[Release] C7 Babylon Release Now Available!

Quintillus

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Editor's Note: This release has since been superseded by Carthage Preview 1.

Good day farmers and lawmakers! Today we are pleased to announce our new Babylon release, the first since the "Aztec" release in November.

Many improvements have been made since then. The first you'll notice is on the main menu, where we now have custom artwork, and where background music will play.

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In game, you'll notice significant improvements to the map. Forests, jungles, marshes, hills, mountains, volcanoes, and rivers all appear in-game. Resources also appear, although for now they are display-only, with no impact in-game. With your Chariot unit, you'll see that movement costs are factored in to terrain, and a land/water distinction is also present.

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Cities now produce units, on a set schedule, including new settlers, and, if they are coastal, galleys. This allows you to colonize your landmass (water transport is not yet implemented), and generally lead Babylon to greatness.

There are also now three AI opponents per map to contend with. They will also build units, and colonize land with settlers. Their AI logic remains primitive for now, but they will colonize based on tile yield, albeit preferring an Infinite City Sprawl (ICS) strategy. Don't be surprised if the AI tries to reach your preferred colonization site before you do!

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You'll also run into barbarians, who send out Warriors to make your life difficult.

Make your life difficult, you ask? Indeed, because we now have our first iteration of combat, as well as unit animation. Units all have three hitpoints, and will duke it out whenever they come in contact with another civilization's units. So far, when that happens is based on the AI's random movements - or your intentional ones - but be careful because sooner or later the AI will run into you!

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Behind the scenes, a lot of other, less visible improvements have also been made. Many BIQ files can be loaded (although most BIQ features are not yet supported); non-square maps are supported; and improvements have been made for setting a default Civ3 directory for importing artwork and opening scenarios. We've also been making some improvements to our C7 architecture as we switch from a prototype-proof-of-concept phase to a longer-term outlook.

I'd also like to call out that we have had several new collaborators since the Aztec release, with @Caro-Kann , @Lanzelot , @TowelCiv3, and pcen making their first contributions, and @Flintlock , @Puppeteer , @WildWeazel , and @Quintillus making additions to Babylon as well as Aztec. We've thus added the Credits area, where we also recognize the contributions of @Blue Monkey , @Civinator , @Ozymandias , and @Vuldacon .

In addition, there have been many ideas and suggestions from forum residents here at CFC. In the following post, I'll note our broad outlines for the next "Carthage" release, including notes on ways more forum members (not just coders!) can get involved.

You can download the Babylon release from this link, and let us know what you think, in this thread!

We also have a request for you, the users: we opened a poll to find out what systems you would expect to use for C7. This will help us determine compatibility requirements and make some design decisions. Especially let us know if you have something other than a modern Windows PC. Thanks!
 
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What's Next and How Can I be Involved?

Our current outline for Carthage features is as follows, listed alphabetically:
  • AI Improvements
  • Architectural Improvements (prototype mod, component-event framework, include some resources)
  • City Production Part I
  • Combat Part II
  • Right Click Menu
  • Road Building
  • Save and load
  • Tile Visibility
  • World Map Polish/Details
This remains subject to change, but is based on discussion in this thread. Realistically, this list will probably take a similar amount of time to what Babylon has taken, perhaps somewhat more.

We've been adding documentation to our Wiki, including this page on how to contribute. It is still early days for the project, so this is still a work-in-progress, but we encourage taking a look at that page and welcome feedback.

If you are a coder, you may be able to help speed up development by looking at one of the Carthage tasks listed here, the most-likely-to-be-good first issues. If you prefer to review code to writing it, that is even better - let us know!

Of particular note for non-coders is the "include some resources" item. Babylon depends on Civ III resources to run; our goal is to reduce that dependency in Carthage. Thus, we could use some help from artists. I'll be starting a thread for that task. Our primary goal at this point is to, with permission, use community art created by this community over the years to replace the Civ III art. Later on, we plan to add support for more modern formats, but using the old formats and assets is the quickest way to start.

