OpenCiv3 Discussion thread

korn469 · March 12, 2000, 00:04

this is a thread dedicated to expressing and discussing ideas that should be in civ3...OpenCiv3 although not made by firaxis or even anyone connected with making a commercal civ game before will include all of the great ideas that should go into making civ3 the game it should be...this is the place where we will hammer down those ideas

korn469

Slingshot · March 12, 2000, 00:24

I had made a similar request (SuperCiv suggestion thread). Are you acting on that request with a similar interest in radical civ ideas? Or are you looking for something that might be incorporated more "short term?"

korn469 · March 12, 2000, 00:25

to establish a strong foundation for OC3 we must decide on the foundamental issues...to me the first of those issues are the map and the time frame...

The Map:

this is the most important issue in any civ game because it effects the game from begining to end...every player interacts with the map on each turn and a realistic map is one of the needs of OC3

my first proposal is for us to use a hex based map instead of a square map like civ/civ2 uses. this would get rid of the unrealistic diagonal moving in civ/civ2 with little disruption of game play. to me a square based map is one of civ2's greatest failures. a hex based map would solve this problem. also a hex map is simple to do and would not present any great programming or hardware issues...but besides just switching to hexes there is another problem present in civ games to date. the maps they represent are not spherical maps...there is no way to cross the poles of the earth and end up on the other side...i do not have a good fix for this yet, but we must make an effort to represent the world in OC3 as a sphere, i am not saying that we should include a spherical map but we should try to simulate a spherical map on a flat surface

however from just a hypotetical stance how hard would it be to represent the world as a true 3D globe with zooming capablities like the globe interface presented by slingshot...could our group overcome the technical challenges presented below?

timespan:

this includes not only when the game runs from but how many turns are in it and how the turns are divided up. i propose that the game start between 4000bce-1000bce and last to 2050ce and that it should take between 500-800 turns...des anyone see problems with this?

what are your thoughts on the map and on the time frame?

korn469

korn469 · March 12, 2000, 00:30

slingshot

maybe these principles could guide us

is it technically feasable?
could our group make it work?
what would the hardware implications be?
how much time would it take?
how much does it increase gameplay?
does it maintain the spirit of a civ game?
would the idea destroy the gameplay?
never let best be the enemy of good

if it meets all of those criteria then i say lets put it in, if not lets leave it out...

korn469

Slingshot · March 12, 2000, 00:43

Looks good to me, Korn! (Besides, I can't find the darn SuperCiv thread I thought I posted

)

Although I only played the SMAC demo, it seems that Firaxis did a good job building a future tech tree. In that case, maybe OpenCiv could span from antiquity to, say, 3000AD

Youngsun · March 12, 2000, 01:12

Korn

Wow! "Openciv3 discussion thread"! I hope this thread will contain many great and innovative ideas from Apolytoners! Good luck!

Slingshot

Keep up the good work! since I regard you as very active Apolytoner as far as this forum is concerned.

One thing that bothers me is that I will have less and less time to come to this forum as my assignments get piled up sob sob

heardie · March 12, 2000, 02:23

why not like a soccorball world, or is that what you meant?

------------------
-Chiron Creators-
"http://members.xoom.com/acchiron"

March 12, 2000, 05:16

So what´s the deal here, can anyone post an idea or?
That said

What would you prefer, the current turn based system or simultaneuos turns, as has been suggested in EC3. The pros and cons have been discussed thoroughly, but I think maybe it would be harder to code simultaneuos turns.

Victor Galis · March 12, 2000, 12:14

"why not like a soccorball world, or is that what you meant?"

-Well, that would mean some of "hexes" would have to be pentagons

I was opposed to the hex idea, before but maybe it would be a good idea in order to set this Civ game apart from the others.

About the map, we should not under any circumstances scrap tiles, they are critcal to all civ games. Terrain should look 3D like in SMAC with Civ 2 looking (but better if we can pull that off) graphics. A spherical world will only come into the picture if we can figure out how to do it well, it should not be put in until late in the game programming process if at all (we can always patch or release future versions).

