Wow....plus SMAC mod reborn!

[Impaler[WrG]]

Their code base only did a few SMAC things, mainly crawling and HomeCity stuff along with some Blake AI stuff (now quite out of date from hes continuing work in AI). I'd keep it at hand and use as a reference for pulling SDK components out of but as you said starting on a fresh 1.61 base will be smoother for you. The XML, 2DArt and Sounds are the real prize as its so very tedious to get all that stuff put together using theirs will save you months.

How extensively do you plan to deviate from SMAC? It seems your not interested in a strait SMAC clone or even a Civ4-avied SMAC, are you going all the way to realm of 'SMAC like game' ala Roanoke Mod?

 

[GeoModder]

You want feedback? I give you some!
Why not making it as random as possible if a player wishes so? Instead of knowing you make planetfall on your target world, let's use the different sorts of terrain as template to create maps from vacuum moons to ocean worlds. So a player could select in startup a vacuum moon (Lunalike), ice planet (Europalike), desert planet (Marslike) or a habitable place (Earthlike). Other options (climate, ocean size) could be used to determine the sort and density of the atmosphere.
And it doesn't has to stop there. According to the sort of map you land on certain aspects of the tech tree are researchable or not, as to simulate research according to the sort of environmet you find yourself in.
Also, city(base) facilities could perhaps be coded to require a certain terrain under it (and/or a certain number in the citycross). For instance if a settled plot is desert, and the atmosphere is thin or non-existant, a sort of dustshrubber facility can be build in a city/base to increase health.
On the terraform department, since in every case planetfall is made on a planet which doesn't sustain earthlife just like that, the techtree could simulate the introduction of terrestrial crops/animals after keytechs (bio-engineering) instead of simply plonking a farm or pasture somewhere. A whole terraformed world covered with wheat, cows, pigs, corn and such.
And if willing artists/modellers can be persuaded to create them, truly alien flora/fauna could be implemented as well on the more habitable kind of maps.

Well, that's the dream at least.

 

[Silver]

Yeah, I would post my vote towards making something much less SMAC, and more more SMAC-like. I think there is no reason we can't take the really great aspects of SMAC and use them in a new an innovative fashion.

GeoModder's post on alternate planet types is an excellent example of the kind of things we potentially could do to make the overall game even better than SMAC.

I think it would be best to aim for something new in the same general vien as SMAC than try for more of a duplication that may pegionhole us into doing some things that would have a net minus on overall gameplay.

Just my thoughts...

 

[Gerikes]

Their code base only did a few SMAC things, mainly crawling and HomeCity stuff along with some Blake AI stuff (now quite out of date from hes continuing work in AI). I'd keep it at hand and use as a reference for pulling SDK components out of but as you said starting on a fresh 1.61 base will be smoother for you. The XML, 2DArt and Sounds are the real prize as its so very tedious to get all that stuff put together using theirs will save you months.

How extensively do you plan to deviate from SMAC? It seems your not interested in a strait SMAC clone or even a Civ4-avied SMAC, are you going all the way to realm of 'SMAC like game' ala Roanoke Mod?

"The best of both worlds." Of course, right now, I think that Maniac and myself are more for creating something completely new, but based in the SMAC world. Something that SMAC users will instantly recognize , not only for the characters but also for the gameplay. Of course, modern revisions in Civ since SMAC that really do a great job (specialists, great people, promotions, the removal of ZOC ) would most likely be kept, but ideas from SMAC like a Unit Workshop might be thrown back into the mix.

As for the XML and graphics, that's fine, but I'm thinking aside from the Civs, the only things we'd probably want to take are the graphics and audio. The tech tree is a clone, which I don't think is what we're going for. Some of the text too will be helpful. But I would rather start fresh and take out what we want rather than start with theirs and remove what we don't, because it's much easier to find what we want than something hidden that we don't.

