What are people's thoughts on this idea.

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Jimmyh

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This is probably going to be a long shot, but I'm going to throw this out there and see what people think.

Some of you older folk may remember me from around the Civ3 era. I converted some units from AoE/AoK, And I had a bash at creating an editor for civ3 before the official one came out.
Moving onto Civ4 and I wasn't all that impressed , I think mainly due to the 3D aspect of it. Civ4 is where the gameplay side of things started to learn towards the casual/mass market audience.
I'm not even going to talk about Civ5, there are plenty of threads talking about how much people dont like it. I bought it, played a few games and was like meh.

I loved the good ole days of Civ3, you didn't need an uber computer to run it and it had some solid game play.
And let's not forget some of the great people I remember who were around then, I'm sure most of you will remember Kinboat, Kal-el, Gramphos, Aaglo, utahjazz7, recon1591, zulu9812, Smoking Mirror and I'm sure Steph is still around some where. And ofc lets not forget Sn00py!!!

I'd just like to say I cant stand what they've done to the Civilization series to dumb it down. So I'm here to propose a solution.

I'd like to know what people's thoughts are on creating our own Civ game :O
Now before you all shoot me down and say it'll never happen, lets have a think about it.

At it's core a Civ game is very simple, you have a map, you have units that you move around the map, they build cities and cities build improvements and more units.

Now does it need to be 3D? - No.

Does it need multi-player? - Now I'm not big on multiplayer so I'm going to say No. I know a lot of people will say otherwise.

Does it need to be moddable? - Since we're trying to create a game with solid/addictive game play it shouldn't be needed. Atleast not in the beginning. And you shouldn't need modding to put the features you want in, they should already be there!

The the biggest area of coding is going to be AI and combat, and that will take months to get right.
Another thing I wont be able to do are art assets, so they would need to be provided by the community. Along with the UI design.

The biggest draw I think for this is going to be the fact that we will determine how the game plays and what features it has and we wouldn't have to answer to any one.

Plans going foward are to gather interest, and then start deciding on features.
I have plenty of code around that I could use to get some thing up and running very quickly.

Regards.
James
 
Jimmyh said:
This is probably going to be a long shot, but I'm going to throw this out there and see what people think.

Some of you older folk may remember me from around the Civ3 era. I converted some units from AoE/AoK, And I had a bash at creating an editor for civ3 before the official one came out.
Moving onto Civ4 and I wasn't all that impressed , I think mainly due to the 3D aspect of it. Civ4 is where the gameplay side of things started to learn towards the casual/mass market audience.
I'm not even going to talk about Civ5, there are plenty of threads talking about how much people dont like it. I bought it, played a few games and was like meh.

I loved the good ole days of Civ3, you didn't need an uber computer to run it and it had some solid game play.
And let's not forget some of the great people I remember who were around then, I'm sure most of you will remember Kinboat, Kal-el, Gramphos, Aaglo, utahjazz7, recon1591, zulu9812, Smoking Mirror and I'm sure Steph is still around some where. And ofc lets not forget Sn00py!!!

I'd just like to say I cant stand what they've done to the Civilization series to dumb it down. So I'm here to propose a solution.

I'd like to know what people's thoughts are on creating our own Civ game :O
Now before you all shoot me down and say it'll never happen, lets have a think about it.

At it's core a Civ game is very simple, you have a map, you have units that you move around the map, they build cities and cities build improvements and more units.

Now does it need to be 3D? - No.

Does it need multi-player? - Now I'm not big on multiplayer so I'm going to say No. I know a lot of people will say otherwise.

Does it need to be moddable? - Since we're trying to create a game with solid/addictive game play it shouldn't be needed. Atleast not in the beginning. And you shouldn't need modding to put the features you want in, they should already be there!

The the biggest area of coding is going to be AI and combat, and that will take months to get right.
Another thing I wont be able to do are art assets, so they would need to be provided by the community. Along with the UI design.

The biggest draw I think for this is going to be the fact that we will determine how the game plays and what features it has and we wouldn't have to answer to any one.

