Important feedback about mod's quality and possible offer!

[necxelos]

Hello everyone
I'm probably not well known here (I'm more of a reading then writing type of guy) but seeing how well this whole mod goes (from the very beginning of Rise of Mankind to present "ROM: AND: C2C mod").

As much as I appreciate how well this mod is handled I also see some very important (from the end-user side) flaws. What is great about C2C is it's size. Everything is big, there are many technologies/units/buildings and general feeling of playing civilization simulation (not just strategy game) is wonderful.

BUT (there allways is but)

Problem is it's visual quality. Some people say that 2d leaderheads are great and I would say it's not a good idea and here is why:

- Civ4 allways had this caricaturalistic feel about diplomacy. Animated heads that enlarge key features of leaders are great. Mix of photos/ photos of statues/ handdrawings/ normal leaderheads and other stuff just don't fit look just bad. Especially pictures with quality so low that I can see PIXELBOXES (I play on high-end PC, maxed settings). This part is also connected to my proposal. I think I can remake EVERY leaderhead (either based on how it looks now or from the scratch) to have a comic-like caricaturalistic look (static as some of You wanted in another topic). This will take some time though.

- Same as above - Main Screen and Loading Screens - hurt my eyes with it's pixel-size. I can make new ones.

- Building models - most of them simply dont exist,
- Building placing scripts (early walls encircle 1 house and others are out of it - looks horrible),
- Animal unit height placement (birds are placed too low above the forest - they just fluy THROUGH trees and most of time You barely see wings not to mention birds body),

Last thing I'd like to mention in this post is just a question considering AI. Does BUG options like "damaging terrain" affect the way AI act? Do the AI even care about units being possibly hurt or not? And IF THERE ARE some options that are well polished and connected to AI behaviour do You guys have some way to "load" premade mod options with "everything works fine" idea behind it? It would be easier to just click "start game" knowing that I can use all the mod has to offer while being sure that I'm not playing easy mode because AI don't use half the options I do.

In the end I'd like to say I really love the way this mod evolved and I'd just like it to look good and be sterile while having this Civ4 feel Sid Meier made.

 

[dusckr87]

I'm not that big on graphically "improving" things. Do so if time permits, but gameplay is far more important. Maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy, but these young kids nowadays wanting lots of pretty pictures at times make me shake my head. Plus I really don't like it when the graphics get changed so often and sourceforge "hiccups" making downloading a new SVN tedious at best.

The last part about the AI considering terrain effects is that I believe that it does, though I play with it off myself.

 

[Koshling]

I'm not that big on graphically "improving" things. Do so if time permits, but gameplay is far more important. Maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy, but these young kids nowadays wanting lots of pretty pictures at times make me shake my head. Plus I really don't like it when the graphics get changed so often and sourceforge "hiccups" making downloading a new SVN tedious at best.

The last part about the AI considering terrain effects is that I believe that it does, though I play with it off myself.

AI understanding of terrain damage is minimal in V25. It has been improved in the SVN just last week though. Similarly there are other options it has a poor grasp of, but which are scheduled for an update as and when I get time to work on it (notably Great Commanders and Surround and Destory)

Animated leaderheads are a bad idea because the game engine is too old to support them well at the same time as supporting the large maps most poeple want with C2C (no coincidnece that the frequency of MAFs and black-tiles increases dramatically if you use the animated pack). That is also why most building models are, by default, turned off (doesn't invalidate the point that those building models that ARE on by default are not great in some cases, and improving those has no negative impact, so that's fine).

If we had a modern game engine doing the graphics all your points would be addressable. However, we don't. We have a 32-bit, single-threaded engine from circa 2005. If you have the necessary skill set to build us a replacement graphics engine then that would be fantastic, but that's a several man-years job for someone who knows DirectX coding well.

 

[ls612]

AI understanding of terrain damage is minimal in V25. It has been improved in the SVN just last week though. Similarly there are other options it has a poor grasp of, but which are scheduled for an update as and when I get time to work on it (notably Great Commanders and Surround and Destory)

Animated leaderheads are a bad idea because the game engine is too old to support them well at the same time as supporting the large maps most poeple want with C2C (no coincidnece that the frequency of MAFs and black-tiles increases dramatically if you use the animated pack). That is also why most building models are, by default, turned off (doesn't invalidate the point that those building models that ARE on by default are not great in some cases, and improving those has no negative impact, so that's fine).

If we had a modern game engine doing the graphics all your points would be addressable. However, we don't. We have a 32-bit, single-threaded engine from circa 2005. If you have the necessary skill set to build us a replacement graphics engine then that would be fantastic, but that's a several man-years job for someone who knows DirectX coding well.