You want feedback? I give you some!
Why not making it as random as possible if a player wishes so? Instead of knowing you make planetfall on your target world, let's use the different sorts of terrain as template to create maps from vacuum moons to ocean worlds. So a player could select in startup a vacuum moon (Lunalike), ice planet (Europalike), desert planet (Marslike) or a habitable place (Earthlike). Other options (climate, ocean size) could be used to determine the sort and density of the atmosphere.
And it doesn't has to stop there. According to the sort of map you land on certain aspects of the tech tree are researchable or not, as to simulate research according to the sort of environmet you find yourself in.
Also, city(base) facilities could perhaps be coded to require a certain terrain under it (and/or a certain number in the citycross). For instance if a settled plot is desert, and the atmosphere is thin or non-existant, a sort of dustshrubber facility can be build in a city/base to increase health.
On the terraform department, since in every case planetfall is made on a planet which doesn't sustain earthlife just like that, the techtree could simulate the introduction of terrestrial crops/animals after keytechs (bio-engineering) instead of simply plonking a farm or pasture somewhere. A whole terraformed world covered with wheat, cows, pigs, corn and such.
And if willing artists/modellers can be persuaded to create them, truly alien flora/fauna could be implemented as well on the more habitable kind of maps.

Well, that's the dream at least.

You lost me half-way through, but I know you're thinking outside the box, which I always like to hear!

Are you saying that every time you play, the planet you land on will have difference characteristics that go beyond just the simple "Erosion, Planet Life, etc", but require certain intricacies which might completely change how a player would choose their research (or other facet of play)? For example, in an Earthlike planetfall, a tech might allow players to build one style of earth-type improvement (say, a farm), where in a planet with a thin atmosphere and little oxygen, that same tech would allow for the creation of a city improvement like a tree farm that helps nutrition in the city, but also lifts levels of the oxygen on the planet to try to create an atmosphere.

Further techs in the earth-like system would allow the addition of a special ability for water-based units, where the same tech in the tree on a desert, thin-atmosphere allows a U.N. Charter proposal to dismantle into energy salvaged parts of the Unity core to be distributed to boost bio-engineering building improvements. The goal being to strengthen the atmosphere (I'm not sure how long something like atmosphere-strengthening actually takes, but this is just an example).

 

[GeoModder]

You lost me half-way through, but I know you're thinking outside the box, which I always like to hear!

Yeah, I was a bit rambling. I know.
But to put it in some more practical terms:

Are you saying that every time you play, the planet you land on will have difference characteristics that go beyond just the simple "Erosion, Planet Life, etc", but require certain intricacies which might completely change how a player would choose their research (or other facet of play)? For example, in an Earthlike planetfall, a tech might allow players to build one style of earth-type improvement (say, a farm), where in a planet with a thin atmosphere and little oxygen, that same tech would allow for the creation of a city improvement like a tree farm that helps nutrition in the city, but also lifts levels of the oxygen on the planet to try to create an atmosphere.

Further techs in the earth-like system would allow the addition of a special ability for water-based units, where the same tech in the tree on a desert, thin-atmosphere allows a U.N. Charter proposal to dismantle into energy salvaged parts of the Unity core to be distributed to boost bio-engineering building improvements. The goal being to strengthen the atmosphere (I'm not sure how long something like atmosphere-strengthening actually takes, but this is just an example).

As on startup, a player can choose his map, or put on the random option of course. Let's assume the choices are "barren", "marginal", "terrestrial".
Climate options could mostly stay the same, but let's put "cold", "warm", "temperate" and "rocky" in the equation for now.
And for sealevel (perhaps renamed to seasize) the options "none", "small", "medium" and "large".
I don't know if the game would allow for more startup options, but with the 3 above already a lot of different maps could be accomplished. Ideally a fourth option to choose the density (or lack of) of the atmosphere would make the choice complete.
For instance "barren", "rocky" and "none" would give a player a map like our own moon, while "barren", "cold" and "large" would give a player a map like Europa, the icemoon around Jupiter with a liquid ocean under its icepack.
Also, some options could exclude other options like already is done with the ice_age map in Civ4.