The current time scale is good enough for me.

Say, has anyone played Age of Wonders? I ask because that game has an option of simo. turns and uses hexes.

Simultaneous turns are evil! Civ is a TBS and simo turns make it too RTS for my tastes. (You could possibly allow the player to manage his cities and such during opponents' turns in Multiplayer to save time.)

korn469 · March 12, 2000, 16:10

ok here is what i was talking about

if you had a paper map wrapped around a globe of the earth and you took a pair of scissors and cut the paper map off of the globe and then laid it flat what would it look like? would the map laid out flat still be an accurate depiction of a round world?

i know that the earth is larger at the equator so would the map look something like that?

Code:

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i think we should use hexes to as victor says, set us apart from other civ games and to make the map a little bit more realistic...we should only use hexes, no hexes and pentagons that is from a simplistic point of veiw

and finally sould we better simulate a spherical world on a flat map? does anyone know how to do that?

korn469
[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited March 12, 2000).]

raingoon · March 12, 2000, 17:20

Korn, I'm not a cartographer but it seems to me possible that you could have a huge globe like the one you've posted above as well as a flat abstract.

Rarely does a player make their moves while looking at the entire world. Therefore, I think the game should take place on a very large globe, one capable of showing almost an entire hemisphere. You wouldn't even really know it was on a globe unless you zoomed to the furthest viewing points.

An abstract of the flat world would always be visible in the upper right corner, as it is now and the shape would be that flattened world shape, I forget the exact name, that all globe abstractions use.

Thus, the game world interface would appear basically the way it appears in Civ 2 -- until you zoomed out to the global views. And a flat, strategic abstraction of the known world would be visible all the time for bigger picture planning. The military strategizes this way every day, I can't see why we couldn't.

korn469 · March 12, 2000, 18:07

raingoon

i want to use a map that is as easy and natural to play on as the civ2 map, but i hope that we can address these two issues in a simple way...also i though slingshot's spherical map looked awsome!

1. moving one hex at the equator and moving one hex at the one of the poles is not an equal distance

2. you can cross the the poles

one could be fixed in a number of simple ways, movement could require less movement points the further away from the equator you get, or there could be less hexes per row the further away from the equator you get or maybe someother approach that is better than my lackluster suggestions

two is simple. just have certain hexes correspond to other hexes...likeif you are at the south pole and you hit down then you show up at its corresponding hex at the south pole like if we have these hexes

123456789

then moving from hex 9 would put you at hex 4 or something like that

or we could just ignore all of that and have a rectangle hex map

korn469

Victor Galis · March 12, 2000, 18:16

The solution to #2 is making the poles impassable. No one went to, much less throught them until this century (1910), so that should not be a problem. I say go with a rectangluar type map, and then see if you can do a spherical projection of fun. If one has to be distorted, let it be the globe, which will just be there to look cool, and serve a small world map (doesn't have to be very accurate, as long as you can use it to recenter your map.)

korn469 · March 12, 2000, 18:28

well as long as ICBMs have infinite range then we can have unpassable poles since we don't have to aim the missles over the poles

how big should the normal map size be? i recommend that it be fairly large...how does 48 by 96 sound?

korn469

VetLegion · March 12, 2000, 20:44

Map...I agree with Victor Galis. The spherical map is an approximation --> check civ ToT for this. Works great.

VetLegion · March 12, 2000, 20:49

And another thing that is bugging me...

The scope
Who are we really in civ? A god? A king?
I think a player is a dynasty or something

I will also post a question about this in strategy section, it really intrigues me.

korn469 · March 12, 2000, 21:38

ok so have a spherical aproximation map

then have a rectangle hex map how does 48 by 96 sound for the default size of the map?

as for the question of who the player is

in civ/civ2 i think the player is the spirit of your civilization

this is not a god and its not a government or a dynasty

i am a citizen of the US...when i think back about my history i consider the colonies and the various states under the articles of confederation part of of my history, i even consider the colonies as part of the USA i see the UK as the civilization we broke away from and i see the US as a mixture of almost every civilization on earth but i don't consider the UK as part of the US civ

maybe that helps some

The OpenCiv3 website
korn469
[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited March 12, 2000).]

