About those attempts to make an opensource or indy civ3 clone
- Thread starter Kyriakos
- Start date
Gray Wolf
Winter Wolf
I was hoping I would see some activity here. I guess no one is interested.
WildWeazel
Carthago Creanda Est
Seems like bringing money into it could jeopardize what is essentially an attempt to clone intellectual property.
But I kind of thought it was a moot point after Antal's breakthroughs. Could we not in theory accomplish the same thing without starting over?
But I kind of thought it was a moot point after Antal's breakthroughs. Could we not in theory accomplish the same thing without starting over?
WildWeazel
Carthago Creanda Est
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=526675
He found a way to patch in code to the windowing dll that could load arbitrary code from another dll. In layman's terms it would allow us to write our own expansions.
He found a way to patch in code to the windowing dll that could load arbitrary code from another dll. In layman's terms it would allow us to write our own expansions.
Gray Wolf
Winter Wolf
That thread seems to have died 4 months ago
Did anything develop out of this person's cool dll editing skills?
He made a few patches but the last I heard he was going to create something where we could modify one file using various parameters to turn on/off the patches/features we wanted to use in a game... and he was working on that but I haven't seen any new posts about it...
This thread has a lot of information about what kind of individual patches he has made so far...
Also, the last page of the thread has info about a bridge patch where we can use a new kind of graphic file to build a bridge across rivers, which is really cool. I'm not sure if he was finished with it though...
I've thought off and on that if there was a source of funding, it would be cool to do an indie civ type game. The big thing that would solve is the limited time to work on it issue. Ultimately, that's been why work on my editor is slow, I suspect it's why work on Steph's editor stopped - IIRC he has a decently high-level job that probably requires a fair amount of time - and it's why Wyrmshadow had to significantly tone down his unit making, and it would've stopped altogether had a benefactor not turned up. To really get such a project up and running, I suspect you'd need at least a year for both a programmer and an artist. And that's assuming you're starting from one of the existing projects that's fairly far along, and preferably with an artist who already has a decent portfolio to jump-start it. Even so, a year may be (read: very likely is) optimistic, especially considering the AI issue and the fact that not every programmer is likely to be good at every skill that would be needed, and most artists specialize in certain areas.
But there's still a lot of other potential hurdles. One is the aforementioned complexity - it's questionable whether you'd have a game anywhere near as good as Civ3 in 12 months. I know it used to be that FreeCiv was only really good for multiplayer, for example. And they've been working on it for years. Admittedly, as a free-time project, but it's been around awhile. Could a small team working on it full time near it in a year? Maybe, but it's definitely not a sure thing.
WildWeazel also brings up some good points. What most of us here are looking for is a Civ3++. When JimmyH did his pole of what people wanted, it largely was Civ3 with bugs and limitations fixed, plus a couple new features. Firaxis is pretty supportive of the modding community all-in-all, but they might not be as cool with "Civ3 with limitations removed and two new features!" as a new competitor, even a small one. There's really two solutions to that - one, get Firaxis's approval ahead of time, perhaps by making Civ3 a pre-requisite for the game (and essentially making it an expansion pack. Given their lack of response on proposals for a small team to patch the code with closed-doors access, as well as financial options dealing with in excess of $100,000, I'm not sure that solution is particularly likely, even if it would encourage Civ3 sales. The second option is really making a different game. Which for that, you really need a product vision and a reason that it will be worth doing when there already are options out there like Civ3, Civ4, Call to Power 2, and going a bit farther, GalCiv2, Europa Universalis, and a whole bunch of lesser-known titles. That's not to say it couldn't be done - it's essentially what Firaxis itself is doing with Civ: Beyond Earth, making it different enough from SMAC that Electronic Arts doesn't have a beef with it, while being clearly being inspired by it and a spiritual successor (the Wikipedia article for Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri 2 even redirects to Beyond Earth, although that probably wasn't Firaxis's doing). But I don't think it would be wise to kickstart something without a vision for it being different enough to warrant a new game and not be stepping on Firaxis's toes.
At the present time, I don't have a coherent vision for that. Most of what I have idea-wise is essentially taking Civ3, enhancing it (such as optional higher-resolution graphics), taking some ideas from other games (like Civ4, with finer control of building effects, and Europa Universalis 4 with coalitions to contain runaway powers), and essentially winding up with a better but not hugely different version of the same core game. And maybe that's why, other than Call to Power in the '90s, we haven't really seen any significant direct competition to Civ. The core mechanics are quite solid, it covers the concept well, and it's kind of hard to argue in favor of a newcomer to the genre without an innovative, fascinating idea that would make it stand out. Even Civ4 and Civ5 themselves largely didn't have these, rather evolving existing ideas.
