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Adm.Naismith
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Milano - Italy
Oct 1999
time: 06:14
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Oh dear, Firaxis will drive all us crazy 
Hmmm, a scenario-based Dino would miss a lot of replayability, that I always considered a must of best games (as CIV, CIV II and partially SMAC). A Dino-Scenario, if I can put my bet, will be RTS because if its small fast is better (trade deepness for action).
On dino point of view that make sense, they already miss the concept of a whole world: they live to browse or hunt and only move when resource are scarce. If you read carefully, Sid speak about dino reacting to balanced resources (it sounds a bit like a Life sim/game to me, I mean that grid where square born or dead according to simple rules, do you know?). The herds move around nicely only in a RTS, so...
OTOH, Pangea idea has very interesting strong point. Hmmm, well now I put my coin on a dynamic global world as general scenario container (I'm thinking at flying simulator battlefield as I red about F16 Falcon 4), where some events - random, induced by player results, by flow of time - will zoom the game on a reduced area with a scenario goal.
The general level could be a sort of TBS, where you link with global event the single RTS scenarios.
On general level you can see the main flow of time (on a large enough scale), then at scenario level your dino's move will take real minutes, not turn of years as CIV. Genetic mutation can happen on a scenario e.g. a different dino born, you must defend he/she until grows enough to care him/herself, but they need plenty of years to firmly take place on a dino population, so you can zoom out on general level and watch your herd reproduce and evolve, then you get a new, mutated herd to look at next scenario. Any thought about my opinion? Agree, disagree, mild insult?
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Adm.Naismith AKA mcostant
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Some of you still see a TBS vs RTS debate.
But I see a decision made on RTS.
First there was the discussion on which to use, then there was a big hint that it was going to be rts, and now I see that it is going to be an rts, but some still think there is a decision to be made. I can't see it, someone show me.
And didn't a lot of dinosaurs mark their territory with a big pile of poo? lol. I hope thats in it!!
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Thats what I am hoping
And MarkG, did you have trouble trying to remove the red background from the tree image? I spent half an hour!! trying to remove it..and did a crap job! It's on my front page, you can use it if you want.
Tree
(I put the tree image link only first, it looked crap on the white background, so I'm giving the page its on. sorry if I'm advertising. lol)
[This message has been edited by L o k i (edited January 14, 2000).]
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actually, I put it in a red table instead
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Glak.
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I suspect that they are going with a big world TBS type game. That's because I have no faith. Sure Sid made civ1 and it was good. But Brian works at firaxis and I hate everything he has ever done and I think he pushes Sid around, so yeah DIE BRIAN! Ok but then this diary didn't really lift my spirits. He talks about big world vs scenario. It sounds like there is still that overwhelming single player fixation. If they are going to make it a single player game then that is ok. I just don't want them lying to us and saying you can play it multiplayer when really you can't. Like the guy brought up Starcraft as an example of scenario type game. Hmm well you see SC is played on small maps not because that makes for better scenarios but because the game totally breaks down and becomes boring when the map gets above (or below) certain size thresholds.
Here's an idea: persistant world like those dumb online RPGs. I've played a lot of EQ and I hate it but I think that kind of world might work for this type of game. When you log off your dinos would disappear but all of you structures and terrain improvements would remain to be stolen by other players. When you log on you have to find an abandoned town or go build a new one.
You'd have perhaps 10-50 dinos. If you have multiples of the same type they could breed but umm.. it wouldn't be too graphical. You could also recruit lone dinos that run away from abusive herds. (sort of a loyalty statistic based on a variety of factors) So you could evolve your own but for types you don't have that many you would have to steal eggs or recruit the disgruntled to get the latest in evolutions. You could probably trade your dinos with other players. Going into a war soon? Put out your purebred brontosaurus to stud and receive some lightwieght fighters as payment.
The peristant world is ideal when it comes to evolution. There wouldn't really be winners or losers either. Some people would go all out predetory and fight other players. Others might attempt to run a peaceful herd and replace losses faster than they take them. Most of course would use a mix. Some players would want to play in the water and would go all out sea dinos, maybe with some air support. Hey actually this sounds kind of fun. Even the passive herds could compete with each other. Do I need long necks or some other adaptation to grab the food?
