How We Can Readily Proceed!

[Ozymandias]

Simple:

1. We have the Rule Book (or, more properly, we have them in ways which be compiled from various parts here at CivFanatics.)
2. We re-write the Rule Book!
   • Better put: we keep the exact same format, and add the additional rules we want, accordingly, in the proper sections.

This should be an easy effort, especially if we invite in a few others. Also, there's no need to "assign" different sections to different people:

1. We each add in precisely what we each want, in the appropriate section!
2. We collate and discuss those items what exactly amounts to our, "Wish Lists."
3. We wind up with a fully complete and coherent outline of every aspect we wish to see implemented - One month! (OK, maybe six weeks.)

WHAT SAY YE?

 

[WildWeazel]

Meaning the (digitized) game manual? Hmm, sounds like a functional specification

 

[Ozymandias]

Meaning the (digitized) game manual? Hmm, sounds like a functional specification

Shhhhhhh!! Be vewy, vewy quiet ... Because I certainly don't hear any "waterfalls"* around here

* Coder's joke

 

[Ozymandias]

{insert "slap to forehead" emoji*} I'd forgotten that Bluemofia had already compiled the best structured "rules book" I know of in his thread, "Da Rules."

*And how is it possible that we don't have one of those?

 

[WildWeazel]

This one works in a pinch

Indeed, that's one of my favorite references, though even it often lacks sufficient detail. We probably should have migrated it to the mod wiki years ago so everyone could expand it.

 

[Ozymandias]

... We have a mod wiki?

 

[WildWeazel]

Oz, don't tell me this is not in your archives

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/help-make-the-modding-wiki.320377/

 

[Ozymandias]

Oz, don't tell me this is not in your archives

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/help-make-the-modding-wiki.320377/

Actually, my "FUBAR" thread is listed on Page One. I just genuinely can't recall the last time anyone had even mentioned the Modiki.

 

[Blue Monkey]

... We have a mod wiki?

Oz, don't tell me this is not in your archives

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/help-make-the-modding-wiki.320377/

Actually, my "FUBAR" thread is listed on Page One. I just genuinely can't recall the last time anyone had even mentioned the Modiki.

Check the dates on the posts. My last post was in 2011. The C3 wiki consists of not much more than a list of links back to threads here on the forum rather than wiki articles. Mostly because (a) the people with the best knowledge were busy actually creating things (b) no one else invested time in sifting through forum threads to collate info into wiki articles. Then there's a 4 year gap before Balthazar & Quintillus posted that they were having trouble logging in. Since that was well after my time as a moderator I had no help to offer.

In other words, there ain't no wiki. Just a single page list of informational forum threads - that hasn't been updated in nearly a decade.

 

[Quintillus]

Well, this thread is probably as good of a place to mention what may be obvious by now as any - that activity in this forum has quieted down, and I am one of the quietest people lately.

I can't say what the cause is for others, but for me it's in no small part the ability to resume life as it was in 2019, or at least aspects of it. I've gained a roommate, and thus a human to interact with, and temporarily a couple cats as well. It turns out that after the past year, I'd much rather interact with live humans and cats in my free time than most other options on the table. Meanwhile, my energy for anything resembling work has continued to fall to new lows. Thus, I'm planning to take some time off this summer - but with the goal being to travel and visit friends, as well as to take advantage of the outdoors now that it's finally nice. After a year of being stuck inside, and having been vaccinated, the opportunity to finally not be inside, and to be with other people, is too good to pass up.

All of which is to say that I can't realistically see myself putting much time towards our efforts (or quite likely, CFC in general) for the next few months. I'm sure I'll be back by CFC again; I always have been in the past, and I may swing by occasionally this summer. But my priority this summer will be healing the wounds of 2020 caused by too much isolation, and for that sitting in front of a screen working on our project would not be productive.

On the plus side, there's a chance that this time gap makes plans will crystallize by the time my creative energies return.

 

[Lanzelot]

Enjoy real life, Quintillus! That's my advice in any case...

