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Take-Two to Publish Next Civilization Game
An anonymous reader writes "Take Two Interactive announced today that they have acquired the rights to the Civilization franchise. They also announced Civ 4, saying that "Civilization IV will also set a new standard for user-modification, allowing gamers to create their own add-ons using the standard Python and XML scripting languages." Okay, so XML's not a scripting language. But it's nice to see open source tech in a major PC game!" Civ IV will be released under the new 2K Publishing Label we reported on yesterday.
Firaxis still owns Civilization, and Sid Meier's still the director on the game. Take Two is just taking over the role of Atari/Infogrames and it sounds like they wish to do more with the title than just make PC games.
Civ IV is scheduled to be out in late 2005. Hopefully, it will be.
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
If you love Civ 2 but have never played Alpha Centauri, be sure to give it a shot. I still play it occasionally even today, but I don't play anything in the Civ series any longer. The modifiable military units are great.
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Never did like Civ 3 myself. Too many boring bombing runs
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
Sid Meyer is known to be taking more of a lead role in the design and development of this version, as opposed to the previous Civ game. Given that, I would bet that gameplay will be greatly improved over Civ 3.
Wise men learn more from fools than fools learn from the wise.
EA has already experienced some of it. The Jane's series was a great franchise and had some great programmers. EA screwed it up with bad business decisions.. Hungry russian programmers developed IL-2 and Lomac to fill the niche and Jane's is gone.
It will happen again to EA.
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
This isn't the first time that Python has shown up in a major commercial game. Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines uses python 2.2 (could be wrong on the minor revision number) to handle almost all of its in-game actions. It's interesting to read the scripts and see how the game works, even if it can spoil things a bit.
Alpha Centauri. You get to make your own military units, for crying out loud ;)
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
I sure hope so, because the current release makes me want to blow my brains out. I thought the original Civ and Civ 2 had a craptacular interface, but then I played freeciv.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Note that Civ Call to Power (and the sequel) aren't part of the Civilization franchise, it's not made under the same license and I think there were even some lawsuits at the time if I remember correctly. It was made by a completely different company and published by Activision.
I personally like Alpha Centauri the most, it's got all of the best parts of Civilization II plus borders and the ability to create your own units. If you haven't tried it yet, I highly recommend it. It's a Firaxis game (Sid's company). There's even a Linux version available.
It's like deja vu all over again.
I believe he's referring to the use of Python.
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I beleive it's shift-U with the unit type to upgrade selected and in a city with a Barracks. All other units of the same type that can be upgraded will be. Note that if you don't have enough money to upgrade them all, it won't work. You can upgrade units en masse through the Military Advisor's screen.
OH NOES!!! IT APPEARS YUO DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO PAY FOR DIS HERE PIZZA! WAHT EVER ARE YOU GOING TO DO!?!?
RTFM next time.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Switching to XML might make the data more structured but at the expense of loading speed, readability, editability and sensitivity to parsing errors.
If you want to try another good freeware version of Civilization, there's C-Evo. It's a bit different in gameplay from other Civilization games, but I prefer it to Freeciv.
But when Civ II came out, it promised to improve all those things which Civ II lacked. We bought it the day it was available, played it for weeks, and gave up in annoyance, frustration and disappointment.
What was wrong?
- The game was slow. Dog slow. 'Nuff said. I could have lived with this if it hadn't been for...
- A HORRIBLE interface. Bad graphics, cheesy icons, ugly cartoonish characters, confusing buttons, slow performance...I could go on for days. This drove me nuts. Clearly not designed by someone with any real interface experience.
- Competing civilizations were right in your terrain and seemed to get in your face way too quickly and were too competitive, even at the second-to-lowest skill level. After a couple of dozen attempts (in each of several games) to get rid of competitors early, late and otherwise, it just seemed to be nearly impossible. Of course, there was always the alternative of playing an easy game, but what's the point of that?
- The diplomacy options were improved, but the diplomacy interface was rotten.
- The Mac version...other posters have commented on that. An embarrassment.
What Take Two Should DoStop and breathe. Don't just clone Civ III and clean it up.
- Look at Alpha Centauri. Although in essence a richer version of Civ II, its interface was amazingly clean, its descriptions of technology and societies were deep, detailed and compelling, its graphics very good for the time, and its overarching story actually thought out.
- Read Boorstin's The Discoverers. If a history book is a page-turner, this is it. Highlights the role inventions and knowledge played in the conflict of cities, nations and societies, and contrasts the different societies in an often startlingly fresh way. One of the Civ branches (Test of Time?) had the clock as a major invention, which it was; that's just one example.
- Hire a usability expert. This current craze for themed interfaces makes usability go down in favor of cute buttons which either all look alike or don't make any sense. Everything doesn't have to look like a Windows app (or a Mac app), but please put your interface in front of Grandma at least once before adopting it.
- Hire a graphic designer, not some kid out of college. Again, see Alpha Centauri. Cool, clean, comprehensible (mostly, though the unit modification rules were a little unclear at first).
- Offer finer gradation between levels of gameplay. Going from insultingly easy to seriously hard in one step is a bit much.
- Don't insult your customers' intelligence. It should be somewhat educational. I learned more about the fictional Alpha Centauri society than I did about our own from Civ.
- Code so a Mac version is easier and can be brought out more quickly. Don't depend on MS-specific technologies. (Hey, could even make a Linux version easier!)
Overall, I hope the designers have fun in bringing a new version to life.(side note: I'm glad it's no longer with Infogrames...let's just say it's not a well-run company.)
A sig is a waste of bits.
For full effect, you need to hear it. Here's another good one:If the game came out today, the voice acting would still be considered superb.
List of SMAC quotes.
I've had a win on Deity level that started off with two cities in a corner peninsula when the opponents had a dozen cities each. I've built up a force, took a couple of cities by surprise, acquired some tech to make peace, moved my palace to one of the cities, and I was off an running.
The fact that you can create new "core" cities through moving palaces and creating the Forbidden Palace on the opposite side of the world really help out with this problem.
Becoming a communist will let you create a third center, as well.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
XML can be a scripting language. The webMethods integration server has been using one for years. You just need to define a xml schema, write a compiler/interpreter and there is a brand new XML scripting language. This is probably what they meant.
Regardless, I think this is pretty cool. Having 'content creation' applications within a game certainly would bring more people into the mod scene. People like me that don't really want to install the latest and createst C++ IDE, download the games mod SDK and spend years figuring out how the engine is supposed to work.
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No power in the 'verse can stop me