Console Version to come soon?

bruntfca

Warlord
Joined
Nov 23, 2001
Messages
120
I own a PC and an xbox360.

It's *obvious* that this new "steamlined" UI has been specifically designed with console users in mind.

Look at how the two big info bars sweep in from the left and right. This is going to correspond to left bumper press and right bumper press.

The absurd way of adding new units to the queue. Check button, for add, new window, buttons to move up and down, *no drag and drop*, *no control click*. Ever tried to drag and drop or control click with a console controller? Exactly.

The horrid bright green citizen "check box" icons you must select to move your population around int he city window. Again this has been done to make it easy to do on a controller.

I like the 360, but I feel a bit miffed that this UI is patently designed for console already in mind. I expect they did as much common code as they code. They will then split the code to console and PC versions, with the PC version having slightly more functionality.

I'm running this on a High End PC and the UI totally fails at 1900 by 1200. The tech tree has what I call the "toilet roll" feature, whereby the top 1/3 and bottom 1/3 of the screen is basically black, in the middle is the tiny squashed tech tree. If you run in very high rez you also see this effect on backward websites which seem to think people are still running 4:3 monitors, you get a narrow toilet roll in the center of your screen instead. Did I mention there was a lot of black?

This won't be a problem on the console however, as 720P is considered high def in the console world. Meanwhile in true HD, I can hardly even see the super "Art Deco" icon designs, they are so tiny, they look like meaningless blobs. I thought the UI was supposed to scale? Well it's only a half baked job.

Since the AI is borked anyhow, I think it may be worthwhile waiting to pick this game up when it comes out on the console. It will prolly look at lot prettier and be optimized for the specific platforms.
 
That would make me mad. The game does seem very consolefied. It would be a slap in the face to learn we were given a console port of a game before the console version was even released. I feel like I'm beta testing.
 
Probably tolling but ill bite...

How is an xbox 360 going to handle the game if high end PC s take a minute or two to process turns? PC gamers will whine and put up with it . A 360 with its olllllld processor would likely melt.
 
Probably tolling but ill bite...

How is an xbox 360 going to handle the game if high end PC s take a minute or two to process turns? PC gamers will whine and put up with it . A 360 with its olllllld processor would likely melt.

Not to mention that 360 has 512mb of memory while in PC the minimum requirement is 2 gigs. If there will be a console version, it'll be for the next generation consoles.
 
Unfortunately Civ:Revolution wasn't a big success. So I don't think we will get a new Civ version for console next, although I would buy it. :crazyeye:
 
Probably tolling but ill bite...

How is an xbox 360 going to handle the game if high end PC s take a minute or two to process turns? PC gamers will whine and put up with it . A 360 with its olllllld processor would likely melt.

Well if the OP is trolling (which I doubt), then I'm not. I agree with the OP. I think with this game released for the PC now, Firaxis know that it will be modded heavily by the community. Firaxis will take some of those mods, improvements, fixes etc and place them into a new Civilization game for the XBOX 360 and PS3. They get us to do their coding for them (I say 'us' as in the talented people willing to play with the mod tools). Obviously they'll make their own changes as well.

As for the time it takes for processing turns - I suspect that the time it takes to process turns will get shorter as the game matures and it patched. They could always remove the "huge" map-types for the console versions anyway. Or call them huge but make them smaller.

If I sound like I'm trolling, then I don't mean to. However, I truly believe that [civ5] will be released for the consoles at some point - maybe even under a different name to differentiate the games a little further. The interface being "streamlined" screams at me of being a console. The complete lack of information presented in certain areas could point towards it being a "casual console" game. [civ5] certainly isn't the game I expected to see come out of Firaxis for the PC. Just my 2c. :mischief:
 
Not to mention that 360 has 512mb of memory while in PC the minimum requirement is 2 gigs. If there will be a console version, it'll be for the next generation consoles.

People got it to run on less than 1GB RAM. I think consoles have a lot more CPU power than GPU power, so this would fit the Civ5 performance requirements quite well. Strip it down a bit, limit it to the smaller mapsizes, optimize for the fixed console hardware, and voila :D
Hey, even Supreme Commander (1), a notorious hardware hog got a console port.

And indeed, about five minutes into the game i thought "Console interface, WTF?!", too.

Edit: And now that engine design around texture compression and streaming REALLY starts to make sense (texture pop-in anyone?), thanks 2k/Firaxis for giving a higher priority to a future console port than to getting it to run decently on mainstream (DX10) PC video cards :(
 
the game isn't coming out on consoles, but yes it does have that console UI look, now is that a bad thing? Certainly not, it just means they have made it user accessible, like they have to if making a console game.
 
