I hate the new 3d engine of civ iv

[Smidlee]

im jus stating the fact that a pretty game doesnt make a great game. I prefer the civ 3 graphics over cIV.. the new grafics serve no purpose!

First not everyone cares for porn. (Also I find food appealing but it has nothing to do with gaming.) Take away the sex drive and women looks a lot better with cloths on. Second Great Graphic and sound can take an average game and make it a great game.
Most Gamers loves graphics and sound which is why we spend so much money on PC hardware and new consoles.

 

[Abaddon]

Adding graphics doesn't take away from the AI.

There you are wrong. Games have a certain deadline. If money had been channeled into A.I. development rather than making the 3D engine work, we would be looking at a much better game.

 

[Smidlee]

There you are wrong. Games have a certain deadline. If money had been channeled into A.I. development rather than making the 3D engine work, we would be looking at a much better game.

Yet on the same side of the coin if a game has ugly dated graphic then less people will buy it equals less money/time to work the AI and patches. Developers invest so much on graphics simply because they know it sells.

 

[Artanis]

What does porn got to do with gaming?

Lara Croft

 

[astralis]

I agree...there is no added value in making an isometric map 3D because it is, after all, still an isometric map. The change from Civ3 and Civ4 in this department is very subtle and hardly worth mentioning. 3D now means San Andreas, Battlefield2, etc... Civ4 is NOT 3D.

 

[Zurai]

There you are wrong. Games have a certain deadline. If money had been channeled into A.I. development rather than making the 3D engine work, we would be looking at a much better game.

There was very little money spent at all on "making the 3D engine work". It really helps your argument if you have a freaking clue what you're talking about. Firaxis used a 3rd party 3D rendering engine (Gamebryo) which they already had existing code base for. At most there was 3 months spent on the graphics engine, which is FAR less than 90% of the games out there.

 

[Zurai]

I agree...there is no added value in making an isometric map 3D because it is, after all, still an isometric map. The change from Civ3 and Civ4 in this department is very subtle and hardly worth mentioning. 3D now means San Andreas, Battlefield2, etc... Civ4 is NOT 3D.

Another person who doesn't know what they're talking about. There are two huge advantages for moving from 2D to 3D in Civ4: ONE, it allows them to actually USE the graphics card that every semi-modern computer has (2D graphics CANNOT be accelerated, which slows down everything dramatically because then the CPU has to do all the rendering on top of all the math and AI), TWO, it makes it far easier for modelers to release new units, buildings, etc etc to the game. In Civ3 it took over a year before there were ANY non cut-and-paste units added to the game. In Civ4, there will be dozens the instant they release the tools to convert models into .nif files.

 

[Kilroy]

Alt+O takes the game out of 3D mode. Sort of. Looks kind of weird though, IMO. Then you could swing the camera 45 degrees to the left or right and you'd be looking at a map not entirely unlike Civ3.

 

[Colossian]

AI is based on the CPU, Graphics are based on the grapics card. They are also programed by people with completely different skill sets. Adding graphics doesn't take away from the AI.

Do you know what is the project? Anyone makes CIV4 if they have a plenty of time. How long time does it take to make 1.52 Patch? How many employees work for FIRAXIS? 100? 1,000 ? 10,000? If you have 1 Million dollar to develope CIV4, how much would you pay for AI programming and Graphics? Can you pay 1M each? A budget is everything.

 

[Thalassicus]

Alt+O takes the game out of 3D mode. Sort of. Looks kind of weird though, IMO. Then you could swing the camera 45 degrees to the left or right and you'd be looking at a map not entirely unlike Civ3.

WHOA! It turns off the perspective...how did you find that? I don't remember seeing it anywhere...maybe I overlooked it in the manual.

Also, two points I'd like to make:

1) Just to be technical, it usually it isn't a matter of the entire team working on the art, then working on AI design or something else, in sequental order from one part of the game to the next.

