20 years of Civ3, and a proposal for 20 more

[Kyriakos]

Hi Shiro, it´s great that you are posting here again, as this gives me the opportunity to say you a big thank you very much for all your work.

You were the rescue for the graphically updated Sengoku Conquest in the just released new German version of C3C. Your work in the German C3C update can be found here .

Where are my japanese cities?

Also, why can't you upload this as a mod here too? I liked that scenario and any improvement is welcome.

 

[Civinator]

Where are my japanese cities?

De gustibus (non) est disputandum.

Also, why can't you upload this as a mod here too? I liked that scenario and any improvement is welcome.

I think that there is only very little interest here for a German version of C3C. This mod was especially done for some younger ones in my family who are not so familiar to the English language - and the English speaking civers have something, that is so much better than C3C: They have CCM 2.50 (at present over 3.600 downloads). The Sengoku conquest (even in the German language) is not working separated from the C3C mainfiles of that mod.

 

[Kyriakos]

 

[Takhisis]

Working land (and air) transports is a necessity!

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

As promised, our project subforum is now open along with our first update! You can also find it under "Project & Mod Development" at the top of this forum.

I had no idea you guys have been working on this for a year already. Reading through the threads and it looks very promising so far.

To hell with modding Civ 3 now.

 

[Takhisis]

But Anthony!

This only means that Civ3 mods, which will now be compatible with this new game, will have to be ported. If anything, it's extra work. It's like whenever a new version of Wesnoth comes out and you have to fix existing bugs and port your campaign to the new game.

 

[WildWeazel]

I had no idea you guys have been working on this for a year already. Reading through the threads and it looks very promising so far.

To hell with modding Civ 3 now.


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Yeah, but you know how many turns it takes to produce a Great Wonder.

This only means that Civ3 mods, which will now be compatible with this new game, will have to be ported. If anything, it's extra work.

Not if @Puppeteer can pull a rabbit out of that hat and convert everything!

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

Tak, I was picturing you as Goldblum when I posted that.

Yeah, but you know how many turns it takes to produce a Great Wonder.

It's worth the wait when that Wonder is the Great Library.

 

[Civinator]

It's worth the wait when that Wonder is the Great Library.

... and it is not a so long wait with a scientific great leader.

 

[Takhisis]

It's worth the wait when that Wonder is the Great Library.

Not if @Puppeteer can pull a rabbit out of that hat and convert everything!

Somebody's been trying for the Great Library slingshot, I see.

Tak, I was picturing you as Goldblum when I posted that.

Remember to watch Law and Order!

 

[Puppeteer]

This only means that Civ3 mods, which will now be compatible with this new game, will have to be ported. If anything, it's extra work.

Not if @Puppeteer can pull a rabbit out of that hat and convert everything!

C7 is meant to have the ability to use a Civ3 mod and/or save file as a starting point. Of course, that (I think) leaves you with most of the modding limits of Civ3.

For terrain graphics, I've already had C7 showing custom terrain when hard-coding the paths; the only blocker right now is figuring out where Civ3 stores the path to the media and how it searches. I have it mostly figured out, but two sources of paths have proven incorrect so far, or else I'm running into an issue I haven't seen. But I think in the pretty near future C7 will be able to open a modded Civ3 save and show all the mod art where appropriate.

As for game rules, we don't really have a native C7 rule set format yet, but since we can read the BIQ and be able to use the rules in C7, I'm thinking a one-click conversion for rules should be possible, and then any extra C7-only features can be added, like more than 31 civs, more strategic resources, etc..

As for media format, we've tossed around some ideas, and I love coming up with wild ideas for the future. In the short or medium term I imagine 32-bit color graphics (vs 256-color palette) with full alpha is an attainable thing, although implementing civ color is something we're only starting to talk about, so I'm not yet sure how that fits in. But we haven't talked about folder structure yet.

As for the more "out there" ideas...I'll just say that the current 9x9 terrain tile layout could probably be swapped out for something better. But that's in a far future. Probably.

 

[Takhisis]

C7 is meant to have the ability to use a Civ3 mod and/or save file as a starting point.

As a model I'd propose that it could be the next step.
Play the World had its new .bix map format but could run .bic maps perfectly.
Conquests brought its own new format, .biq, but could still run .bic and .bix maps perfectly as well.

As for the more "out there" ideas...I'll just say that the current 9x9 terrain tile layout could probably be swapped out for something better. But that's in a far future. Probably.

