Taking Matters into Our Own Hands: A Proposal for a Fan-produced SMAC Remake

[neutral_leader]

Let's all get real for just a moment: no one is going to make SMAC 2 for us. Not EA, not 2k, not Firaxis, nobody. And, let's be honest, after seeing CiV do any of us trust them to anyway? If we want it done, and I know many of us do, we have to do it ourselves, and there's no reason we can't. The modding community has access to tremendous amounts of source for CIV and inexhaustible talent. We can make this happen, and I want to see it happen. I want it for myself but, at the risk of sounding too fanatical, I want it for my children. I learned so much from that game as a teenager (I still manage to impress people with my many memorized quotes) and I want my kids and all of yours to be able to enjoy a modernized version. What's more, I read the forums and I know you guys want it too.

What I propose is that we produce an independent, open source modernization of original SMAC plus SMACX. I have tried to raise interest before in a total conversion mod for CIV or CiV, but there has been little response in those forums, and a stand-alone development will provide the best opportunities for development and refinement independent of Firaxis and without the damn thing breaking every time a patch is released. I'm not a programmer, but I can help coordinate efforts, code XML, and translate user interface in a number of languages. If we can get a couple of programmers and a couple of graphics guys interested, we can get off to a good start.

The chief design principle, as I see it, should be conservatism. It would be too great an undertaking to try to produce an entirely new game and many of us really just want an update on the classic anyway. Mods can satisfy whatever hankering for a sequel anyone may have. To that end, I think our aim should be maximum use of original game text, sounds, and artwork (although on-map graphics could stand a major update). That also makes the job a little easier. For the most part, technologies, facilities, improvements, units, etc. would be just as in the original. So what should change? The following I regard as essential changes to modernize:

Graphics
Although much still artwork can be used from the original, city, unit, and terrain graphics need a major overhaul to be brought up to speed with CIV and CiV.

User Interface
So many little improvements have been made to this since '99, like the ability to see what cities are producing right on the map and the ability to move units in groups. Interface should be brought up to CIV standards.

Number of Factions on one map
Seriously.

Multiplayer
Simultaneous turns would be nice, for starters.

Besides this, there are a lot of developments in the Civ series featurally that I think could be fun inclusions to base SMAC with minimal adaptation: culture and attendant mechanisms (reflecting ideological influence), promotions, hexagons, city states (which could be an interesting way of implementing the Data Angels and possibly also the Nautilus Pirates, as they would not have very strong centralized governance anyway), and even religion (where the religions would represent global infrastructure projects like the Planetary Datalinks or the Planetary Energy Grid that, CiV style, would provide bonuses to the faction founding them and to all of the cities that link into them). Whether or not to implement these (and how to do so if they are wanted) can be a matter for further discussion once we have a project team together.

It won't be easy, but it will be fun and it will be worthwhile. Is anyone with me?

 

[Perfection]

I'll do anything so long as it doesn't require much time or any talent.

 

[HarvesterofSorr]

There is a MOD that attempts to recreate AC for CIV4 called Planetfall. There is even a thread about it on Civfanatics.

forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=252829/

It's pretty good. Could use a few improvements and has a bug or two but if your that into SMAC then it's worth a look.

 

[bhavv]

Good idea. Planetfall is rubbish as it takes away the two single best elements of SMAC - customizable units and the social policy modifiers.

 

[neutral_leader]

@HarvesterofSorr Planetfall was, for me, too disruptive of the original ambiance of the game in its total revision of the tech tree, facilities, and other such elements of the gameworld. I'd like something that modernizes gameplay and graphics without changing story or setting.

@bhavv Those were very important elements of SMAC that the CIV engine wasn't designed to handle. To them, I would add the diplomacy effects of social policies and the geographical and climatic modeling--real elevations, prevailing wind patterns, etc. To get some of these core elements will, I think, require a ground up approach.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Good idea. Planetfall is rubbish as it takes away the two single best elements of SMAC - customizable units and the social policy modifiers.

While I miss the unit workshop, too, it is direspectful to say it is rubbish (to the modders of Planetfall and the fans of this mod, too). You could at least formulate, that you think it is rubbish because of that.

Also, Planetfall is so far the closest thing to SMAC 2 around. AFAIK, the only project having made past the planning phase and having reached a mature state. So anyone making a new attempt, even an attempt outside a civ full-conversion mod is probably better off by not ignoring Planetfall but instead looking at it in regard to what it did right and achieved.

Without a doubt, Planetfall is no 1:1 conversion. But on the other hand, it added to a AC themed game a decent AI for example - something the original SMAC never had.

To make it short - I wish this new attempt all the best...and if ever something playable should come up here, I will give it a try for sure and my feedback, bug reports etc. Sadly I lack the abilities to help with more

 

[Fugitive Sisyphus]

I would love there to be a modernized SMAC with some of the rough edges sanded down. But due to copyright issues I expect a fan-made SMAC would need different factions, storyline, techs, etc. In other words a completely different game.

