JOIN NOW!

Join our Announcement List and receive a weekly newsletter about all civ games. Enter your email address... List Archive

Date: Jul 16 1999 15:31:20 EDT
From: "Apolyton Announcements (Apolyton Civilization Site)"
Subject: Apolyton&Friends News 8-15/July/99


Greetings everyone,
these are the news of the week(8-15/July).

On Apolyton, the big news is the first version of The List, the of the civ
community to create a list of suggestions for Civilization III. The
outcome was great and has been sent to Firaxis. If just one idea...
And of course, in the SMAC section, we had the announcement of the
development of a Mac port and we got an exclusive interview of the head of
the development team for this project, Brad Oliver.

In the "Friends" part of the newsletter, news from Fantastic Worlds:
Jorrit's Civilization II Page, Mr Temba's site which moved civnation.com.
If you have a civ2, ctp or smac site and want your news included here,
mail Dustin Dunn at dustind@home.com

And now, in detail
=========The news from Apolyton=========
----------------------------
**Civilization III Section

FIRAXIS SENDS THANKS
(July 15, 1999) Firaxis got the mail from Yin containing The List, and
Brian Reynolds himself replied. We post it, just for the pleasure of
everyone who submitted even a single idea. The team of The List is now
re-organizing, based on the experiences of the last two months. A new
forum will most probably be created, and the topics of discussion might be
a bit different now. Stay tuned on the forums, this was just version 1! :)

BACK WHERE THEY BELONG
(July 15, 1999) The title has been quoted directly from the lead story in
PCGamer's Eyewitness section in their August, 1999 edition. Here are a
couple of excerpts from the article, which discusses the Firaxis deal with
MicroProse to create the already widely-anticipated CivIII:
"But as good as Alpha Centauri was, it didn't have the mystique of the
Civilization name behind it -- a name that proved to still be a huge draw,
as Activision's mediocre but best-selling Civilization: Call To Power has
demonstrated.
Jeff Briggs, president of Firaxis, tells us [Firaxis] "what is great about
the Civilization line of games will remain intact. We are going to great
lengths to make the graphic presentation richer and more compelling, and
to deepen the gameplay experience even more without complicating the basic
simplicy of the design. Brian Reynolds will be our lead designer, and we
have recently brought Doug Kaufman, one of the designers of Civilization
II, on board, and he will play a major role. Producer Time Train, the
organizing force behind Alpha Centauri, will be heavily involved, and
we'll have six to ten talented artists, sound engineers, and composers"".
Want to read the rest of the article? Pick up a copy of the current issue
of PCG today!

THE LIST IS HERE!
(July 14, 1999) A couple of days earlier than what we thought, Yin mailed
us the first version of The List, even before sending it to Brian! :)
Well, no need to say more, check out the amazing result! And yes, you can
call it an "Apolyton Exclusive"! :)

LIST 1.0 ALMOST HERE!
(July 13, 1999) The latest news from Yin is that the first of version of
"The List", the project to create a list of civ3 suggestions from the
civers by the civers, is almost done. We wont say a specific day for
obvious reasons, but we think you will definetaly see it here(first and
exclusive :)), by the end of the week. Stay tuned!

BECAUSE PENGUINS PLAY TOO
(July 13, 1999)Thirty responses after a week, have you signed? No? Well,
sign now!


----------------------------
**Civilization II Section

FIRST TOT MODPACK??
(July 15, 1999) Some games allow game files modification. Mod files for
these games appear after their release. Except from Civ2:ToT :) Yesterday
we posted the Rules.txt of ToT. Today, I(MarkG) got a strange mail. It was
from David Hudson, a.k.a. Kestrel, and he says he has created the first
ToT modpack! Of course we can't test it, but we post it anyway along with
it's readme. Perhaps John Possidente can check it out and lets us know...

TOT RULES(.TXT)!
(July 14, 1999) Civ2 creators, in the future, remember that you saw it
here first. What? The Rules.txt of Civ2:ToT. You asked, and John
Possidente promised to publicised a sample rules.txt file of he upcoming
Civilization 2:Test of Time. Well, here it is, just for your hungry eyes
:)

GAMESPOT REVIEWS TOT
(July 14, 1999) Gamespot has a full review of Civ2:ToT. A summary of the
three pages? "Civilisation II: Test of Time falls into the add-ons
category, but offers enough tweaks, bells and whistles to satisfy the
hordes waiting ravenously for next year's Civ III". The final score is
7.5/10(in older reviews, CivII had 9.2, Civ2:FW 8.2, SMAC 9.6(!) and C:CTP
8). Thanks to Carolus Rex for the note. By the way, we doubt that we will
see CivIII next year...

