First Civ 4 Screenshots!

[Jon Shafer]

Um? That sounds like vector vs bitmap rather than 3D vs 2D to me; am I missing something?

As Warpstorm said, that's what 2D and 3D is. I tried to make my answer more abstract so that people who aren't programming/graphics experts could understand...

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Cologne as a buddhist settlement

Fits perfectly.
That's not a Buddha. It's Rainer Calmund, sitting next to Cologne.

 

[derdede]

What do these huts next to the cities mean? Will a city finally be able to grow beyond one tile???

 

[lionheart]

Aargh.. I hate 2D games gone 3D.. Most of the time the end result looks like you-know-what and you think back to the good old days.. Remember Leisure Suit Larry and Monkey Island? Didn't they look a lot better when they were drawn as comics instead of those inflated 3D-balloons they became in the latest editions of their games?

Too bad to see Civilization go down that road as well.. (By the way: Is it too obvious that I don't like 3D? I mean, games like Half-Life 2? Sure! 3D is great.. Games like Civilization: nooo! )

 

[Arathorn]

Picture 1:

- Forests on mountains -- it appears that we'll have different terrain types now. Look 2 NE of Cologne for what I'm talking about.
- That tile 1 NE of Cologne is interesting. Grassland? Mountains? Hills? Mixed terrain? I don't know what to make of it, but the blend of terrains is interesting. I wonder if there are LOTS of blended terrains as mountains give way to grasslands or plains to hills or.... Would be interesting. Doesnt look likely, though, as it's not universal.
- As people have said, back to squares instead of diamonds -- at least at this point. That can change, though, pretty late in development, I believe, with minimal problems. At least, I'm not completely convinced Civ IV won't be back to the twisted squares of Civ II and III. No hexagons, though, as that would need to be done immediately. Too bad.
- The units have TWO bars of something above them (those little tiny green bars. A/D values? HPs current and total possible? HPs and morale? The bottom one is always longer, for whatever that's worth.
- The flags of the units also look different. The three warrior units have their flags nearly full out. But the flag over the spear unit is quite droopy. Since the top bar is also white and significantly shorter, I'm wondering if MAYBE the two are related. My current GUESS is that the two green bars are current hps over max hps (greatly varying max hps by unit, too, appears to the case) and the flag is an easily visible representation of the ratio. Morale might be tied to flag, but since there's been no text mention of morale, I'd tend to doubt it.
- Is that some kind of bonus resource NEE of Cologne on the mountains? Very unclear whatever it is.
- Horses are back, so I expect the whole strategic resource thing to be back, too, in some form. Makes me happy.
- That red arrow over Cologne is so high it makes me think it's placed wrong. Oh well. Graphics stuff will change mightily.
- Cologne is size 2, building a warrior. I have to agree with the brighter yellow being food in storage and the dimmer food to be added. Brighter grey is shields built (5 of 10, I'm supposing) and dimmer is shields to be added (2 of 10, I believe, too). The three trade arrows sign to the leftmost confuses me. Three commerce from the city? My best guess. Cologne is apparently a worshipper of Buddha. The star presumably means capital? Would make sense to me, anyway.
That's quite a lot of info available, actually, on the main screen. I hope/expect actually going into the city would provide more detail. Apparently, though, the food/shields/commerce trifecta will remain and food will still determine growth, shields building one item at a time, etc. (best guess anyway). It's really a pretty good system, so I'm not disappointed (though I'm sure some will be).
- I gotta agree the spearmen look to be fortified and the warriors not fortified.
- Borders (cultural or claimed territory or some-such) still definitely exist.

Picture 2:
- I believe we’re looking at three towns. No names, though. Pretty zoomed in for no names. Makes me wonder about zoom levels some.
- Windmill? ??? ??? Not sure what to make of that.
- Those huts also confuse me. Not sure what to make of them. Mini-towns? Squares being worked? Terrain improvement?
- I gotta think that big ugly yellow thing is a wheat square – on grassland.
- The tile SS of Northern City is obviously irrigated. Clearly delineated tile on where the irrigation ends, too. But what the heck is that aproned shape of blue and green mean? No clue here. And why the one farm-looking building – just part of the irrigation change?
- Two east of the irrigated square (NW of the Eastern City) is something odd. Looks like a semi with its back open or something. Trade? Shipping something somewhere? Anomaly? ??? It’s on the road, though, which makes me wonder a bit.
- Another odd person-looking thing WW of Eastern City (SW of the semi) on the square with the huts. <Shrug>
- The roads mostly appear to go somewhere – to the coast, to another city, to the river, to a hut. Two exceptions. One road heads north off the visible screen. I’m guessing that connects to something. Second is the weird loop in the road west of the semi = north of the odd-person-looking thing = SE of the irrigation. I’m gonna call that one a graphics blip for now, but it’s odd. And why two roads to/from the river in the same square, joining for a while and then splitting? Makes no sense to me, but again I guess merely a graphical thing, not a gameplay issue.

That’s about it, from me. Pretty interesting stuff. I may well have to get the magazine, but I expect enough discussions of it here to minimize the need.

Arathorn

 

[Justus II]

@Arathorn: Good analysis, you motivated me to go take a closer look! I know we're all guessing at this point, but here's a couple responses that I see. The 'semi'-looking thing, I took to be the graphic for a mine. Looks to me like an opening with tracks or something going into it, not too far from the current mined plains graphic. On the irrigation tile, that looks like a person (Farmer, maybe?). My first thought was that it could show which tiles are being worked, but I don't see workers from the other towns, so that doesn't seem right. But that might also be the icon near the camp to the SE.