 

[HarvesterofSorr]

I think it's remiss for anyone to slam Planetfall unless they have done or know of something better. The customizable unit workshop is probably incompatible with Civ4 so they dealed. I think overall they did a pretty good job otherwise.
I'm not saying Planetfall is perfect but if someone is going to make a new SMAC Mod it would be a good place to begin rather than starting from scratch. The terrain and unit art are superb IMO.

 

[sunbeam]

I won't be coding for this, so what I'm going to say may seem hypocritical.

Recreating SMAC doesn't seem like it should be hard, at least not compared to some other projects that fan based communities have actually accomplished. The lack of graphics alone, coupled with the simple gameplay, means it shouldn't be too hard. Would take a lot of time and testing to make sure it works reasonably close to the original though.

For example the Ultima Online emulation servers and EQEmu projects. Even though both of those used the client software (I think UO has a from scratch client now for emulators that works) both were much larger in scope and the effort it took to make them than Alpha Centauri is.

One negative is that Alpha Centauri doesn't have anywhere near the number of fans either of those two games had though.

As a positive I think there are some open source games you could use to start with. FreeCiv is based on Civ II I think. If you are comfortable with whatever language they used I think it would be an excellent starting spot.

Even if it isn't the language you want to use, it would still be very useful to see how they implemented things.

Just saying that compared to other things people have pulled off, this isn't very difficult. Only question is how many people that can do the work are interested in doing it.

As a negative, take Master of Magic. A very simple game codewise (not so simple gameplay wise though), but there is no version of it floating around out there. That game seems like it still has some pretty serious fans too, but no FreeMoM as far as I can tell.

 

[Kilkakon]

A nice idea, but a very big undertaking. You'd probably want a good team of 3 to 5 people who were pretty dedicated as fan support is waning for this game.

 

[fluxcapacitor]

I've wanted to see this for years now.

 

[jonloovox]

Love your idea and wish it could come into fruition.

However, I should note that the current SMAC actually does support simultaneous turns.

 

[rcb]

I really like this idea. I am a programmer, and I would gladly spend some of my free time working on this.
I play SMAC on Linux, so I would mostly be interested in working on this environment. Also, I would love to see an updated SMAC run on most major OSs (Win, Mac, and several Unix / BSD).
I suppose we would follow some sort of open source license for anything we actually develop, since this is a community effort.
As a suggestion, I have seen other open source projects being developed by game fans, and often they start by being a "port" of the game to Linux (or to some other OS where the game doesn't run), which requires the original game content to run. We could do something like that, a sort of "wrapper" program that requires the original game, but enhances it in some ways.
I have only recently started reading the forums here, so if I am reinventing the wheel, please let me know. But I think that it would be really, really cool be able to mod SMAC. I'm thinking about a wrapper program that uses the original SMAC but that "hacks" into it and allows us to mod it, like changing values for weapons, costs for stuff, etc. That would be great. Perhaps it would also serve as a starting point for a SMAC 2.
About updated graphics: as far as I know, there is a real problem with art when it comes to games not developed by game studios. To make good game art is really, really expensive. Hopefully I am wrong about this, but I think having (for instance) high resolution art should be a very distant goal, because although it would be great, many other projects tried to get there and didn't.
UI: it would be great to change the UI, and I think this would be a much more ambitious goal than having a modable SMAC. It would involve much more creative programming, but would not require (too much) of touching the core software, like the AI and the rules' engine.
About the # of factions, hopefully it is something which can be easily tweaked, like changing a single number. Perhaps we will run on some glitches, like the list of factions being larger than the list widget, or it simply crashing if we click there. I think this kind of idea is more "implementable" than updating the graphics.
About culture, and other enhancements, I think that most of it is doable, but within the constraint of only using the original art.
I have not seen the source code for SMAC (and guess I never will, unfortunately) but I suppose that a good rule of thumb would be that ideas that are simple "tweaks" of existing game features (e.g., increasing the cost of a building) we could implement (in a fair amount of time). Stuff which is more of a "new feature" than a tweak (e.g., culture), that would require a considerable amount of developing time.
Anyway, I am excited by the idea of going through the innards of SMAC/X, so if you guys are up for testing, I am up for programming.

 

[Kilkakon]

A lot of the "simple" changes you mention there are already possible in alpha[x].txt, which is lovely. As for big graphics, I know Buster's Uncle is pretty legendary at that sort of thing, but his morale is shot worse than mine these days.

It would still be cool to have a good OpenSmac project though, like Zdoom for Doom or OpenTTD for TTD. Perhaps looking at FreeCiv might be a way to start as the games are very similar?