10 NEW FILES
(July 13, 1999) I think I'll never get tired of making news posts like
this. Sven posted ten new files in our civ2 db today. These are The End of
Earth, Bajor - The Cardassian Occupation, Banewars, The British Isles,
Cave Wars, Dino, Dune: The Battle for Arrakis, Earth 2, EU-British War and
The Battle of Endor. Sven tells me that he recieved 17 new files in the
last two weeks! Expect them to be posted very soon. Other than that,
Thomas Mathison is working to add a "ratings by people" feature in the
databse script, we hope that we will have ready soon. Stay tuned!

ToT BOX COVER REVEALED
(July 9, 1999) Well well, what DO we have here? Just to your right is the
Civilization II: Test of Time box cover, as displayed in Hasbro
Interactive's E3 1999 Press Kit (we got it just today). Click on the image
for a larger version!
According to the information provided in the Press Kit, ToT, being
published under the MicroProse label, will support only the Window 95 & 98
platforms and not 3.1. As for language support, this will constitute the
English (US & UK), French, and German dialects. This was the case with
Civilization II: Multiplayer Gold Edition in both respects.
Some of you might now be saying, "but come on... we know that MPS [then
still a division of Spectrum-Holobyte] advertised in magazines very
different box art than what actually made it into the final version".
True, true. Let's analyze this further for a moment then: the layout you
see above is consistent with those of previous Civilization II titles (the
alternate FW design as aforementioned was quite different; see our News
Archive if you would like to refresh your memory), and take into
consideration that this cover image appeared in an official press kit,
rather than simply an ad in a computing magazine.
But, to put the question to rest once and for all on all fronts, DanQ has
raised the question in our ToT forums, directing it to John Possidente,
resident ToT team member who has unquestionably become a "regular" on our
discussion boards. Let's wait and see what he has to say...


----------------------------
**Alpha Centauri Section

Interview With Brad Oliver
--(July 11 1999) A few days ago we first mentioned that a Mac port for
SMAC had been confirmed, and that the job had been contracted to Aspyr
Media. The head of the development team for this project, Brad Oliver, got
in touch with us a short while ago and gave us the opportunity to conduct
an interview with him about the upcoming port, scheduled for commercial
availability by the end of the year.
Some of the twelve questions contained in the interview have never been
asked of him before, so part of the interview's content is *exclusive*
material you read here at Apolyton first. Click here to read it all!
When you are done, for further reading you will want to take a look at the
first interview Oliver had on the SMAC Mac port, over at MACNN.COM.

Get It While It's Hot
--(July 8 1999) You know you want it, and you've just been bursting at the
seams to get an opportunity to d'load and install it for your very own...
yes, SMAC Patch 4 is here! No doubt demand for the patch is high, so to
help spread the cheer of good, steady streams of downloads for SMAC fans
all over the online world, we're making the patches available for download
right here from ACS!
Now available for your downloading convenience, the following languages
are currently supported by Firaxis in SMAC v4: English(2.9MB) , French
(3.2MB), German (3.1MB), and new this time around, Spanish (2.9MB). UK
players will want to download the English version, and the patches for it
and the US version have now merged into one.

Another Apple In The Basket
--(July 8 1999) The long-awaited confirmation has come -- SMAC is being
ported to the Mac, and should be commercially available sometime in
November or December of this year, Aspyr Media announced this morning via
their newsletter. Back in April, it had been confirmed that a Mac version
was in the works, but by whom nobody knew until now. Here's a greater
portion of the announcement:

"Aspyr Media, Inc. is pleased to announce that Sid Meier's ALPHA CENTAURI
is in the works for Mac gamers, and should be ready for release later this
year. "Aspyr is thrilled to continue our partnership with Electronic
Arts," says Ted Staloch, Vice President of Sales.

Westlake Interactive, who did a phenomenal job on the Tomb Raider series,
is currently working on the conversion.
"We're very excited to be working on Sid Meier's ALPHA CENTAURI. Mac
gamers have been well acquainted with Sid Meier's game development efforts
in the past, from playing the original Railroad Tycoon or Civilization,
and should love ALPHA CENTAURI," says Mark Adams, President of Westlake
Interactive.

Aspyr Media is eager to get ALPHA CENTAURI out to Mac gamers before the
holiday season. Updates from Westlake Interactive are promising. "So far
we've been working on some low level graphics technology and sound
conversion needed for the game, and everything is progressing smoothly,"
says Adams".

We thank IMG Magazine for the information, and they were able to confirm
that a Mr. Brad Oliver is currently heading the development of this port,
and that a demo would, to quote IMG's website, "eventually be released".

Bigger Beta Team To Test SMAC-X
--(July 8 1999) We have just heard from Firaxis that they will shortly be
increasing the size of their public beta testing team. This team will be
drawn upon to volunteer their services on Firaxis' upcoming SMACX data
disk, Sid Meier's Antietam, and future unannounced products. Previous
experience with Sid Meier's games is by no means a prerequisite, but
testing experience on commercial games is!
If you wish to participate, email the following information in the
following format to publicbeta@firaxis.com:
1.Name
2.Daytime Phone Number
3.Email Address
4.Previous Game Testing Experience (references prefered)
5.Brief example of technical writing (1-2 paragraphs)
6.Reason for wishing to participate (1-2 paragraphs)
On behalf of the staff and administration of ACS, good luck to all
qualified that apply!


