Praying for a revival of FFH with Civ6

[Zavaleta]

I assume that I am not the only fan of the Fall from Heaven mod that dreams of a glorious return for dark fantasy with Civ 6.

Yes there have been fantasy mods in Civ5 like Fearun and a slew of fantasy 4x games, Age of Wonders 3, Endless Legend (the nearest successor to FFH), Warlock, etc. But none of them matched the dynamic gameplay of FFH and the two features I loved most about the game:

1) Dynamic terrain. The earth would literally change as the game progressed and depending on players actions. Deadly winter and the late game arrival of Hellscape as the earth descended into the apocalypse. There were civilizations whose very presence on the map changed the map itself. Modmods of FFH went even further with this concept.

2) Apocalypse counter. Events in the game would gradually raise the prospect of the apocalypse and the arrival of demons and an infernal civilization. You could play with the intent of bringing on the apocalypse sooner or defending against it and once the the end times began it would realign all of the civilizations in a final battle. Like the "endgame crisis" Stellaris sold but in FFH it actually worked and created an overarching story for the entire campaign.

Ea was a very cool design concept building on FFH for Civ5, but suffered as Civ5 was never made as moddable as Civ4.

I have no modding skills so this post is a simple plea to the modding community and the developers of Civ6 to make it as open sourced a game as Civ4 was so that the revival of FFH's legacy can return. Or heck, just make an independent title and I, along with others, will happily pay you for it. Please!!

 

[Diavolo Rosso]

FFH really was something special. The game had a ton of replayability, not only that but the lore was incredible, too. If anything like it was to be made for Civ6, I'd be a happy gamer.

Hell, I think I'd learn how to code some more to try to help out anyone tackled such a project.

 

[TC01]

FFH really was something special. The game had a ton of replayability, not only that but the lore was incredible, too. If anything like it was to be made for Civ6, I'd be a happy gamer.

Hell, I think I'd learn how to code some more to try to help out anyone tackled such a project.

The lack of total conversion mods in the same vein of FFH2 is one of the biggest reasons I am still primarily a Civ 4 player and not a Civ 5 player. I realized in the latter days of Civ 4 that I cared a lot less about Civ 4 as a game and a lot more about it as a game engine. As a result I never really got around to making the jump to 5.

I think it's unfortunately unlikely that we'll see a bunch of total conversion mods for Civ 6 though. Given that they didn't happen for Civ 5, and given that making art continues to get harder as the game engines improve... I dunno. I hope I'm wrong, but we shall see.

(Interesting aside: what we might someday see is a standalone Fall from Heaven game of some sort. (Kael's been posting about the FFH universe on reddit recently).)

 

[Zavaleta]

I am really hoping they open up the code for Civ6 like they did with Civ4. The designers claimed that it will be the most moddable Civ yet. We will see.

There have been plenty of fantasy 4x since FFH but for whatever reason none have hit the same gameplay itch as FFH did.

"The Frozen" was one of my favorite modmods for FFH. That alongside the necromancer D'tesh. Thanks TC01 for the hours of fun.

 

[TC01]

Well, even if it is, "most moddable" doesn't necessarily mean "easiest to make total conversion mods", unfortunately. But we'll see, I guess.

"The Frozen" was one of my favorite modmods for FFH. That alongside the necromancer D'tesh. Thanks TC01 for the hours of fun.

Wow, thanks! I've never been 100% happy with the way the Frozen turned out, but I'm glad you enjoyed them.

I always intended to make more FFH civs, but I never got around to it.

 

[Diavolo Rosso]

The lack of total conversion mods in the same vein of FFH2 is one of the biggest reasons I am still primarily a Civ 4 player and not a Civ 5 player. I realized in the latter days of Civ 4 that I cared a lot less about Civ 4 as a game and a lot more about it as a game engine. As a result I never really got around to making the jump to 5.

Me too! 5 just didn't have that spark 4 did, nor anything amazing like FFH to keep me playing endlessly.

(Interesting aside: what we might someday see is a standalone Fall from Heaven game of some sort. (Kael's been posting about the FFH universe on reddit recently).)

Hells yeah.

 

[Alexej]

I hope there is enough of us praying that we actually can play our FFH on new engine one day be it as mod or standalone game

 

[janboruta]

I hope there is enough of us praying that we actually can play our FFH on new engine one day be it as mod or standalone game

Praying won't make it happen - how about joining forces with modders who'd be interested in recreating FFH? There was a lot of people praying for FFH in Civ 5, but no one willing to put any effort towards making it a reality.

