Future of RifE

Although I fear that my capacity to express myself in English is rather limited, I finally braced myself up:

Thank you! Thank you guys for this admirable piece of modding, for keeping my Civ4 alive, for stealing my sleep, for RifE.

I was really looking forward to 1.4 but I know where you are coming from, valk. If you put your entire heart into something, it gives you the feeling of doing the right thing. Otherwise, it doesn't.

Well, seems that I am now looking forward to E'iten. ;)
I like the idea of strengthening the minor/emergent traits. Forging a civ from the ground up by the way you play the game. Nice.
So keep up the great work, appreciate it! :thumbsup:




Vodka bong, WTH... ;)
 
thinking about E'iten.
You said somewhere that you disliked the "too much predetermination" of FFH civs.
however, one good aspect of FFH was "each civ is different than the others". (and not only cosmetics).

I hope you'll find the good equilibrium between those to trends.
 
Calavente said:
thinking about E'iten.
You said somewhere that you disliked the "too much predetermination" of FFH civs.
however, one good aspect of FFH was "each civ is different than the others". (and not only cosmetics).

I hope you'll find the good equilibrium between those to trends.
Click to expand...

Without going too much into it, the system I settled on allows each civ to play however you want (can turn one into another, if you like), but only with significant investment. All civs will feel different, between art, wholly unique leaders, <removed>, and starting settings.

We'll get more into that in the future, but put it this way: They will START just as different from each other as FfH2 civs, but need not remain that way; Adaptable in any direction you choose.
 
Valkrionn said:
Oh. That's just the current public svn plus any bug fixes or ai work in the dev svn, not really new content. Waiting on Snarko to finish testing some AI work before I make a release.
Click to expand...

What I was trying to say was that it was obvious that the Healers weren't a finished item yet: they had placeholders instead of names ("Healer 1," "Healer 2"), plus they were using quotes and images from other GPs.

I don't know what your plans were on Healers, and actually I never tried the SVN, but I figured that now that you're not going to further develop RifE, there's no point in your putting in the time and effort to come up with names/quotes/images for Healers, so might be simplest to just get rid of them before the "final" RifE release.

Anyway, up to you, it's no big deal one way or the other.
 
i love the "<removed>" part ^^

I'm sure you are fully confident. And I completly trust your judgement :D
I just wanted to remind you that one of the core (and nice) aspects of FFH was the real difference of the civs.
But I understand also that "create multiples unique mechanics for each civ and usable only by said civ" is a bit too complicated and sometimes un-fun.

(oh and totally off-topic : Richard feels he is becoming human ... :woohoo:)
 
Valkrionn said:
The next mechanic to be added (which I'll be working on tonight, and may even be done with tonight) will not just be able to see, but be played with, in RifE.
Click to expand...

Update on this: The original mechanic involved culture, and would have been fairly simple (both in terms of implementation, and gameplay, as even though it would have had far-reaching effects it wouldn't be hard to grasp), but it's been... expanded. To say the least.

We wanted to expand on the peaceful side of the game, shrink the role of warfare from the prime mover of the game to just one of several important factors (it will ALWAYS be a prime factor, but I don't want it to be THE prime factor). So we came up with another mechanic, which came to encapsulate this one, in a more flexible way (which is entirely fitting with the rest of the design, focusing on flexibility, so it's a good thing). Then this new mechanic was swallowed up by another mechanic that has come to dominate much of the mod (linking together several different mechanics we had in mind, solving important issues with one, tieing things together in a great way, and even providing a possible method for non-unit-based war :crazyeye::crazyeye:), so it's suddenly become much... larger in scope. Fortunately, I can implement a small part of it (the first new mechanic we came up with, that swallowed this one), without the huge one. So I'll be working on that. :D

No, I won't say more about this mechanic. Just that it affects pretty much everything, in some form or fashion. :crazyeye: Ah, other than one thing: Was not my idea, though I latched onto it pretty quick. :lol:

Harri said:
Although I fear that my capacity to express myself in English is rather limited, I finally braced myself up:

Thank you! Thank you guys for this admirable piece of modding, for keeping my Civ4 alive, for stealing my sleep, for RifE.

I was really looking forward to 1.4 but I know where you are coming from, valk. If you put your entire heart into something, it gives you the feeling of doing the right thing. Otherwise, it doesn't.

Well, seems that I am now looking forward to E'iten. ;)
I like the idea of strengthening the minor/emergent traits. Forging a civ from the ground up by the way you play the game. Nice.
So keep up the great work, appreciate it! :thumbsup:




Vodka bong, WTH... ;)
Click to expand...

That "forging a civ from the ground up" aspect will be... quite prominent in E'iten. Far more so than simply the leader.

Nor'easter said:
What I was trying to say was that it was obvious that the Healers weren't a finished item yet: they had placeholders instead of names ("Healer 1," "Healer 2"), plus they were using quotes and images from other GPs.

I don't know what your plans were on Healers, and actually I never tried the SVN, but I figured that now that you're not going to further develop RifE, there's no point in your putting in the time and effort to come up with names/quotes/images for Healers, so might be simplest to just get rid of them before the "final" RifE release.

Anyway, up to you, it's no big deal one way or the other.
Click to expand...

We aren't likely to add or remove content in the final release, just fix bugs. Healers are likely here to stay, as far as RifE is concerned (unless another team member keeps updating it).

Calavente said:
i love the "<removed>" part ^^

I'm sure you are fully confident. And I completly trust your judgement :D
I just wanted to remind you that one of the core (and nice) aspects of FFH was the real difference of the civs.
But I understand also that "create multiples unique mechanics for each civ and usable only by said civ" is a bit too complicated and sometimes un-fun.