----------------------------
**Civilization: Call to Power Section

LOKI GETS POWER HELP
(July 15) Loki, the company that brought C:CTP to the Linux OS has come to
an agreement with Terra Soft to to work together in bringing the Loki's
ported games to the PowerPC platform. As the press release says "Through
this new alliance, Loki will continue to license and port PC games to the
Linux OS. Terra Soft will work with Loki to develop PPC-compatible
versions based on Loki's source code". So, even if there isn't a Mac port
of the game, mac users will be able to play the game not on MAC OS but on
Linux. What this means for C:CTP? The initial release date for the Mac
port from MacSoft was Christmas '99, so a PowerPC version of Loki's port
could be out much earlier. Macsoft, hurry up! :)

THREE MUSKETEERS
(July 10) It's a slow way, but we're walking. John Wiley("ticktock" on the
forums) created the graphics to be used to make a musketeer unit graphic
in red, blue and green versions. All are posted in the Modification
sub-section. We have more stuff to post on the way, stay tuned!


----------------------------
**CivLeague(hosted site)

All Scores Reset
--(July 13) Apparently, some loser by the name of "The Guy" decided to
report 39 false wins. Usually, we can just run a script that would reverse
all the false reports and ban the user, but this time the script had a
bug. It reversed all but 2 of the reports. But since we don't know which
two, we can't go back and manually reset them. We've fixed this bug now.
However the scores were still damaged.
So the CivLeague admins have decided to reset everybody's scores. We were
planning to do this anyway every 6 months so that players who held the
high scores wouldn't hold it forever. I guess this will be the first time.

Navy Tournament Results
--(July 12) Congrats to baphoo who finished first in our navy tournament
last saturday and to dcemitt who finished second.

Tournament Rules Up
--(July 09) Click on tournament, under rankings, above to read them for
yourself.


----------------------------
**Scenario League(hosted site)

New Reviews and a New MAPS Review Section!
--(July 12, 1999) From discussion in the Apolyton forums, we have decided
to create a new MAPS section to review maps!Please submit/review all the
maps you can.The criteria can be found in the maps section.Also, three new
reviews.Two for the Vietnam War and one for 2194 Days of War.


----------------------------
**Civilization Scenario Collection(hosted site)

--(Jul 13) New scenario in Fictional: Cold War X, by Jason Molthan
(Scenario #7 in this section, #84 in the site)

--(Jul 13) TRIVIA closed. Congratulations to our four winners: Michael
Jeszenka, Stefan H?rtel, St. Leo, and af Ulm.

--(Jul 9) New scenario in Fantasy: Prince of Darkness, by Techumseh
(Scenario #3 in this section, #83 in the site) We need more Fantasy
scenarios, people!

--(Jul 8) New scenario in XX Century: 2194 Days of War, by Captain Nemo &
Alex Mor(Scenario #17 in this section, #82 in the site)


=========Apolyton's Friends News=========
--------------------------
Fantastic Worlds: Jorrit's Civilization II Page

07/12/99
- NEW! Half of the new Map Database is up!! The Real-World part I uploaded
has 213 maps. Apart from that I also added a map to the 'regular' maps
section. Now there are still 193 maps to come to the Map Database, as well
as 8 maps to the maps section. I hope you didn't experience any major
problems the last two days, but at least it's fixed now.

07/10/99
- I uploaded only about a third of what I had planned to upload. You might
have some problems... (see 12 July for more)


--------------------------
Mr Temba's

07/15/99
- ANNOUNCEMENT I AM HAVING SEVERE DIFFICULTIES WITH THE INTERNET. IT IS
IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO EVEN CHECK MY EMAIL. I WON'T BE ABLE TO UPDATE UNTIL
THIS IS CLEARED UP.

07/14/99
- Added Tecumseh by Giant Squid to the Playtest Section. Also many files
to the Scenario Supplies.

07/13/99
- Added the Scenario Playtesting Section! You can now download playtest
Versions of Enemy of God and Australian Civil War 19999 Version 2.

07/12/99
- Many new uploads, and surveys were updated.

07/11/99
- This site no longer covers Call to Power, Playing that game is a waste
of my time and yours. If you still want some CTP files go to my links and
follow them.
- Just moved to civnation...things are going to be messy for about a week
as I move all my files and add cgi and stuff like that. Currently very few
of the scenarios and such are uploaded, be patient it takes a while.
- My First order of business is uploading my own scenarios, then the best
on net, then the homeless scenarios and scenario supplies. Then any others
that aren't covered in those areas.



That was all for this week ladies and gentlemen,

Until next time
Markos Giannopoulos - markg@apolyton.net
Apolyton Civilization Site - apolyton.net