 

[Drakarska]

It wouldn't really be FFH without Kael's input anyway.

 

[Alexej]

With work and kid I do have like 3 hours a week for playing, even if I switch it to learn modding of civ 6 any fruit produced will be too late for everyone here

 

[Zavaleta]

Modder enthusiasm was not the problem for converting FFH into Civ5. The problem was that too much of the game remained hardcoded for modders to easily do full conversion mods. Faerun I believe is one of the only full conversion mods for Civ5 and most of it is accessory (does not alter base game mechanics). When I checked last week, modders are still modifying FFH for Civ4 in the dark corners of the Civfanatics forums. If FFH is going to be possible for Civ6, we first need the developers to open up the code for the game. That is step one.

 

[TC01]

Modder enthusiasm was not the problem for converting FFH into Civ5. The problem was that too much of the game remained hardcoded for modders to easily do full conversion mods. Faerun I believe is one of the only full conversion mods for Civ5 and most of it is accessory (does not alter base game mechanics). When I checked last week, modders are still modifying FFH for Civ4 in the dark corners of the Civfanatics forums. If FFH is going to be possible for Civ6, we first need the developers to open up the code for the game. That is step one.

While that's true, you shouldn't assume that people who are still working on modding FFH2 would even necessarily want to spend time working on a similar mod for Civilization 6.

 

[Opera]

It'd be great, that's for sure. We have to see how moddable the game is first and art was already a big issue back then, it'd be an even bigger one now; although note that a primary issue with Civ5 was that, early on, you couldn't even mod in 2D leaderscreens because of a bug.

Having the civics tree might be a way to pull off magic research, although that also brings about the problem of coding a magic system. Civ6 has the advantage of having governments and policies, a step closer to Civ4 and its civics. This tree would actually be useful in really separating progress from cultural advancement in FFH's tree (it was always a messy bit).

Unstacked cities could be great with portals instead of airports, magic schools on the map, that kind of thing.

I mean, in theory FFH could be great in Civ5 or Civ6 but I'm not sure there's enough *modders* willing to do it.

 

[Deon]

With work and kid I do have like 3 hours a week for playing, even if I switch it to learn modding of civ 6 any fruit produced will be too late for everyone here

That's a problem for quite a few previously dedicated modders . But if we organize, even a bit here and a bit there should be good enough. All we need is a few people who are ready to stay strong and keep the other contributors around them.

 

[Nomad or What]

Throwing in my two cents here, I would love to be part of a Civ VI FFH concept provided that custom animations and 3d model conversions are relatively straightforward. This was the greatest challenge with CiV; it took a lot of dedicated modders to finally reach the point to where custom models and animations were credible - and by that time, Civ VI was already in the works. If these aspects don't prove to be difficult obstacles to overcome, you can absolutely bet that I will be there to contribute to a FFH-like mod!

 

[Septentrion]

At least there is enough lore to work from, and having ancient magical sites as part of your districts is very appealing. The non-priest magic system was already complex enough and came out of basically nowhere in the native civ-4. It's not hard to picture Civ 6 FFH.

 

[UnderKingDuck]

I would love to see a FFH mod for civ 6. I brought civ 4, maybe put say 200 hours into it, and then stopped playing it for awhile. Then I discovered FFH and all the modmods and now I have 1849 hours in civ 4. While they are many 4x fantasy games in the market now, none of them really comes close to having all the features that FFH had. I mean in FFH some civs played really different, it had an alignment system which i have not really seen in any 4x game, magic, and more. With all the new systems in civ 6, I can just imagine how much more can be done with it.

 

[Jojo_Fr]

I would love it too. I could even pay money to have a great FFH2 mod in Civ VI.

 

[Thlayli]

I'll add my voice to the FFH fans. Even if Kael isn't actively developing, there are a ton of members of the old mod team who might come back if Kael at least gave his blessings for a spiritual successor.

 

[Ari Rahikkala]

I really love Fall From Heaven's setting, and just for that reason, I hope that if there is going to be a great (dark) fantasy mod for Civ6, it will have its own setting. The one thing better than one great fantasy mod for a Civilization game is two great fantasy mods for Civilization games!