And perhaps that isn't necessary. Rise of Nations, after all, was a pretty blatant clone of Empire Earth in many ways. But I can't think of a game that was able to read and play another game's scenario files, and that seems to be the crucial bar to top in order to get a lot of people here really interested (and it's also a high bar, which hasn't helped previous efforts). Sure, people have re-made Doom levels for all sorts of games. But it isn't the same file itself, and that's a rather different case since Doom is open-source now.
There's also the logistical issues. Most of us who have looked at indie-civ type things don't live in proximity. I can't speak for anyone else, but for me having a social aspect to a work environment is important. I wouldn't want to work online or remotely full-time. So it could definitely be an issue spending a year working with someone in France, someone in Greece, and someone in Texas. It could be great, but for me at least a shared office space would be necessary. Of course, if logistics could be worked out for the team to be able to be in the same city for at least part of the time, it would help a lot, but again, that's not easy logistics. Figuring out who could do it also could pose a significant challenge, both in terms of reliability, skills, living expenses, and willingness to take a chance on what may very well not work out long term.
So, impossible, no. But also not easy. I'm not personally up for it at the present time, although as my job satisfaction is not sky-high presently, I'm not going to say I'd never consider it, either.
Edit: I should also note that I'm behind the times on Antal's breakthroughs, largely due to spending less times in the Civ forums over the past year and thus basically having just stayed up-to-date on what I was already following and not much else. From what I've read the theoretical possibilities are certainly interesting, but it's still less clean and likely more practically limited than starting with a clean slate would be. Very impressive and potentially a huge step forward, but not as good as what having source code could yield. It's kind of like how with Civ4 modding, even though a lot can be done through Python and DLL modding, there's still limitations that modders there can't work around (such as memory allocation failures due to being 32-bit and certain other performance bottlenecks).
But there's still a lot of other potential hurdles. One is the aforementioned complexity - it's questionable whether you'd have a game anywhere near as good as Civ3 in 12 months. I know it used to be that FreeCiv was only really good for multiplayer, for example. And they've been working on it for years. Admittedly, as a free-time project, but it's been around awhile. Could a small team working on it full time near it in a year? Maybe, but it's definitely not a sure thing.
WildWeazel also brings up some good points. What most of us here are looking for is a Civ3++. When JimmyH did his pole of what people wanted, it largely was Civ3 with bugs and limitations fixed, plus a couple new features. Firaxis is pretty supportive of the modding community all-in-all, but they might not be as cool with "Civ3 with limitations removed and two new features!" as a new competitor, even a small one. There's really two solutions to that - one, get Firaxis's approval ahead of time, perhaps by making Civ3 a pre-requisite for the game (and essentially making it an expansion pack. Given their lack of response on proposals for a small team to patch the code with closed-doors access, as well as financial options dealing with in excess of $100,000, I'm not sure that solution is particularly likely, even if it would encourage Civ3 sales. The second option is really making a different game. Which for that, you really need a product vision and a reason that it will be worth doing when there already are options out there like Civ3, Civ4, Call to Power 2, and going a bit farther, GalCiv2, Europa Universalis, and a whole bunch of lesser-known titles. That's not to say it couldn't be done - it's essentially what Firaxis itself is doing with Civ: Beyond Earth, making it different enough from SMAC that Electronic Arts doesn't have a beef with it, while being clearly being inspired by it and a spiritual successor (the Wikipedia article for Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri 2 even redirects to Beyond Earth, although that probably wasn't Firaxis's doing). But I don't think it would be wise to kickstart something without a vision for it being different enough to warrant a new game and not be stepping on Firaxis's toes.
At the present time, I don't have a coherent vision for that. Most of what I have idea-wise is essentially taking Civ3, enhancing it (such as optional higher-resolution graphics), taking some ideas from other games (like Civ4, with finer control of building effects, and Europa Universalis 4 with coalitions to contain runaway powers), and essentially winding up with a better but not hugely different version of the same core game. And maybe that's why, other than Call to Power in the '90s, we haven't really seen any significant direct competition to Civ. The core mechanics are quite solid, it covers the concept well, and it's kind of hard to argue in favor of a newcomer to the genre without an innovative, fascinating idea that would make it stand out. Even Civ4 and Civ5 themselves largely didn't have these, rather evolving existing ideas.