Plans going foward are to gather interest, and then start deciding on features.
I have plenty of code around that I could use to get some thing up and running very quickly.

Regards.
James
Click to expand...

Well, there's already FreeCiv :)

I've thought that this idea would be interesting because it could illustrate what we as an amateur community can come up with. A lot of the posts here sound as if people know game design in and out, so it would be a good opportunity to put our money where our mouth is.
 
Dibs on naming the Bowser monster like creature -FC-Commando (from Sim City) that random events youre army in half.

Muhahahaha.

ss_simcity_bowser.gif
 
Sure. I'll be happy to write your documentation. :)
 
New and interesting. +1

Aside from the AI, the game is quite simple. I can think of only a handful of (Java) classes such a program would need:

Array, EventListener, Graphics, and the various lightweight GUI components on the screen.

EDIT: Assuming 2D graphics here, I no nothing about 3D stuff.
 
ss_simcity_bowser.gif
Click to expand...

The music in SNES SimCity is like valium :)

The way they've set up the graphics on Civ 5 they may as well have used 2D
The world map doesn't have much in the way of parallaxing and perspective. It's there, but its hardly noticeable, and you can't rotate the camera unless you enable the debug
So aside from a few shaders for the water effects (which can pass with cheapo enviromental bumpmapping too - geometry reflections are subtle and could be kludged) it may have well been made with tiled sprites
 
Most of these "let's make our own game" projects end in failure. Just go mod FreeCiv if you really want a custom 2d civ game.
 
Welcome back, JimmyH.

Actually, I kind of like the Mods Legends of Revolution and Road to War for Civ IV, and History in the Making II for Civ V.

I hope you find a team to work with, be it on the Civ III, IV, or V forum.
 
I love to think about how I would design my own Civilization game, I really do, but I never entertain a hope that it will ever be made. It's too much work, and there's already FreeCiv.
 
What would make it really different is if you can mod up FreeCiv or make your own with a mod that has hex maps. That's the only thing that really attracts me to Civ5. Everything else described about it makes it sound like a buzzkill of a game. But the hextiles are long overdue--they should've been introduced during civ3's debut.

Another change I'd like to see is allowing cities to build more than one building at a time. 3 queues ought to do. That's in my ideal game. As it stands now, I'm pretty happy with civ3.

(x-posted to civ3 forum)
 
Jimmyh said:
[...]

Now does it need to be 3D? - No.

Does it need multi-player? - Now I'm not big on multiplayer so I'm going to say No. I know a lot of people will say otherwise.

Does it need to be moddable? - Since we're trying to create a game with solid/addictive game play it shouldn't be needed. Atleast not in the beginning. And you shouldn't need modding to put the features you want in, they should already be there!

The the biggest area of coding is going to be AI and combat, and that will take months to get right.
Another thing I won't be able to do are art assets, so they would need to be provided by the community. Along with the UI design.

The biggest draw I think for this is going to be the fact that we will determine how the game plays and what features it has and we wouldn't have to answer to any one.

Plans going foward are to gather interest, and then start deciding on features.
I have plenty of code around that I could use to get some thing up and running very quickly.

Regards.
James
Click to expand...
awesome idea!

but there are a few issues:
  • civ fans will never agree on what is the best civ evaaar
  • you need a concept-document(what will the player do in your game, how do parts of your game interact, bla, bla)
  • there must be a leader. the person, who knows exactly how the actual game must look like

i'm fairly competent in C++
PM me if the platform will be C++
 
I just went to check out FreeCiv, and it looks like a good start. However, it doesn't even have sound, and the graphics are like Civ2. It would still probably be better to start from there, since it's all open source, rather than from scratch.

But honestly, this just sounds like something you or anyone wouldn't see through to the end. It would probably be a lot of work.
 
Not to sound facetious or anything, but why does it have to be built from scratch when an existing Civ game can be modded?
 
Smote said:
Agreed, very few people will play a game that is not visually appealing.
Click to expand...

