Space Empires - Ideas Thread

[dalek master]

that picture is awesome, but I still like my mechanics better. . Congrats I never thought to do it like that! Mabye it will be better in the long run....

 

[Vadus]

One advantage of using .nif files for the planets, which I don't believe anyone has thought of yet, is the ability to animate them, so you could have rotating planets, or even fully rotating solar systems if you wished.

Sure, but the only possibility to use meshes ( .nif files ) for terrain, instead of using resources, is to change the terrain/features/hills or terrain/features/mountains meshes to spheres. But I still don't know, if this terrain features (for hills and peaks) are really used by the game.
For example this mesh of a mountain, which is Assets\art\terrain\features\peak\peak_mountainb.nif is not used in the game, as far as I know. I've never seen such model on the map ...

 

[MooManof_]

The peak models change depending on the arrangement of the peaks. If you have a mountain range, the peaks tend to join together in various ways in order to look more realistic.

 

[Vadus]

so these meshes are only used, if I have a whole area of peaks ? ... I think a single peak is only created by the heightmap..

 

[jenks]

sounds very interesting fella,
esp. liking the idea :

3. Wormholes
Then there are wormholes. This is a special one-tiled terrain. If a ship flies into a wormhole (entrance), it looses all remaining movement-points. But at the end of the turn, the ship will be located to another wormhole (exit).

very nice keep up the idea machine!

 

[Calavente]

I may have some Ideas for you mod:

1) ressources :
planets can make buiding that give manufactured ressources when built, but the building needs...things : ressources, other building :
ex : with metal ressource you can build forges that gives 1 steel ressource, with 3 forges (and iron) you can build 1 "hyper SF factory" that gives 1 hardened battle steel ressource, and with 3 forges you can also build if you have gold ressource a "luxury factory" giving +6commerce + ressource jewel)... etc :
this way, it is interesting to build those ressource-building in more than one city : to have some extra for trade, to make the next building.
furthermore, if those building are lost in the huge tech tree, the ability to trade those manufactured ressource is important : to have access to the jewel ressource if you didn't discover the tech...etc

2) ressources
you can make all ressources into two types:
-the planet type : to have access to the ressource you have to build a city on it.
-the space type (asteroids: metals (iron/urananium/copper/gold/silver/platinium/etc..), ice (water==>food/comerce), raw(for farms), comets, any other kind of ressource)).
you make them as the 'sea food ressource' in vanilla civ : no issue to have access to it: you just have to build the adequate "workboat"/spaceshuttle to have access to it. and the shuttle disappear when the 'colony' is made.
that way you will have 'workable places' in space.

the only drawback to point 1 and 2 is that you have to create a lot of ressources :
raw ressources:
-planetes and space ressources
manufactured ressources
-many ones

3) citizen
the interest of ressources vs citizen ..
if you say : specialist farmer in city gives ... 4F, specialist worker gives 2hammers
you have to make space = 0 production
you have to make ressource give more yield than the specialists. ex: iron asteroid gives +1H and when mined +3H +2c
...etc
so you will have citizen working on planet (specialists) AND citizen working off planet (ressources colonie)

you can make those ressources discoverd with this or that tech X, and the improvement to exploit it available at this other tech Y, at the ability to trade it at this other tech Z.
(furthermore, you can maybe if Z is an unreachable tech make that a ressource is never able to be tradable, only interest is to have a worker on the tile : ex :raw asteroid + tech 'genetical hygroponic' allows you to build colony, that gives a +2F +2H: equivalent to a specialist worker but self sustaining in food..)

my two cents

 

[Vadus]

Yeah, thats a fantastic idea, having "higher" resources from buildings, which are created from "lower" resources. With that it is possible to play like a mechant civ, importing cheap resources, and exporting expensive ones!

 

[woodelf]

Are you actually still working on this Vadus?

 

[snafusmith]

Lately the idea of a space mod has really got me thinking - so much that I started work on a generic terrain pack. Here's what I've got so far:



After a lot of digging into the code, I've found it's easier to make new things (like planets, stars, whatever) as features. The terrain is actually pretty tricky to work with. Oceans, coasts, flatlands (plains, tundra, grassland, etc), hills and peaks are all done with heightmaps. Peaks and hills have .nif files associated with them, but they don't look like they're used.

The way I found that out was by changing all of the heightmaps for hills/peaks to match the flatlands - when I loaded the game up, the whole map looked flat! Meaning: No .nif files for terrains.

That left using features to represent things, so I came up with the following:

I'm working on flattening the whole world (all the terrains) to a level BELOW what the ocean floor is currently at. Then all the planets, stars, nebulas, whatever will be added as features. The terrains will still be used to distinguish things, but you won't be able to see it.

It's pretty easy to add features too - it's pretty much just like adding a unit to the game. The other nice thing is that when you have added animations to the celestrial bodies (like Rabbit, White did with his Earth as pictured above), they are ANIMATED! That's right, the planets rotate! It looks awesome in game. The only issue right now is that eventually the animations stop. The easiest feature to look at for animations is fallout, and it looks like that was achieved through moving the texture around. I'm working on re-animating RW's Earth so that it rotates perminantly.