And perhaps that isn't necessary. Rise of Nations, after all, was a pretty blatant clone of Empire Earth in many ways. But I can't think of a game that was able to read and play another game's scenario files, and that seems to be the crucial bar to top in order to get a lot of people here really interested (and it's also a high bar, which hasn't helped previous efforts). Sure, people have re-made Doom levels for all sorts of games. But it isn't the same file itself, and that's a rather different case since Doom is open-source now.
There's also the logistical issues. Most of us who have looked at indie-civ type things don't live in proximity. I can't speak for anyone else, but for me having a social aspect to a work environment is important. I wouldn't want to work online or remotely full-time. So it could definitely be an issue spending a year working with someone in France, someone in Greece, and someone in Texas. It could be great, but for me at least a shared office space would be necessary. Of course, if logistics could be worked out for the team to be able to be in the same city for at least part of the time, it would help a lot, but again, that's not easy logistics. Figuring out who could do it also could pose a significant challenge, both in terms of reliability, skills, living expenses, and willingness to take a chance on what may very well not work out long term.
So, impossible, no. But also not easy. I'm not personally up for it at the present time, although as my job satisfaction is not sky-high presently, I'm not going to say I'd never consider it, either.
Edit: I should also note that I'm behind the times on Antal's breakthroughs, largely due to spending less times in the Civ forums over the past year and thus basically having just stayed up-to-date on what I was already following and not much else. From what I've read the theoretical possibilities are certainly interesting, but it's still less clean and likely more practically limited than starting with a clean slate would be. Very impressive and potentially a huge step forward, but not as good as what having source code could yield. It's kind of like how with Civ4 modding, even though a lot can be done through Python and DLL modding, there's still limitations that modders there can't work around (such as memory allocation failures due to being 32-bit and certain other performance bottlenecks).
Gray Wolf
Winter Wolf
I just want to simplify what I wrote here before...
Basically, I believe that most of civ3 would be easy to re-code and I think 1 or 2 developers could create a good product in about 6 months to a year. The application could be written in C#.net and be web based. And it could use Postgres as a backend to store data, instead of text files. So it could be much easier to play and customize mods.
Working remotely would be cheaper though and if we set the project up as Open Source, a lot of developers could help out on the code and create finished versions more quickly.
Edit: I meant that the game could be windows based. The Civilopedia part of the game could be web based...
Basically, I believe that most of civ3 would be easy to re-code and I think 1 or 2 developers could create a good product in about 6 months to a year. The application could be written in C#.net and be web based. And it could use Postgres as a backend to store data, instead of text files. So it could be much easier to play and customize mods.
Working remotely would be cheaper though and if we set the project up as Open Source, a lot of developers could help out on the code and create finished versions more quickly.
Edit: I meant that the game could be windows based. The Civilopedia part of the game could be web based...
Gray Wolf
Winter Wolf
^For what it's worth, I am definitely interested in helping (with gfx i mean, both already existent and new ones), if it comes to a Kickstart attempt
Cool, and you would be a great contributor ... if someone is ever bold enough to start an Open Source Project. If I was younger and healthier I'd do it now...
Gray Wolf
Winter Wolf
Even though civ3 has a lot of limitations and takes a long time to mod, I enjoy using it because it is challenging. So even if a new game came along, I'd still play and mod civ3 also. I wouldn't give it up. It would be too sad to let go of such a good friend...
This actually brings up another stumbling block that's affected existing utilities here - the choice of language and architecture. I don't think anyone's going to argue that what Civ3 has is ideal. But getting agreement on what to go forward with is difficult. I've seen utilities written in Visual Basic, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, and Python. Part of it is definitely differing skill sets. And if you could get one or two main people, you could go with whatever they are most comfortable with. But I think it's a case where it would have to be get the people first, then decide what technologies to use, not "we need people for a C# project" only to find that the person who could really do it is a C++ person who isn't interested in C#, but could do it really well in what they know.
As for myself, I'd be okay with C# as a primary language, skeptical of it being web based (makes sense for Puppeteer's utility, raises some potential challenges like infrastructure, latency, and graphics for an actual game, though), and really know nothing about PostgreSQL beyond that's it's SQL and that pretty much anything would be easier to work with than the current binary (not text) format. But it doesn't matter much what my opinion is of the technology as what whoever is able to do it thinks of it.
