Yet another mod idea

I just thought of an interesting idea for a mod: a sci-fi urban mod in which the "world" is a huge city, "civs" are political factions, gangs, etc, and warlords battle for supremacy. Terrain would be differrnt types of buildings, roads, waterways, and empty land, and units would represent small bands of fighters roaming the streets.
Does this sound interesting to anyone?

WWWeasel said:

I just thought of an interesting idea for a mod: a sci-fi urban mod in which the "world" is a huge city, "civs" are political factions, gangs, etc, and warlords battle for supremacy. Terrain would be differrnt types of buildings, roads, waterways, and empty land, and units would represent small bands of fighters roaming the streets.
Does this sound interesting to anyone?

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It sounds interesting but we'd need a new terrain set to make this work.

Yes, that would be a major part of the work, one reason I wouldn't be qualified to actually do this.

I like this idea a lot. I had a similar one a while ago. I won't have the time to actually do it (and if I had more time, other projects would be done first), but here's a sketch of ideas, if anyone wants to give it a shot.

Terrain changes (laid out in a way that even random maps might make sense)

desert -> city center, shops, low on food and shields, but much trade; bonus resource: supermarket, grants high food bonus

plains -> industrial areas, also low on food, but high on shields

grassland -> living quarters; medium food and trade

tundra -> rural areas, high on food, low on production and trade; bonus resources: farms

(With this assignment, random maps would be created properly, with lots of trade in the city center and food-providers in the periphery. Players could even choose whether they want a highly developed town ("hot world", i.e. lots of city center (desert) squares) or the opposite ("cold world", i.e. lots of rural (tundra) squares).

jungles -> parks? (not of much use in the Civ3 resource paradigm unfortunately, it would be nice to have them reduce pollution, but terrain can't do that)

forests can remain forests, but with different values (reduced production to the least)

roads -> underground train (roads are supposed to connect the city squares anyways, so the terrain impovement that is roads in Civ3 must be something faster in this mod)

railroads -> highway (may be a bad idea because of the hardcoded railroad bonuses)

I'm not sure what to do with rivers. Making them pedestrian zones might make sense, as they facility trade and hinder movement somewhat)

Other ideas:

- flat map

- settlers of course don't found cities, instead they create HQs of their factions. Factions could be anything that makes up a group in society; politicians, managers, civil rights movement, criminals, scientists ... (I'd be less interested in a pure "gangwar" scenario, but that's personal preference of course).

- city improvements should be "flat improvements", e.g. use a refrigerator instead of a granary, a radio and a TV instead of a temple and a cathedral; a PC instead of a library etc.


The above is just a brainstorming of course, there is much design work to be done. However I do think that the idea "Civ in a city" has much potential and will attract many people, but I just don't have the time to promote the idea or even carry it out myself (lacking skill's also a factor here). Anyways, if anyone likes to use some of my ideas, feel free.

This has been proposed several times before. Ilike the idea but it will take A LOT of work. I will see if I can find the old threads so you can get ideas. I think one of them had some graphics partially completed too....

I think this idea can become something very cool! If you have the time, please do something with it.

Maybe you can model it to something like "Mad Max", "Escape from NY" or even New Reno from the Fallout 2?

Dease said:

This link may help you for the graphics

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Yeah, that's the one I was talking about I think. If you noticed, I posted in that thread as well saying I would find a policeman unit....... I never found it but now that someone is trying to do this again I will continue looking for it.

I made street terrain, this may be usefull.

Oh yea, i want to say something else:

Desert: Beach-No food or shields but a good lot of gold

Tundra:

Grassland: Mall (as in grass)

Plains: Farmland-food, little or no gold or shields

Hills: The key points in the terrain pack above, can place resourses depending on what it is.

Mountains: Buildings- Place to build "cities" some shields and commerse.

Forest: Same thing

Jungle: Zoo ( has animal resourses to attack your foes with raging animals )

Marsh: Marsh

Volcano. Un used?

LMForest: Park, little food some commerse

LMGrassland: suburbs

LMMountain: Ghetto

LMHill: My streets

Road: Used in rural space as trails

RR: Nothing, railroads shouldn't have been in the game anyways

Resourses:
Drugs (weed and stuff)
Animals (elephants horses and other zoo animals)

Bonus:
Building resourses (to make some places of lesser or more value, probably invisable)
Civilian housing (+shiels & commerse)

Luxery:
Fair
Prostitutes groucho
Church


Any other ideas?

hey, there are already some germans, who are doing such a Mod/Scenario

you could see some screenshots of the current status in this thread (german forum)
The guys say, that the city-terrain there is from ptw. I guess, it would look quite cool in combination with kulades roads and the other city-terrain from Kenta'arka

Vadus said:

hey, there are already some germans, who are doing such a Mod/Scenario

you could see some screenshots of the current status in this thread (german forum)
The guys say, that the city-terrain there is from ptw. I guess, it would look quite cool in combination with kulades roads and the other city-terrain from Kenta'arka

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The graphics mentioned there are no terrain graphics, but an "urban sprawl" mod that replaces railroad graphics. These probably won't help for creating a city terrain, except if you want to copy/paste them into terrain pcx files. There also isn't enough variety to make several different city terrain types out of them.