I have also been one of the quietest lately, basically for two reasons:

1. My impression is, that we currently do not have a clear strategy. People are still trying out various different options. Exe patching, branching off this or that open source project, getting the original source code, starting from scratch in C# using this or that game engine -- it's not clear yet to me, what the final approach will be. But my time is quite limited atm, so before I start contributing, I want to be sure that it will be productive work that people actually use, and not for the garbage can.
   So I'm waiting for one of our "project leads" here (WildWeazel, Puppeteer, Ozymandias?) to make a final decision like "this is our plan, and this is how we follow it through to the end". Then I can imagine taking over smaller sub-tasks like implementing this or that component, converting this or that useful lib from C/Java to C# or whatever.
2. Over the past 6-9 months I have been working on a very exiting project again at work. Never thought that management would ever give us the budget for this project, but customer pressure had become too high, so finally they had to... Last time I had so much fun while working on a project was 15 years ago... So I was working quite enthusiastically on it and sometimes spent 10h a day coding. Of course that stilled my hunger for programming, so in my spare time I rather did other things and spent time with the family... (I did that small limited project of writing a PediaIcon.txt converter, and that was enough in terms of hobby programming...)

 

[Ozymandias]

I think "normalcy" and a gorgeous Springtime are best enjoyed.

Soren did pass my request for the Civ 3 source code to Firaxis, and I'm now officially part of the "Beta" group for Old World. I'll query him about Firaxis whenever the headiness of a Post Plague world recedes.

Insofar as Our Project goes, my greatest concern is that our coders will be bored: absent the source code, I believe whatever approach we take will, ultimately, wind up using a (kindly try not to swallow your tongues here, guys ) functional spec in the form of the printed rules, my old FUBAR thread, etc. On a lighter note, I don't think we'd need to go, "Full Waterfall." I think we're all on the same page about OO, so the game could certainly be built "modularly."

Yet, along those lines, we certainly don't need to adhere to overbearing (boring) consistency. As long as the mainline code is plug-compatible, via DLL (or, Once Upon A Time, we had APIs) those can be constructed in (and, I cannot emphasize this enough) in whatever way you guys think best.

Beyond that, perhaps it is best to revisit the "Wish List" approach to further se what might be accomplished via .exe patching, etc. Beyond that, I'd still, very much, like to dramatically improve AI behavior.
Once we've all had a few - weeks? - of lungfuls of fresh air (and hopefully heard back from Firaxis, one way or another) I hope we'll fully reconvene.

 

[Puppeteer]

Today I am officially at max vaccination effectiveness, and yes that is also a factor going forward as it is for Quintillus.

As far as direction for this project, I still have several things I want to accomplish with C#, media conversions, map rendering, and scripting that would benefit any C# project including my own C3SAT / CIA3. (Which are currently in Go, but never mind that...meaning to change that now.)

 

[Ozymandias]

Today I am officially at max vaccination effectiveness, and yes that is also a factor going forward as it is for Quintillus.

As far as direction for this project, I still have several things I want to accomplish with C#, media conversions, map rendering, and scripting that would benefit any C# project including my own C3SAT / CIA3. (Which are currently in Go, but never mind that...meaning to change that now.)

I think it would be enormously helpful for you Coding Gents to start a separate thread here to identify what you're each working on, simply to a level of detail in which:

• Everyone understands what everyone else is working on.
• Reveal whatever commonalities and/or disparities are underway (development approaches; languages; .dll structures and/or their equivalents.)
• Begin to use this as a "superstructure" for whatever we do next.

... Yes? No? Maybe?

 

[WildWeazel]

It seems living life is the common theme. I have also as mentioned had pretty limited time lately, and will likewise be taking advantage of the "return to normal" (though sadly the spring weather has all but passed here already). But that's okay. I never had much of a timeline for anything, other than I'd like to have announced our intentions by the time the 20th anniversary rolls around in another ~6 months. By all means enjoy the fresh air.

The plan, so far as I can call it one, is this: to support @Flintlock however we can and see how far patching can reasonably be taken vs our dreams, while simultaneously prototyping with Godot to lay some foundations. In the meantime I agree we should all collaborate on a wish list, and then cross-reference it against both options.

Quintillus, Puppeteer, and I started doing some basic Godot stuff- gosh, almost 3 months ago- but I at least have only been learning the engine until just this week. Analysis paralysis is my ever constant foe. Despite my philosophical support for agile and just-in-time development, I have a compulsion to fully explore everything to the nth degree before doing it. So that I don't waste any time doing it wrong, of course. But anyway, we've identified a handful of tasks and anyone else who's able and willing is more than welcome to jump in. That work should be brought out into the light:

... Yes? No? Maybe?