According to the things I've read sofar in modthreads, we're stuck with the number of different terraintypes the game has (supposed to be hardcoded). Thus all the current ones are to be used in combination to create believable maps. Like a "marginal", "temperate" and "none/small" map would make use of desert and desert hills, with perhaps some small seas in it (a Marslike planet so to speak), while a fully terrestrial map ("terrestrial", "warm/temperate" and "medium/large") could use almost all terrain types. In this system only one, perhaps two, terrain type(s) should be converted to a dedicated sort of vacuum-style graphic. The rest could be used in combo's, probably with some change graphicswise as well to create some scifi eerieness.

That's it for the maps.

As on how the environment adjusts the way things can be build/reasearched, I think you already seem to understand what I meant.
For instance take a fictive tech Bio-engineering. In a terrestrial world this would allow the introduction of certain earth farm animals on the open, while on a marginal world the same could apply to domed pastures. On iceworlds of course this could not apply and the tech would be useless for agricultural purposes then. Instead a sort of "aquasphere-seeding" tech could allow the spreading of fish farms under the icepacks. (I admit that this sort of map wouldn't be popular graphicwise ). Overall the idea is that since we're talking about a whole new world, earth crop/animal graphics could be used (where applyable) to show the terraforming of his new world to the player, but of course with other (lower) yields then we're used from Civ4.

Also, in case of base/city facilities, the terrain plot on which it is founded could mark codewise (and in combination with the mapchoices) what sort of facilities can be build in this settlement. A barren plot would give a starting city immediately a dome of course. Same with a sea-based settlement.

Hope I have made things a bit more clear now.

 

[Gerikes]

Yeah, I was a bit rambling. I know.
But to put it in some more practical terms:



As on startup, a player can choose his map, or put on the random option of course. Let's assume the choices are "barren", "marginal", "terrestrial".
Climate options could mostly stay the same, but let's put "cold", "warm", "temperate" and "rocky" in the equation for now.
And for sealevel (perhaps renamed to seasize) the options "none", "small", "medium" and "large".
I don't know if the game would allow for more startup options, but with the 3 above already a lot of different maps could be accomplished. Ideally a fourth option to choose the density (or lack of) of the atmosphere would make the choice complete.
For instance "barren", "rocky" and "none" would give a player a map like our own moon, while "barren", "cold" and "large" would give a player a map like Europa, the icemoon around Jupiter with a liquid ocean under its icepack.
Also, some options could exclude other options like already is done with the ice_age map in Civ4.

According to the things I've read sofar in modthreads, we're stuck with the number of different terraintypes the game has (supposed to be hardcoded). Thus all the current ones are to be used in combination to create believable maps. Like a "marginal", "temperate" and "none/small" map would make use of desert and desert hills, with perhaps some small seas in it (a Marslike planet so to speak), while a fully terrestrial map ("terrestrial", "warm/temperate" and "medium/large") could use almost all terrain types. In this system only one, perhaps two, terrain type(s) should be converted to a dedicated sort of vacuum-style graphic. The rest could be used in combo's, probably with some change graphicswise as well to create some scifi eerieness.

That's it for the maps.

As on how the environment adjusts the way things can be build/reasearched, I think you already seem to understand what I meant.
For instance take a fictive tech Bio-engineering. In a terrestrial world this would allow the introduction of certain earth farm animals on the open, while on a marginal world the same could apply to domed pastures. On iceworlds of course this could not apply and the tech would be useless for agricultural purposes then. Instead a sort of "aquasphere-seeding" tech could allow the spreading of fish farms under the icepacks. (I admit that this sort of map wouldn't be popular graphicwise ). Overall the idea is that since we're talking about a whole new world, earth crop/animal graphics could be used (where applyable) to show the terraforming of his new world to the player, but of course with other (lower) yields then we're used from Civ4.

Also, in case of base/city facilities, the terrain plot on which it is founded could mark codewise (and in combination with the mapchoices) what sort of facilities can be build in this settlement. A barren plot would give a starting city immediately a dome of course. Same with a sea-based settlement.

Hope I have made things a bit more clear now.

It all sounds really interesting, unfortunately it's an idea that would have to wait until a tech tree and other game items are created for just one world before we start worrying about multiple ones.

