The Most Moddable Civilization ever....apparently isn't that moddable.

[Dale]

Ah, okay. I was referring to a comment made by Soren in the Civ4 prototyping talk, as far as I recall he mentioned only 'poly and CFC there. Seems that this piece of data is either outdated or was never right in the first place then, thanks for clearing that up.

The initial Civ4 group (for vanilla) which Soren spoke of, is a completely different beast to what the group is now. He was correct then, but it's changed a lot now.

Dale,

Any luck with modding the AI... in ANY fashion/aspect of the game?

I have a major (for me) mod in progress, and the last element I am trying to mod before releasing a "beta" version is the AI... it's horrible in a standard game...

and even worse in the scenario/mod that I have made. I am nearing the point where I just need constant war between all players... or a few juggernaut civs that will steam roll over the other computer civs so that there is a viable challenge/excitement for the human player.

Any thoughts (on the AI+modding of it)?

-Zen Blade

TBH, I haven't tried major AI modding yet. The primary reason for that is because with the string of patches coming, there's really no point modding core components since the likelihood of them changing in the patch string is high.

But I do have a mod I haven't released where I wrote my own AI for the component. So is it possible to write AI stuff right now? Yes. Is it feasible right now? I would suggest no, wait till the patches settle down first.

Then, within little more than 1 month, the full SDK was launched & the mods were coming thick & fast (even I was modding using C++, in spite of having *no* prior experience in computing).

Really? So did you have special access to the SDK 5 months before everyone else? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_IV#Software_development_kit

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Really? So did you have special access to the SDK 5 months before everyone else? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_IV#Software_development_kit

Woops, I stand corrected. I could have *sworn* the SDK was out earlier than that. Guess my memory is a bit hazy!

Aussie.

 

[Zen Blade]

thanks dale for the information (and slowpoke).

 

[Dale]

Woops, I stand corrected. I could have *sworn* the SDK was out earlier than that. Guess my memory is a bit hazy!

Aussie.

Yeah, end of 2005 and most of 2006 sort of hazed and blended together for me too (first child came along).

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Yeah, end of 2005 and most of 2006 sort of hazed and blended together for me too (first child came along).

For me it was just an intense 6 months of playing Civ4-that clearly felt like just 1 month. A very different experience to Civ5 .

Aussie.

 

[SevenSpirits]

I will say though, that some of the best Civ players from all over the World were on the fan-test team. It's a shame so many of them have already moved on or are moving on.

While I'm sympathetic to the fact that you're under NDA, I have to say I'm really confused about what point you're trying to make. (And I've heard this from other testers too.) Here's what I see:

Critic: Civilization V is a terrible mess that appears to have been released before it was ready, and seems woefully under-developed and under-tested.

Defender: HOWEVER, I and other super-fans worked on it.

OK... I must be missing something because I think you're saying one of the following things:

- "My coworkers and I sucked at testing. Sorry."

- "Your opinion of how good the game is doesn't matter; all the people who do matter, like me, liked it just fine."

- "It doesn't matter how bad the end result is, as long as we gave it a good effort. Which we did."

I don't believe you'd want to say any of those things like that, except maybe the first one. But the only alternative is that you're actually trying to argue that since the process was good, the result must be good. Unfortunately what matters is the result. Since the result is bad, the process must also have been bad, by much more solid logic than your claim that the testers were some of the best civ players around. (Which AFAICT from looking at the list is not the case anyway. Prominent, sure. Skilled? Not so much.)

 

[Sonereal]

When the budget and parent company demands a game be released, it gets released.

Regardless of testing. Case-and-point, Elemental.

 

[Dale]

While I'm sympathetic to the fact that you're under NDA, I have to say I'm really confused about what point you're trying to make.

You forgot:

- "The game is so bad the best players have moved on to something else."

 

[Dale]

When the budget and parent company demands a game be released, it gets released.

Regardless of testing. Case-and-point, Elemental.

I had the displeasure of paying to be part of Elemental's "public testers". We were completely ignored. When we said something sucked ass, we were told that in some invisible locked away developer build it was awesome.

Funny, what we tested and what was released was the same thing. I'd like to know what happened to the so called "awesome developer build" that Brad kept going on about.

 

[monsterfurby]

It's not really about the actions actually taken but about the way they are communicated.

