iPad version?

[Nikolai II]

I'm pretty sure we'll not see this. Porting the game would be hell, I'm sure.

 

[wyqtor]

Civ 5 is unplayable on my Bay Trail tablet, which is quite similar in performance to the iPad Air. Alpha Centauri, however, is running OK. The only way to make Civ:BE work on iPads is to significantly dumb it down.

I would rather have them port older and less demanding games on iOS and Android and retrofit them with touch controls.

 

[Richelieu06]

I know the discussion is about Civ V and B.E. but just to make it clear to Firaxis; I would pay a lot of money for something that looks and play like Civ IV on my iPad. After all i was playing it on an old pc that did not had the power of my iPad Air.

 

[Wodan]

I doubt we'll see tablet versions for BE, but it's pretty much mandatory for Civ6. There's too much money/customers in the tablet market for 2k/Firaxis to not do it.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Didn't say it was easy, but to me it looks like it's possible if you plan for it. I'm talking about setting up a new shared project in VS2013. Doesn't matter if it's the data layer, Data Access layer, Business Layer or Service Access layer. Alot of the codebase could be reused if you went for it from the start.

I've used VS for 15 years, but don't have experience with Xamarin Studio or the Xamarin techology itself beside of what I've read. Since the VS shared project update first came in April2014 with Update2 I guess it will need some time to mature. But it seems to me that it's getting there.

But I agree that alot of #If PLATFORM compiler directives would make it a mess to maintain if they're needed everywhere.

For a computer game, data access layer is a minimal thing. The main part of the engine is game cycle and graphics. All this needs to be coded manually. Surely you could share Lua code and XML, but you don't need cross-platform tools for it.

 

[Lord Shadow]

I doubt we'll see tablet versions for BE, but it's pretty much mandatory for Civ6. There's too much money/customers in the tablet market for 2k/Firaxis to not do it.

It really isn't any need for any main series Civ game. There's no need to mangle a flagship title such as a hypothetical Civ6 to make it run on underpowered hardware such as that of tablets (or consoles, for that matter). You need a separate installment specifically designed for such environment, if anything. But there's too many examples of titles in the mainstream industry gimped for the lowest common denominator, which are later ported to PC and deliver an expectedly lackluster experience.

So for Pete's sake, don't mix PC and tablet gaming unless we're talking about simple products, such as Plants vs. Zombies.

 

[derdgod]

An Ipad version of civBE/6 game wont be happening. For those of you who want to play civ on your ipad you can use remote play and stream CIV from your computer to your ipad. This works great for turn based games

 

[beetle]

Alpha Centauri, however, is running OK. I would rather have them port older and less demanding games on iOS and Android and retrofit them with touch controls.

Nice. A tuned version of SMAC on an iPad? That would be sweet! I would happily pay full MSRP for that. But this would be up to EA, no?

For those of you who want to play civ on your ipad you can use remote play and stream CIV from your computer to your ipad. This works great for turn based games.

This misses the point. I want to play Civ5/CivBE on the train, not from my bedroom.

 

[Wodan]

I daresay the algorithms for pathing, combat, etc. aren't really that cpu intensive. Especially if they do a better job at the AI, which we all want anyway. The real intensive part is the animations. And Civ already comes with options for simplifying / reducing that, in the settings. No reason why Civ6 couldn't do the same, enough for a tablet to run the game just fine. Plus, in the couple of years before Civ6 comes out, the power of tablets will have improved greatly anyway.

I repeat, there's too much money in the tablet market for 2k/Firaxis to not do it.

 

[That Other Guy]

The minute-long waits between turns late-game are entirely CPU-limited - they have nothing to do with the animations. Between the reduced clockspeed and the order-of-magnitude smaller cache and memory in tablet, an ipad's going to make that significantly worse.

Also, there really isn't that much money in the tablet space for large games. Very few people are willing to pay $15 for a tablet game.

 

[Wodan]

The minute-long waits between turns late-game are entirely CPU-limited - they have nothing to do with the animations. Between the reduced clockspeed and the order-of-magnitude smaller cache and memory in tablet, an ipad's going to make that significantly worse.

And that's entirely the result of inefficient algorithms. You ever just sit and watch the AI move units around? They go in circles. Now imagine all the units you can't see across the map doing the same thing. That's just one example of efficiencies they could achieve.

Also, there really isn't that much money in the tablet space for large games. Very few people are willing to pay $15 for a tablet game.

That's because the market is too young. Most people use a tablet like an overgrown phone. Games for tablets are the same games they play on their phone. Currently. You've got to look at where the market is going... people are wanting to use their tablet for everything they used to use a desktop for, from surfing to doing work, and more (like controlling home appliances). And its inarguable that tablet use is still growing like a house on fire while desktop use is declining. 2 years from now tablets will be even more powerful and yes, I think people will be paying for "full" software to be used purely on a tablet. Or, another way to look at it, Surface Pros and Tablets will merge into a single market.

And, who says the price point has to be a flat fee. It could be a subscription model. e.g., maybe you get 1 Civ for free for a 1 month free period. Then, $2.99 per month and $2.99 per additional Civ you want to buy. Whatever, don't fixate on the numbers is the point.

 

[boghog]

And that's entirely the result of inefficient algorithms. You ever just sit and watch the AI move units around? They go in circles. Now imagine all the units you can't see across the map doing the same thing. That's just one example of efficiencies they could achieve.

I'm not a pro but I can tell you that making the AI intelligent enough to not do that (and just do it "in its mind" to find out that it really is pointless) makes the algorithm more cpu-demandung not less.

 

[Wodan]

I'm not a pro but I can tell you that making the AI intelligent enough to not do that (and just do it "in its mind" to find out that it really is pointless) makes the algorithm more cpu-demandung not less.

We'll just have to agree to disagree. I do coding for a living. And, it's intuitive even to non-programmers: work smarter not harder. A smarter algorithm is not synonymous with more computations. That's a false correlation.

What 2k/Firaxis haven't really been willing to do to date in previous incarnations of Civ is invest the design budget necessary to figure out the most efficient / smartest algorithms. Instead, the algorithms take a brute force approach. While it gets the job done, by no means is it efficient now, let alone the best case scenario as you are presenting it as. It's actually the opposite: the worst case scenario.

 

[m15a]

I repeat, there's too much money in the tablet market for 2k/Firaxis to not do it.

I'm not a game designer/developer, but from what you're saying, it makes sense that Firaxis would still be interested in the tablet market. I think the bigger question is whether Firaxis are planning one new Civ game or two (Civ 6 and Civ Rev Too (or Civ 6 Lite)) - I bet Firaxis has had that debate internally, too. They could also release Civ 6 in two years and Civ 6 for iPad (as a full, not "lite" game) in three or four years.

 

[Wodan]

I'm not a game designer/developer, but from what you're saying, it makes sense that Firaxis would still be interested in the tablet market. I think the bigger question is whether Firaxis are planning one new Civ game or two (Civ 6 and Civ Rev Too (or Civ 6 Lite)) - I bet Firaxis has had that debate internally, too. They could also release Civ 6 in two years and Civ 6 for iPad (as a full, not "lite" game) in three or four years.

Valid question. I be the failure of the Facebook game has them gunshy though.