C2C - Galactic Era

Hydromancerx said:

Ok so lets take for example a late galactic era unit, the Seedship. As discussed before it would take X amount of turns to get to its destination based upon various propulsion methods. Is this seedship an actual unit? Or is it like a building or project? If it is a unit it would both take time to produce in the city AND take time to get to wherever it needed to go in space right?

Also what about battles in space? This has been a question people have been wanting to know.

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In layman's terms the seedship will be an actual unit, but technically again, it will be a unit when on the map otherwise it will be a simple value in a data table represented by the pedia.

I've been thinking about this overnight and if the second map could be done, then I know how the units could be set up for it. Instead of having a direct relation between player-managed path directing and units moving like on the normal map, we could have a unit speed divided by distance per tile which would give the player the amount of turns one spaceship will need to traverse a single tile. When the timer is up, the spaceship will move to the next tile. Should two foes enter the same tile, the regular battle will come up - victor will continue along its path.

ls612 said:

What would that do to memory issues though...

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I was initially worried about that, but actually I don't think it would be too bad, because most of the map-related memory conumption is not in the underlying game state representation (which would obviously need to have both map areas at all times), but in the graphical front end, which would be switching between the two (so not have resources for both loaded at once)

Koshling said:

I was initially worried about that, but actually I don't think it would be too bad, because most of the map-related memory conumption is not in the underlying game state representation (which would obviously need to have both map areas at all times), but in the graphical front end, which would be switching between the two (so not have resources for both loaded at once)

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Cool! If we can do 2 (or more) that would make the Galactic Era so much easier to do (it could be done ala Final Frontier to start) and open up more use from the civ engine that we didn't have before. C2C has seemed to be doing a lot of that recently.

@AIAndy, Koshling and Civ Fuehrer

So I was thinking things over as I went to sleep last night and I think I have a way it could work. Its a bit crazy but if it works it would be so awesome!

First rather than the Earth map and the Galaxy map you have a Moon and Mars map too! It would work like this ...

Earth Map - Available at the start and lasts you all game.

Orbit - This is what we have now with the satellites and space stations in orbit on the Earth Map.

Moon Map - With the Apollo program you can send your first units to the Moon to explore and later colonize. This would need its own lunar terrain set and units.

Mars Map - Like the moon we would have the missions to Mars. Note that Lunar and Mars maps could be set up to be either pre-made maps or random maps based upon each terrain set. Like the moon you could send over exploration units and eventually colonize and terraform the planet.

Note that the Lunar and Martian maps can also have Orbiting things like we already have on the Earth map.

Galactic Map - By the time you get to this map you will not be colonizing individual planets but entire solar systems. Sure interstellar probes can be sent out to explore this map beforehand but only colonization on the epic scale of entire stars being claimed will allow the player to gain access to colonizing this map.

Having these 4 maps would better translation you out. Basically Lunar would be unlocked at the Modern Era, Martian at the Trans-Human Era and the Galactic map at the Galactic Era. Doing it in map form means that even if all your cities are taken over on Earth you can still have existing cities on the Moon, Mars or other Star Systems.

In addition with unlimited resources that means that not only can we find familiar resources on other maps but new exotic ones too. And in the Galactic map I don't see why we could not introduce say powerful alien barbarian units. I would like to keep them more on the plausible side though. No Vulcans or Wookiees.

So what do you guy think? Could 4 maps be done?

2 meter tall bipeds have worked well in at least four ages on Earth pre dinosaur crocodillians, dinosaur, birds and mammals.

Monaldinio said:

I have a suggestion, let us work together on a space scenario for our mods.
What do you think?
You have ideas and resouces, I have ideas... and...mhmmm...me!

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I am excited you have chosen to find a way to work together with the C2C team.
I see nothing but good things both ways. I recommend you start by making some suggestions here or in the appropriate threads. It may take some time for them to respond; they are doing this in their spare time. Please be patient. Sometimes they miss a response here or there, so remind them and they will get back with you as they can. I can't speak for them but they are open to changing/improving things, including new ideas, and letting you add to or use their work (always credit their hard work also). You can pretty much work on what you want, and involve others, and to different degrees it can be accepted based on people's happiness with it.