We're also at a stage where user feedback, particularly bug reports, can be useful. We don't expect the AI to display optimal behavior at this point, but especially feedback on BIQ/SAV compatibility could be helpful in improving stability going forward. We have a list of tasks and bugs here, so you might find an issue you run into already documented, but if not, feedback is helpful! It also could be useful to have a community organizer who focuses on organizing the community feedback.

But right now? Take Babylon for a spin, and let us know you have!
 
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Gave it a quick test run, then swapped the terrain in my main Civ3 installation folder to see how that looked too (screenshot related!). Seems to be working ok. Only things I can note (and that you are probably already well aware) are that 1. Galleys act as land units, 2. some sound files not playing (I think they might be .amb files though, so I'd wager they're not configured yet), 3. some slight transparency issues for the Catapult death animation

Overall, it's looking really good!
 

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Thanks for posting the link to the poll, WildWeazel! I realized this morning that I forgot to include that last night.

Gave it a quick test run, then swapped the terrain in my main Civ3 installation folder to see how that looked too (screenshot related!). Seems to be working ok. Only things I can note (and that you are probably already well aware) are that 1. Galleys act as land units, 2. some sound files not playing (I think they might be .amb files though, so I'd wager they're not configured yet), 3. some slight transparency issues for the Catapult death animation

Overall, it's looking really good!

Good to hear! And thanks for the feedback! You are right about .amb files; Flintlock has written that up and made some notes here. We also have the galleys-on-land (or "Prairie Schooner") problem noted here. But I hadn't noticed the catapult death animation one yet. I know the speed of playback is still being adjusted, which could be related, but @Flintlock is our resident animation expert at this point.
 
Ok wow!! I didn't get a chance to try out Aztec yet but I'm 100% going to try this out today! It looks amazing. I'm so impressed at how much progress has been made. I can't code at all but will look into wether I can contribute art-wise though I think for many things there will already be a wealth of graphics on the forum. Will check out the wiki etc.

This is so so cool! Thank you to all who have made it happen!
 
I extracted C7 to a Folder in Conquests Scenario Folder.
Game loaded I could hear sounds and I could see terrain and build Babylon but the Unit Buttons were unrecognized and I could not move the Units. I could not go inside the City or see how many units I had.
Any ideas concerning this?
 
I extracted C7 to a Folder in Conquests Scenario Folder.
Game loaded I could hear sounds and I could see terrain and build Babylon but the Unit Buttons were unrecognized and I could not move the Units. I could not go inside the City or see how many units I had.
Any ideas concerning this?
Most of those things are not implemented yet. You should be able to move units with the numpad keys, but many on-screen buttons don't work yet.
 
For the modding side of things, I have a lot of possible suggestions.

I don't know if they're AT ALL feasible but I'd love to see these two: Make retreating from combat toggleable (Rather than automatic based on unit speed). This would allow one speed units to retreat. Or would allow certain naval units to retreat from Combat

I always wanted to balance naval combat to be interesting but because it was just high cost and high damage vs high speed and low cost it was never interesting. Always wanted to make heavy ships way beefier and ships like Destroyers can have the ability to retreat from combat

The other one would be stealth bombard. Always wanted to make the Stealth Fighter and Cruise Missile have the stealth attack ability but with bombard (To make them actually useful), but unfortunately stealth attack does nothing as far as bombarding is concerned. Hell, I think it'd be even better as a separate command altogether (Kind of like Precision Strike vs Bombard)




Other than that, increased unit and city cap would be nice. Always wanted to do a long haul 1024x1024 archi game but even with the city cap exe in place, the unit cap would inevitably get hit PRETTY early, making it tedious. More city names would also be very nice. Always hated the "New Babylon" etc...
 
Most of those things are not implemented yet. You should be able to move units with the numpad keys, but many on-screen buttons don't work yet.

OK, I thought perhaps I had it installed improperly... The existing work is a Good Start :thumbsup:
 
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