Civ I clone on PalmOS

[JavaGeek]

I am working on porting Civ to PalmOS (currently requires hires)

There have been several failed attempts for reasons of:
who knows (Pocket Civ)
Got to busy/Gave up: (FreeCiv)
Legal problems (Redshift)
To ackward to play: CaSTaway (Civilization from atari - haven't got it to work will on my Clie yet)

While I do plan to charge for this software ($5 or so) I hope that I can avoid the legal problems by having a remarkably different type of civ (certainly wont be called civ)

I order for me to accomplish this I will need community support eventually to help making graphics and terrain. (not now)

So I just thought I'd see if I could get some enthusiasm for this plan.

current progress:
data storage format is basicly complete (however reading the stored data isn't)
movement works
basic attack works
map fully displays
working on city dialog so I can do...
next:
...settler action: build city
todo: a lot

More pictures: World

 

[void]

There have been several failed attempts for reasons of:
who knows (Pocket Civ)

Oddly enough, just yesterday I got the urge to continue work on Pocket Civ... and then moments later I came over here and saw your post!

I have been fiddling with it once in a while over the last couple' years, mainly just fixing bugs.

By all means, it would be cool to have another civ clone out there! Good luck with it!

As far as Pocket Civ goes, my Handspring died a couple of years ago and I haven't replaced it, but I'm thinking of getting another one on ebay at some point. I've also been busy with all the other things in my life, so obviously Pocket Civ has been a bottom priority for me. I probably will never get very far with it.

At the moment it's buggier than the posted version, but I'll be sure to update the site when I get something more stable!

 

[JavaGeek]

Some AI and other stuff makes me nervous (diplomacy...?)

My map generator sucks though. Can't think of an easy way to generate a nice looking random map. I think I'll do it in seperate software in the end.

Most of the stuff: graphics, data storage and movement is quite easy.

It's starting to run slowly (1 second to move a piece) on my tj35, although I will add ARM code where necessary. And think I can speed it up by using more memory...

When my sl10 died I bought a new tj35 within a few months, can't live without it.

 

[void]

You're absolutely right, those are two big obstacles. I haven't given any thought to solving them. (I won't need to worry about them for a while!)

The cool thing about making a civ game is you can do it in many stages, with each stage having a new degree of playability. You could start with cities, settlers, one defensive unit, one offensive unit (or even just one military unit), and you'd have a game. Later you could add techs that give you better units, and you have a new game. And then, say, terrain improvement, wonders, or trade. Etc.

I view the AI as something that can start off very basic, and be built to become arbitrarily complex later. Right now my AI is as basic as it gets - it just walks around plopping down cities randomly. And oh yes, if you get in the way - it will blindly attack you...

I'm curious, why does it take so long to move a piece? Because of the animation?

 

[Marx]

Well I Don't Have any knowledge of scripting, but there must be some people on civfanatics who are studying Artificial Intelligence (Two of my former classmates are currently studying Kunstmatige Intelligentie (as we call it in Holland). But I Don't think they are interested in programming on a Civilization port.

 

[void]

After 3 years, I've uploaded a new version of Pocket Civ. It's still not much of a game, but you can now attack other settlers and capture cities!

 

[void]

The cool thing about making a civ game is you can do it in many stages, with each stage having a new degree of playability. You could start with cities, settlers, one defensive unit, one offensive unit (or even just one military unit), and you'd have a game.

I have now achieved this level of playability! (Although units to build are chosen randomly because there is no city screen.) The third version of Pocket Civ is available for download.

 

[Mei]

haha, wow.
I might actually download it as long as it doesn't crash my palm. ;(

edited: I had a look at the screenshots and it seems to be a pretty good game thus far, but how buggy is it, exactly, and how much space does it take up?

 

[void]

Don't worry too much about bugs, the only ones I know of now are gameplay bugs. e.g. Doesn't show city name when city is on left edge, doesn't show defending unit when being attacked, etc. However, I haven't been able to try it out on any hardware...

The game doesn't take up much space - this version is 43K including the database. I also thought about battery usage when I decided to outline the current unit instead of making it blink.

 

[Mei]

I gave it a try. Then I gave it another try. And another.
It's a good game! Fairly simple but challenging to win (I only just managed a win, on my fourth time trying!). It runs great on my Tungsten E (though obviously still in b/w).
Obviously things need improving, but it's pretty good as it is.

