day & night cycle no globe?

[boghog]

I don't know who it was at Firaxis who said that they'd love to have a spherical map but that it just wasn't possible with Civ V's engine. Looking for clues as to whether they implemented spherical maps this time I remain skeptical:
The screenshots appear flat and the grid seems hexagonal - although an occasional pentagon, which you'd need for a spherical map, might go undetected as long as gridlines are turned off.
The stronger clue comes from the day and night cycle which on a spherical map would mean that day and night are just two hemispheres chasing each other around the globe. Since you can however set the daylight to a set time, as referenced in the IGN article, it appears that you will not have a spherical or indeed a cylindrical map otherwise you'd still have different times of day on the different areas of your map.
What are your predictions?

 

[DudewiththeFood]

As long as time of day has no effect on actual gameplay then surely cylindrical maps still work and spherical ones would if the engine could handle them. The sun is just a light source in game that might will change shadow length and direction of things on the map.

By setting the game at a specific time then either parts of the map will be forever at midnight/noon/whatever or the sun will keeps its position in relation to the camera so all shadows will appear the same wherever on the map you are.

 

[Ronnoc83]

I think it would be amazing if there was spherical map!! Do I think they'll be in? Not really

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I think it would be amazing if there was spherical map!! Do I think they'll be in? Not really

I'm not really bothered with it, yeah sure it helps with the immersion but it looked awfully messy to begin with in Civ 4.

 

[lindsay40k]

Civ IV has a spherical map view mode with a square grid, it's just a question of stretching and squeezing here and there

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Civ IV has a spherical map view mode with a square grid, it's just a question of stretching and squeezing here and there

To be fair I'm sure you culd just create the "antarctic" or the poles and prevent units from having any access to it.

 

[Westwall]

Do we really know how extensively this day/night cycle will be implemented though?

The only thing they've actually confirmed is that it will be related to Wonders, but beyond that is just "experimentation."

Then there's the issue of striking the right balance between visibility and conveying an actual sense of night in a game where everything will still have to be recognizable by color coding and so on.

I think we really need to see night screenshots before we can speculate much further.

 

[Michkov]

Why does a civ game need day/night cycles?

Civ IV has a spherical map view mode with a square grid, it's just a question of stretching and squeezing here and there

But you cant lob ICBMs over the poles so not much point to it.

 

[lindsay40k]

But you cant lob ICBMs over the poles so not much point to it.

There's a definite argument that ranges able to extend from any top or bottom line of hexes should be able to jump anywhere along that line.

 

[brianshapiro]

Why does a civ game need day/night cycles?

For mods/scenarios which take place on a shorter timescale. In box support for seasonal changes would be cool, too.

Not sure why its important for the default game, though.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

For mods/scenarios which take place on a shorter timescale. In box support for seasonal changes would be cool, too.

Not sure why its important for the default game, though.

I'd say they designed it for the wonders 1st, and realised "hey, this looks cool" so they kept it.

Beats the modders having to create it.

 

[nyyfootball]

What's the point of day/night cycles?

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

What's the point of day/night cycles?

Rule of cool. It looks cool so they did it. You could argue that it was a waste of resources, of course. But then all aesthetic choices beyond the basic could be argued that way.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Rule of cool. It looks cool so they did it. You could argue that it was a waste of resources, of course. But then all aesthetic choices beyond the basic could be argued that way.

I don't necessairly think that day/night cycle is that expensive to create to begin with.

 

[nyyfootball]

Rule of cool. It looks cool so they did it. You could argue that it was a waste of resources, of course. But then all aesthetic choices beyond the basic could be argued that way.

Better gameplay would be even cooler.

A day/night cycle would only make sense if every turn only lasted a couple hours instead of many years.

I don't understand the necessity of a day/night cycle.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Better gameplay would be even cooler.

A day/night cycle would only make sense if every turn only lasted a couple hours instead of many years.

I don't understand the necessity of a day/night cycle.

It's not necessary. It's just fun, which is subjective. Some people won't like it, which is why you can lock it in at whichever light level you prefer.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

It would be so much work to go from a uniform hexagon shaped tile arranged in a uniform pattern to hexagon of different dimensions plus a few pentagons in a non uniform pattern and have that map me as variable in size and content as a simpler map.
Would be cool, never happening.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

[m15a]

I'd say they designed it for the wonders 1st, and realised "hey, this looks cool" so they kept it.

Beats the modders having to create it.

The original article where the art designer mentioned day/night cycles states that it was made for the wonder building sequence (the "wonder movie").

And that's is only confirmed for the day/night cycles use, too. The article says that they are experimenting with other uses, but that's all.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Better gameplay would be even cooler.

A day/night cycle would only make sense if every turn only lasted a couple hours instead of many years.

I don't understand the necessity of a day/night cycle.

"Better gameplay" what? Are you refering to the general gameplay of the game or something specific?

Look, from a game design point of view, sometimes games create extra features that might not originally have been thought or created on board.

In this event, Ed/Dennis, said that in order to highlight the "magnificence" of the wonders we were given back the "wonder animations" that were in Civ 4 which many people actually missed in Civ 5.

But certain wonders (namely the Great Lighthouse) only look magnificent in the right time, in this case night (because it's a lighthouse and lighthouses pave way for ships during night time so they don't crash) So they probably said let's make sure that when you finish the Lighthouse it gets dark.

Then, i'd say they realised that since this was in-game and not seperately rendered that they created this night time by accident and said "you know what, I'm sure modders could do wonders with this" and decided let's implement this since we already have it.

Hence, it's a pure aestethic feature that doesn't change gameplay, is optional to many (since we can set specific time of the day).

I consider this to be one of the happy accidents of the game. Something with a different purpose that was reused into something cool.

 

[nyyfootball]

It would be so much work to go from a uniform hexagon shaped tile arranged in a uniform pattern to hexagon of different dimensions plus a few pentagons in a non uniform pattern and have that map me as variable in size and content as a simpler map.
Would be cool, never happening.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

Why not just rid of tiles altogether and go the route of Cities: Skylines? Tiles just seem to get in the way of improving the gameplay and visuals.