It would be cheaper and likely the realistic option. But it would require finding people who can work well in that environment, which isn't for everyone. I know I can't work very well remotely for extended periods of time, so I wouldn't volunteer for a project with that setup. And as I've mentioned, the timing isn't good for me right now in general, anyway.
The open source idea is interesting. It really has both advantages and disadvantages. It could potentially raise more funds initially, and could increase contribution. But it still leaves the question of why not just do a kickstarter to improve FreeCiv if that's what you're going for? I know some Linux graphics technologies have done Kickstarters (or the equivalent from other sources) to fund development, with some decent results, so a "Raise $5000 so we can hire someone to work full time on FreeCiv for a month or two" type program might work.
On the disadvantage side, there's still very much the question of how further development would work after the initial boost. I could see improvements to FreeCiv working well in stages - if the first one goes well, there's likely to be support for further improvements as long as there is a good supply of ideas. But if the idea is pitched as a whole separate game, the expectation may be set that "once it's done, it's done, it'll be free, and no one will have to give any money any more". Which is great if it is perfect after the initial stage, but not so great if it's okay but still needs more improvements. As a commercial product, provided it was in decent shape, you could still sell it to more people to raise funds. (If it didn't go well at all, you'd be out of luck whether it was open source or commercial)
At any rate, I notice there's edits on all your posts here, and that has me curious what it is I missed.
Gray Wolf
Winter Wolf
I always mention .net because that's what I know. You're right, if developers want to use C++ or something else, then that w/b fine also.
I should have said that I would make the Civilopedia web-based. The game itself and the map would be windows based. Basically, players could click on a civilopedia button and open an html page in a web browser that describes the game and all its features. They could just click on links to hop around to different html pages created by the modder...
You're right, rendering graphics over the web could get pretty ugly...
Good point...
I mentioned Postgres because it's a database made by people at Stanford that is extremely fast. It's just as good (or better) than Microsoft's SQL Server but it is 100% free and open source. Anyway, I've used Postgres quite a bit in the past and I've always liked it. It's pretty easy to use and most developers (regardless of programming language) know how to write SQL statements to read and write data to a database. And Postgres could be used to store any and all information that the current .BIQ file stores.
But, the same thing applies here...if developers are more familiar with a different database, then that's what they should use.
I apologize for all of the edits. I just wanted to simplify everything and get to the point...
About my editor
I made my editor initially to work on my own mod, but I never finished this mod (and so stopped working on the editor) for 3 reasons
- I had some big gaps in my unit lines. Artists like Sandris made very fine pack, but they did not cover all the civilization, all the periods.
- After I spent a lot of efforts into trying to get an agreement with Firaxis to get the source code, and the discussion stopped suddenly without explanation, motivation went down...
- I started a mod for Napoleon Total War, and it soaked all my limited free time.
About a "clone" of civ3:
I started to program something in C#, with my own engine. I stopped that for two main reasons
- Lack of support from an artist. When I try to make a map engine, and I can't get the graphics to make it work, then I can't test and get de motivated.
- Again, start of my Napoleon Total War mod.
Now, about moving forward with a new "clone"
- First, it's important to draw the line somewhere about the ambition. I think my attempt to make my own game failed because I was maybe to ambitious, and had something too complexe.
A game like civIII is easy, if we stick to the current mechanism (for example, a limited number of terrain types, need to define all the attributes of the unit one by one without "inheritance"). The most challenging part would be the AI. But a similar graphical engine it's not a very big issue, the game mechanim not very complex.
We could reuse the animation from civIII, maybe with a kind of "converter" to use a more efficient format.
Where I failed was probably to want something "big" from the start, with unlimited type of terrain, possibility to have units inheriting from another, etc.
- About language: personally I like C#. I wouldn't use C++ since I'm using it daily at work, and I'm tired of it.
But the main important point to succeed would be to have a real motivated team.
- People who can spend a significant amount of time weekly on the project, and not one hour
here and there.
