Online petition for an updated Civ III editor

[Steph]

Folks, I think most of you are getting off-track on this.
The original title was "online petition for an updated Civ III editor".
What they will be first interested in (however remotely) is simply how many people would pay for a new upgraded Civ III.
And please read the News Update thread, where Jason of 2K makes it very
clear the chances of such an upgrade are tiny, at best.

I agree with you. There is no economical advantage to do it. It would cost them to produce it, and then to release it. An now they want to concentrate on CIV, or even Civ5.
Releasing a SDK as Darque is suggesting could be a solution. However, if the code is not done from the start with a possibility of SDK, then it means they have to create one, and we come back to case 1: to coslty.
I doubt they will make public the whole source code, for obvious copyright That's why I'm suggesting a fourth option, which was the option used for Steel Panthers.reasons.
Select a few modders - programmers, have them sign all the NDA and other needed documents. Send them the source code (or part of it), and let them handle it. It costs nothing to Firaxis, except perhaps answering some technical questions from time to time. As the copy protection will still be there, it means the changes can be used only by people who owns a version of CivIII.
For me, it would be the best solution. And if they agree with this, then we can make a list of what is a) wished, b) doable without to many changes.
However, it has to pass 3 difficulties:
1) Firaxis Take2 have to be willing to let the game expend with no more income (however, it would be done with no cost)
2) They have to find modders/programmers with the skills to do it
3) They have to find some that they can trust to sign the agreements, so the source code remains with them and is not released.

 

[Ogedei_the_Mad]

This was what happened with Call to Power 2, so it has been done before.

 

[Steph]

This was what happened with Call to Power 2, so it has been done before.

For Call to Power 2, they released "all" the source code for everyone, but without any comment, so it was not so easy to follow...
I'm speaking of releasing it with comments and a minimum support, but not to everyone to limit copyright issues

 

[Iron Beagle]

Since this and Civ4 are the only video games I play, I would pay a ridiculous amount of money for a Civ3 expansion, so much that you would question my sanity.

 

[Steph]

Since this and Civ4 are the only video games I play, I would pay a ridiculous amount of money for a Civ3 expansion, so much that you would question my sanity.

You should make an insane donation to the SSS team to help them finish it then

 

[utahjazz7]

Like mrtn said, many people would enjoy playing the mods and scenerios that could be created with changes like adding event triggers--myself included. I'm all for some sort of improved editor or code release.

 

[Olorin0222]

Please give us a downloadable source code (or follow Steph's suggestion above) or some form of a SDK, please Take2/Firaxis!

 

[taube87]

i support this pedition!
i think that your proposals are practicable and that this things would improve the game!

 

[waTTe]

I strongly support this.
CivIII has still a big community and a far-seeing company could still be interested in keeping in touch with these fans.
For example I bought CivIV, but I´m not playing it. It is not "my Civ" and I dont like it. Aditionally I´m still thinking its a huge bug
Any form of update for CivIII would be great and keeping me (and others?) addicted to this series. At the moment I´m not longer interested in any futurve "CivV" and I havent bought Warlords-expansion for CivIV and wont do it.
If at least something like Steph proposed would be possible, that would be fine.
And yes in other cases: I would buy an Expansion for CivIII.

 

[ShiroKobbure]

I would like everything R8XFT said.

I would also like:
Adding eras, deleting eras
Units need a specific government to build
Option to trade any units
Religions....?

 

[BadKharma]

I think the vast majority of people that play Civ 3 would pay for an improved editor. and considering the number of people that are not overthrilled with Civ 4 I see a large market for take 2 to develop the Civ 3 code and editor and release an expansion. It might even make more money than Civ 4.

 

[Mirc]

Most important things needed have been already said.

However, I would say:

• Make the effect of nukes possible to change
• DON'T LIMIT BUILDINGS!
• ALLOW MORE TERRAIN TYPES (with separate graphics if possible)!!!! and I'm not talking about LM, I'm talking about those who could occur randomly
• Allow adding and editing traits for real, with more "traits" of each trait possible to change
• DON'T LIMIT CULTURE GROUPS!!!
• Allow a unit to be more than one of those: sea, air, land.
• Allow more leaders for a civ
• ALLOW MORE THAN 31 CIVS
• Allow adding more eras
• And maybe allow some kind of religion in the game.

 

[Iron Beagle]

I'd also like a way to tinker with the railroad properties. As it is, you just cover the map with railroads and you can move your whole army to repel any invasion, making strategic placement of forces unnecessary. I always turn the railroads off in my mods.

Some penalty for putting a railroad on a tile might do the trick.

 

[Mirc]

But I equally don't like the system from Civ4, with railroads using 1/10 of the movement points... Anyway, if it would be just an option you can turn on and off, I'm all for it (and for any other improvement)

 

[Ozymandias]

Ah, Gentlemen (& Ladies, if appropriate),

I've gone through this thread and agree about much that I'd like to see added to the game. However, I seriously doubt the mainline code will ever be modified or released, due to (1) too low a cost / benefit ratio and (2) sheer embarrassment -- I mean, so much more than you suspect is hard-coded, and not particularly intelligently (I spent quite some time and effort 2 or 3 years back simply trying to figure out how the AI chooses which units to build, and the results were beyond disheartening).