I don't want to get too far into the "let's replace the engine" discussion, but could we not use a pre-existing open source graphics engine as a base and save some time and effort?

 

[Koshling]

I don't want to get too far into the "let's replace the engine" discussion, but could we not use a pre-existing open source graphics engine as a base and save some time and effort?

Maybe. I don't know enough about that area to be sure. The big issue is that whatever engine we use has to be capable of using our current graphical assets (which are not a very modern format) or else we're into recreating every terrain, feature, unit, building, etc. from scratch in some sort of graphics editor, which is both a huge effort in itself and another thing we don't really have the skillset for in the team I don't think.

 

[necxelos]

Previously (in ROM and ROM:AND) there were animated leaderheads (some of them great like Hitlers) and game was working well. You must consider the fact that the game is few years old but common player has PC with DOUBLE the specification that was in standard when Civilization 4 came out. So the hardware needs aren't that important.

I'd like to know how to turn all the animated heads on that were there previously. I'm sane enough to know that visuals are as important as new options. For example: even if llama's guano were the greatest drug ever without any negative side effects I wouldn't use it because "ItIsPurehorsehockey". As simple as that. Mod is great so why not make it look good as well?? Eating pie AND having pie is a best way to do things.

Btw. I offered to make 2d comic-like caricaturical leaderheads that share same visual style. But mish-mash of "what I found on web" is just terrible and this is the actual version of leaderheads.

I think that this mod deserve to raise into a top-quality expansion not "just mod".

Also some of You said that buildings are by default "turned off". How can I turn them on? Same for animated leaderheads. How can I have every leader animated?

 

[Cyrusfan]

You might want to have a look over the "performance" thread before you make too many assertions about what the common player (or even the modders) is using relative to the workload C2C (which dwarfs base civ4) puts on them.

 

[Koshling]

You might want to have a look over the "performance" thread before you make too many assertions about what the common player (or even the modders) is using relative to the workload C2C (which dwarfs base civ4) puts on them.

More to the point the engine cannot USE the extra capabilities of modern machines. It's 32-bit which means it cannot address more than 4G RAM (3G practically sicne the OS reserves 1G of the address space anyway). It's single threaded so it make ZERO use of multi-core processors.

There is a separate downloadable animated leaderpack I think, but it's very incomplete (most recently added civs don't have them at all). The buildings displayed is controlled by the SHOW_BUILDING_LEVEL global define in assets/xml/A_New_Dawn_GlobalDefines.xml (the comments there describe how it works)

 

[draz]

You must consider the fact that the game is few years old but common player has PC with DOUBLE the specification that was in standard when Civilization 4 came out. So the hardware needs aren't that important.

If it only were that simple; it's not the hardware that's the limiting factor here, but the engine itself like Koshling said.

Unified caricature leaderheads would be kickass (don't much care for the current mish-mash of different styles either), but it'd be a pretty huge undertaking for someone to do alone.

It's 32-bit which means it cannot address more than 4G RAM (3G practically sicne the OS reserves 1G of the address space anyway).

Does that happen with a 64-bit OS with 4+ GB RAM as well?

 

[Koshling]

If it only were that simple; it's not the hardware that's the limiting factor here, but the engine itself like Koshling said.

Unified caricature leaderheads would be kickass (don't much care for the current mish-mash of different styles either), but it'd be a pretty huge undertaking for someone to do alone.



Does that happen with a 64-bit OS with 4+ GB RAM as well?

I believe so

 

[Rasma]

Does that happen with a 64-bit OS with 4+ GB RAM as well?

Yes because it is a limitation of the game itself, however I do know there are mods out there to help exes understand multi core processing I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head but using something like that would invalidate the ULA.

 

[Cruel]

More to the point the engine cannot USE the extra capabilities of modern machines. It's 32-bit which means it cannot address more than 4G RAM (3G practically sicne the OS reserves 1G of the address space anyway). It's single threaded so it make ZERO use of multi-core processors.

For information I'm seeing a mod becomes bigger than the game itself. I'ts the 0 AD game from Age of Empires: they are developing their own engine. It would be wonderful if we could make better use 64-bit features, or even use those effects of sea of the colonization.

BTW: I believe it should have 100 people on their team.

 

[ls612]

For information I'm seeing a mod becomes bigger than the game itself. I'ts the 0 AD game from Age of Empires: they are developing their own engine. It would be wonderful if we could make better use 64-bit features, or even use those effects of sea of the colonization.

BTW: I believe it should have 100 people on their team.