However copy/paste isn't so bad an idea ... if you really want to do such a mod, I'd copy/paste some placeholder graphics for the terrain and create a workable ruleset first. Making a good terrain isn't easy and takes time, not many people will do that for a project that may never be finished. But when the mod is playable and enjoyable and only terrain graphics are missing, you *will* find someone who's able and willing to make them.

I keep popping up with ideaas

CIVS:
Police
SWAT
The Mod
(Other Gangs)
Civlians (non-playable but rich, you much try to soak up their monkey.)
Farmers (Monopoly of the Farming industry)
(Several Corpoations)

Any others?

Improvements:
You can not build improvements. Each City should have an improvement for what the building does like: Drug Strore, Airport etc.

Polution

Instead of polution, we could use "unemployed people." (We need graphics for this.) Workers can employ them "clean up polution". Volcanoes can be the HQ of your faction. They say stuff like "the tension at the HQ is rising" and "scandal in the HQ, many fired". Polution changes rural area to suburbia to Urban area to building, building into Ghetto.

So tired of typing

I guess, we need a new hero-unit : Snake Plissken

BTW, i haven't ever found any unit graphics suitable for this mod. Maybe a Belgian Resistor for the farmers, some modern soldiers for the SWAT. Civilains should only have one unit only for defense. War is not the point of the civilians. Only some resourses should be useable for some people. Like farmers get wheat and cows, gangs get hookers and drugs, people at the zoo onbly get zoo animals.

Sorry if im posting to much, just think this was a great idea.

UNITS:
THE LAW:
SWAT Agent
Policeman
Marine
Helicopter
THE FARM:
Famrer
Corn Chucker (Yea!)
THE GANGS:
Pimp (not sims pimp, kindreds spy would work best. )
Drive By Car
Gangster
Hitman
Road Block
THE BUISNESSES:
Security Agent
Policeman
Tax Collecter (hidden nationallity, to cause wrath on all
OTHER:
Animal riders need animal resourses.
Canoe
Commerce Vessel

Vadus said:

I guess, we need a new hero-unit : Snake Plissken

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My thoughts exactly

RRT2 graphics would fit in nicely, even better would be SimCity 4, buy i don't know about the legality of that... IIRC there are some building gfx from SC4 in the forum so maybe it would be fine.
The storyline I had in mind is a post-apocalypse type period after the downfall of the US and other world powers. (not exactly the most PC mod ) The population was left to rule itself, and cities became hot spots where force was the law and the only government was the biggest gun. Warlords led bands of fighters on quests for domination of metropolises, while the remnants of the old world, the remaining law enforcement, tried in vain to restore some sort of order.

Crap I had to go do a tornado drill and lost my train of thought... (last day of school before finals, nothing else to do but surf the web)

Oh yeah - tech tree. Instead of researching technology, it would make more sense to fuel new projects. Money directed to research would be replaced with the more abstract concept of influence, which would determine what your faction would be able to do. For example, you could "research", or fund, a project to persuade mercenaries to join your cause, thereby allowing mercs to be "built" in your "outposts", for lack of a better term. At the beggining of the game you would only be allowed to "build" thugs, vandals, and the like, while "influential" factions could "build" such things as light armor, rockets, maybe even helicopters.

So you say its a battle for control over the city? That seem way better, but we still will need many other the thing i have mentioned. What kind of map should we do? What size? Should it be based on a real city?

kulade said:

So you say its a battle for control over the city? That seem way better, but we still will need many other the thing i have mentioned. What kind of map should we do? What size? Should it be based on a real city?

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New York would be nice. Size wouldn't really matter, unless there are a lot of factions.
Does anybody know if SC4 graphics would be legal?

WWWeasel said:

New York would be nice. Size wouldn't really matter, unless there are a lot of factions.
Does anybody know if SC4 graphics would be legal?

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Probaly so, but i dont know. Loads of stuff has been taken of other games. Im sure Sim City won't mind . If we do do a map on NYC we will need a big map .