Rhye
's and Fall creator
[Edit 3/7/2021:
ANNOUNCEMENT: new forum created
https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/rhyes-and-fall.605/
]
[Edit 1/1/2021:
ANNOUNCEMENT: Rhye's and Fall will be completed and released as soon as it's ready, hopefully this late spring. You can check the updates on this thread or on rhye.civfanatics.net. This thread is about Rhye's Catapult, which is a middle step, but a new thread or forum for Rhye's and Fall will also be opened.
Download of Rhye's Catapult have been suspended, and will be again available only when the complete Rhye's and Fall is ready.
If you want to help testing, please contact me by private message to arrange some testing in the upcoming months.]
---------------------------------------
Dear Civ community,
I hope you are all healthy and safe.
I'm happy to announce here the release of "Rhye's Catapult" for Civ5 [EDIT 2nd of June: relased the first alpha].
This is happening because of...Coronavirus. This worldwide disaster had the unexpected collateral effect of giving free time at home...
So, if any of you is still playing Civ5 and eager to play RFC, you are welcome to contribute to the feedback.
I'd like to keep this thread as not only as a place to post feedback, but also for me to ask advice, in case I get stuck in the development.
I imagine many of you will have some questions, so here is a Q&A:
What's Rhye's Catapult?
Some of you will remember Rhye's Catapult in the early stages of Civ4. For the others: it's the working title for a Rhye's and Fall-style mod, without its complete additional features. It is somehow related to Civ3's "Rhye's of Civ - the Fastest Loading Mod".
Therefore, this Catapult for Civ5 will contain a specifically tailored world map with a smooth rise and fall system. No fancy stuff like UHVs or full overhauls for now... (however, the future addition of external mods could be considered).
What's peculiar of Rhye's Catapult for Civ5?
I saw that in the meantime, many other modders released pieces of RFC, such as delayed spawns, revolution, realistic city naming, etc. Even the official game series incorporated some concepts such as congresses and city states.
Indeed it's possible to build up your own RFC-style mix using existing mods, but I haven't found an all-in-one solution, and didn't find comfortable playing with the available world maps, for a variety of reasons.
The goal of Catapult is not to turn Civ5 upside down, but just to allow an enjoyable experience in playing the Earth map, which should behave as a historical simulator.
The most important part of this mod is the map, which satisfies 2 prerequisites at the same time:
1-big enough to allow a comfortable 1 unit per tile movement
2-small enough to allow a reasonable loading time.
The result is a 134x74 map that is smaller than the standard big size (128x80) but has room for movement (see screenshots)
On the top of it, a system of 22 major civs + 30 minor civs is implemented.
A system of rotation of civs and city states will limit the number of actors on the stage, containing loading times (on my PC, 1-2 seconds at the beginning, to reach 15-20 when the map is populated).
Delayed starts also help cutting loading times of autoplay (something similar to the 600AD starting point of RFC).
City names map and settlers map modifiers will be added.
What happened to Rhye's and Fall of Civilization?
Works on the Civ5 version were started immediately. With the help of Gedemon, Seraphim and other civfanatics.
It wasn't easy because my PC was too weak for the game, and any time there was a crash (which happened a lot) I had to wait sometimes hours: to reload the game, investigate, try a fix and re-run the autoplay. Autoplay was heavy also for other testers, apparently.
On the top of that, every time Firaxis released a patch or a DLC it was an interference with my plans for the mod.
Finally, all of a sudden my free time was over, and the mod was left as "a thing to do".
What happened to Rhye?
To say it shortly...I have been busy. I know this is not enough explanation and I need to apologise...
If you want to know more in detail you can read the spolier.
2010 Started working on RFC for Civ5
2011 The RFC development goes on but far to be completed, also because collaborators sometimes had to leave. At some point moved to Japan, changed field to robotics; started Ph.D.; free time to zero due to the frantic lifestyle of Tokyo.
2012 Moved to Germany and back through many business trips, free time even less than the previous year. Found external help to do some more progress on RFC, but couldn't integrate on the previous versions.
2013 Moved to the US, then Germany, then Japan and other places in a rush to finish Ph.D. Uninstalled Civ5.
2014 Moved to the Netherlands, Brazil, then to London in a restless barbarian fashion
2015 Moved back to Japan, started post-doc; published a scientific article on the mechanisms of RFC together with Soren Johnson
2016 Heavy workload; keep developing robots
2017 Bought Civ6, quickly gave up; moved to Russia and then Peru
2018 Working in Japan/Peru, heavy work load with teaching duties
2019 Same as 2018. My work can be seen here: http://rhye.civfanatics.net/gabu/
Why Civ5 instead of Civ6?
When I bought Civ6 I made up my mind that it wasn't going to happen, because of Civ6 districts, which make a game more as a sort of "Age of Empires", in the sense that you have a few bases (cities) for which you construct buildings and fight against other players bases. This doesn't seem to work well on a grand-scale game on a world map: in fact my only game played with the Earth map I spawned in the Amazon and it was all pretty uninspiring.
Furthermore, I don't like the Civ6 cartoonish appearance. So well, it's a great game, but not for RFC.
---------
So, I hope to be forgiven for the long absence!
Many times I felt guilty for leaving a halfway developed mod, long awaited by the community, lost somewhere in an external hard disk in a shelf...
For now I am not committing for an extensive mod like RFC nor for a totally bug-free code, as I don't want to repeat the same mistake of ambition, but I decided to keep things small and provide you what I have, which will be released whether it's perfect or not, and I hope you will find it enjoyable.
