would love to have a job in computer game design, but without experience/ conections its not going to happen any time soon.
So for now Iv'e got to get a sh*tty job selling people double glazing or similar and just continue doing civ III graphics as a hobby. No one gets paid for doing their hobby (I only ever sold one peice of art work, an etching for £40, it cost me almost £22,000 to do my degree), but sometimes it leads to a job where you do get paid.
The "play the world" expansion pack is going to have a "best of the net" disk on it with selections of peoples art work and scenarios from sites such as Apolyton and here at civ fanatics (It was confirmed it the webchat at poly the other week). If you get you stuff on that disk, you can put on your CV that you have had some of your art work published, admitedly you didn't get paid for it.

Even if you don't have anything on the disk, you can point potential employers at Civfanatics and say "look there is my great art work, and here are dozens of game fans and their honest opinions of my work", but they've got to see the work first. Its no good Just showing endless previews.

It would be nice to get paid for doing this but the reality is, its just not going to happen :) .

If you think your getting a raw deal Just think of the poor guy who invented tetris.

Smoking Mirror (J.M.T.)

Smoking Mirror,

You do really nice work.

In the computer graphics design arena it may be an unfortunate fact of life that creativity is taking somewhat of a backseat to productivity. The realities are demanding the use of ever more powerful tools to focus resources on producing rich and immersing entertainment experiences.

Someone who produces flawless and inspired artwork at the end of six weeks of work will not be hired to do the same job as someone who can produce a functional graphic work in an afternoon.

We realized fairly quickly that the community represented on this website was very special but only represented a small faction of the real world. Those of us that contributed to buying the 3D animation package realized quite quickly that we would gladly spend the price of a cheap movie rental for the chance at some new unit graphics and game play options but that this did not reflect the mind set of many users.

That's seems to be why we are where we are in the development cycle. If we build the 3D graphics models that we can use to produce graphics in a variety of scales and formats for the games we choose to play, then we can seek out the game that has the best game play engine to support the type of scenario experience that we want to play.

The fit with CIV3 currently is very good but there are many hardcoded roadblocks to making these things work at even some small level. I have not fully figured out if some of the roadblocks in naval and air units are the result of expediency or lack of understnding in the original game design or if they are designed in limits that will only be remedied when a future XP type product is released. If you wanted to reserve some options for future game expansion to generate extra income, then hardcoded limits would be one of the most effective way to accomplish this for the general public.

The real unit creation work that is generating functional 3D units for the game is currently limited to only about 5 or 6 individuals like yourself, kinboat, womoks, pesoloco, and perhaps our work.

We currently feel that the CIV3 game and the upcoming RON release will be games that really require a functional 3d animation design that includes the animation files plus audio. Producing these outside of a real design package takes 10 or 20 times as much time to complete the a task that is only partially as good.

If all we are doing is modifying existing units then the 3d package is not absolutely required. If we are making new stuff then we have to get up to a higher level.

The only reason we are currently at an impasse is that we feel it isn't fair to not find a way to share the costs of the major software tool that makes this stuff possible. We can animate 10 times as many units as we are currently producing if we could share the costs and have other people finish off the final tasks that get the animation converted for use in CIV3. Everyone should not have to buy the $650 or $3000 software package but as a group we should go in together and make the commitment in these areas.

There are plenty of other examples where people are sharing model packs and graphic design sets for a minimal cost that helps to recover the cost of their software platforms (look at renderosity and the other websites that have marketplaces). This works and it doesn't have to be expensive. But if it doesn't work we end up where we currently are and that is with a limited result that can't use the more advanced tools unless someone is willing to spend three grand to win a popularity contest.

I can't help but also observe that we are talking about much bigger issues here because some of the animation stuff we can use goes way beyond what we currently think of in the game but will come to expect when RON and other products are released in the coming months. Things like battlefield smoke, discharge clouds. flashes, explosions, and on target effects are all possible with our current tool set. It would just be nice to know if people think that the impacts of these features and units that interact and produce them would be of any value to people who want to play them in the game.

I hope you don't think I am upset because I am not even close to that. I just feel we will all come up shorter on the stick because too few people will invest in the tools and the process to make these things happen if there is not an ethical standard to try and share the base costs (not the cost of time and effort but the special tools). We have a software tool that can do the job but since very few other people do, there is not a fair exchange market where we can get as much as we give in most cases. The freeware and steal-it processes only create a block that leaves us all with less to work with in the long run. Its different when we talk about stuff we can do is Animation Shop packages that are generally available to everyone but that's not whate we are tacking about

I think it is important to look at bigger issues and the metaissue of this site is the cration of a new type of literature (bear with me for a little, Its 4AM where I am and I feel ready to investigate the big picture).
O.K I admit that it would be nice if we could have that level of interaction with the computer games and the gaming industry, but there are only a few of us who have that sort of interest and the drive to have that sort of relationship with computers. The Civ series has atracted many people who feel that the computer gaming experience should be more like reading or writing a book than watching a movie. But overall that audience is still very small. Most people prefer a pasive gaming experience, its why PC games have such a small share of the market, Many people find Civilisation too complicated to relate to even in its standard form.

What you are taking about is the begining of a new kind of literature where the games are just the language, and we are the writers, but at the moment that language is just too complicated, I don't know about you, but my expertise extends only to graphical concerns, I can't program computers if it wern't for Moenirs Flickster program, I would still be sat here scratching my head trying to get my ideas to work in CIV II.

What is needed is a totaly visual programing language, based on our own visual grammar, but that is years away, even if it were practical.
My research at art school was devoted to trying to figure out how such a language would be designed, A universal Icongraphic language, and my conclusion is that even if it were possible, it would likely be the work of a lifetime, and as such uneconomical in any human timescale, it would be the work of generations, windows 21XX. We live in a post modern society where every one has an independant visual gramar, What the image of charlie brown means to one person, it means something else to some one else, this is basicly the reason that dream analysis is impossible, because when you dream your brain works in raw visual gramar, taking iconographic images and fitting them to subconsious ideas. Before you can decipher some one elses dreams you have to build a full profile of their personal visual gramar.

With present tools all we can do is edit our computer literature, within the confines of the games' genre, thats the apeal of Civilization, such a large canvas; there are almost no limits, Human history, past present and futre? that covers a lot of ground. But the limitation is the scale, we can only interact with our story at a macroscopic scale; Cities, Armies, continents.

I want a Programing language that is as powerfull as the english language, that can create the sort of literature displayed by text classics, Dostoyevskys "Crime and punishment", George Orwells "1984". Centuries of literary development and the new literature reads like a tax return, or history book, the results of a motor racing event, tabloid journalism.
I aspire to games with the literary depth of Hemmingway, or Joseph Conrad.

O.k CIV three is a good place to start, but What we need is a real language, Graphical improvements are just florishes of the pen, , But many of the games realeased to day are nothing but mere caligraphy, When is the gaming industry going to stop producing games, and get on with the serrious business of giving us the power to make our own (and I'm not talking tedious colision detection defecient text adventures or scrolling shootum ups, Real games with the sort of depth to compete with Civilisation, or chess ;) ).

I'm looking forward to your next generation programing language Smoking Mirror... when did you say you'd be done 21XX? :) can't wait. Plus for someone who's typing this at 4 in the morning you are surprisingly coherent and thoughtful... Those extra cups of coffee really come in handy :) And I've already mentioned my thoughts on selling unit packs before so I won't go into it again...