 

[JavaGeek]

When I develop program I always think of the end result and build everything based on that. I plan on developing tanks so I must provide the necessary data structure for that. This means that a lot of the work that has gone into my software has been that of planning as opposed to coding, however this means once I've complete the city stuff I'm working on it will likely be quite useable and similar to the original.

I'm not posting here, because I'd rather program than post messages. Glad to see there are a few people interested although it seems like Pocket Civ has taken over this thread, but that's not a problem...

I also lack time as I'm a full time student part time worker so development over the next 12 weeks will be sluggish to say the least. I plan on taking 2-3 courses in the summer so I plan on finishing by August.

 

[void]

That will be awesome, keep up the good work!

Sorry for hijacking your thread, but it was the logical place to post. I could have resurrected "my" original thread, but that would have been silly cause then there'd be two threads with the same title... It doesn't matter anyway, when you're done with your game nobody will care whether you have been posting or not!

Have fun with it!

 

[JavaGeek]

I just discoverd a SNES emulator for PalmOS 5....

Download: LJP, note it is a multi-emulator (sweet GB-color BTW).

Download the Civilization Rom from "Rom Hustler" (Google)

I plan on continuing my work as I have always found SNES Civ interface rather annoying to say the least...

 

[trada]

*dances* *dances some more to get past the 10 character min.*

 

[JavaGeek]

I've gotten a lot done in the past few days, but over the past few months I've been busy with school, so I haven't gotten near as far as I would have hoped.

The site: World

However, I have a nice little webpage for those who would like to follow my progress, I'll try to keep it updated, but it isn't easy. There's not really any new information, but there's a few changes. You'll notice the name "World", which is tentative. And the new city screen shot, that supports a bunch of standard features already. I hope to get a lot done from April 15-May 1 (my little school break).

 

[trada]

*claps*
Well done, never forget there are people out there, like me, who worship people like you who just get out and actually do something that's worth it (and not just for themselves).

 

[JavaGeek]

Well over the last week I have done a lot (the previous two weeks before I did nothing as I had exams).

As a side note, I did a quick fix so the units move fast enough (best guess is 200ms).

I will likely releasing an incomplete, non-playable user experimentable version in the near future at several palm forums (and here). So you guys can see what I've actually done.

Look at the first post for updates as I prefere to edit the first post than put a lot on at the last post...

 

[GenMarshall]

Civ I for PalmOS wont do me any good since I use Pocket PC . I just hope that somewhere that there is a Civ I for PocketPC.

 

[JavaGeek]

Civ I for PalmOS wont do me any good since I use Pocket PC . I just hope that somewhere that there is a Civ I for PocketPC.

Pocket Humanity

 

[Gregh]

Civ 1 on a Pocket PC? Yes, you can. There's a DOS emulator out there called PocketDOS. It's taken them a long time to get there but version 1.10.1 is good enough to run the DOS Civ 1 on my iPaq 4700. This has a 640x480 screen. I haven't tried running it on a device with only a 320x240 display yet.

The sound is crappy - I turn it off - but the graphics look better on the small screen than they do on my PC monitor!

The game runs faster in emulation on the Pocket PC (600 MHz processor) than it did on my old 486-33 DOS desktop, so speed is not an issue.

The interface is sometimes a little tricky - hitting the magic spot in a menu, for example - and of course there's no reliable way to access the right-click functions. Sometimes when I'm trying to select a city improvement from the menu the game will pop up the Civilopedia info, but I can't make this happen reliably. Also, the mouse pointer inevitably jumps to wherever I tap the screen, getting in the way.

The main glitch is that if you play a long time the emulation eventually dies. It must use up some system resource or another. If you save regularly this is not a hassle as you can just restart PocketDOS and continue from your last saved game. If you're using some of the cheats like Fast Settlers (now who would do that?), it dies more frequently, so if you're doing that then you just have to save more often ...

A minor issue is that because the game loads stuff from disk all the time, it's hard on the battery if you're playing from a flash card or onboard flash memory. Three or four hours of play with a half-bright screen will drain the battery. If you're running from AC the iPaq gets hot instead.

Also, the screen occasionally breaks up into noise (like a TV with no horizontal hold) when jumping in and out of windows, but this clears up in a few seconds.

Being turn-based, Civ is an ideal game for the traveller. Unlike Age of Empires Gold (which is a pain to play on the Pocket PC) there's no need to remember to pause the game when something else grabs your attention - it just waits until you have time to get back to it.