Welcome to the Cinemod.
The Cinemod is a movies themed mod that I made for Civ III Conquests. But, before we get into the story of the game, I'd like to provide a little back-story so that you may have a little bit more understanding as to how this came about.
As mentioned in the Cinemod post, I haven't been playing Civilization III that many years. I played, IIRC, Civilization II and Age of Empires back in the late '90s but then my life moved on and games fell out of it. Around five years ago I bought a Wii and played Dawn of Discovery and fell back in love with managing my own empire. Funny enough, pc games weren't even on my radar at that time. Then I got a new colleague who introduced Civ III to me. I loved it, got my own copy and we started playing online. For us, there was no cultural victories, moral victories, diplomatic victories or anything else. You crushed or got crushed. Every now and then we might spice it up with an elimination game, but always we went back to what we liked.
Then I happened upon the maps included with PTW and realized I could make my own. I did. And we played.
Also around that time I found Civfanatics. In my three or so years of lurking, I never once found my way into the customization forum. Not once. I don't really know why. Perhaps I was intimidated and thought mods meant you really had to modify your game. I really didn't understand how they worked. I did read things such as the strategy articles and threads in the general forums.
Then one day, who knows how or why, I did end up in the customization forum. I saw some mods had robots and stuff. Yep, I needed robots, Mech to be more specific. I first downloaded some mods, but these were still in the historical genre. Played them a bit and went back hungry for more. Then, I think, I was reading about the 10th Anniversary Awards and I saw mods about space and zombies and other weird stuff and knew that was for me. I know it may be heresy to actually say, but for me the play style including the management holds more allure than the actual historical aspects.
Naturally, this led to that and I started finding funny units like the soccer player. I needed a mod with a soccer player. I needed a mod with Kool-Aid man. I needed a mod with dinosaurs, robots, ufos and every other unit that had more than just history going for it. Don't get me wrong, I like some of those awesome battleships, planes, tanks, etc. too. It's just that I didn't care what time frame they were from, only that they looked cool when I was running across the screen to kill my civ buddy, and those pesky AI civs of course.
Since necessity is the father of invention, or in this case modification, I set out to make my own mod with those units that I wanted to play with. My first step was to pillage the civfanatics database and take and take and take. I had so many great units swimming around in a folder on my computer. I needed a way to get them all together though. So, I just thought about it. I won't waste time talking about my first idea, but in the end it led me to my second idea, that was a movies themed mod.
I knew it was going to work. I knew I loved playing on the old Dominatrix map from PTW and knew I would base my map on a similar idea. You get to build up your own territory with little interference and then try to take territory from another. Other modders or writers or creators of any sort may understand what I say next. It just came out. The Cinemod built itself. I merely provided the hands that the mod needed to construct itself. It may sound weird, I don't know, but it's how it happened. I sometimes had technical questions or problems to solve, but I never had any doubt about what to do next. The answer was always there before I even asked. And thus the Cinemod produced itself into existence.
Well, at this point I knew I had to give it back. Earlier I mentioned taking and taking. Working with the units and graphic files others produced made me realize the time and effort they really put into their work. This stuff was real quality, something I also was realizing mine wasn't. Despite my highest intentions, I just did not have the talent, skills, or experience to produce even a luxury icon like they could. Anyway, I knew I had to give it back and give them and others a chance to see their work used. Whether anyone ever played it or liked it, well, that would be out of my control.
So, I finally finished to a point and put it up.
If you think you'd like to give it a try, the mod thread can be found here.
Finally, I seemed to have a little spare time this week and while deciding to play another round, I figured I would do this story to give others, perhaps those who will never play the Cinemod, a chance to get an inside look.
The Cinemod is a movies themed mod that I made for Civ III Conquests. But, before we get into the story of the game, I'd like to provide a little back-story so that you may have a little bit more understanding as to how this came about.
As mentioned in the Cinemod post, I haven't been playing Civilization III that many years. I played, IIRC, Civilization II and Age of Empires back in the late '90s but then my life moved on and games fell out of it. Around five years ago I bought a Wii and played Dawn of Discovery and fell back in love with managing my own empire. Funny enough, pc games weren't even on my radar at that time. Then I got a new colleague who introduced Civ III to me. I loved it, got my own copy and we started playing online. For us, there was no cultural victories, moral victories, diplomatic victories or anything else. You crushed or got crushed. Every now and then we might spice it up with an elimination game, but always we went back to what we liked.
Then I happened upon the maps included with PTW and realized I could make my own. I did. And we played.
Also around that time I found Civfanatics. In my three or so years of lurking, I never once found my way into the customization forum. Not once. I don't really know why. Perhaps I was intimidated and thought mods meant you really had to modify your game. I really didn't understand how they worked. I did read things such as the strategy articles and threads in the general forums.
Then one day, who knows how or why, I did end up in the customization forum. I saw some mods had robots and stuff. Yep, I needed robots, Mech to be more specific. I first downloaded some mods, but these were still in the historical genre. Played them a bit and went back hungry for more. Then, I think, I was reading about the 10th Anniversary Awards and I saw mods about space and zombies and other weird stuff and knew that was for me. I know it may be heresy to actually say, but for me the play style including the management holds more allure than the actual historical aspects.
Naturally, this led to that and I started finding funny units like the soccer player. I needed a mod with a soccer player. I needed a mod with Kool-Aid man. I needed a mod with dinosaurs, robots, ufos and every other unit that had more than just history going for it. Don't get me wrong, I like some of those awesome battleships, planes, tanks, etc. too. It's just that I didn't care what time frame they were from, only that they looked cool when I was running across the screen to kill my civ buddy, and those pesky AI civs of course.
Since necessity is the father of invention, or in this case modification, I set out to make my own mod with those units that I wanted to play with. My first step was to pillage the civfanatics database and take and take and take. I had so many great units swimming around in a folder on my computer. I needed a way to get them all together though. So, I just thought about it. I won't waste time talking about my first idea, but in the end it led me to my second idea, that was a movies themed mod.
I knew it was going to work. I knew I loved playing on the old Dominatrix map from PTW and knew I would base my map on a similar idea. You get to build up your own territory with little interference and then try to take territory from another. Other modders or writers or creators of any sort may understand what I say next. It just came out. The Cinemod built itself. I merely provided the hands that the mod needed to construct itself. It may sound weird, I don't know, but it's how it happened. I sometimes had technical questions or problems to solve, but I never had any doubt about what to do next. The answer was always there before I even asked. And thus the Cinemod produced itself into existence.
Well, at this point I knew I had to give it back. Earlier I mentioned taking and taking. Working with the units and graphic files others produced made me realize the time and effort they really put into their work. This stuff was real quality, something I also was realizing mine wasn't. Despite my highest intentions, I just did not have the talent, skills, or experience to produce even a luxury icon like they could. Anyway, I knew I had to give it back and give them and others a chance to see their work used. Whether anyone ever played it or liked it, well, that would be out of my control.
So, I finally finished to a point and put it up.
If you think you'd like to give it a try, the mod thread can be found here.
Finally, I seemed to have a little spare time this week and while deciding to play another round, I figured I would do this story to give others, perhaps those who will never play the Cinemod, a chance to get an inside look.