Slingshot · March 13, 2000, 01:03

This thread should be a directory!

We have so many good ideas, that it makes sense to be able to split them into separate threads. Let future Civ programmers drool, because an OpenCiv thread could really push the envelope!

Maybe our thread moderator could start up an OpenCiv thread. If he won't do it, I would be happy to help.

RE: A globe world. It is definitely possible to make a globe with triangles inscribed on the surface. All triangles would be the same size!

Six triangles make a hexagon. The center of each hexagon can easily be given a polar coordinate array. If you want elevation, it is a 3D array. If you want to specify the type of tile, it becomes a 4D array.

JacobH · March 13, 2000, 14:39

quote:

Let's have an OpenCiv v0.01 before we make a v3.0.

I fully agree with that. Once we have a public binary for download, people will only be disappointed if they think it will be more cool than Civ II because of the numbers. It could turn out to be, but a development version will not have all of the intended features, and they will likely be buggy to begin with. Initially the game is going to be primitive no matter how many good ideas we come up with.

quote:

I don't know how well you people program, but I would think making a spherical world is pretty complicated compared to the ordinary Civ style map.

It will be easier to make a Civ style map. An isometric view and hexagons will not be a problem. If it should be a spherical world with a 3d look, we are going to need more programmers (of course, we will need more people in any event). Currently, I believe only me and Victor are working on the programming part. There is not too much we can do until we get a few more facts established about how the game should be, but I have started to make a few classes that are not dependent on how the game will be like.

quote:

Could some of you that can program please tell me how much is changeable when the game is complete?

If we take care in the design of the program, it should not be too problematic to change it later. I will begin working on a few abstract base classes once there is a more clear description of how the game will be like.

Jacob Hammeken
[This message has been edited by JacobH (edited March 13, 2000).]

Slax · March 13, 2000, 14:45

Will your hexes be on an angle? Civ uses diamonds because they look like a grid system given perspective. That way terrain and units have perspective. I think hexes have not been used because when tilted away from the viewer to get perspective, movement, if using the keyboard, looks complicated.

I've been programming a game as a hobby, it uses terrain in hexes with no perspective, and it looks pretty flat.

------------------
Light the fuse!

[This message has been edited by Slax (edited March 13, 2000).]

JacobH · March 13, 2000, 16:17

quote:

I think hexes have not been used because when tilted away from the viewer to get perspective, movement, if using the keyboard, looks complicated.

You certainly seem to have a point. I made some test-graphics, and when looking at it, this seemed to be the case.
Perhaps we should decide on another shape?

Jacob Hammeken

VetLegion · March 13, 2000, 16:37

JacobH
I will also be doing some programming. I have good amount of expirience with basic, pascal, and c. However c++ is not my strongpoint, and I have done virtually no work on object oriented programs. I am familiar with the concept, and I am planning to speed up on learning c++.

Is it ok to email you to exchange some thoughts?

pris · March 13, 2000, 16:57

A 3d map would take at least 6 person months so I'd strongly recommend getting the core work done first.

If you don't mind starting with someone elses code you should think about doing a Windows port of FreeCiv. If you take this approach you should be able to get a multiplayer Civ clone running on Windows in a short time. This would be a good foundation for all the interesting stuff we've been talking about.

The alternative is to write it from scratch; just to give you an idea of how much work this would take FreeCiv is over 79,000 lines of C code.

My time is limited but I'll be happy to help people with C/C++ programming.

JacobH · March 13, 2000, 17:02

quote:

I will also be doing some programming. I have good amount of expirience with basic, pascal, and c.
...
Is it ok to email you to exchange some thoughts?