- Complementary skills: I'm good at modelling architecture for the different aspect of the game and how they can interact. But for the engine, not so much, like I know little of DirectX or XNA, and had to discover things on my own. I think if I had a guy working with me on the engine while I'd worked on the game mechanism, project may still be going. It's also very important to have programmer and artist who can work interactively, to allow testing the engine "immediately", and adapt. not only to shorten the dev time, but more important to exchange idea between artist and dev (like : I can program rivers if you can make this type of graphics *- Ok, but if I make the graphics that way, it will blend better, can you adapt the engine for that )., and to keep MOTIVATED. If you program an engine but can really see it in action because you graphics are too bad... well you are not eager to carry on.
I don't think the team need to be physically in the same location, although it will help, as long as people are motivated, there's a project manager, a good work methodology and the dev/artists are skilled/autonomous and each can make his own part correctly.
A clone of civIII (same type of graphics and game mechanism), excepting for the AI part, could easily be done in less than one year by a dev working full time (an artist is not even needed), but I'm not sure about the performances.
We already have the game structure, so no need to invent many things.
I could do it relatively quickly using GDI+, but perf won't be very good if we want to have animated munits for example.
I tried using XNA, the performances are much better, but XNA is harder to program.
What would be complex is to program a good AI.
I'm not sure we need PostGre, or even a database, since we have relatively few data to manage. a good binary or even text storage mechasim should be enough.
Look at Europa Universalis: everything is text based, you can mod most of the game just with notepad!
The big issue here is to get a team working "full time" on it. Far from easy. Personally speaking I think the project could be fun and I could be interested. But my free time is already used by my Napoleon Total War mod (it's a ambitious mod, and I'm working alone on it), plus sports, familly, etc.
And to work "professionally" on it, I'd need a guaranteed income of around 3500 € / month (net, after all taxes). So even if we can finish in one year, that's 42000 € budget just for one person (and not including tax).
Added thought about copyright
It's possible to make a game similar to Civilization, and change a few names
- You can have race/faction/civilization: the name can't be copyrighted
- You can have units / buildings/ technologies : the name can't be copyrighted either
It's not possible to copyright a game where you develop your country, fight war, trade, etc. There are dozens of game like this.
So what are the issues?
- The name: don't call it "civilization 3.5", find our own name
- The source code / mechanism: we don't have them. So we'd have to make our own engine / mechanism. No issue with this.
- The graphics: there are plenty of artists and grapichs here. We can use it... Or simply make an engine whcih come with only a few "sample" graphics, with a kind of importer. We don't provide any graphics from CivIII. But if someone owns CivIII, then he can use the graphics from CivIII in his own game.
I made my editor initially to work on my own mod, but I never finished this mod (and so stopped working on the editor) for 3 reasons
- I had some big gaps in my unit lines. Artists like Sandris made very fine pack, but they did not cover all the civilization, all the periods.
- After I spent a lot of efforts into trying to get an agreement with Firaxis to get the source code, and the discussion stopped suddenly without explanation, motivation went down...
- I started a mod for Napoleon Total War, and it soaked all my limited free time.
About a "clone" of civ3:
I started to program something in C#, with my own engine. I stopped that for two main reasons
- Lack of support from an artist. When I try to make a map engine, and I can't get the graphics to make it work, then I can't test and get de motivated.
- Again, start of my Napoleon Total War mod.
Now, about moving forward with a new "clone"
- First, it's important to draw the line somewhere about the ambition. I think my attempt to make my own game failed because I was maybe to ambitious, and had something too complexe.
A game like civIII is easy, if we stick to the current mechanism (for example, a limited number of terrain types, need to define all the attributes of the unit one by one without "inheritance"). The most challenging part would be the AI. But a similar graphical engine it's not a very big issue, the game mechanim not very complex.
We could reuse the animation from civIII, maybe with a kind of "converter" to use a more efficient format.
Where I failed was probably to want something "big" from the start, with unlimited type of terrain, possibility to have units inheriting from another, etc.
- About language: personally I like C#. I wouldn't use C++ since I'm using it daily at work, and I'm tired of it.
But the main important point to succeed would be to have a real motivated team.
- People who can spend a significant amount of time weekly on the project, and not one hour
here and there.
- Complementary skills: I'm good at modelling architecture for the different aspect of the game and how they can interact. But for the engine, not so much, like I know little of DirectX or XNA, and had to discover things on my own. I think if I had a guy working with me on the engine while I'd worked on the game mechanism, project may still be going. It's also very important to have programmer and artist who can work interactively, to allow testing the engine "immediately", and adapt. not only to shorten the dev time, but more important to exchange idea between artist and dev (like : I can program rivers if you can make this type of graphics *- Ok, but if I make the graphics that way, it will blend better, can you adapt the engine for that )., and to keep MOTIVATED. If you program an engine but can really see it in action because you graphics are too bad... well you are not eager to carry on.