I also wonder about the 3 arrows in the Cologne picture, but the arrangement (not linear) makes me think they do not represent 3 trade, I would expect them in a row or other easily scaleable representation. It could mean that it generates positive trade, or is connected to the trade network, maybe?

 

[oilfan]

Wow, exciting, can't wait to play it.

I am content just to sit back and let Firaxis develop the game. I think they know what they are doing. Undoubtedly there will be improvements. The biggest thing I am hoping for is a much improved diplomacy aspect. Someone previously mentioned mutual cooperation, that would be great.

About the units, Trip and the others are right, it is too early to make judgements. I believe that Sid knows what Civ fans like and I am sure he and his team will deliver!
I may prove my ignorance with this, but was Sid directly in charge of Civ 3? The original post on the home page certainly implies he is directly in charge of this one, which is great.

 

[deo]

Well i dont love the grapics. Comparing to some civ 3 graphic mods this is nothing. Just this zooming is cool but the grapics must realy be improved, the units too i think.

 

[Gen]

Arathorn, amazingly detailed observation
I'll comment a bit.

Picture 1:
- Forests on mountains -- it appears that we'll have different terrain types now. Look 2 NE of Cologne for what I'm talking about.

It might be also forest on tundra, although not likely.

- The units have TWO bars of something above them (those little tiny green bars. A/D values? HPs current and total possible? HPs and morale? The bottom one is always longer, for whatever that's worth.

Shorter line can be movement indicator, too. White = fortified?

- Is that some kind of bonus resource NEE of Cologne on the mountains? Very unclear whatever it is.

I think so. Furs, perhaps?

Picture 2:
- I believe we’re looking at three towns. No names, though. Pretty zoomed in for no names. Makes me wonder about zoom levels some.

Or maybe city names display was just switched off.

- Two east of the irrigated square (NW of the Eastern City) is something odd. Looks like a semi with its back open or something. Trade? Shipping something somewhere? Anomaly? ??? It’s on the road, though, which makes me wonder a bit.

I'm pretty sure it's a mine.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

Well, it sounds like unit modding and versatility will be enormously improved upon. I wonder how these units will be upgraded? Will they lose the ability to use enemy roads and such when they turn in their pikes and pick up muskets and rifles?

 

[Slax]

Pic 2 - Maybe to show which tiles are being worked, they are planning to show not just people (like the farmer) but symbols, like huts and windmills? It may look silly to move these symbols around if they look so permanent, though.

 

[Mercade]

Looks very nice indeed. And think of the possibilities. New stuffses, beta test opportunities, ...

 

[DaveShack]

3D == vector; 2D == bitmap

Well, that's a little simplified, but the right general idea.

[gory technical detail]
A 2D image is typically rendered by taking fixed bitmaps and performing operations on them. There is an inherent problem in the rendering operation, in that certain operations like rotation for example can cause major distortions in the final image due to different pixellation. There are techniques like smoothing and anti-aliasing to handle this problem, but you'll usually see 90 degree rotations and a limited number of fixed images in a 2D system.

3D is rendered by taking a point of view, light source, and mathematical model of the image, and creating the screen view on the fly, frame by frame when there is movement. This has the advantage of allowing nearly infinite zoom, rotation, and scroll, as long as the resulting image has enough pixels to be visible at all. Additionally, you can manipulate the mathematical image to make the characters move -- animation becomes a sequence of modifying the image instead of showing a sequence of images. They'll still probably animate by using a sequence of discrete steps instead of continuous motion, but when you animate a warrior walking north, you can use the exact same animation sequence for walking him south -- the image is drawn "looking from the other side".

The disadvantages are that typical 3-D images on less than studio-quality systems can lack definition due to limitations in the hardware, or performance problems. Good 3D will only look good and perform well on systems with at least decent 3D graphics cards.

[/gory technical detail]

Now a look at the extreme positive potential of 3D. Right now, a battle is shown from the top with an isometric twist -- but in 3D you can seamlessly shift to a battle closeup and show it from any direction! You can shift the perspective point lower and see the ground like a commander would see it. Terrain can be much more realistic this way. The potential advantages go on and on -- now we just have to hope Firaxis delivers on the potential.

 

[Spatula]

Looks a bit like GameBoy graphics to me.....but I'm keeping the faith, they are bad screenshots and the game is some way off. If it makes them same kind of leap Civ3 did from Civ2 I'll be happy.

 

[The Last Conformist]

As Warpstorm said, that's what 2D and 3D is. I tried to make my answer more abstract so that people who aren't programming/graphics experts could understand...

Obviously you failed, since this iggerant didn't understand.

I used to play with 2D vector gfx in programs like Arts & Letters and Corel Draw as a kid. There's no reason beyond usefulness they should be in any specific number of dimensions.

(I suppose an animated gif could be considered a 3D bitmap ...)

 

[Cardano]

I think is better improve CivIII than launch another Civ.

 

[Rhymes]

Hmm, I just hope they wont have the horrrible idea to make civ4 real time instead of turn based.

But its so great to finally have constructive news!

 

[Rhymes]

The only bad feeling I got about the scrreen shots is that they give the impression of a real time game, instead of turn based. Which would be the worst idea ever.

besides its great to finally have constructive news!!

 

[Jon Shafer]

Soren has already said a while back Civ 4 will be turn-based.

 

[Ekmek]

for all the terrain improvements in picture 2 I see NO WORKERS...