Over the past 6-9 months I have been working on a very exiting project again at work. Never thought that management would ever give us the budget for this project, but customer pressure had become too high, so finally they had to... Last time I had so much fun while working on a project was 15 years ago... So I was working quite enthusiastically on it and sometimes spent 10h a day coding.

Well now you've piqued my curiosity!

Oz- curious to hear your thoughts on Old World! I should take it for another spin now that's it been out for a while.

 

[Ozymandias]

The plan, so far as I can call it one, is this: to support @Flintlock however we can and see how far patching can reasonably be taken vs our dreams, while simultaneously prototyping with Godot to lay some foundations. In the meantime I agree we should all collaborate on a wish list, and then cross-reference it against both options [...]

I glad that you Fine Gents are coordinating. After all, we can only have one .exe. running per game, and combining your work with antal1987's would be spectacular.

Oz- curious to hear your thoughts on Old World! I should take it for another spin now that's it been out for a while.

I'm part of the beta, and there's a new "Carthaginian branch" just available. I'm going to force more time from my schedule into it this week, and shall gladly report

 

[Flintlock]

I would like to see this wish list. There's already a sort of wish list at the end of the proposal document which makes this project sound very ambitious, most of that stuff, especially after the essentials section, wouldn't be practical to do through EXE patching. But I wonder if that list is overly broad. Many of the things listed are to expand the modability of the game but if we're going to do that we should focus on adding features that modders want to use immediately instead of guessing what might be useful. But then the problem is that there aren't many mods for Civ 3 still being actively developed, in fact I only know of one, Tides of Crimson.

Also right now, in C3X, I'm working on making the minimum distance between cities adjustable. After that's done I'll write up what it involved as a case study so you guys can get a better idea of how EXE patching is done. I previously posted about how my mod works but I realize I didn't explain how it's used. I'll post that some time within the next couple of days.

 

[WildWeazel]

I glad that you Fine Gents are coordinating. After all, we can only have one .exe. running per game, and combining your work with antal1987's would be spectacular.

Ah, maybe I wasn't clear- those are two totally independent avenues, I just meant that we should pursue both in parallel. Especially since Flintlock is doing all the patch work himself

Oz- would you care to take charge of the Wishlist?

There's already a sort of wish list at the end of the proposal document which makes this project sound very ambitious, most of that stuff, especially after the essentials section, wouldn't be practical to do through EXE patching. But I wonder if that list is overly broad. Many of the things listed are to expand the modability of the game but if we're going to do that we should focus on adding features that modders want to use immediately instead of guessing what might be useful.

It's my pie in the sky brainstorming but not meant to scope the game. More like examples to guide design thinking.

Also right now, in C3X, I'm working on making the minimum distance between cities adjustable. After that's done I'll write up what it involved as a case study so you guys can get a better idea of how EXE patching is done. I previously posted about how my mod works but I realize I didn't explain how it's used. I'll post that some time within the next couple of days.

Looking forward to it!

I've started coding on the prototype in earnest, and just in the past 2 evenings have put together a simple "game loop" state machine with alternating turns, with a turn counter to demonstrate event-based components. I'll see about writing up a development thread (our first dev diary?) later this week.

 

[Civinator]

But then the problem is that there aren't many mods for Civ 3 still being actively developed, in fact I only know of one, Tides of Crimson.

Flintlock, there are even more Civ 3 mods actively in development, among them CCM 2.50 and RARR. Here I posted a screenshot about the new RARR era 3 techtree: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/rise-and-rule-revisited-epic-mod.549166/page-61#post-16056105

Additionally I´m working on the German translation of C3C, so it will not become to bad, compared to the upcoming German translation of your Flintlock patch.
The German translation for me has a high priority, as it is demanded by some younger ones in my family, who have some problems in understanding the English texts. The German localization for C3C done by Firaxis is catastrophic and frequently even historically wrong and must be rewritten in big parts: https://www.civforum.de/showthread....andard-Spiel&p=8802440&viewfull=1#post8802440

Flintlock, it would be great, if a next version of your great patch containing your fix of the houseboat bug could be released about the start of the next month.

 

[Vuldacon]

Happy to see things moving along now...and BTW, I am still working on EFZI2 Elite. Making another Unit now and will Update by the end of this Year.