Yes, please do, and you may perhaps also be interested in joining the mailinglist. There are a few issues I think needs to be discussed. I will send you an email as well and describe what has been discussed and what has been done so far.

Jacob Hammeken

JacobH · March 13, 2000, 17:26

quote:

The alternative is to write it from scratch; just to give you an idea of how much work this would take FreeCiv is over 79,000 lines of C code.

We do not have to start entirely from scratch even if we do not use the FreeCiv code. There are quite a lot of free C and C++ libraries on the Net. Personally, I would prefer not to base the game on the FreeCiv code, although we could possibly use certain parts of it.

Jacob Hammeken

Victor Galis · March 13, 2000, 21:41

I hope there are more people who know what they are doing... Because my own programming skills are somewhat basic, but my plan was to do a the combat system (basically a lot of variables passed in, and a bunch of random number generators). I haven't had any experience with graphical programs or some of the more advanced concepts. My thought is we should begin deciding somethings now like how to handle combat, not what the units are, but rather what the functions that established what happened when two units fought a standard engagement, and returned results.

I would go with a 3D looking hex map. (not reall 3D, just looks that way somehow.) Could someone tell me where the picture of a forest tile was? The map in terms of code should be a flat cylindrical map (the poles impassable). The terrain would look like the SMAC one in terms of elevation and such with a Civ2-like tileset.

I think things like the time frame are a little less relevant right now, being one of those things that is easy to change later on, while the type of map may be a little harder to mess with.

The Joker · March 14, 2000, 01:07

I think we should focus on making this game playable before we give it a spherical world or other things. Let's have an OpenCiv v0.01 before we make a v3.0.

I don't know how well you people program, but I would think making a spherical world is pretty complicated compared to the ordinary Civ style map. But I completely agree that it should have a hexagon map. It is superior to the squares in every way.

I would like a timespan that reached some time into the future, like 2150 or so. This would make the ascent to Alpha happend at a realistic stage.

Could some of you that can program please tell me how much is changeable when the game is complete? Is it possible to change to a spherical world when other game features are already in place? If so we could have the game evolve slowly.

How about sending the code (when done) out to everyone who want to see it. They could then change it as they liked, and then send it back to us (or someone else who is in charge of the project). This would mean that everybody that has a good suggestion can get their idea into the game, making the quality much higher than if it's just the 6 of us doing everything. I think that's how Linux was made, and that turned out good.

Perhabs we could get Dan or Mark to advertise for us by making an OpenCiv3 news on the Civ3 site.

BTW I am getting loads of emails containing stuff I do not understand. I hope I am not supposed to understand it as it is only to the programmers.

heardie · March 14, 2000, 05:02

pris can i hav your e-mail to add it to the mailing list

pris · March 14, 2000, 16:49

Nothing beats the feeling of create a whole game yourself but it really is a LOT of work.

Just so you know what you're getting into he's a list of FreeCiv features that you're going to miss out on;

- Generally comparable with Civilization I & II.
- Up to 14 players! Will soon have more.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Internet & LAN multiplayer (TCP/IP)
- Support for a great number of platforms see requirements .
- Premade maps & scenarios!
- 47 units and 44 nations.
- Modpack support!
- Internationalization (i18n)

I'd be amazed if you can find a library on the net to match that feature list.

Which everway approach you choose good luck & as I mentioned earlier I'll be happy to help with specific C/C++ questions. Just post it on the message board.

[This message has been edited by pris (edited March 14, 2000).]

The Joker · March 16, 2000, 05:20

I thnk as FreeCiv has come so far we could benefit from using some of their code in stead of just writing it from scratch. Some of the basic things that are not gonna be revolutionary in any way could be copyed from FreeCiv. This would give us time to focus on the important parts of the game.

Victor:
Didn't you post an advanced combat model back at the Firaxis Forum? I remember someone did, and it was really great. If it was you could you please post it here or as an email so we could check it out.

I guess now it's time to figure out the basic concepts of the game...