I agree - the design of the interface was clearly intended to work on a console. A lot of strategic choices, like the oversized icons for buildings in cities, only make sense if you visualize them on a low resolution TV screen.
 
the game isn't coming out on consoles, but yes it does have that console UI look, now is that a bad thing? Certainly not, it just means they have made it user accessible, like they have to if making a console game.

Source that the game isn't coming out on consoles? You write it like you know it definitely isn't.

I personally don't play games that come from direct ports from a console. They usually have a very rigid control system that isn't completely compatible with the PC.

Same thing goes the other way. I wouldn't like it if a game was designed intentionally to be ported directly to console as that means that usually the developers haven't implemented features purposely for the PC as they cannot be ported directly to the console. In other words, the console players get a "fully-featured" game as nothing more can be added for that platform, whereas the PC players generally get what would be a cut-down version. No thanks.

As far as Civ V goes, we just don't know but I suspect the signs are there that Firaxis will announce a direct port in some fashion to the consoles. It would make sense based on a lot of their design decisions with Civ V.
 
By the way,
It would be a slap in the face to learn we were given a console port of a game before the console version was even released.
You are joking, aren't you?
 
By the way,

You are joking, aren't you?

I think it is a reasonable hypothesis that this game has been written with a console in mind. Cross platform is what its all about these days, since sales = money = survive as a business.

I think the poster simply has a tongue in cheek way of saying that no doubt the version we are playing with, will no doubt have feedback taken into account for the console version.

Some posters made good points above about the serialization of textures (usually for compression on consoles) and other things. I have little doubt that the game we are playing - to use evolution as a metaphore - has a common ancestor that the console version will also be based on.

Call this "missing link" Civ V Neanderthal, to extend the metaphor. Yes and that IS a joke......
 
And has anyone yet given any answer to the big question - how on Earth could a console handle the resource-hog that is civ5 if beefy PCs are struggling as it is?
 
Anybody knows how good did civ rev handle huge maps with max civilizations? Was it fast between turns?
 
I'm running this on a High End PC and the UI totally fails at 1900 by 1200. The tech tree has what I call the "toilet roll" feature, whereby the top 1/3 and bottom 1/3 of the screen is basically black, in the middle is the tiny squashed tech tree. If you run in very high rez you also see this effect on backward websites which seem to think people are still running 4:3 monitors, you get a narrow toilet roll in the center of your screen instead. Did I mention there was a lot of black?

Speaking of the UI not properly scaling with the resolution, when I was playing at 1024x768, I noticed the strategic resources icons extended to the right of the upper UI, overlapping the date and turn #. Talk about bad UI scaling.
 
Source that the game isn't coming out on consoles? You write it like you know it definitely isn't.

I read an interview awhile back where they talked about not doing a console version of Civ5. I don't have a link to that article off-hand, but after a great deal of Google Fu I managed to find another article that says the same basic thing.

http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/civilizationv/222/interview.html

My Google Fu prowess is unequaled so I wouldn't expect you to be able to find it on your own, though. I had to search for such obscure terms as 'civilization 5 interview console' (no quotes,) and then click the very first link that showed up. =Þ

Naturally, that alone is no guarantee that the Civ5 we have now isn't actually just some hashed up job intended to segue into the fuller, console version. They could've changed their minds since the review, or even have been lying. But I would argue that there exists stronger evidence to suggest that it isn't, than there is in the conjecture that "THE UI IS SO *OBVIOUSLY*--OBVIOUS BECAUSE I SAY SO BTW--PROOF THAT THIS IS A CONSOLE GAME," as the OP would argue.

Cheers.



edit: And for the record, two things. First, I'm no huge Civ5 fanboy. I really enjoy the game but am greatly disappointed at how pants-on-head stupid the AI is. I doubt it could have effectively waged war against my elderly blind cat before she died--and still might lose even after. I'm also annoyed by the bugs, though that has almost become par for course now, and I do have to admit it is at least leagues better than Elemental.

Second, I am something of a PC elitist myself. I don't hate console games or certainly console gamers, and I don't care one way or the other about console ports of PC games. If they make a console port of Civ5--great! What does annoy me is when console limitations or pointless traditions get shoved sideways into PC games. I don't see that in the Civ5 UI, though. It is streamlined, and some the buttons are bigger or lead into other options rather than having them all spread on the screen at once, but we don't really lose any usability as a result. The UI still works just fine. It's not a case of form over function, unlike the annoying radial menus for dialog in RPGs that Bioware is now in love with as opposed to the old lines of text from the Baldur's Gate games.
 
They said a whole bunch of stuff in interviews that didn't end up being true. Demo before release. Secret unit that can only be unlocked by doing certain prerequisites in game. AI is amazing. Loads more I'm forgetting at the moment. Bottom line: take everything they say with a massive pinch of salt.
 
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