We've discussed several times the idea of making our own engine, and I think that at this point it's a matter of when as opposed to a matter of if. Viewports will give us more life out of the Civ 4 engine, and some of the more time-consuming DLL processes are parallelisable, so in theory we can circumvent some engine limitations. However, having our own engine would provide so much potential, but also so much work.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Problem is it's visual quality. Some people say that 2d leaderheads are great and I would say it's not a good idea and here is why:

There is a separate download for animated leader heads. However it is not up to date, mostly because no one on the team feel it is important enough to keep it up to date.

- Animal unit height placement (birds are placed too low above the forest - they just fluy THROUGH trees and most of time You barely see wings not to mention birds body),

This is a bug in the graphics engine or how the XML is being used. They are set to be displayed as air units but aren't. Although on the rare occasion they do.

 

[Hydromancerx]

- Building models - most of them simply dont exist,

Since we are so building heavy it was decided to just not include buildings since most of the time all you would see is the icon/button anyways. If there were graphics for each building the game would run much, MUCH slower. And that's why most buildings have no graphics beyond icon/buttons.

For information I'm seeing a mod becomes bigger than the game itself. I'ts the 0 AD game from Age of Empires: they are developing their own engine. It would be wonderful if we could make better use 64-bit features, or even use those effects of sea of the colonization.

BTW: I believe it should have 100 people on their team.

I have the up most respect for the 0 AD team. They are really making a great game I wish the best for it.

 

[necxelos]

There is a separate download for animated leader heads. However it is not up to date, mostly because no one on the team feel it is important enough to keep it up to date.

It's not the matter of "important or not" because the whole modding community has around 2-3k of nicely done leaderheads to use. They just need to be included instead of this terrible, low quality, pixelized jpg's.

Flying animals... This is a bug in the graphics engine or how the XML is being used. They are set to be displayed as air units but aren't. Although on the rare occasion they do.

It's a well known bug then? Any chance of someone working on this?

 

[necxelos]

Unified caricature leaderheads would be kickass (don't much care for the current mish-mash of different styles either), but it'd be a pretty huge undertaking for someone to do alone.

Well, I will post few examples when I go back from my summer trip and if You'll like them I will start asking for someone to help me doing it the same way.

Btw. there is another thing/bug connected to leaderheads. Many leaders have different animated leaderhead in miniature and different in use. It's even worse - the bad ones are used in big leaderhead and good one in icon/miniature. For example DIDO. Great community made head is used only in Icon and crappy retexture head used as big one -.-

P.S. Is the thing with building placement (walls especially) known? I mentioned it in 1st post...

 

[Koshling]

Well, I will post few examples when I go back from my summer trip and if You'll like them I will start asking for someone to help me doing it the same way.

Btw. there is another thing/bug connected to leaderheads. Many leaders have different animated leaderhead in miniature and different in use. It's even worse - the bad ones are used in big leaderhead and good one in icon/miniature. For example DIDO. Great community made head is used only in Icon and crappy retexture head used as big one -.-

P.S. Is the thing with building placement (walls especially) known? I mentioned it in 1st post...

Not really my area, but I don't think there is a known issue with building placement. I'm not very familiar with tha code and to be honest I wasn't aware our code had any control over where it placed individual buikldings (I thought that was all done inside the engine)

 

[ls612]

Not really my area, but I don't think there is a known issue with building placement. I'm not very familiar with tha code and to be honest I wasn't aware our code had any control over where it placed individual buikldings (I thought that was all done inside the engine)

No. It is controlled in the CIV4CityLSystem and the CIV4PlotLSystem XML files.

 

[Cruel]

If we had a modern game engine doing the graphics all your points would be addressable. However, we don't. We have a 32-bit, single-threaded engine from circa 2005. If you have the necessary skill set to build us a replacement graphics engine then that would be fantastic, but that's a several man-years job for someone who knows DirectX coding well.

I don't want to get too far into the "let's replace the engine" discussion, but could we not use a pre-existing open source graphics engine as a base and save some time and effort?

More to the point the engine cannot USE the extra capabilities of modern machines. It's 32-bit which means it cannot address more than 4G RAM (3G practically sicne the OS reserves 1G of the address space anyway). It's single threaded so it make ZERO use of multi-core processors.

There is a separate downloadable animated leaderpack I think, but it's very incomplete (most recently added civs don't have them at all). The buildings displayed is controlled by the SHOW_BUILDING_LEVEL global define in assets/xml/A_New_Dawn_GlobalDefines.xml (the comments there describe how it works)

We've discussed several times the idea of making our own engine, and I think that at this point it's a matter of when as opposed to a matter of if. Viewports will give us more life out of the Civ 4 engine, and some of the more time-consuming DLL processes are parallelisable, so in theory we can circumvent some engine limitations. However, having our own engine would provide so much potential, but also so much work.

I would like the opinion of you in this thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=487644