I'll be doing the graphics, and by my standards, Civ5 only barely passes. Civ4 was as if one of the artists puked on their screen, although I shouldn't blame them, they had to use a horsehockey 3D engine.
 
Originally Posted by Hail
civ fans will never agree on what is the best civ evaaar
Click to expand...

This!

If you would take a humble opinion of a fellow Civver for a game idea: Civ 3's gameplay - a more linear style, a more horizontal empire, simple UI with advisors (and all without the hardcore corruption) with Civ 4's religious factionalism, corporations (which should provide you bonii like oil, not need it to build the corp IMO so if you have no oil, you're not screwed), BTS's Better AI mod (if one can somehow implement such adaptive AI to a newly designed game)

I could do without the fancy grafx (civ3's are excellent already, civ4 is cartoony but it's lovable in its own way). I could probably do without the promotion/counter system (although i love unit vs. counter-unit exploits), I could definitely do without spaghetti roads everywhere (thanks civ3), I could do without spreadsheets (thanks civ4 for making my civ experience like working at my job - effin' excel spreadsheets), and of course I could do without a SOD (thanks Civ3 & Civ4 w/ it's throwaway cats and trebs - base military might on city pop... easy enough to code in Civ4 BTS, the bigger your cities the more people that can pick-up guns and fight for you or break into civil-war - either way you have an army of people)

I guess it's a start but this would be my wish-list (this is a wish-list thread right? :crazyeye: )
 
Maybe all units are based directly on a city and you can have only as many units as city pop? (baring special stuff). So your pop 1 capital, + 1 from palace, supports 1 warrior and 1 worker. Then you can get more bonuses, cities and units.

Special stuff would bee like a 'Call up Levies/Militia/Conscripts/reserves' which will give you as many units as twice of the city's pop, at the cost of 1 pop per 5 units and some anger with death. When you disband one of these units you automatically refill the granary somewhat, as well as +1xp temporary for units built within 5 turns (of course, they would be over the starting pop.)

Example. London is size 12 and supports 2 workers and a 6 unit army: 2 long bows, 2 long swords, 1 catapult and 1 galley. It is 8/12

Normans invade. London starts Call up Militia (medieval Age, you get units when starting it, but you have to finish it even after disbanding free untis. You can cancel by getting no free ) and then has up to 8/24 units to pick from. So it picks out 8 miltia bowmen/pikesmen to support its army. It is 16/12 of normal and 4 over, so 8/5 of the granary is emptied and there are 4 angrey faces. They barely fought off them and disbanded 3 Militia units, which would take out 3 angrey faces and bring 3/5 of the population back.

After the battle,
 
Terrance888 said:
Maybe all units are based directly on a city and you can have only as many units as city pop? (baring special stuff). So your pop 1 capital, + 1 from palace, supports 1 warrior and 1 worker. Then you can get more bonuses, cities and units.

Special stuff would bee like a 'Call up Levies/Militia/Conscripts/reserves' which will give you as many units as twice of the city's pop, at the cost of 1 pop per 5 units and some anger with death. When you disband one of these units you automatically refill the granary somewhat, as well as +1xp temporary for units built within 5 turns (of course, they would be over the starting pop.)

Example. London is size 12 and supports 2 workers and a 6 unit army: 2 long bows, 2 long swords, 1 catapult and 1 galley. It is 8/12

Normans invade. London starts Call up Militia (medieval Age, you get units when starting it, but you have to finish it even after disbanding free untis. You can cancel by getting no free ) and then has up to 8/24 units to pick from. So it picks out 8 miltia bowmen/pikesmen to support its army. It is 16/12 of normal and 4 over, so 8/5 of the granary is emptied and there are 4 angrey faces. They barely fought off them and disbanded 3 Militia units, which would take out 3 angrey faces and bring 3/5 of the population back.

After the battle,
Click to expand...


This wouldn't make total sense, because citizens of a city are used for other things too, such as building, professionals, etc.
 
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