Half Done Game

[rhialto]

I can't say I've ever heard of the fud acronym before, and I work with the English language in a professional capacity. perhaps it only really exists in the marketing world? Within politics, the other major area the wikipedia article says the term has spread, the more normal word is spin.

 

[CyberChrist]

Or DVD. I'm referring to HD space. And half a giga more does bother me, seriously. State of the art laptops ship with 40-60GB, and I for example have split that in 3 partitions (progs, data, linux).
And, I also hate installation times of >30 minutes.

Heh heh ok, but since their setup for Civ4 in generel is hardly taking people with systems that are not 'up to date' into consideration (and certainly not that people choose to have Linux installed on same HD also - heh), it seems more like a convient excuses for them not to included equal amount of leaders for all nations - and they haven't even included all the nations from Civ3 either.

If they wanted to accomodate people with restrictions on HD space they could offer an install option with stills for leaderheads instead of animations. I doubt it would break their back in anyway to include this option. Same goes for wonder movies.

 

[warpstorm]

If they wanted to accomodate people with restrictions on HD space they could offer an install option with stills for leaderheads instead of animations. I doubt it would break their back in anyway to include this option. Same goes for wonder movies.

It's not the space that is the issue. I'm nearly certain that it is the cost (both in time and money) to generate the animations that limited it to 26 playable teams (10 more than any new Civ game out of the box to date, IIRC), not the disk space. Disks are cheap; professional animators are not.

Even if you make it optional, they still have to pay the cost. In fact, it would cost them more since they would also need to make the code to make it optional (and if animators are expensive, programmers are even more so).

I can just see how that discussion went in the Firaxis conference room. *wavey lines going into the past* "Why don't we increase the number of playable teams out of the box from 16 to 26? Nobody will complain about that."

 

[sir_schwick]

These are my problems with the current leaderheads:

1) They take up nearly 11% of the screen.
2) They provide almost no information that I cannot get from other parts of the diplomacy screen.
3) They require tons of HD space and developer time/money.

I am making a thread proposing another solution.

 

[warpstorm]

I am making a thread proposing another solution.

Since thay've already spent a goodly bit of this money already, isn't it a bit late?

 

[sir_schwick]

Yeah, but you could say the same about most of these threads.

Watching proud and accomplished athletes battle against impossible odds is one of the more stirring sights in sports. The Phillies are down 14 to 1 since the third inning and I think its the best game we got.

 

[warpstorm]

True, that's why I started the Civ5 suggestions thread ~6 months ago.

 

[CyberChrist]

It's not the space that is the issue.

Yes, for some potential buyers it is.

Even if you make it optional, they still have to pay the cost. In fact, it would cost them more since they would also need to make the code to make it optional (and if animators are expensive, programmers are even more so).

Come on, it would take no time to make neither the stills themselves or the code for showing a still (instead of an animation) and any halfdecent install program can be made to install this chunk of data or this other chunk of data in 2 mins using only your left hand.

Btw, even if they don't give all civs and equal amount of choice of leaders (2) - and I doubt they will - I still think they could include an option for stills instead of animations, so those with restricted HD space could install a less HD-space hungry version.

I can just see how that discussion went in the Firaxis conference room. *wavey lines going into the past* "Why don't we increase the number of playable teams out of the box from 16 to 26? Nobody will complain about that."

Where did you get the 26 playable teams from? As far as I am aware there will only be 18 playable civs in vanilla Civ4 (perhaps you meant 26 leaders?)

Anyway, based on my own experience of executive type meetings, I see the discussion having looked a bit more like this:
*wavey lines going into the past*
"Why don't we reduce the amount of playable teams out of the box from the 31 in Civ3 - that we are basing this product on - to just 18 in Civ4! That way we can release add-ons later on with a few more teams on each add-on and thus greatly increase our income"
*heavy applauding, smiling, nodding and cheering from the other executives*

 

[Commander Bello]

CB, I didn't think you were a spreader of FUD. I guess I was wrong.{question > answer}
FUD = Fear Uncertainty & Doubt

The act of trying to scare people by presenting data that you do not know to be true to gain your ends (in this case to cause people to think worse of Firaxis and not buy Civ4 immediately).

Warpstorm, I give you credit that you just "know" me from occasional reading some of my postings.
Nevertheless, I would like to kindly ask you to believe me that my intention is not to intentionally spread wrong information.

Yet, Firaxis and their last distributor didn't do a good job as far as quality and support for C3C were concerned. At least not in my eyes. I think I don't have to repeat the reasons for that opinion as I already stated them in posting #43.
But these are the reasons why I don't think one should buy Civ4 without having tested it or having read some tests about it.
And I feel that it is part of my personal freedom to express those concerns of mine. After that, we can discuss about it in a rational way, as we just do.

Sure, I cannot prove yet that Civ4 will be as messy as C3C has been when we took it out of the box. And I hope that my suspicion will be wrong.
Yet, until now nobody can prove that it will be better.
We can and do keep our fingers crossed, but nothing more.

