Sign this plea to Firaxis -- open your AI APIs!

[AtW]

Dear Firaxis,

I have been playing your games since the very first release of Civ and just like everyone else was eagerly anticipating Civ3! You have done a great job in back then and now, and I can see that you are truly interested in helping out the MOD community to prolong life of your game and just for fun.

Civs have always been focused on single player experience, with computer opponents -- and this is what we need! We need way to modify or even create our own AIs - but not just some scrited INI parameters, but being able to modify them completely!!!

Please give us C++/H files needed to write AI plugins! We don't need to peek into your own version of AI, just allow us to create our own code that would override internal AI decisions. Be like Valve with HalfLife - make Civ3 thrive through the centuries with our help!

Fellow civfanatics, please sign this plea to Firaxis! Guys, don't just read it -- login and sign this plea -- we need at least 100 people to pursvuade Firaxis, if its possible at all! Just think what awesome things we would be able to do with AI!!!!

 

[s3d]

Wow, that is a great idea ! If we only could plug in our own AI routines...I would stop sleep at all and will be fired:crazyeyes

 

[DarkEvent]

yes this will be realy great
I can c++ so I will create some new scrips, too

 

[skywalker]

LET US CHANGE THE AI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[CD Light]

This would definitely increase the enjoyment of the single-player game, and would allow us to create really cool scenarios even
WITHOUT scenario editing tools.

I second the motion!

 

[Marzipan]

Yes please! Same to all game makers for all games: we want to do as much tweaking on the AI as possible! Thank you.

 

[Khalid01]

Sign.

 

[Stormbringer]

I'm in!
The change AI would be nice!

 

[Joe R. Golowka]

Sign.

 

[skywalker]

scribblescribblescribblescribble [illegible_signature]skywalker[illegible_signature/]

 

[Turkish]

Sign

 

[Plutarck]

Plutarck, creator of the Long Winded Changes Mod for Civ3 (LWC), do hereby sign this plea.

And I approve of it, too

 

[Black Fluffy Lion]

count me in.

 

[wongthefob888]

I'm all for this, I'd love to see Firaxis do this!

 

[Umask077]

I dont think they can do it without providing at least portions of there AI. This shouldnt be to difficult to do but hiding the original and allowing people change them without example would be difficult.

This would be a major project so good luck getting them to do it. Ill take advantage of it if they do.

 

[God]

God

 

[MikeV]

Originally posted by AtW
Please give us C++/H files needed to write AI plugins! We don't need to peek into your own version of AI, just allow us to create our own code that would override internal AI decisions. Be like Valve with HalfLife - make Civ3 thrive through the centuries with our help!

I think it's not a reasonable request for Civ 3, since it's released and in maintenance mode (patches to fix bugs and problems). Besides, the folks have their hands full with adding multi-player -- let's let them finish that first! :santa:

Designing a program with the kind of extensibility you are requesting is possible (I've done it in some of my programs), but it has to be designed in from the start -- you can't just tack it on after the fact. The API has to be designed pretty carefully, and it takes several iterations to settle on a workable one.

The most difficult aspect of this kind of extension is the potential for bugs & crashes it introduces. Drives the tech support folks nuts. :crazyeyes (Makes video card/OS driver incompatibilities look like kid's play) Then, you have to worry about all the flavors of compiler/linker compatibility (with C++) and JVM implementatiions (with Java), on top of all the existing (in)compatibility issues. Quite a combinatorial can of worms. :aargh3:

Add to that the small audience who could really take advantage of such a feature, and the cost/benefit analysis doesn't look so good.

You might want to try your hand at hacking around with one of the Open Source games available on the 'net. Who knows, maybe you can teach one to read .bic file formats, and ... well, the sky's the limit! (Go for it!! )

Good hunting,

 

[Lt.Col. Kilgore]

You've got my Herbie Hancock!

 

[AtW]

Mike, what you talking about? I can hack their EXE and DLLs and create my own API, just like HalfLife was hacked to allow bots. In fact external bots for CS were better than those built in Valve.

There are no technical issues -- all modified code will NOT be supported, just like Valve doesn't support it. The point is -- Civ is more about AI than graphics, and this particular aspect has not been open for mods ever -- hence my request.

Update: obviously I don't want to spend time in debugger going through their AI code, and much rather use official interface. It would also be good if they published .BIC file spec! A simple header file would be sufficient, thnx Firaxis.

 

[Shaitan]

I'm in. I'd love to be able to tweak the AI.