I don't think the team need to be physically in the same location, although it will help, as long as people are motivated, there's a project manager, a good work methodology and the dev/artists are skilled/autonomous and each can make his own part correctly.
A clone of civIII (same type of graphics and game mechanism), excepting for the AI part, could easily be done in less than one year by a dev working full time (an artist is not even needed), but I'm not sure about the performances.
We already have the game structure, so no need to invent many things.
I could do it relatively quickly using GDI+, but perf won't be very good if we want to have animated munits for example.
I tried using XNA, the performances are much better, but XNA is harder to program.
What would be complex is to program a good AI.
I'm not sure we need PostGre, or even a database, since we have relatively few data to manage. a good binary or even text storage mechasim should be enough.
Look at Europa Universalis: everything is text based, you can mod most of the game just with notepad!
The big issue here is to get a team working "full time" on it. Far from easy. Personally speaking I think the project could be fun and I could be interested. But my free time is already used by my Napoleon Total War mod (it's a ambitious mod, and I'm working alone on it), plus sports, familly, etc.
And to work "professionally" on it, I'd need a guaranteed income of around 3500 € / month (net, after all taxes). So even if we can finish in one year, that's 42000 € budget just for one person (and not including tax).
Added thought about copyright
It's possible to make a game similar to Civilization, and change a few names
- You can have race/faction/civilization: the name can't be copyrighted
- You can have units / buildings/ technologies : the name can't be copyrighted either
It's not possible to copyright a game where you develop your country, fight war, trade, etc. There are dozens of game like this.
So what are the issues?
- The name: don't call it "civilization 3.5", find our own name
- The source code / mechanism: we don't have them. So we'd have to make our own engine / mechanism. No issue with this.
- The graphics: there are plenty of artists and grapichs here. We can use it... Or simply make an engine whcih come with only a few "sample" graphics, with a kind of importer. We don't provide any graphics from CivIII. But if someone owns CivIII, then he can use the graphics from CivIII in his own game.
to work full time on this yes, because that's more or less what I currently earn. I wouldn't abandon a secure job for an "adventure" like that if I cannot pay my taxes/loans/bills and feed the family.
That's the big issue here: if you want to move forward fast and efficiently, you need people dedicated to it, not working only a few hours here and there. But if they have already have a well paying job, it's difficult.
Choices are simple:
- work "fast" with a good full-time team (not necessarily a large one), but you need a significant budget for it.
- use only free time and take ages to make the game with little guarantee of success.
Why do you think civIII (and later CIV and CivV) was made by a rather large team working full time on it? If it was so easy to make just with a few hours by casual programmers, we'd seen dozens of clones already.
If we don't, it's because few good programmers could afford working on it (compare to what they can get with their regular job).
That's the big issue here: if you want to move forward fast and efficiently, you need people dedicated to it, not working only a few hours here and there. But if they have already have a well paying job, it's difficult.
Choices are simple:
- work "fast" with a good full-time team (not necessarily a large one), but you need a significant budget for it.
- use only free time and take ages to make the game with little guarantee of success.
Why do you think civIII (and later CIV and CivV) was made by a rather large team working full time on it? If it was so easy to make just with a few hours by casual programmers, we'd seen dozens of clones already.
If we don't, it's because few good programmers could afford working on it (compare to what they can get with their regular job).
Ok, but 3,5K euros/month is a bit hard to sell..
Maybe it is more realistic to try finding people who can still work for enough hours in a full year, to have a chance of producing something in that timeframe. Then again i know nothing about Kickstarter, so even such a salary/wage may be not impossible to get in a project that attracts considerable attention.
As for gfx, not sure about animations, but PCX is not firaxis-tied anyway so all pcx gfx can already be used in a new game without any civ3 copyright issues (unless, obviously, the pcx was originally made by firaxis, but those suck anyway
).
Maybe it is more realistic to try finding people who can still work for enough hours in a full year, to have a chance of producing something in that timeframe. Then again i know nothing about Kickstarter, so even such a salary/wage may be not impossible to get in a project that attracts considerable attention.