What you actually have is several teams working simultaneously side by side throughout the entire duration. Money still determines the total number of man-hours spent in any one department, however, since you might have 30 people working for 9 months on art, and 80 people working 9 months on something else. Funding does determine how many people you have in any given department. I seriously doubt more funding would have improved the AI, however. What could have used some more funding is the QA department though.

2) Displaying the output in 3D likely had little to no impact on the development time spent on other parts of the game. It's my understanding the engine was developed by another company, so Fireaxis didn't have to put in any time there. Everything (even in previous Civ games) is designed in 3D in the first place, and simply converted to other formats and displayed in an isometric ("2D") projection. This was done because it was the most efficient method of graphic display at the time. Now they just removed the intermediate step and display it in its original perspective format ingame, as it was created. This'll also make it much easier to create new models for the game, as less conversion will be needed.

 

[daengle]

Another person who doesn't know what they're talking about. There are two huge advantages for moving from 2D to 3D in Civ4: ONE, it allows them to actually USE the graphics card that every semi-modern computer has (2D graphics CANNOT be accelerated, which slows down everything dramatically because then the CPU has to do all the rendering on top of all the math and AI)

You're saying 2D sprite based graphics are slower than this 3D non-sense? That's simply untrue. The reason for the abursdly high required system specs is the 3D engine, which does nothing for the game but make it harder to read the map.

Firaxis felt they needed to go 3D to sell copies to noobs. More's the pity, they were probably right.

I have serious doubts about the assertion that this brave new 3D world is gonna be a moders paradice. There are literaly hundreds of units available for CIV III, many with gorgeous professional quality art. If this ever comes to be the case for CIV IV, I for one will be very surprised. But, only time will tell which media the artists actually prefer to work in.

 

[warpstorm]

How many employees work for FIRAXIS? 100? 1,000 ? 10,000?

About 50. For the most part each person there is specialized in what they do. About half of them are 3D artists and animators. Most of the rest are programmers with various specializations (3D graphics, networking, AI, gameplay, tool making, UI, etc.). (Note that they have at least two titles on the burners at any given time).

 

[Kamamura]

Wouldn't monochrome top-down graphics be best? Afterall since when did chess need more than 2 colors?

I believe this oversimplification is quite incorrect.

You can create visually acceptable and functional 2D interface that makes good use of colors for identifying purposes. 3D engine is completely other topic - it's really useless in case of board games like Civ or chess when it comes to conveying information in a clear and comprehensible way - and it rises the resource costs considerably.

However, rational, hardcore gamers do not represent the main segment of market - there is a fair share of those "average" buyers who get attracted by the screenshots, then buy the game, get bored with it and buy something else. From the revenue point of view, these customers provide dev (and publisher) with more money, because they tend to buy the new, fashinonable crap... excuse me, products, rather than playing and improving (modding) the old games. They also must buy latest cutting-edge hardware, so the manufacturers get their cut and everyone is happy. That's why modern commercial games are more oriented for those "average" people.

 

[Zurai]

You're saying 2D sprite based graphics are slower than this 3D non-sense? That's simply untrue. The reason for the abursdly high required system specs is the 3D engine, which does nothing for the game but make it harder to read the map.

Yes, actually, 2D graphics are slower than 3D graphics. Or, rather, 2D graphics MUST be handled by the CPU and main RAM, whereas 3D graphics can be offloaded to the GPU (video card) and VRAM (video card), leaving the CPU and main RAM free to work on the rest of the game. Have you ever made a 2D and a 3D game (before you ask, yes I have)? It's nearly impossible to keep frame rates acceptable with any serious 2D game, while it's simple in a 3D game. The move to 3D allowed Firaxis to improve the potential quality of graphics AND improve the quality of the AI (by giving it a larger portion of the CPU/RAM) in one move.

Firaxis felt they needed to go 3D to sell copies to noobs. More's the pity, they were probably right.

The only 'noobs' are the ones that are willfully ignorant - like yourself.

