Draginol
GalCiv2 Designer
- Joined
- Feb 12, 2006
- Messages
- 100
So where did Galactic Civilizations come from in the first place and what relationship does it have, if any, to Civilization?
14 years ago, I was in college. I was a total fanatic of Civilization 1. I'd played it a million times and kind of wished there was a way to continue the game right from where you left off at the end where you built your ship and sent it off to Alpha Centuari.
At the time, there were various Civ projects going on because it wasn't clear whether there'd ever be another Civ.
So one day I sat down and on the Usenet group, comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic, and wrote out what I thought a space strategy game should be like. Other people chimed in and lacking a more appropriate name, I picked Galactic Civilizations as the name.
Of course, at this point, I didn't really know how to program. So I bought a book called "Teach Yourself C in 21 days" and started learning C. I also decided to write it for IBM's OS/2 because for me, a big part of the reason to write the game was to have a really good computer AI. One that didn't cheat. But back then, the only way to have something that was remotely good would be to have the AI multitask. That is, have the AI plan its move as the same time as the player was taking their turn and the only practical way I could think of to do that back then was using threads.
Just after the beta of GalCiv came out, Master of Orion came out. It was similar to GalCiv but it was more focused on combat where GalCiv was more focused on civilization building.
Eventually OS/2 died and when our company moved to Windows, we eventually decided to make it for Windows. So we made GalCiv I. It did way better than expected but it was done on such a shoestring that we weren't particularly happy with it.
So for GalCiv II, we decided to pull out all the stop and try to incorporate a lot of new features. Some ideas were inspired by other games, others were our own. Overall, our goal was to make a space strategy game that would appeal to a large strategy game audience where the player felt like they were creating their own epic story.
14 years ago, I was in college. I was a total fanatic of Civilization 1. I'd played it a million times and kind of wished there was a way to continue the game right from where you left off at the end where you built your ship and sent it off to Alpha Centuari.
At the time, there were various Civ projects going on because it wasn't clear whether there'd ever be another Civ.
So one day I sat down and on the Usenet group, comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic, and wrote out what I thought a space strategy game should be like. Other people chimed in and lacking a more appropriate name, I picked Galactic Civilizations as the name.
Of course, at this point, I didn't really know how to program. So I bought a book called "Teach Yourself C in 21 days" and started learning C. I also decided to write it for IBM's OS/2 because for me, a big part of the reason to write the game was to have a really good computer AI. One that didn't cheat. But back then, the only way to have something that was remotely good would be to have the AI multitask. That is, have the AI plan its move as the same time as the player was taking their turn and the only practical way I could think of to do that back then was using threads.
Just after the beta of GalCiv came out, Master of Orion came out. It was similar to GalCiv but it was more focused on combat where GalCiv was more focused on civilization building.
Eventually OS/2 died and when our company moved to Windows, we eventually decided to make it for Windows. So we made GalCiv I. It did way better than expected but it was done on such a shoestring that we weren't particularly happy with it.
So for GalCiv II, we decided to pull out all the stop and try to incorporate a lot of new features. Some ideas were inspired by other games, others were our own. Overall, our goal was to make a space strategy game that would appeal to a large strategy game audience where the player felt like they were creating their own epic story.
Luckly the AI is not imediatly on you doorstep as soon as it declares war.