I believe that the more you participate the more likely you will get help with your stuff. If you try, I also see that this will be a good place to test out your new ideas, as well as getting help and working together on scenarios and other new things. I think both your mod and this one will both get a lot better, yet stay different as we learn to share ideas, resources, and work on improving them together. Think of C2C as your neighborhood project and your own as a great personal project. You could always choose to work on either or both as you want. I look forward to playing and being a part of both of them. I hope to see you here. Stay positive!
Modders, what do you think?

Dancing Hoskuld said:

2 meter tall bipeds have worked well in at least four ages on Earth pre dinosaur crocodillians, dinosaur, birds and mammals.

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All of those are tetrapods. Its unfair to compare them to aliens since they all have a common ancestor and thus a common body design. Even in our own history at the Cambrian Explosion the common ancestor could have been very different than a tetrapod body plan.

And even on Earth now bipedalism or even having 4 limbs is not the majority. There are more types of invertebrates on Earth than there are tetrapods. I personally would like to use the "Birrin" by Alex Ries. While still Earth-like they are at least a step in right direction of having a non-humanoid alien.

Brin Pictures
Pic 1
Pic 2
Pic 3
Pic 4
Pic 5

Note that I would also be happy to create my own alien if needed since before moding for Civ 4 is what I did (and still do) with my Sagan 4 project.

Hydromancerx said:

All of those are tetrapods. Its unfair to compare them to aliens since they all have a common ancestor and thus a common body design. Even in our own history at the Cambrian Explosion the common ancestor could have been very different than a tetrapod body plan.

And even on Earth now bipedalism or even having 4 limbs is not the majority. There are more types of invertebrates on Earth than there are tetrapods. I personally would like to use the "Birrin" by Alex Ries. While still Earth-like they are at least a step in right direction of having a non-humanoid alien.

Brin Pictures
Pic 1
Pic 2
Pic 3
Pic 4
Pic 5

Note that I would also be happy to create my own alien if needed since before moding for Civ 4 is what I did (and still do) with my Sagan 4 project.

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Just think if anomalocarus had been the surviving progenitor from the pre Cambrian explosion.

Koshling said:

Just think if anomalocarus had been the surviving progenitor from the pre Cambrian explosion.

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Yes that is the most used example for my point.

Anywho what do you guys think of the 4 map method? Could it be done?

Koshling said:

lol.

I still want to thorw Civ4 away entirely and re-implement cleanly with a number of goals:

• Much better scalability (in map size etc.)
• Support for variable geometrty (allow hex maps, though ideally not demand them)
• Efficient server hosted multi-player, where the AIs run as separate processes and appear to the game engine as if they were just another player (i.e. - separate the AI layer entirely and in principal allow multiple different AIs to participate), and we only sync visible state, not underlying decision logic
• Modern implementation language so we get away from all the pointer-error type issues (I'd vote for C# but I could probably live with Java if forced to)
• 64-bit natively
• Designed from the start to be multi-threaded

However, it's largely a pipe-dream. I have most of the skill-set necesary to do the server hosting/networking/game-state/AI, but not the UI stuff. Would need someone to write a front end (after we agreed a clean interface between rendering engine and game state engine). Of course, even with all the right skill sets on board it would still be a HUGE effort (fun though!)

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I'd love that (especially the architectural part) but such a project would require a lot of effort as you couldn't rely on all the stuff that has been made for the Civ engine in the last years.
I don't think it is something a small group could do in their free time so it needs either some funding and full time effort or a rather large amount of people committed to it (a kind of community project).

@Hydro: The 4 map method is likely doable. Once the multi map effort is put in (a lot of code needs to be aware of that), the number of maps should not matter that much. A lot of effort but doable.

AIAndy said:

@Hydro: The 4 map method is likely doable. Once the multi map effort is put in (a lot of code needs to be aware of that), the number of maps should not matter that much. A lot of effort but doable.

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Awesome!! Great news!

Then that shall be our goal for the Galactic Era. Having the 4 maps would take existing functions of the game that people are familiar with. There are also enough space related mods around that we should not have any trouble finding graphics either.

In short if we can get something made this year for the Galactic Era I will be VERY happy.

AIAndy said:

is likely doable. Once the multi map effort is put in (a lot of code needs to be aware of that), the number of maps should not matter that much. A lot of effort but doable.