I have serious doubts about the assertion that this brave new 3D world is gonna be a moders paradice. There are literaly hundreds of units available for CIV III, many with gorgeous professional quality art. If this ever comes to be the case for CIV IV, I for one will be very surprised. But, only time will tell which media the artists actually prefer to work in.

True, there are hundreds of units for Civ3. None of them came out before a year had passed after release. I'll compare the processes for making a unit in Civ3 and then in Civ4:
3: Make the model in a 3d program -> animate the model in an animation suite -> render every individual frame of the animation -> combine the frames into a single storyboard -> assemble the palette.
4: Make the model in a 3d program -> animate the model in an animation suite

Tell me, which sounds easier?

 

[Briareos]

Yes, actually, 2D graphics are slower than 3D graphics. Or, rather, 2D graphics MUST be handled by the CPU and main RAM, whereas 3D graphics can be offloaded to the GPU (video card) and VRAM (video card), leaving the CPU and main RAM free to work on the rest of the game.

Or you just use the 3D hardware to do 2D graphics - slap a texture with an alpha channel on 2 triangles forming a rectangle and you've got yourself a sprite; cycle through textures in video memory and you've got animation, and use more textures and triangles to paint a tiled back-/foreground, or several layered tiled backgrounds, or what have you.

And then there's pixel and vertex shaders to implement all kinds of blending, distorting and other mangling of textures - shaders are just programs running on the GPU, after all.

2D is simply a special case of 3D; nobody forces you to use the 3rd dimension in your coordinates. That way, you can easily offload a lot of work from the CPU to the GPU - you can also use the GPU to implement such things as video filters, so why should using it for 2D be hard?

np: Mayer/Aguayo - Slow (Kompakt Total 6)

 

[Zurai]

Or you just use the 3D hardware to do 2D graphics - slap a texture with an alpha channel on 2 triangles forming a rectangle and you've got yourself a sprite; cycle through textures in video memory and you've got animation, and use more textures and triangles to paint a tiled background, or several layered tiled backgrounds, or what have you.

Except that, in that case, you might as well actually use the 3rd dimension, since you now have a 3D engine. Which is exactly my point.

You do have a point with shaders - but that would up the system requirements even more.

 

[Reignking]

Use ASCII, like Nethack or Rogue, and your "problems" will be solved.

 

[roey_nissim]

First of all let me say that i love this forum
i joined and posted this massage yesterday
and all ready I have over 1000 views and about 30 replies
i never seen such an active forum

btw i'm not saying that i'm against 3D in civ iv over all
i'm just saying that if there was an option to play in 2D
it would have been better and if you like to play civ in 3D
thats good too thats why an option called an option

 

[alexti2]

Yes, actually, 2D graphics are slower than 3D graphics. Or, rather, 2D graphics MUST be handled by the CPU and main RAM, whereas 3D graphics can be offloaded to the GPU (video card) and VRAM (video card), leaving the CPU and main RAM free to work on the rest of the game

2D is hardware accelerated on pretty much all graphics adapters (for about past 10 years). For example, if you're using MS Windows, you can try to switch your graphic adaptor driver to the standard (generic) VGA driver and see how fast your windows will be drawn in comparison to the correct driver. Standard VGA driver does not use any hardware acceleration and do everything in main CPU and RAM

 

[alexti2]

You're saying 2D sprite based graphics are slower than this 3D non-sense? That's simply untrue. The reason for the abursdly high required system specs is the 3D engine, which does nothing for the game but make it harder to read the map.

Good example is Dominions 2. AFAIK, they run 2D-sprites in 3D-world. And they can handle battles of several thousands independently acting units (unlike one unit represented by several figurines). For whatever reasons, Civ4 isn't anywhere close to that level of performance.

Also, when I look at Civ4 credits, the number of people who don't work on gameplay is just scary. Just look at number of artists and animators. And they have only one AI programmer (who also wears the hat of lead designer). If they had AI programmers instead of half of those people, perhaps, AI wouldn't be losing on Deity despite all those insane bonuses. But, the mass market doesn't care about AI, of course.