As for gfx, not sure about animations, but PCX is not firaxis-tied anyway so all pcx gfx can already be used in a new game without any civ3 copyright issues (unless, obviously, the pcx was originally made by firaxis, but those suck anyway
).
Yes, I know, that's why it's difficult for this kind of project to take off as indie game. You basically have 3 choices
- you have someone who works during free time (so not that much, and with often RL issues going in the way)
- you find someone who doesn't need money (living at his parents for example, or retired, and with lots of free time) and can work "full time" on it for free
- you find someone who can work full time, but not an income more or less equivalent to what he can have if working for a "regular" company. You cannot expect someone to drop a good job just for the fun of making a nice clone of civIII if you already have expenses that won't go magically away.
This makes things difficult to set up. When I say 3.5 k€/month, I don't expect it to be easy or even possible at all, it's just to illustrate the difficulties in funding a clone with a reasonable chance of success. And for my qualification/experience, I'm not even paid that much...
PCX are not an issue (for the format, although I think PNG may be better), animation may be since the FLC from Firaxis are slighlty different. But we could imagine our own format for animation, with a converter.
- you have someone who works during free time (so not that much, and with often RL issues going in the way)
- you find someone who doesn't need money (living at his parents for example, or retired, and with lots of free time) and can work "full time" on it for free
- you find someone who can work full time, but not an income more or less equivalent to what he can have if working for a "regular" company. You cannot expect someone to drop a good job just for the fun of making a nice clone of civIII if you already have expenses that won't go magically away.
This makes things difficult to set up. When I say 3.5 k€/month, I don't expect it to be easy or even possible at all, it's just to illustrate the difficulties in funding a clone with a reasonable chance of success. And for my qualification/experience, I'm not even paid that much...
PCX are not an issue (for the format, although I think PNG may be better), animation may be since the FLC from Firaxis are slighlty different. But we could imagine our own format for animation, with a converter.
Gray Wolf
Winter Wolf
Steph, I think you are right about this. There's not much data and Postgres would be overkill...
Text files would work. They are simple to use and as long as there are good utilities to help users add/delete entries, I think it would be smart to use them.
Maybe multiple text files could be used to simplify things? One text file for government types. Another text file for units. Another for buildings. And so on.
And xml files could also be used to store some of the data. They are bulkier but at least they have a pretty good structure and they are easy to parse using C#
I'm glad this has sparked your interest because you are the perfect candidate to lead something like this.
I think that amount is perfectly reasonable. And if we limit the scope of the project to what is essential to make a good clone and figure out how much we need to fully fund a project like this, it's possible to raise the amount on Kickstarter. I went to their site and saw some games that got 100,000+ dollars worth of funding.
I know that I would contribute 50-100 bucks on something like this. (I'd do more if I could, but I am poor).
Right! It wouldn't be very wise to call it "Civilization".
I'm sure people here can come up with a good name. I remember Civ Army was trying to make his own game and he named it "Evolution". I tried to help him with the project but I had to gracefully bow out because I could not figure out how to use GDI+ or XNA to create a map...
If I recall correctly, XNA, even though it is a platform for gaming, seemed to have a lot of limitations regarding maps and memory allocations. So I think C#/GDI+ would be the best way to manipulate maps. But I only had basic XNA skills at the time and there's probably something that I did not know...
In any case, it sounds like you are confident that you could create the basic game mechanism and map.
I'll send a PM to Civ Army though and see if he is interested in something like this. He has awesome graphic skills.
Good idea. We just need to make a mod that is able to use the same graphic files as civ3 (flic files, pcx files, etc.)
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Legal Issues
New war games come on the market all the time and as long as the game we make has a unique look and feel, with a different menu system and different features, it should be able to withstand any legal claims by Firaxis or other companies. Also, using the same file types should not be an issue at all. There are a lot of games that use pcx and flc files.
Open Source
Needless to say, I prefer Open Source so that a lot of developers can contribute time on making the game. And it would be great to be able to look at all the code and functions and see exactly how the AI works/thinks. But I suppose it would be alright to make a proprietary version of the game and put it on the market. If so, I'd still want to be privy to the code, if at all possible. Edit: Actually, I just believe in open source or nothing...
Hopes Up
Hopefully we can Kickstart this project. I've got my hopes up now. I really think it can be done if we get a good team of people. I'd volunteer if I felt better, but I have OCD pretty bad and other health issues and I'd never be able to accomplish anything worthwhile.
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