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alms66
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Louisiana
Oct 1999
time: 23:15
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Hi,
To Alt Civ regulars:
Empires in Time (EIT) is a new strategy game a group of programmers and artists who met on GameDev.net are beginning to develop. We have some design done already, though more is needed. We're moving discussions of the game here to this forum, so stay tuned.
To the dev team:
Until we hear back from Pepe or we decide to appoint a new project leader (if he never shows up again), we should let the others know a little about ourselves and what we'd like the final game to be, in more detail than we had on GameDev.
I am a C++ programmer (though I'm just beginning to learn DirectX), musician, and artist. I've done 2D artwork for civ2 scenarios in the past, but have never done sprites. I've never done music for a game before, but possibly could, if I can get a hold of the right equipment (which I should be able to). I've programmed for 3 game dev teams, all of which fell apart shortly after forming.
What I'd like to see this game become is an epic level strategy game, with 1 year turns stretching from 4000 b.c. to 2000 a.d., and possibly beyond. I'd like to be able to dictate how many civs are in the game, not have the game dictate how many civs I can have... if I want 300 civs in the game, I should be able to have 300. I've also grown tired of the unrealistic nature of the city system (a city in civ2 encompasses nearly 500,000 sq. km, if I remember the math correctly) in civilization-type games, and would like to move to a provincial-based (or regional-based, as some prefer to call it) model, though cities should still have a realistic strategic and economic importance in the game. In general, I'd like to see a more realistic game also. Not every minute detail should be modeled, of course, and not even to 100% historical reality, just enough to where it has a realistic feel to it.
Anyway, any team member who would like to see the design doc I have, just email me, and I'll be glad to send it to you. Keep in mind, however, that the design doc is nothing more than a list of general ideas that need to be modeled... not the actual modelling of it.
Last edited by alms66 on 11-09-2001 at 08:58
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alms66
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Louisiana
Oct 1999
time: 23:15
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I just received word from Pepe, his computer got fried this weekend, so he'll be out of the loop until he can replace the parts, which he expects to be next week. He also said that Empires in Time is a good name, if noone objects to it, it will be the official name.
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alms66
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Louisiana
Oct 1999
time: 23:15
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Crousto,
Yes, 6000 turns would make for a long game, but that's exactly what I wanted, and is what I meant by "an epic level strategy game." In Civ2 and CTP many time periods were sorely neglected, and I feel that having 1 year turns throughout the game is the only way to do every period justice. Even if we did 5 year turns throughout, that would be 1200 turns, more than double the length of Civ2, which I could live with, but I'd like the option of 1 year turns also.
As for starting at 1 AD, I'd have to say no. The Ancient period is my favorite, but I also like to play modern times, so I'd really like to have a game that stretches throughout civilized history.
A possible solution:
What we can do is have an "end turn" button, that when right-clicked brings up a small window allowing the player to set the number of years that get executed that turn (so our definition of a turn would be the number of years that passed, or got executed, whether it be 1 year or 100). This way, when there is a "dull" period (you basically have everything the way you want it, and would just like to advance a few years to consolidate what you have), you can right-click, set the number of years to 50 (or more), then left-click, causing 50 years to get executed. If something noteworthy occured during this time, the current year would be paused to allow the player to deal with it, and when done, if he chose to, he could continue to finish that 50 year execution or go back to 1 year turns, or 5, 7, or 15 year turns for that matter. If nothing noteworthy occured during the 50 years, then the player could either execute another turn at 50 years, or change the number of years again. Would this solution be acceptable to you?
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alms66
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Louisiana
Oct 1999
time: 23:15
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For the military, I was thinking of having a build-your-own army system. You stockpile weapons/armor/equipment as they are made. When you need/want to raise an army, you go to the military advisor enter the number of men to raise, and what equipment they use. For example, you might raise an army of 3000 soldiers, and outfit them as follows:
Men Weapon Armor equipment
500 swords medium none
500 spears light none
500 bows light none
500 swords light horses
500 swords medium horses
500 spears medium none
**The equipment section is for things like horses, elephants, catapults, tanks, etc.
All the men raised will be taken out of your empire's population (so you can't just raise an army of 1,000,000 if your population is only 1,000,000). And raising the army wouldn't be immediate, it takes time to find and train the men. The army would be represented on the map as a single entity and would fight as one as well.