(oh and totally off-topic : Richard feels he is becoming human ... :woohoo:)
Click to expand...

Well.... To hell with it. I like my setup, and since the mechanics of it are implemented and the design is fully integrated (though not fully fleshed out, we're leave most of the fine details until all the mechanical work is done, so we can test/balance it as a whole rather than piecemeal), I'm going to go ahead and describe the basics of the system.

Civilizations will have very little unique to them. Primarily the leader, and fluff (can't go into the fluff. Very important, in your face fluff, but nonetheless fluff, just associated with an undisclosed mechanic :D). However, this is not nearly as bad as it sounds; All civs will play hugely distinctly from one another, particularly at the beginning of the game.

How? Simple. We're turning the tech tree into a collection of perk/policy/whatever trees. Special unit/building upgrades, even unique mechanics, will no longer be tied to a civilization but to specific technology trees; There will be enough of these that no civs will share the same "society" tree at game start, thus being as unique as FfH2 civs. As the game goes on, you can open up new tech trees, gaining new mechanics, bonuses, units, magics, etc... But in turn, you slow your tech rate. The more trees you have active, the slower you will tech, meaning it is almost always a good idea to stick to just a few trees (no worries, they should be about 15 techs deep, so we'll have many more techs than FfH).

Techs are divided into two groups; Society and Magic. Each civ starts with one active tree from each group. Society trees are unique; Magic trees may be shared. There will also be a generic tree, holding things such as basic improvements/units/open borders/etc, but it will be much smaller than in your standard Civ game. The primary focus will be on the other trees.

Does this mean the player will be able to have any combination they want, in the end? Yes and no. Yes to society trees; We're working to make sure the design will mesh (or at least, not outright conflict) no matter the active trees. This has hugely influenced our unit/building designs, but not getting into that now. :lol: Magic trees, however, are divided into certain groups (which is tied into the background of the mod, so no more will be disclosed), and you are only able to open up the trees within your group. Yes, this means your opponents will quite likely have completely alien magic to you. That's a good thing. :p


So, to summarize: As unique, if not more, than FfH2 civs at the beginning. Adaptable enough to turn one civ into another, given concentrated effort (though you will NEVER lose active trees). And one civ that is... specialized, towards this adaptability; Well aware that there will be people trying specifically to min/max, so rather than fight it (impossible with my system), we're giving them an outlet. ;)

I realize this won't be entirely to everyone's tastes, butto put it in RifE terms; The kurios limited number of sprawling cities could be one of these trees. Opening the tree would unlock the basic mechanic (sprawling cities, only a limited number allowed, etc), while further developing it would boost you along related lines (aerial naval units, boosted trade, etc). And this would be available to everyone... But only at a high cost, such that it is almost always more cost-effective to progress along your own tree until it is mostly finished before branching out.
 
And yes, this is what I meant by:

How you see things can be quite important, some times. Simply being able to present the same exact content in a new package can allow us to actually do new things with that content. E'iten won't have your standard Civilization tech tree design, to say the least.
Click to expand...
 
valkrionn:
here you got me.

wonderful.
hypercallifragillistickhappyhalidosiuce (whatever is the right spelling for this word).

I'm in love with your concept.
The coming year will be ... very long ... until you release. But take this comment not as me wanting to put pressure on you but just to show how I'm taken.

good luck.
 
Cromagnum P.I. said:
I gasped last week when I read the comic. Can't wait for this story to play out. Richard is my favourite character.

Back on topic: You've sold me on E'iten :goodjob:
Click to expand...

I have a Richard statue, plushie, and belt. And signed copies of the editions. And the golden eye in my avatar is from Richard as well (my original avatar).
 
well, I only have the tee-shirt :D
my wife wouldn't allow the other goodies...
 
I'm a little late on the teary goodbyes to RiFE, but let me just say, the time I had a game that went to 1890 turns or so, without a single error, played on a huge map with 23 AI's, was easily the single best portion of a video game I have ever played (I was Bannor).
Thank you Valkrionn and co. for making that experience possible.
 
You were saying one of the factions explained the catastrophes that happened through Gods that aren't real. I thought that could be the same for the magic but since you were talking about a magic tech tree that's probably incorrect.

So I guess my question should have been what is magic in this mod, how does it work etc.
 
KamikazeFTW said:
You were saying one of the factions explained the catastrophes that happened through Gods that aren't real. I thought that could be the same for the magic but since you were talking about a magic tech tree that's probably incorrect.

So I guess my question should have been what is magic in this mod, how does it work etc.
Click to expand...

Thought I explained this already, perhaps not. Simply put, there are no gods/angels/demons or anything of that nature; There is, however, magic. And religious magic.

Basically, I tried to base everything I could on actual science. In this case, I ran with the idea that our brain functions actually make use of quantum mechanics, and have direct effects on space-time; Magic in E'iten is an outgrowth of this, and is essentially a process of redirecting energy from one place to another (something that is very important to the setting). This can be accomplished through natural aptitude and training (mages of various kinds), or intense faith (religious magics); Whether or not a religion is TRUE has no bearing on how intensely it's adherents believe it to be true.

Currently there are 6 entirely different forms of magic in the mod (though one is not what you would traditionally call magic); There are no spell spheres or mana types.
 
Sounds like some bad startrek plot. ^^

No srly i like the idea and cant wait to see how things turn out.
I am not sure why but i have the feeling this is kinda steampunkish, or was that the fall further 2 discussion? :confused:
 
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