Now on to how this would all work- I know there are a lot of suggestions for what to include, but right now it looks like I have to work around on what CAN be done, and what people WANT done. You guessed it, it's more important to focus on what we CAN do at this point.

So what do I think I can add? Planets, stars, moons, nebulas and asteriods should be easy enough at this point. All of them I should also be able to animate. Because of the restrictions, planets, stars, and nebulas have to be features. Moons and asteriods will be resources. It might not be ideal, but ultimately it's a choice between what we can and can't do at this point.

I'll keep this up, and ultimately I might end up writing a tutorial on how I'm doing this. It's not easy by any stretch, but I'm learning stuff about the game that I don't know has been found before.

 

[woodelf]

That's super news smitty.

 

[Vadus]

This looks very cool, snafusmith !

Yeah , I'm working on this again. Last year in summer, my grafic card has crashed, and since that civ4 wasn't working, not now this problem is fixed. So after one year I can work on

The two screens show the status so far. I've played around with making the land terrain to round single half-sphere tiles, but as you see, this isn't good looking.
But you can see in the city screen, that, corresponing on the planet's attributes Minerals and Climate, a colony has special "buildings" from the start, which influence the hammer and nutrients output.

I like the idea to add features as planets ! Is it possible to add completely new features or can we only replace existing ones ? With features it is also possible to add a resource to a planet, right ?
If it is possible to place on an ocean-map ( which should be deep space ) several different planets, we will have no problems with the terrain, I think.

A major point, I have to think of now is, if it is clever to use the unit sandbox in this mod, because there are still some unsolved problems with that..
And then making unit promotions depended from buildings would be very cool thing, because then, only industrial developed colonies can build spaceships with some "expensive" or "high tech" modules(promotions) e.g. a ship can only equipped with a better ship drive, if the ship is stationed on a colony with a dock and a shipyard level III or something

 

[snafusmith]

It's possible to add completely new features. I'm not sure if maps generated with the standard scripts will place them though. I'm still looking into making a new map script once I get the terrain looking good.

The biggest thing to overcome at this point is a problem that's inherent with all features. If you build a city on a feature, the feature dissapears. I still don't know how to change that, but I have a feeling it might require some SDK work.

 

[Vadus]

oh, hmm.. that is a point. maybe ask the sdk mod masters, if they can solve that ?

 

[Gaius Octavius]

This looks very nice. I've always been a fan of the Space Empires series and would like to see a Civ 4 mod made.

 

[Vadus]

@snafusmith : did you find out or asked somebody about the disappearing feature - problem ? If not, I can do that, since I'm very interested in that.

@Gaius Octavius : well, unfortunately, the mod has nothing to do with the computer game "Space Empires" . I heared the first time about this game, after I've created the according Civ3 thread, so it is just the name of my space mod
But I want to create the mod in the way, that in future anyone can easily add new races and units to this mod, to have various different races playing against each other.

 

[snafusmith]

@snafusmith : did you found out or asked somebody about the disappearing feature - problem ? If not, I can do that, since I'm very interested in that.

Nope, haven't figured it out. I'd be much appreciated if someone did though, I can't find it anywhere. I've got all of the major planetary bodies done (stars, planets), now all I have to do is get them working in game. Shouldn't be to bad.

 

[Vadus]

see here , it seems to be easy to keep the features on the map. Do you have experience with modding the SDK ( recompiling, dll stuff ... ) ?
I'm sorry to say, I don't..

 

[Zladimir]

At first I'll say, it is an overall good idea!

VIII. Religions
Well I really don't know yet what to do with religions ??

You could change this to a races philosophy(Ex: Vulcans are logical,Klingons are honorable warriors) these are kind of like religions in the sense that they believe to the core.

I don't think it is a good idea.
Often in space games religion plays a minor role,
but who the damn says, religion would be a minor factor in space race development?
I think in a far-far future reality religion will play a major role in space development (in getting contact to other species, like it is in Babylon5 ).


Maybe religion can be seperated in there forms:
monotheism - people belief in one absolute god.
polytheism - people belief in multiple gods.
pantheism - god is represented in the "whole world".
atheism - people beliefs in no kind of transcendent being.
jainism - people beliefs in something like of the development of karma and soul.

There also can be a religion, where is no god present, but people beliefs in sacred writings (doctrines/teachings),
a little bit like konfucianism.

And my both favored types of religions are:
1) People belief their leader is god (something like happend in old persia, or more or less in the third reich).
2) People beliefs their own race is divine/godlike. - Maybe, people belief only their race have something like souls?


A statesform for religion should be kept,
because it can represent the depth of their faith, but less like it was in civ4.
1. The state says, their religion is the only one, all others are wrong.
2. The state says, their religion is the right, but still accepts others.
3. The state says, there are religions, but we isolate religion from state.
4. The state says, religion is evil, we have to fight them and our citizens should be atheists.
There are much more possibilities.



Greetings,
Zladimir

 

[Vrenir]

Since resources are animated in CivIV, what if you did planet terrain as a largely-untextured base and then added the type of world as a resource? That way you could add types of clouds (earthlike, gas giant, sparse, etc).

 

[lamppost4]

I'm looking for a good space mod and I can't wait for a release. Unfortunately, I do not have the skills to assist with anything. Will you get this out before bts?