 

[snipperrabbit!!]

I'm thinking of 4 yields for this mod : nutrients, minerals, energy, commerce.
N for growth
M for production
E for sustaining facilities and improvements
C for cash rushing, ... etc ...

 

[gnome]

I love the idea... as a player (unfortunately I'm not much of a modder) I would enjoy a SMAC-themed game if the original mood could be preserved. That was what I loved about the game more than all else. The color theme, the voice overs... the ideological factions...

I'd want to see the original familiar factions, though they needn't have exactly the same characteristics within the game mechanics as before--if something more sensible is made possible by the Civ4 engine, why not?

Regarding the unit workshop... I didn't find it to add much value to the game. I found it boring that each new unit's stats was simply an amalgam of the specific weapon or armor stuck on. In Civ units have strength values and other stats based on more than just cookie-cutter technology. Personally I'd love a set of basic units to be established--not even necessarily the familiar ones, except perhaps based on familiar technology names. Perhaps without, for example, the foolish consistency of turning every weapon technology into artillery. Laser artillery, anyone? The "special abilities" would be great to handle via the promotions system.

I'm rambling... sorry. It's too easy to be full of ideas for a game we all liked so much. My main point--I want to FEEL like I'm playing the game that would exist if it had been invented after Civ4.

 

[woodelf]

Rambling is encouraged.

That's how brainstorming and idea generation works. Ramble away.

The Unit Workshop is indeed a polarizing animal. Some people love it and others hate it. I tolerated it, but could surely live without it. Promotions can work in this respect IMO.

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

I'm thinking of 4 yields for this mod : nutrients, minerals, energy, commerce.

Id stick with N, M, E and handle commerce at the city/trade route level

If you wanted to be far more radical, you could fold some of the commerces into Yields so improvments could create science, 'credits' and 'pych'.

 

[GeoModder]

Mmm... a worked 'fieldlab' improvement increasing beakers, a worked 'park' facility put on a forest increasing psych. Perhaps depending on the civ/faction the player is.
Perhaps some 'native' resources which when put a fieldlab or park on it give a better science/psych yield. Like for University studying a remarkable native lifeform, but for Gaians the joy of getting to experience its beauty... and the Morgans sell it out, thus for them it's a source of revenue.

In any case, I wouldn't use hamlets->villages in such a mod. Most likely the population density on a colonial planet would never become high enough to create such a dense 'trading network'.

 

[gnome]

I would vote for sticking with the energy=money of SMAC... one of the futuristic ideas that they really made work, I think.

 

[snipperrabbit!!]

Commerce is inherent side-effect of all human ( + alien ) activities. There is no point to drop it out. I envision a system where energy and commerce are interdependent. no more sum energy transaction but a per turn deal.

commerces into Yields so improvments could create science, 'credits' and 'psych'

yes & yes

a worked 'fieldlab' improvement increasing beakers, a worked 'park' facility put on a forest increasing psych

no, stick improvements in the adjustment part of tile yields + health/happiness modifiers.

 

[troyDoogle7]

Guys feel free to use what work I have given. I would advise setting up a team instead of relying on an anything goes. That was the main problem with the poly one. Gav and I will contribute what we can. Feel free to use anything we have made to date.

 

[woodelf]

In any case, I wouldn't use hamlets->villages in such a mod. Most likely the population density on a colonial planet would never become high enough to create such a dense 'trading network'.

This was a sticking point in SotM as well. It's a terrific mechanic, but as is it's useless on a colonial planet. The whole "working a tile" concept needs rethinking unless it's not as hostile as I hope it is. Maybe in some way a city that is surrounded by other cities would feel safer allowing citizens outside to work tiles, but that would have to happen after at least 5 cities for border protection.

 

[woodelf]

Guys feel free to use what work I have given. I would advise setting up a team instead of relying on an anything goes. That was the main problem with the poly one. Gav and I will contribute what we can. Feel free to use anything we have made to date.

Thanks troy. We're in the process of deciding which direction we're taking. A straight clone is out, but beyond that we're not sure.

