Civilization 1 for SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive!!! :O

[Blake00]

OMG! Was not expecting to see this in my news! This fan project looks to be heavily influenced by the Super Nintendo Civilization game and has already released a public beta!

I still have my SEGA Mega drive and still collect games for it (including homebrew) so I hope this awesome project gets finished!

EDIT: I just noticed he thanks CivFanatics in his original forum post so is the author here??
EDIT2: @tupi is the creator of this fine project!

http://www.indieretronews.com/2019/08/civgen-ambitious-project-to-bring.html

 

[tupi]

Well it's me, Mario. I didn't expect it to spread any further than a topic on a emu-land for now, though. Civgen is no way 'beta', but purely 'alpha'. Even though Darkpanda disassembled AI units logic and sorta kinda wrote it in pseudocode, I will really struggle with AI. I almost froze development of this, too. I really want to do this like all day everyday, but this is not possible now.

I'm not even a professional programmer, and that's one of the reasons I don't want to open the source code for now. It's just bad. And most my comments in Russian btw. And it's certainly pretty troblesome for me to write changelog or info about controls scheme in English. But I think controls scheme mostly is pretty straightforward and easy to guess. X,Y,Z,MODE are used, but almost exclusively for debug options (in normal game you also can change taxes with these buttons - it's faster than to use a menu). You can play it with 3-button controller totally fine.

By the way, big thanks to darkpanda, Gowron, SWY, axx, Tristan C, mize, Dack and other guys from here.

Also, it's possible to play human vs human now, on some emulators it's even possible to do this online.

I don't have any reports from real hardware for now (flashcard, I mean), I only tested it on emulators, even if some of them are pretty precise.

 

[Blake00]

Well it's me, Mario. I didn't expect it to spread any further than a topic on a emu-land for now, though. Civgen is no way 'beta', but purely 'alpha'. Even though Darkpanda disassembled AI units logic and sorta kinda wrote it in pseudocode, I will really struggle with AI. I almost froze development of this, too. I really want to do this like all day everyday, but this is not possible now.

I'm not even a professional programmer, and that's one of the reasons I don't want to open the source code for now. It's just bad. And most my comments in Russian btw. And it's certainly pretty troblesome for me to write changelog or info about controls scheme in English. But I think controls scheme mostly is pretty straightforward and easy to guess. X,Y,Z,MODE are used, but almost exclusively for debug options (in normal game you also can change taxes with these buttons - it's faster than to use a menu). You can play it with 3-button controller totally fine.

By the way, big thanks to darkpanda, Gowron, SWY, axx, Tristan C, mize, Dack and other guys from here.

Also, it's possible to play human vs human now, on some emulators it's even possible to do this online.

I don't have any reports from real hardware for now (flashcard, I mean), I only tested it on emulators, even if some of them are pretty precise.

Hi Tupi! So you are here at CivFanatics! Awesome! I've been waiting for ages for my account on that forum you post at to be approved. I think it has now though so I'll go post there too.

The work you're doing is amazing mate, especially if you're not a programmer. May still be some wisdom in opening the code on github so programmers can help. Nothing to be embarrassed about! I wish I was a programmer so I could help!

 

[Blake00]

I notice you're still working on it mate and are up to version 1.17.10 now over in your emu-land forum thread. I'll have to give it another try!

I'll also be releasing a Civ1 console conversions video soon so I'll make sure I mention your project in it!

 

[tupi]

Yep, probably it's a good time to try, I guess now the game has at least some AI and all sort of endings. No animations (no city screen animations, no face animations on diplomacy screen) and no music though. And go-to logic is baad. And lately I almost abandon this project again, only some minor fixes from time to time.

For convenience:
d-pad - by default, move unit. Diagonals should work pretty ok on Genesis d-pad. But if you are not comfortable with it, use 1st item in the unit menu ("move") or enable "movement confirmation" in "options" menu
A - in most cases, "OK/select", also to select/de-select unit menu. Also "to next active unit" if none are selected.
B - in most cases, "cancel"
C - to the left panel/back to the map, also "show help" in some cases
START - end of turn (when available)/skip turn (you can use corresponding menu item instead)
if X,Y,Z,MODE are available: you can change taxes with them (only if debug mode is disabled)
if you press X on the very first game screen, debug mode will be available. Press X again to disable some noisy debug messages. In debug, press MODE to enter into map editor mode. There's many other options in debug, but it will take too long to describe them.

EDIT: today I fixed bugs with barbarian logic from original game. Main problem was: barbarians did not attack your diplomats... And reason for this is clear, in the original code barbarians get +99 score if enemy is not diplomat for some reason. But why they DO attack diplomats in the orig. game then? Because there's also a rule "+4 score if terrain owned by somebody". So, even when I changed this +99 score rule to +0 score in civdos - it makes basically no difference. And in civgen, I mistakenly used "current terrain value" map instead of "terrain ownership" map. That's why barbs was so peaceful around my diplomats.

 

[Blake00]

Cheers mate.. that's great to hear you're still batteling against all those challenges. I couldn't dream of doing the stuff you've done. Super talented work!

In the end I just gave a quick mention and preview of your cool project in my Civ1 console video as I think I'll instead do another bonus episode video later on that looks at fan remake projects of Civ1 and that will alow me to do a much bigger tour of your project and the CivONE fan project too. I probably won't do it for a while so at least that gives you more time to do more cool stuff with it. In the meantime the Civ1 console video where I've mentioned your work is here (I've also put a link to this thread in the video description so people can find your work) :

Keep up the great work mate.

.

 

[Blake00]

Any news on this awesome project of yours @tupi ?

 

[tupi]

Hello. Lately I seldom do something (not even every month), and mostly bugfixes. Last update (may 2023) was mostly for changing of civil war logic, copied from the original game. Or to say shortly, this project is mostly at the same state as before. And it's still closed source. Quality of code is kinda better now, but still pretty bad.

The link to google drive is still working, you can find a ROM in the very first link in emu-land thread. I don't know if it's a good idea to post it here: I never planned to post it myself on Civfanatics, because the game uses converted images from the original game and was created partially from my own reverse engineering work (which is no-no at least according to USA laws). As far as I know (it can be that I'm wrong) RE only legally ok as long as one person describes the program logic and then other one implements it according to this description.

What is NOT in the game:
1) any music or sound effects
2) city screen and its animations
3) animations of king on diplomacy screen and the images of advisors here
4) original AI for movement of units (for now main difference from the original!), including original logic to determinate strategic locations,
and original rules of visibility of enemy units and when to draw them - only logic for barbarian units is more or less like in the original game
5) logic for "stacks" of units on the same square (when needed, game always go through all 128 units, units do not "know" who with them in the "stack list", because there is no stack list)
6) original Go-To logic
7) original space ship logic (conditions for launch and other stuff)
8) original tax distribution logic for AI (easily can be implemented, but results are too bad with current AI)
9) original logic for AI to build settlers and transport ships (again, easily can be implemented, but results are too bad for now)
10) original logic for AI to distribute its workers in cities and put some elvises
11) custom city names: not enough memory for that
12) palace
13) sega mouse support
Diplomacy screen logic was copied not so long ago, but I think diplomacy is working strange compared to original, probably some bugs here.