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Ask Sid Meier

Posted by Zonk on from the why-do-i-lose-at-civ-so-much dept.

Sid Meier is a household name in gaming. Titles he's designed, such as Railroad Tycoon, Pirates!, and Civilization, are pillars in the history of PC gaming. This year the fourth chapter in the Civilization series of games is being released, and we have a great opportunity. Today we're asking for questions about design and philosophy to pass on to Mr. Meier. On Wednesday, we'll be asking for questions to give to the Civilization IV development team. That day you'll have the chance to ask technical questions about the moddability and design concepts that went into the game. For today, here's your opportunity to put questions to one of the most respected game designers in the industry. Keep them topical, and one question per post please. We'll pass on the ten best questions, his responses will go up as soon as we get them back.

4 of 604 comments (clear)

  1. Complex Game Factors by sexyrexy · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I know alot of readers would really like to hear about how you approach the task of balancing complex strengths and weaknesses in games - for example, the relative speed and power of a unit in an RTS.

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    Rex is 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
  2. Availability of mods by prisoner-of-enigma · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Games like Half-Life have shown that phenomenal sales can be maintained for a prolonged period of time if the game is designed from the beginning with mods in mind. To date, HL is still one of the most popular online games, having spawned a number of variations that are essentially entirely new games in their own right.

    With this in mind, do you plan on offering a robust and flexible method for fans and enthusiasts to modify and extend the game? The trend in FPS games is to offer a toolkit or SDK that facilitates this. Could we expect something similar in Civ IV?

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    In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  3. Releasing the source to your old games? by Steamhead · · Score: 0, Redundant

    My family's first computer was a Macintosh LC we bought in 1991, at the time I was only 4, I loved your Railroad Tycoon game and continued to play it for 10 years until we finally retired our LC and got a new iMac.

    Unfortunately your game would not play well on PPC and not at all on OS X, I have played the sequels that were not by you, but they never seemed the same.

    Would it be possible to release the source of some of your classic games for nostalgic people like me?

  4. Who cares about Sid Meyer? all I wanna hear... by master_p · · Score: 0, Redundant

    is about Duke Nukem Forever! that's the game that I want to ask its developers about!

    (what the fsck are doing the last 10 years! are they gonna release DNF or not? and what Sid knows about it?)