 

[asioasioasio]

I would like to see this mod as much SMAC as possible. It was great idea with great concepts - so i vote for SMAC civilizations, SMAC Buildings, SMAC workshop and Unit design, SMAC Civics, SMAC Techtree, SMAC Improvments. SMAC Terraforming - it would be great to make 3D terrain - similliar as it was in SMAC - is this possible?

When i played CIV3 it was great jump back - with SMAC 3D terrain unit design, civics system, storyline ->civ3 wasn't so good even it had better graphics.

Civ4 returns with great ideas - as civics for example. And it's more likely to change the game in sdk in python to the SMAC climate.

And i can sometimes help - i begin working on brother Lal's cityset
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=145947&d=1168828228
- i had this filling i had to make this asap. This is just sample - the next buildings would be slightly different in geometry and i would add the elevated railway

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

DROOOLS!!! Lal was my favorite leader and this looks great, I'm not shure if the mono-rail should be part of the building art though, seems that might be more of a route improvement

 

[asioasioasio]

Donno about monorail - i just saw it on this screenshot
http://www.jucaushii.ro/images/screenshots/pc/Sid_Meiers_Alpha_Centauri/16.jpg

without it would be quicker to finish it - but's that not a big problem - i have texture ready and model isn't complicated

 

[Gerikes]

I would like to see this mod as much SMAC as possible. It was great idea with great concepts - so i vote for SMAC civilizations, SMAC Buildings, SMAC workshop and Unit design, SMAC Civics, SMAC Techtree, SMAC Improvments. SMAC Terraforming - it would be great to make 3D terrain - similliar as it was in SMAC - is this possible?

When you say "as much SMAC", are you generally talking a direct clone of gameplay, or as much SMAC story and feel? I think that's one of the big issues that is being worked out, is how close to SMAC to make it, as opposed to possibly just making it based on the SMAC world. Right now, the feeling is, SMAC world, new rules.

As for the 3D terrain, I have ideas, and it'll be tough, and if possible at all wil be one of those things that would have to be "faked". In theory, however, because of heightmaps and other such items, we can control the height of terrain. I've tested, and there is more than enough leeway to be able to get terrain to be from flat to many times higher than a Civ4 "peak" and everywhere in between. If a peak terrain can become more flat rather than a straight-up point (which I believe just needs the height-map to be changed), than we can create a large amount of "lvl 1" peaks, and "lvl 2" peaks, each with their own height. When two "lvl 1" peaks are adjacent to each other, they provide a flat landscape because they're on the same level, but that landscape is higher than say the water level, or a "lvl 0" peak. The main problem is this:

Getting the terrains to "merge". Two terrains on the same level is easy, it's exactly like the current Civ4, all on the same level, but with some bumps and bruises. I'll need the help of a graphic artist here. Each terrain texture is split up so as to be able to show what a terrain looks like when adjacent to another terrain. Think about when you have two peaks adjacent to each other. There is a little piece of peek that connects the two that, when one of the peeks is removed, disappears. If that connector part can be, rather than a small strip, a full blown slope that travels on the entire border of the plot (rather than just through the middle), we can create a slope.

This is all purely theoretical, so I'm just throwing ideas out there, but am 50% sure that it would work. Hopefully, I'll eventually find someone who can help me test it who has the skills to modify those heightmaps.

When i played CIV3 it was great jump back - with SMAC 3D terrain unit design, civics system, storyline ->civ3 wasn't so good even it had better graphics.

Civ4 returns with great ideas - as civics for example. And it's more likely to change the game in sdk in python to the SMAC climate.

And I think that's what we're going for. Taking the good from SMAC, Civ3 and Civ4, filling in our own nuances using the incredible power of the Civ4 engine, and coming up with a new game, but based in the SMAC world.

And i can sometimes help - i begin working on brother Lal's cityset
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=145947&d=1168828228
- i had this filling i had to make this asap. This is just sample - the next buildings would be slightly different in geometry and i would add the elevated railway

Awesome! We could definitely use your help!