 

[Buster's Uncle]

My morale is shot, but not that shot - my services are available, should they be needed. I'm easy to contact at the link under my sig.

 

[rcb]

Kilkakon, thanks for the tip on alpha[x].txt, I took a quick look and yes, that is the sort of thing I had in mind!

Buster's Uncle, thank you for volunteering for art!

As Fugitive Sisyphus noticed, we have to respect Firaxis' IP. I think we can do that in the following manner: let's imagine we have implemented high resolution graphics in OpenSMAC. In order to play the original games in high res, someone must download OpenSMAC _and_ have the original game files in their computer. So we would not have anywhere in our project the story, characters or art of SMAC[X].

From the posts on this thread, it seems that the most popular idea is the "re-creation" of SMAC[X] as an open source game.

I think we should state this goal clearly, before deciding how we are going to get there. Perhaps we have different things in mind when we think of 'open source SMAC'.

- What I have in mind is that OpenSMAC must have all the functionalities of SMAC[X], and then some.

In other words, there should not be any subtractions from the original game (like not having a unit workshop), but there can be additions, which should be optional (like culture). So if I want to play a "pure" SMAC[X] with updated graphics, that should be possible. If I want to add some features to the game, that should be possible, also.

Regarding the use of FreeCiv, that is a great idea, and we can only know if it would work out after trying to use it (at least for a while) to code OpenSMAC.

 

[Kilkakon]

It's typical for these sorts of projects to run using the original graphics, yes, so out of the box it doesn't do anything.

Still a big project though! :O I hope that enough people get together to make it happen.

 

[Ari Rahikkala]

Dude, that's not a vision. That's a list of minor complaints and a promise that you don't actually want to change anything. That's a post that seriously contains the words "would be nice" in a list of what are supposed to be essential changes - which speaks of the fact that you haven't even thought about this enough to know what you yourself want, let alone what would make a good game.

Where's the fire in your breast? Where's the need to do this? Because "I'd like" doesn't cut it. "I'd like" is paying five bucks in a Steam sale, if that.

Here's my proposal: What if, instead of trying to "raise interest", you show that you're doing this? I'm seriously saying, if you really want to do this, and you don't have the money to pay someone to do this, then you learn programming, and when you come back your questions are ones like like "where do I start with this game engine?" (Unity being one possibility among many). I'm not saying implement it yourself, in fact you most definitely should find team members to hook up with as soon as possible. I'm saying be the guy who does this rather than asks people if it wouldn't be too much of an imposition for them to consider perhaps doing stuff.

Or, hm. Actually, how about you start with a vision document? You know, one with interface mockups, with organised ideas about how you would combine these gameplay changes into SMAC, as a lot of the changes you're proposing are by no means simple ones. One with character, even. Put in alternative possibilities if you like, look into ideas from different games, show you've done your homework. You can do that, right? No programming skill needed. Just hunkering down for maybe a few weeks to clarify what you're thinking about. Enough to show that you at least have the beginning of commitment - which is what you need to have a fighting chance to find someone who'll work with you who actually wants to get this done.

I want you to succeed. Well, okay, I would like for you to succeed, I'm not committed even to the point of five bucks, not yet anyway. If there were magic words I could say that would get you to actually do this instead of dropping a thread about it and not posting in it for weeks, I would say the hell out of them.

 

[Ari Rahikkala]

Or, one more possibility: Find your programmers and other developers, a good team that has shown it can do good work, and get yourself on http://kickstarter.com. Seriously. Granted, if you don't have a successful project of this scale under your own belt, the probability that you'll actually get the donations to make it work is... not great. But it's about on the same scale as getting the same programming work for free.

 

[rcb]

Ari Rahikkala, I disagree with you on the emphasis you place on the original poster's role in this project. But I think you are right when you say we need more effort put in the "homework" - that is, being more specific and detailed on what we want to be done.

I have been throwing some ideas here, on the spirit of open source and community-driven development. In other words, I had until now only considered the idea from a point of view of non-commercial software, which would be developed voluntarily, wihtout deadlines, without financial compensation, and would be offered for free, for anyone to download.

You post seems to come from another direction, by suggesting the use of kickstarter and hiring a team. That is an interesting idea, and since many great things came and are coming from kickstarted projects, it is something to consider.

However, as I said, I am thinking about the community project. And I honestly do not care much about who is in the project, and I think that if the OP started posting that he totally disagrees with the direction this discussion is taking, I would start another thread, or kindly ask that he allowed this one to remain hijacked. And continue from there. What I mean is this: I think that one of the ways that an open source SMAC can be developed is by a community, which can be volatile - that is, programmers and artists would come and go as they please - and the vision and development goals would be set more or less loosely, by trying to converge the players' demands with the developers' interests.

I hope you don't mind my asking, but I would like to know: what you want from an open source SMAC, in the sense of a community-developed one?