Actually while I was writing this I thought about the tree. It is an RTS tree, perhaps it could be TBS but looking at those trees...
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RenderDrone
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Are you some kind of retard? I thought talking out of asses is only a right of the priviledged.
[This message has been edited by RenderDrone (edited January 15, 2000).]
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I totaly agree, scenarios are BORING, plain and simple. They're so boring infact, I sometimes stop playing the game half way through, they're so boring that if I get the chance NOT to play a scenario, I will!
Every scenario type game, I have only played once straight through. Its about a months worth of gaming. And that's it I'd never go back, simply because I've done it all before, everythings too easy. It's like going to a job and doing the same thing over and over again, you don't want to do the same thing over and over again!! You want something different each time! And that doesn't mean change the look of the map, that's not good enough. You gotta do a little bit more than that.
Sure, If you want to put scenario's in, then put them in, but don't make it the major part of the game, make the large world the major part of the game.
A lot of people seem to think this is gonna be a DinoCraft, well somehow, by the screenshots and the gameplay, It doesn't look like that to me. Both Starcraft and Warcraft were total war games, all about war.
This dinosaur game is a lot more than just war, its about evolving, its about surviving, reproducing, interacting with the terrain.
Hey, Age of Kings is closer to being a Warcraft type game than this Dinosaurs game, sheesh.
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Koyaanisqatsi
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of Maine paupers.
May 1999
time: 00:14
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I have to agree with Loki... it looks like the decision to go RTS/scenario (edit--whoops, looks like Loki doesn't think it won't be scenario . . . from the last post, I thought otherwise) has already been made, and the diaries are Firaxis' way of easing us into the decision. I mean, do those trees really look like anything you've seen in a big-world TBS game? They're way to big to fit into that kind of map, and I don't think they're from cutscenes, either. I suppose it's possible that they're intended for a 'dinopedia' type section, but from the angle they were rendered, I don't think so. To me, they look a lot like props from a zoomed-in, RTS-style small map.
I suspect what's going on is the Firaxis folks knew that they had the concept for what might be a really great game, but they knew that it wasn't going to be automatically accepted by their traditional audience (which is, well, us.) The dinosaurs theme was a little cheesy, it had been done before with bad results, and (horror of horrors) it was going to be an RTS! In a series of TBS games! That package would be a hard sell, no matter how good the game was, so I think with the diaries they're trying to ease us into the decisions they've made about the game, and hope we follow them through the decision-making process, instead of just throwing us all into shock when they announce the much-hyped third member of the sweep of time is an RTS about dinosaurs.
But hey, maybe I'm just being cynical, and it will turn out to be a big-world, TBS, civ-esque game that will make everyone happy.
[This message has been edited by Bell (edited January 15, 2000).]
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Koyaanisqatsi
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of Maine paupers.
May 1999
time: 00:14
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I didn't say it couldn't be, but I do think it is very unlikely. It would simply be bad design work to have something that detailed on a large-scale map. There's a practicle limit to the zoom range of a map, because if you zoom in or out too far with any given graphics set, it's going to look horrible. Even if the trees are only that big at maximum zoom (resulting in a zoom level of less than maybe six or seven spaces sqaure on screen), if you zoom out to any practicle strategic map size, it's going to look horrible. I suppose you could swap out the graphics set between zoom levels, but that would add a lot of complexity. If they try to get around the zoom problem by using vector or voxel type terrain graphics, then judging by the detail of the trees, you're going to need a serious video card to even move around a blank map. Also, the angle and depth are wrong. If you put that tree on a TBS map, it's so tall it would obscure the spaces behind it.
On the other hand, they seem to be the ideal size for maximum-zoom on a small, tactical scale RTS map. They can afford highly detailed terrain, because you never see very much of it at once, and you can't zoom out far enough to make it look really bad. And obscuring terrain isn't a problem in an RTS, for one thing because they try to avoid using discrete squares, and also because people often hide behind the terrain on an RTS. So like I said, while that may be a tree from a dinopedia or possibly cut scene, I really doubt that you're going to see it on a TBS game map in the near future.
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15-01-2000 00:14
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