Also, remember everyone: this community has a role as lobbying for the interests of the player. So while the market situation might warrant the release as it happened and the stunted modding abilities, it is our role as customers to push into the other direction in order to remind the business as a whole that there are still notable modders/players with specific interests out there. Being reasonable and compromising is great in times of confrontation, but the way I see it, there has been no confrontation, in fact, there has been no communication at all from Firaxis. Hence, heavily criticizing them does not have to be an expression of haterism (yeah, I just made that word up, but you get the meaning), but also of this community taking itself seriously as a representation of CIV-Player interests.

PS: Am I the only one who runs Elemental on an EeePC without encountering any notable bugs to date?

 

[SevenSpirits]

You forgot:

- "The game is so bad the best players have moved on to something else."

Ah, OK, makes sense. I still can't say I saw these "best" players on the testers list though.

The part I've seen multiple testers post on multiple boards is the "there are good testers" bit, not the "and then they left" bit. That is still the part that confuses me, even if it's explained in your particular case.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Ah, OK, makes sense. I still can't say I saw these "best" players on the testers list though.

The part I've seen multiple testers post on multiple boards is the "there are good testers" bit, not the "and then they left" bit. That is still the part that confuses me, even if it's explained in your particular case.

I saw them on that list-many of them were people who helped to create "Beyond the Sword", a process I managed to be a part of ! I got to know them all *very* well, & they were definitely the "Best of the Best"!

Aussie.

 

[Dale]

Ah, OK, makes sense. I still can't say I saw these "best" players on the testers list though.

The part I've seen multiple testers post on multiple boards is the "there are good testers" bit, not the "and then they left" bit. That is still the part that confuses me, even if it's explained in your particular case.

When you hear the "best" Civ players used to describe the Franky team, I'm not necessarily talking about the ones at the top of MP ladders, or the ones who score the highest points in GOTM's. The "best" Civ players are the ones who can analyse the game and what's happening, and figure out all the ins-and-outs, and see where the issues are.

Now I know you're going to say "but anyone can see where the issues in Civ5 are!". Yes, you can see the surface issues, but can you figure out why these issues occur, as in what in the core is causing the problem so the devs can drill down to the correct section of the game's code to fix the bug. For example...... anyone playing the game can see that after an initial growth spurt the AI tends to stagnate and not settle later in the game. Do you know why? Well the Franky people are the "best" Civ players in that they can figure out what component, why and what would fix it. At this point it's up to the developers to actually do the fix so that it appears in-game.

 

[Slowpoke]

When you hear the "best" Civ players used to describe the Franky team, I'm not necessarily talking about the ones at the top of MP ladders, or the ones who score the highest points in GOTM's. The "best" Civ players are the ones who can analyse the game and what's happening, and figure out all the ins-and-outs, and see where the issues are.

Now I know you're going to say "but anyone can see where the issues in Civ5 are!". Yes, you can see the surface issues, but can you figure out why these issues occur, as in what in the core is causing the problem so the devs can drill down to the correct section of the game's code to fix the bug. For example...... anyone playing the game can see that after an initial growth spurt the AI tends to stagnate and not settle later in the game. Do you know why? Well the Franky people are the "best" Civ players in that they can figure out what component, why and what would fix it. At this point it's up to the developers to actually do the fix so that it appears in-game.

Is that really a testers job, though? I mean anyone who's tried looking at Civ 5 A.I.Iwould know the reason for the growth spurt and stop is the A.I.'s early expansion strategy has a value that prevents it from being adopted if the civ has more than 8 cities. But that's something the developers would know if a tester said "A.I. sucks at expanding"

 

[Dale]

When the budget and parent company demands a game be released, it gets released.

I also want to point out that blaming the testers, or the programmers, or 2K is pointless. There's no one group "responsible" for a game.

Some facts from the industry:
- Testers don't have time to find all the bugs / issues.
- Developers don't have time to fix all reported bugs / issues.
- Producers don't have time to implement all design features.
- Designers don't have time to balance all components.
- Studios don't have time to complete all projects.
- Publishers don't have time to allow true innovation.
- Consumers demand shorter dev cycles and faster turn-around.

Consider that Firaxis had two years (from Civ Rev release) to turn out Civ5. That's a HUGE ask! Look at the polish of Starcraft II with its TEN YEARS of development. And it still had problems!

IMO (and feel free to disagree with me), the games industry is under increasing pressure from consumers to produce better, more polished, more innovative games in shorter times. At the same time as consumers demanding to pay less. Studios do amazing things to keep consumers happy.