As for technology, I'm working on a system that would work very well with handling huge numbers of technologies, while being little hassle to the player. I'll post it here when I get more details.
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alms66
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Louisiana
Oct 1999
time: 23:15
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toblo,
I had a look at your site, and I must say, Leviathan looks like a nice game, you're doing a good job.
As for how our design-your-own system is working... it's not. We haven't begun any programming yet. We're just discussing what the final game is going to be like here (general ideas, not implementation), to get a feel for it, so when we do start programming it, we don't encounter too many surprises.
Darkknight,
Those are good words of wisdom... you must have done this a few times, haven't you?  Fortunatly, I've done this a few times also, and I basiclly had the same plan. I've learned that the only way to keep these internet-based projects going is to show progress, and show it often!!
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alms66
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Louisiana
Oct 1999
time: 23:15
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So what kind of map are we going to use? I assumed we would use a map just like in civilization (isometric tile-based, square tiles), do you agree with this?
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jimmyh
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Sunny Old England
Sep 2001
time: 05:15
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Perhaps the higher you go you could increase the view range for that unit, also if a unit would slow down going up hills then maybe you could also increase it's defense.
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alms66
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Louisiana
Oct 1999
time: 23:15
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I've actually never played SMAC, but I have seen screenshots of it however, and I don't like it for 3 reasons:
1. It seems nearly impossible to show mountains on such a map, without making the mountains or the map itself ridiculously large (because you would have to elevate the land, you couldn't use a mountain tile).
2. The distortion of the tile graphics on the "rise" of the higher land is very unappealing.
3. There are other games out there that use the same style of map (SimCity 3000 & Age of Empires), that I have played, and they are fine in that setting because they are only showing a small piece of a world, I just don't think it fits right in a global map, such as we are doing.
So, my vote is no. But if you and Pepe want to do it that way, I'll go along with it.
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Schmacker
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As I said these ideas are not thought out completely, but here goes a couple; Ethos, Caulture & Resource Strain.
Caulture: As your civilization grows it will be tailored to the way that you lead it. Over the generations you will shape the civilization to the way you think. Therefore, shouldn't the caulture also change as the generations pass??? Shouldnt they become people that fit into a caulture that is a certain way? Take, for example, the player that goes hard nuts on tech vs the player that is very millitaristic, expansionist. They techys people will grow up in a caulture that promotes science and reason above all else, while the milltary dudes people will grow up in a very war orientated society were service is all. What would this ecuate to?? Well the techy guy might get better research, but might also have to maintain a certain level of reserch or the people will get pissed at him, while the millitary guy might get bonuses to his troops, but might take penalties to smoe of the none millitary functions like the other buildings. Of course this is far from thought out, but it could add another dimention to the game.
Ethos: This is a lot like caulture, and probably the twop might fit to gether in the end, but where caulture is the way of life you "bread" into your people by your actions, ethos is more the belife system that the caulture has. At the start of the game each civ would get a random ethos. Each of these ethos's would have a certain worship system, like nautre worship, or leaders are gods. This would define their outlook on life and their reactions to certain things. I dont know how exactly this might work, but a thought would be that a nature ethos might get better harvests and stuff, but might not be able to put to much strain on the enviroment. Needs a lot of thought.
Resource Strain: This one is already in the original civ, sorta'. If you remeber the email I sent you, saying that you could have billions of people on a continent, I meant that there seemed not to be any form of strain on the resources. The cities each used their own regions resources to grow then there is no interaction between cities as they compete for resources. Each one would be free to get as big as they could get from the land around with no worries about having a city the same size next door, which just doesnt happen in real life. So I was thinking that there could be some kind of overlaping effects from large cities that interfers with any smaller cities that are nearby.
Those are the thoughts for now... Ill see if I come up with any more later...
bye
Schmacker
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11-09-2001 08:13
), and have already done a bit of DirectX. I managed to make some kind of 3D engine for a RPG project, but never finished the game (couldn't find enough people to help me with artwork...).
We've only got one programmer who doesn't have much spare time right now.
that's sounds just like me!
is to check out clash of civs and/or GGS models. what I learned is that although we started independant, our models are so much alike, as if same people were writing both. 
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