I'm totally not going to say the h-word, but as a player of both Battle for Wesnoth and Transport Tycoon I remain unsure of which is the better format. Actually (Open) Transport Tycoon has square tiles (rendered as rhombi) inside which railways and bridges can be placed with different orientations, as well as waterways. So that kind of mixed system could work, too.

Eventually, I mean. I am not a coder (yet?) but I know enough to know that just making a new engine that can read civ3 files is sufficiently challenging by itself.

Edit: I've just remembered something. OpenArena is a really good clone of Quake3. I think, though –in fact I am almost sure– that this was done with the legally available original Quake 3 engine code. But then Nexuiz was made independently, IIRC.

 

[Puppeteer]

In my early musings I was hoping to allow for different map grid formats, but distance and path calculations would seem to be very different, and I'm not sure if the game engine could feasibly be made to accommodate different layouts. We'll see.

Civ3 is not square, isometric, or hex. It's logically a checkerboard layout in which you either move diagonally or hop 2 increments cardinally. Coordinates can be even,even or odd,odd, but never even,odd or odd,even. Kinda blew my mind when I learned that. It seems to make choosing which iso-like tile to place simpler to determine (even though each logical tile has 8 neighbors, the graphic only has to draw bits of four game tiles where they meet), but I don't know if that's why they did it or if there were code logic reasons.

 

[Takhisis]

I don't know about the code because… has anybody ever seen the code?
But there were some weird decisions, such as keeping the .pcx format and random things that seem to depend on powers of 2. Who knows what happened there.

What do you mean by hopping two increments cardinally? I'm not sure I follow. Is this about the tile numbers? Because, in effect, a unit stands on a four-sided tile and moves to one of eight tiles that stand either along the corners or along the sides, so calling them square tiles might be what Discworld's Brother Lu-Tze would call ‘a very good lie’.

 

[WildWeazel]

If you look at the tile coordinates, you'll see that moving vertically or horizontally (across corners) is a change of +-2 to X or Y, because each row and column is either all odd or all even. Moving diagonally (across sides) is a change of +-1 to both X and Y, going from odd-odd to even-even or vice versa. You can't just move +-1 in one axis because that tile doesn't exist. But, I don't see that we need to keep this convention.

I mean I get why they did it, I think. Tile 1,1 is physically halfway between 0,0 and 0,2 vertically and 0,0 and 2,0 horizontally. So for drawing it makes sense. But surely we can divorce drawing math from map coordinates if there's an advantage to a different scheme.

 

[Takhisis]

I thought as much but wasn't sure.

Yes, I agree that it is not necessary to stick to such a convention, but there might be backwards-compatibility issues there if you decide to change it.

 

[Takhisis]

Suggestions I'm posting from the umpteenth time that people on CFC-OT try to peddle the conspiracy theory that Civ3 is no the best in the series:

I miss the advisors from earlier games like civ3, one of my few grudges with IV is how they replaced them with "i do only dumb tile management" governors.

The outstanding leaderheads somewhat make up for it, but there could have been more atmo if they didn't drop all other faces.

Something that I really miss from Civ 1- 3 was how the backgrounds behind the leaderheads would change to reflect how advanced they were and in Civ 3 how the leaderheads would actually change clothes/appearance to match their era. Most of the mid-game outfits were clownish and silly, but it was still a very nice feature, to see the leaderheads change every era. Civ 4 did that with the music both for the gameplay, as well as the leaderheads, which was awesome... I just wish that they would have gone whole hog and changed the leaderheads outfits and backgrounds with the eras as well.

(the entire thread is worth reading)

 

[WildWeazel]

Am I hearing animated advisors? Full-screen diplomacy scenes??

Well, the least we can do is re-enable city view and palace upgrades for mods.

 

[Takhisis]

Not so much the animated advisors (we already have pre-rendered 2D .flcs for that!) as much as praise for what are actually called governors in Civ3. You know, mood control and production settings, one city/continental cities/all cities, and so on.

re-enable city view and palace upgrades for mods.

Shut up and take my money!

 

[Takhisis]

I have to add, after perusing that thread, that one big thing about Civ is, precisely, the fact that it's big. OK, it lacks natural wonders (which can be symbolised by location-specific resources) but the challenge in Civ III is to make one-city civs or actual one-city games. In other games, you cannot build too many cities. There's simply not the space in the map, to begin with!