I fully expect it to be free. I would be greatly shocked if at this point with all the documented times that they have said it'll be coming for free, that it will.

If you will be right with the SDK being free, I will be the first to state that this would be a good action.
Nevertheless, I would assume such a SDK to consume some 100 - 200 MB of memory, probably even more. It would take quite some time to download it, even if you would have a DSL line (as I do). But I for sure wouldn't like the idea to have to download it via ISDN or even worse, via a 56K modem.
And I would guess that there still is at least a minority of considerable size of people who just don't have access to DSL or cable.
Therefor, I am quite unsure whether the SDK will be downloadable free of charge.
And I have to admit that I haven't read anywhere any explicit statement that the SDK would be free. All I can recall was the statement that there would be a SDK, which I understood as that SDK being part of the shipped game.
If this statement has been given in one of the Gamespot movies, than I will have missed it as for some strange reasons I am not able to either stream or download those.

Like I said, when I make an SDK for internal use the documentation is often sketchy (okay, in some cases non-existent). Due to time constraints (getting my current game done for example), I often leave out a lot of stuff that I assume people know or can figure out. In any case, they can walk over to my desk and ask for help if needed. When Soren releases the AI SDK, you won't have the luxury of walking over to his office and asking how a certain section works. Firaxians can, so they don't need it to be polished (or even written at all) to get the game out. They just need to ask Soren. They also have the luxury of looking at all of the source code, which I assume, the purchaser won't. The purchaser will likely get a set of header files and some instructions on how to call stuff in the Firaxis provided dlls and how to replace the AI dlls with your custom ones. They almost definitely won't get the full source to Civ4.

As I am in the software business as well, I am pretty well aware of the fact that documentation is something most people (especially programmers ) don't like to do.
There are so many excuses, not to do it. "This has higher priority than documentation." "We will do it afterwards." "This feature might change. Let's postpone the documentation until we know we will keep it the way it is."
In most cases the follow-on costs of missing documentation are much higher than the costs of having prepared a documentation in time.

But, as soon as I know THAT I will release such a SDK, I know that I have to release a sufficient documentation as well.
That means, I will start to do such a documentation. At least I will make notes which can be used by some kind of "technical writer" to "translate" them into a documentation.

To make a long story short: I was quite surprised when I learnt that the SDK won't be shipped with the game.
And I just cannot deny to feal a certain unease about this decision, like I have explained above

 

[warpstorm]

No, SDKs are usually fairly small. They are often just a few header files and a few DLLS and the documentation to use them.

 

[warpstorm]

Where did you get the 26 playable teams from? As far as I am aware there will only be 18 playable civs in vanilla Civ4 (perhaps you meant 26 leaders?)

26 leaders = 26 playable teams as far as I am concerned since it is the leader that dictates the bonuses for the civ, not the race.

 

[CyberChrist]

26 leaders = 26 playable teams as far as I am concerned since it is the leader that dictates the bonuses for the civ, not the race.

City appearance, buildings, wonders, UU's and other flavor units will still be exactly the same for both leaders of the same nation, right?

I think you are revealing your own extreme bias in favor of Firaxis (not that that is anything new of course) by claiming that a different head and 2 bytes of code to indicate traits counts as a full fledged independent playable team.

I am fairly confident that your are in a very small minority of people that see it that way.

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

City appearance, buildings, wonders, UU's and other flavor units will still be exactly the same for both leaders of the same nation, right?

I think you are revealing your own extreme bias in favor of Firaxis (not that that is anything new of course) by claiming that a different head and 2 bytes of code to indicate traits counts as a full fledged independent playable team.

I am fairly confident that your are in a very small minority of people that see it that way.

England in C3C and England in VC3/PtW plays totally different, even with only one changed trait. Iroquois?
I don't think warpstorm is biased here - from a gameplay POV, he is objectively right.
Of course, the roleplay feeling is the same, agreed.

 

[CyberChrist]

@Warp and Doc:
You are both missing the point. The fact that 8 nations can be played in 2 different ways it is totally besides the point of how many teams there can be on map at the same time. Can more than 18 nations be on the map at any one point? Not as far as I have understood anyway - so effectively there can ONLY be 18 nations on any given map and thus we are talking 18 playable teams and not 26.

Of course it will be probably be possible sooner or later to mod your own nations and leaders into the game, but that is another story entirely and certainly not relevant when discussing 'out-of-the-box' content.

 

[warpstorm]

I don't even know if 18 teams can be in one game at one time. It may be less. I also don't know if a nation can be in twice if it has 2 leaders.

 

[Jaybe]

WS, this concept that both leaders of the same civ can be played is revolutionary!

Multiple "factions" of the same civ would have to be placed near each other of course, but the idea of uniting your nation under one leader (yourself) is great, even in a single-player game.