07-02-2004 20:43									#1
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Just was rereading Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars) in which Mars is terraformed enough for people to walk around outside without suits within a century.

It has occured to me that there haven't been any good games that I know of about terraforming. It always is abstracted, like in the sense that you could build a building that gives a breathable atmosphere, or civ2's mars scenario in which tiles can become earthlike one at a time.

I would like to see something where I can work on the atmosphere, landforms, and hydrosphere. I imagine a game in which I can arrange to crash asteroids into the planet to speed things up, but at the risk of causing widespread quakes. or I can take the slow road and try to do it all by chemistry and biology. The risk of things in the game would be that things could get away from you and have unexpected effects, like having an unexpected amount of poisonous gases released into the atmosphere because of failure to check out the local rocks, which kills off your biotas you've been releasing all these years. Or maybe you set off a volcanic age, rendering most of the surface uninhabtable, even in domes.

I expect the lowest difficulty level, the easiest, would be like Mars itself, where centuries of looking at it through telescopes has been done, maybe even explored by robot rovers before colonization, and Earth is nearby for supplies, as well as influx of colonists and investments by Earth Industry. Not to mention that Mars is almost ideal for a terraforming primer

On higher difficulty levels, You might have to try venus, with its added difficulties of trying to cool it down instead of heat it up, and also find a way to handle its slow rotation. Can it be sped up? Or maybe drop into another solar system and deal with a planet that hasn't been explored at all. find ways to import water, maybe. try to find a decent mix of gases for the atmosphere. try to figure ways to get a decent temperature. make the soil something you can grow stuff in. and so on.

I can't think of anyway to have any serious enemies, so it may become a sim type game. Kind of like SimEarth, but on another planet, and active terraforming.


Any Ideas?

	07-02-2004 23:40									#2
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SimPlanet, eh? Its possible that this exists already... hmmm... there's a "gaia" game I remember playing a while ago...

-Jam

	08-02-2004 01:53									#3
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Love idea but I don`t think lot of people would like it.

	08-02-2004 02:56									#4
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Well, Alpha Centauri has some pretty advanced terraforming options, but I suppose that a game completely dedicated to terraforming hasn't really been done.

I admit, I'd probably like it if it was made, but the chances of that are more than slim.

	08-02-2004 03:38									#5
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I remember a game like this...

But I can't place the name of it, or if it was ever released, or whatever. I just remember reading about it somewhere.

	08-02-2004 04:28									#6
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Maxis' SimEarth pretty much covered that field. Can't remember if it was a win3.1 game or dos though.

	08-02-2004 06:01									#7
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Outpost.

But don't play it, it is on the official worst top 3 games list.

I bought it

	08-02-2004 06:02									#8
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Outpost?






Sorry, i couldn't resist. My memory might be faulty, but I think you terraformed in that game. I should dig it up and torture myself for an hour some time.

	08-02-2004 06:13									#9
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You can indeed do this in SimEarth. But it's like the oldest game ever and damn hard to find now. It doesn't even come with the classic SimGame packs. I'm just lucky I still have the Macintosh version.

	08-02-2004 08:40									#10
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SimEarth doesn't really capture the feeling of what KSR's Mars Trilogy+2 Series (prequel: Antarctica...Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars...sequel: The Martians) went on about. Sure, there was terraforming, but more in the Impersonal-and-Distant-Invisible-Hand-of-God sort of way. MT+2 was all about Human efforts at terraforming and how to balance the needs of the population with the concerns of wiping out as yet unfound native life.

spoiler(highlight to read): There was a brief interlogue that spoke in the third person describing that simple native martian life was brewing far below the surface untouched by Human presence

Sierra Online's Outpost and it's horrendous sequel - that shall go unnamed by me - are a wonderful example of a piss-poor effort at creating a game envisioned well ahead of its time. I won't go into my rant about the bitter disappointment I feel with that game, but I used to mess with the bitmaps to visually simulate a terraformed surface (altered the overview maps, ground tiles, even some of the structures). I may still have some of my work in the dark, dingy corners of my harddrive. I'll see if I can't post a picture.