So I think -- if we're lucky enough for this to ever happen -- a new editor will simply (1) if possible build upon activating, reallocating, and maybe duplicating switches already in place (I, too, would love to see more than one set of "Is Replaced By" building options); (2) hopefully, add various utilities to keep us from having to edit the many .txt files.

All that having been said, I'm afraid there's not much to hope for. All I can realistically think of are:

1. Opening up all options for all Buldings, Small Wonders, and Wonders.
2. Have a "multiple choice" for Government types when building (e.g., both a Fascist and Communist Gov -- but no other -- can build "Secret Police HQ" or whatever). And I can't even guess if this is doable without touching the mainline code.
3. Rename "Spaceship Part" to a variable field and let us produce properly ID-ed alternatives to Spaceships.
4. Allow base and landmark terrain to have different flags set.

I'd also love to see a box allowing an Improvement to double the effectiveness of other Improvements (trade; research; etc.) as opposed to just Happiness. Not to mention having the !@#! flags for "Civilizations" actually work the way they're supposed to!

*Sigh*,

Oz

 

[T.A JONES]

I support this and my money's on the table for a upgraded Civ3. Thank you

Improvment: Allow user created buildings to be added to the City View.

 

[Steph]

I've gone through this thread and agree about much that I'd like to see added to the game. However, I seriously doubt the mainline code will ever be modified or released, due to (1) too low a cost / benefit ratio and (2) sheer embarrassment -- I mean, so much more than you suspect is hard-coded, and not particularly intelligently (I spent quite some time and effort 2 or 3 years back simply trying to figure out how the AI chooses which units to build, and the results were beyond disheartening).

That's why I'm suggesting to release the code to a small team of trusted modders, with a NDA, and part of the agreement is they have to keepa few things quiet.

 

[Bjornlo]

Honestly, I don't care which way they do it.
If they opt for the small group of programmers.. they risk very little and earn little or nothing except good will. Which surely can't hurt.
If they opt to do it themselves they can do a low cost web release and with again little risk and earn a little (or maybe alot) on it. I know I would certainly be very willing to pay more than typical for such a "modders update".
If they opt to do nothing, they earn nothing and risk nothing. Unfortunately this is also the most likely.

 

[Plotinus]

I think that the number of people who would pay for a better editor (and nothing else) is very small. Even if all the regular posters on C&C here bought it, that's negligible really. So I think it's extremely unlikely that they would be willing to invest any money in such an upgrade. That's why I like Steph's idea, since it would cost them nothing.

 

[Chieftess]

Just to note (being a Programmer/Analyst, here's my 2 cents) -

If you want the code to be released...

- Civ3 doesn't have an SDK like Civ4. Making one would require a complete rewrite to have it in a DLL. They probably don't want people seeing the CD copy protection code, either.

- Check the feasibility. The Civ3 code has been written by multiple programmers. Being a programmer myself, this is the death knell of many a programs. Why? The next set of programmers don't know what the previous programmers did. Even with a few months (and that's atleast how long it takes) to study the code, there may still be things they don't know about. For example, maybe they want to change a function for the submarine AI, but for some reason, the spearman's defend AI also uses that function in some way, or even multiplayer. It might even be easier to do a complete rewrite of Civ3 than to have a 4th set of programmers (original, Soren and Co., BreakAway Games programmers, then a new one if they do that) work on it. Many of the changes here - even ones that seem simple like "Add new traits!", "trade units!", "Add XYZ feature", "Add more civs/units/cities/etc.) is going to have to go into the AI, and MP code. AI and MP is a whole 'nother ballgame. If the programmers already had enough trouble with this, imagine what it'll be like if stuff gets added! MP might become unplayable. Even without MP, the AI is really going to need to be told how to handle things. Got a new building that affects new terrain? The AI needs to know about it. Units now have traits like mounted, melee, pike (spear, pike, etc.)? The AI needs to know about it. Rails aren't 0 movement? AI needs to know about it. You get the picture.

- On the development end, many changes could require maybe a year or two to develop, and essentially an expansion pack. Say you have 10 programmers, and pay them $50,000 for 2 years, plus the artists. That's gonna be well over $1,000,000 right there, perhaps close to $2,000,000 if you include the testers (not beta testers - inhouse Quality Assurance people), artists and producers/developers - maybe more if you include modders for new mods. Take2 might need to know there's still an audience out there that will cover the costs. (atleast 50,000 players to cover $2,000,000 if it costs $40, and that probably doesn't cover corporate income tax, cost to mantain the building during that time, cost to produce ads, cost for equipment (computers, software, servers...), etc..). This is just part of the feasibility analysis that might stop them cold.

BTW, there's a similar petition for Civ2. Nothing's happened with that yet, I believe.


Even if the best option is to release the entire source code for free, something's going to have to be done about legal stuff like copy protection and such. The best thing really might be just to start from scratch with a DirectX project, and maybe release just the important C++ files (of course, Visual C++ 6.0 and DirectX would be required).