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Actually I don't think a lot of code need be aware of it. Suppose you did it like this:

• One large map with 4 quadrants
• Pathing functions changed to make passage between quadrants impossibly
• CvMap (and a few CvPlot) methods that are exposed to the game engine split off from the vesion used internally, such that the game engine fucntions report a map size of an individual quadrant, and coordinate transformaion make it act as a window into the currently selected quadrant

This way the external game engine always sees one of the quadrant sized maps, but almost no other internal code needs to chane since it's just one large map to it. Of course we may WANT to change SOME other internal code purely for efficiency reasons (like all-plot enumeration of the map maybe would default to only the selected quadrant plots being enumerated in most cases)

Edit - could probably also use this viewporting technique more generally to provide very large maps without scaling up the garphics memory requirement, the onl issue there being what UI you use to pan the viewport around (since the minimap would only show the viewported area)

A quick question...

Once you reach the "galactic map", are you still capable of controlling things in your homeworld? i.e. What happens if your empire is destroyed on the homeworld, can you land troops on it which you built offworld etc? What happens if you and other players all control the same "Homeworld"?

Or do you plan to just start the space age like you started prehistoric- at a set point (like an ELE) everyone just starts in space with a colony ship and a warrior etc?

@Koshling

What happens when you reach the west or east side of your quadrant map? How do you get to the other side?

@Micael

Yes all 4 maps would be controllable at once. I would like to have "Earth" as an unclaimable solar system on the galactic map. Thus the only way to claim stuff in your home star system would be to claim all of Earth, Mars and the Moon. The unclaimable solar system would be the starting point of everyone on the Galactic map.

@AIAndy

Is it possible to make 4 types of "cities"?

1. Earth City = Builds normal Earth buildings like we have now.

2. Lunar Colony = Builds Lunar related buildings and units. Can upgrade to Earth City if the planet is terraformed.

3. Mars Colony = Builds Martian related buildings and units. Can upgrade to Earth City if the planet is terraformed.

4. Galactic Colony = Builds Star System relate buildings and units. Cannot upgrade to Earth City.

Can such a thing be made? I suspect it would need code similar to the Nomadic Camp code. What do you think about this idea?

Hydromancerx said:

@Koshling

What happens when you reach the west or east side of your quadrant map? How do you get to the other side?

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It can be handled so it behaves just like a full map would, by adjusting the coordinate wrap functions so wrapping occurs in the domains formed by the quadrants independently. The mechanics of it however, do make this a point of extra complexity, so actually I'd separate the maps by map-sized 'holes' in the internal coordinate system. Also I don't think quadrants wa the best layout. I actually think the best layout is, is to place the 4 maps in a line, with a map-sized hole between each.

So suppose the individual maps are size X by Y. Then the internal 'super-map' would be of size 8X by Y, with the individual visible maps occupying coordinates:

Map 1: (0,0) -> (X, Y);
Map 2: (2X, 0) -> (3X, Y);
Map 3: (4X,0) -> (5X,Y);
Map 4: (6X,0) -> (7X, Y)

Then coordinates would wrap:

(X+x, y) wraps to (x, Y); for 0<x<X/2
(-x, y) wraps to (X-x,Y); for 0<x<X/2

that handles map1. Similar wraps handle maps 2,3, and 4. Putting the gaps in between the maps makes the corrdinate wrapping unambiguous for overlaps up to half the map size (and I don't think any game calculation goes over that, but it's possible some go to map size in which case double the blank space in the above).

Note that the blank spaces don't need actual allocated memory associated with them - just a bit of fiddlign with the function that returns a CvPlot given a coordinate.

What about then the world auto-centers when you discover say the world is round or make a wonder (i forget if this still happens). And what happens if you zoom out to the "globe view"?

If i understood it right, are you guys talking about making additional maps playable within the actual game? So not 1 map, that is currently now, but 4? How is that possible?

Gregori said:

If i understood it right, are you guys talking about making additional maps playable within the actual game? So not 1 map, that is currently now, but 4? How is that possible?

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See here ...

Civilization Tactical Combat Development Thread
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=441280

We want to use their tactile map idea and use it for separate maps. Specifically ones using different terrain such as space terrain from the Final Frontier mod.

Hydromancerx said:

What about then the world auto-centers when you discover say the world is round or make a wonder (i forget if this still happens). And what happens if you zoom out to the "globe view"?

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In the case of zooming out it would be fine because the coordinates being reported to the game engine are those of the viewport (I.e. - one of the sub maps). Similarly auto centering (anything graphical essentially that is handled in the main game engine, since it oly ever sees the active sub map)

Any progress here?