I would LOVE a revamped version of Outpost made now tens years after the aborted attempt. Though, my concern would be the developer trying to put in unecessary amounts of graphics. Outpost v1.0 was visually very stunning for its time and even now it wouldn't be that bad. But, imagine its graphics being developed with programs nowadays...

Making the sequel as a wargame was an inexcusable blasphemy. Made a poorly-executed game SO much worse...

	08-02-2004 17:41									#11
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There were quite a few games of similar style made, but none are really what the original post is after. Such a game would be difficult to keep challenging you though.

	08-02-2004 18:23									#12
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i'm too lazy to look around the net but i'm pretty sure there is some open source game which is very detailed and realistic about terraforming mars. i think its on sourceforge. it was so detailed in fact that i didn't even bother downloading it.

	09-02-2004 00:11									#13
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In MoO 2 you had to terraform planet types, but that's the closest thing I can remember.

	09-02-2004 00:22									#14
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quote: Originally posted by GhengisFarb In MoO 2 you had to terraform planet types, but that's the closest thing I can remember.

He thinks of more individually and complex solution - in MoO2 it was just matter of time, techs and research.

	10-02-2004 00:49									#15
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The games mentioned here are all lacking in execution.

Outpost, besides its other deficiencies, simply allows you to build a building and all is happy. absurd.

AC has an already earthlike world, with the only "terraforming" done to fight the indigenous fungus. There was ecological impact with seas rising and falling (something similar available in civ and civ2, with the global warming), but little actual terraforming.

moo2 had a mechanic almost identical to outpost, build a building and all is happy.

The original MOO was similar in that it was a simple application of BCs to get more and better land.

SimEarth (I have a windows version) was mostly focused on the building of biomes and evolution. a part of the process, in a way, but only a small part.

I would be interested in the sourceforge game, can anyone point the way?

BTW, drosedars, AFAIK, The Martians wasn't exactly a sequel, but a series of anecdotes taking place concurently with the series.

	10-02-2004 00:55									#16
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quote: Originally posted by Father Beast AC has an already earthlike world, with the only "terraforming" done to fight the indigenous fungus. There was ecological impact with seas rising and falling (something similar available in civ and civ2, with the global warming), but little actual terraforming.

AC has little more terraforming than that! Drilling aquifiers, condensors, boreholes, echelon mirrors etc. not to mention that it has the only sensible water raising system and deformable map.

	12-02-2004 22:33									#17
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OK, It's been a while since I played AC, so I may be out of date.

Did all those "terraforming" possibilities affect the global conditions as a whole? For example, could you do enough to melt the polar caps or, alternatively, cause an ice age where the ice caps grow hugely?

Did the deformable terrain, when you used it to raise a land bridge, affect the ocean currents and thereby the climte conditions resulting from the lack of mixing oceans?

if this is so, I may need to get back into AC

	12-02-2004 22:59									#18
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quote: Originally posted by Father Beast OK, It's been a while since I played AC, so I may be out of date. Did all those "terraforming" possibilities affect the global conditions as a whole? For example, could you do enough to melt the polar caps or, alternatively, cause an ice age where the ice caps grow hugely? Did the deformable terrain, when you used it to raise a land bridge, affect the ocean currents and thereby the climte conditions resulting from the lack of mixing oceans? if this is so, I may need to get back into AC

Not quite .

Sadly it is possible to raise global sea levels by trigerring global warming or selecting melt polar cap topic for planetary council meeting and making it get enough votes. But is kinda "sea levels will raise xxxx meters in next 20 years" It is posible to fight back sea levels with solar shade.
About climate - game always thinks or northwest squares as being rained upon and south east not - so you always choose NW side of mountains for bases.
But creating a mountain would certainly drain out certain area of planet from rainfall.

Let`s all pray for BRAC2 with advanced system.

	13-02-2004 01:45									#19
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I Space Empires IV may qualify. You can colonize say a Rock planet, but need a dome for the other types. You can learn tech to make it atmosphericly acceptable and to improve its value.

Once you learn the tech to colonize the other types you do not need the dome and can then have a large population.

	13-02-2004 19:55									#20
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I'd welcome a game that had significant terraforming in it, but only on a game level. If you had to be university educated in an appropriate field to decide what was the best step to take in the simulation it would leave me cold.