Like anything in the computing sector, you can choose TWO of these three things:
- Quality
- Cheap
- Fast

 

[Dale]

Is that really a testers job, though?

Remember, Franky is not normal testers. 2K has their own testing team to do the "normal testing". The Franky team is focused more on design testing not application testing.

 

[SevenSpirits]

When you hear the "best" Civ players used to describe the Franky team, I'm not necessarily talking about the ones at the top of MP ladders, or the ones who score the highest points in GOTM's. The "best" Civ players are the ones who can analyse the game and what's happening, and figure out all the ins-and-outs, and see where the issues are.

Now I know you're going to say "but anyone can see where the issues in Civ5 are!". Yes, you can see the surface issues, but can you figure out why these issues occur, as in what in the core is causing the problem so the devs can drill down to the correct section of the game's code to fix the bug. For example...... anyone playing the game can see that after an initial growth spurt the AI tends to stagnate and not settle later in the game. Do you know why? Well the Franky people are the "best" Civ players in that they can figure out what component, why and what would fix it. At this point it's up to the developers to actually do the fix so that it appears in-game.

Aha. So it sounds like you're implying that the testers caught all the issues; they just weren't listened to.

On the other hand, this seems implausible to me, as we have only heard from testers that are pleased with the resulting game and think it's fairly good, as far as I know. A more likely explanation would be that the testers are pretty good at understanding root causes of issues as you said, but aren't nearly good enough strategy game players to hone in on all the most powerful strategies and tactics quickly enough, and thus don't figure out the biggest issues in the first place.

I know exactly what you're talking about, differentiating those two types of people. Lots of my friends fall into the first category (just being extremely skilled at things), and their ideas of what things need to be changed to fix the system are often completely misguided. But you do need people like that testing things and being listened to, or the game will be full of absurd holes, like it is now.

 

[lschnarch]

May it be as ever it may be, the problem is that Civ5 has severe quality problems in *all* areas.

I, for my person, am not so much interested in exactly identifying Mr. John E. Smith, who is responsible for this. From the state of the game I would give a guarantee that replacing him with Mr. Reginald F. Brown wouldn't change much.

Obviously, there has been an early decision to strip away anything which would distract from early identification of the "winning path". After you have identified this path, you shall follow it and once again, neither the game in total nor any component should distract you more than absolutely unavoidable.
No need to mention that this doesn't meet my philosophy about how to set up a Civ game, but the pure fact that this decision was taken has some meaning already.

Up to and including BtS, that philosophy was not *that much* present in the franchise. At least they didn't let the player feel it. Now you feel it from the very first beginning.

Furthermore, I feel a big mismatch between announcements and delivered product.
For me, this game is all but not "accessible".
The player is just *not* enabled to "access" information. Examples would be missing overview of international relationships, missing overview about number and sources of resources, direct access to the units, information about the outcome of battles when the screen is focused somewhere else and even the constant (and more than annoying) "mouse travelling" over the whole screen which you have to do. Or even such basic things as not being enabled to identify units at first glance. And these are just points which come to mind immediately. You could literally write pages about the missing "accessibility".
In total, the UI is crap, to say it short.

These items become apparent at the very first moment. You literally see all of it within the first half hour of playing only the demo and of course it becomes more annoying when you're really playing the game.
I just have problems accepting that all these things should not have been obvious to the Frankenstein group.

So, either these things have not been mentioned, or they were not taken into account. Not mentioning would characterize the tester group in a certain way, not taking them into account characterizes the company crew in a certain way.

In what ever way you put it, the state of the game reveals that the whole process of "finishing" the game (and frankly, I still see it more like an early beta) has been flawed.
This leaves me with a certain impressioin about how Firaxis works. And this impression forbids to buy any other products from Firaxis at release date.
And for sure I will no longer advertise any Firaxis product amongst my friends anymore.

 

[smellymummy]

this thread is a sham

whatever page 50,000 is about you all need to understand that modding is OPEN

(almost) anything you want to do is available
*current limitations: diplomacy deals

anything else, learn to use the live tuner and type in the code, TADA

and here's a bit of news: if you can type the code in the tuner, you can have the game automaticaly type it in for you! wow! civ5 is so amazingly open who would believe it.

 

[The_J]

I also want to point out that blaming the testers, or the programmers, or 2K is pointless. There's no one group "responsible" for a game.

[...]

Like anything in the computing sector, you can choose TWO of these three things:
- Quality
- Cheap
- Fast

I guess we could blame whoever did not choose "Quality" .