ANNOUNCEMENT: new forum created
https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/rhyes-and-fall.605/
]
[Edit 1/1/2021:
ANNOUNCEMENT: Rhye's and Fall will be completed and released as soon as it's ready, hopefully this late spring. You can check the updates on this thread or on rhye.civfanatics.net. This thread is about Rhye's Catapult, which is a middle step, but a new thread or forum for Rhye's and Fall will also be opened.
Download of Rhye's Catapult have been suspended, and will be again available only when the complete Rhye's and Fall is ready.
If you want to help testing, please contact me by private message to arrange some testing in the upcoming months.]
---------------------------------------
Dear Civ community,
I hope you are all healthy and safe.
I'm happy to announce here the release of "Rhye's Catapult" for Civ5 [EDIT 2nd of June: relased the first alpha].
This is happening because of...Coronavirus. This worldwide disaster had the unexpected collateral effect of giving free time at home...
So, if any of you is still playing Civ5 and eager to play RFC, you are welcome to contribute to the feedback.
I'd like to keep this thread as not only as a place to post feedback, but also for me to ask advice, in case I get stuck in the development.
I imagine many of you will have some questions, so here is a Q&A:
What's Rhye's Catapult?
Some of you will remember Rhye's Catapult in the early stages of Civ4. For the others: it's the working title for a Rhye's and Fall-style mod, without its complete additional features. It is somehow related to Civ3's "Rhye's of Civ - the Fastest Loading Mod".
Therefore, this Catapult for Civ5 will contain a specifically tailored world map with a smooth rise and fall system. No fancy stuff like UHVs or full overhauls for now... (however, the future addition of external mods could be considered).
What's peculiar of Rhye's Catapult for Civ5?
I saw that in the meantime, many other modders released pieces of RFC, such as delayed spawns, revolution, realistic city naming, etc. Even the official game series incorporated some concepts such as congresses and city states.
Indeed it's possible to build up your own RFC-style mix using existing mods, but I haven't found an all-in-one solution, and didn't find comfortable playing with the available world maps, for a variety of reasons.
The goal of Catapult is not to turn Civ5 upside down, but just to allow an enjoyable experience in playing the Earth map, which should behave as a historical simulator.
The most important part of this mod is the map, which satisfies 2 prerequisites at the same time:
1-big enough to allow a comfortable 1 unit per tile movement
2-small enough to allow a reasonable loading time.
The result is a 134x74 map that is smaller than the standard big size (128x80) but has room for movement (see screenshots)
On the top of it, a system of 22 major civs + 30 minor civs is implemented.
A system of rotation of civs and city states will limit the number of actors on the stage, containing loading times (on my PC, 1-2 seconds at the beginning, to reach 15-20 when the map is populated).
Delayed starts also help cutting loading times of autoplay (something similar to the 600AD starting point of RFC).
City names map and settlers map modifiers will be added.
What happened to Rhye's and Fall of Civilization?
Works on the Civ5 version were started immediately. With the help of Gedemon, Seraphim and other civfanatics.
It wasn't easy because my PC was too weak for the game, and any time there was a crash (which happened a lot) I had to wait sometimes hours: to reload the game, investigate, try a fix and re-run the autoplay. Autoplay was heavy also for other testers, apparently.
On the top of that, every time Firaxis released a patch or a DLC it was an interference with my plans for the mod.
Finally, all of a sudden my free time was over, and the mod was left as "a thing to do".
What happened to Rhye?
To say it shortly...I have been busy. I know this is not enough explanation and I need to apologise...
If you want to know more in detail you can read the spolier.
Spoiler :
2010 Started working on RFC for Civ5
2011 The RFC development goes on but far to be completed, also because collaborators sometimes had to leave. At some point moved to Japan, changed field to robotics; started Ph.D.; free time to zero due to the frantic lifestyle of Tokyo.
2012 Moved to Germany and back through many business trips, free time even less than the previous year. Found external help to do some more progress on RFC, but couldn't integrate on the previous versions.
2013 Moved to the US, then Germany, then Japan and other places in a rush to finish Ph.D. Uninstalled Civ5.
2014 Moved to the Netherlands, Brazil, then to London in a restless barbarian fashion
2015 Moved back to Japan, started post-doc; published a scientific article on the mechanisms of RFC together with Soren Johnson
2016 Heavy workload; keep developing robots
2017 Bought Civ6, quickly gave up; moved to Russia and then Peru
2018 Working in Japan/Peru, heavy work load with teaching duties
2019 Same as 2018. My work can be seen here: http://rhye.civfanatics.net/gabu/
Why Civ5 instead of Civ6?
When I bought Civ6 I made up my mind that it wasn't going to happen, because of Civ6 districts, which make a game more as a sort of "Age of Empires", in the sense that you have a few bases (cities) for which you construct buildings and fight against other players bases. This doesn't seem to work well on a grand-scale game on a world map: in fact my only game played with the Earth map I spawned in the Amazon and it was all pretty uninspiring.
Furthermore, I don't like the Civ6 cartoonish appearance. So well, it's a great game, but not for RFC.
---------
So, I hope to be forgiven for the long absence!
Many times I felt guilty for leaving a halfway developed mod, long awaited by the community, lost somewhere in an external hard disk in a shelf...
For now I am not committing for an extensive mod like RFC nor for a totally bug-free code, as I don't want to repeat the same mistake of ambition, but I decided to keep things small and provide you what I have, which will be released whether it's perfect or not, and I hope you will find it enjoyable.
Last edited: