Hey Everyone,
I've been out of the loop for about a year and a half working on the first part of my PhD program.

I have a group of friends, all Graduate students in Computer Science that are looking at building a Computer version of this expansion. I've been heading this up, and though we are still at the initial stages of development, we think that there is a strong possibility of success.

The goal is an open-source, cross platform game (written in Java) that groups of players can connect and play. We are also trying to speed up the game, and allow for the game variants mentioned.

After that long-winded explanation, I guess my first thought is to ask permission to use graphics and possibly for help (especially on some strange rules). I've read the legality discussion, and I want to be sure that this project does not do something which would violate anyone's rights, or use someone else's work without their permission.

Chris

It sounds good that someone makes a computer game from the expansion project. However, the game itself is still in an experimental phase with many playtests, discussions and rule changes. I hope you will insert this in your computer game.
Is it possible to play your computer game alone?

It's a great thing you're planning this game. I'd love to play it.

Remember that this game is still in development!


For the rights of the artwork it's not to say at this moment.

At first which artwork do you mean exactly

I have done new artwork for the advances and the calamities for my own very game. Though people like it, we're not done in whether this artwork is going to be used for this project anyway.

So if you are planning to use the artwork used on this layout:

you're talking about my work, and i'm asking you to wait.

If you want to use the artwork used on this layout:

there's nothing I can say about this.



Talking about the calamities:

This is my work:

please wait...

This is the original artwork:

(I can't tell about that)

As I said, the game is still in the planning stages, and my plan is to allow for changes/upgrades to the game to be fairly simple and straightforward (to reflect possible changes in the Civ: Expansion Project) I'm also including different gameplay options, and map options, so one could play with a number of different rules or locations.

To play solo, our plan is to include some AI, as well as a structure for creating your own AI in Java. Unfortunately, with the complexity of this game, an AI can be difficult. Alternatively, I figure it could be played by a group of people anywhere, so you could have a posting for players somewhere, and form a group from that.

After reading a number of posts, I realize that you (Flo) have put in a lot of work on the art, and I certainly wouldn't take anything (yours or the "old stuff") without permission. I am certainly happy to wait. Until we get the game up to a strong working version, we will probably just use some generic pictures (squares with X's). At the point that we need graphics, I will probably make another, more formal, request.

Maybe you can get inspiration by the computer game of Advanced Civilization:
On the Civilization Cards there was no artwork in the computer game. It just was stated a Civilization had bought that card or not.
On the calamities the artwork was a 1-2 second movie of the calamity, when the calamity resolves. Since Flo's artwork are only pictures, you still have to make the movies on your own if you have them.
When trading there is artwork too, but I think that that artwork should be the same as the artwork on de commodity and calamity cards made right now. But for the calamities, you can create own artwork as a part of the corresponding movie.

I have played the old game, and I think one of the biggest drawbacks is that it doesn't look very good (although the graphics were pretty good for the time). Now, our primary objective is to make the game playable (good player interaction).

As for graphics, I agree, that the game doesn't need great graphics, but I'd rather have something graphical than nothing. It would be a shame to make a computer version of a board game without having the feel of the game. My goal is to have all of the cards with graphics. If it turns out to be unfeasible due to copyright, then I'll try to find "real" pictures that are public domain. I doubt I will include movies like the original game--I personally found that they were annoying and slowed the game down - as soon as I found out how, I removed them.

But, I am open to suggestions. If you have played the old Advanced Civilization computer game, and think any aspects should be included or changed, please let me know by posting here.

The old game always broke half time so I never got to finish it.


First let me say I'd love to playtest it, and the computerized version may be a great way of playtesting new finetuning options of the physical game in turn.

then about some notices:
If you compare things to the old comp.game, some thing i think might be problems:


1. how to get a good overview of the board. especially when you're using the full 18 players.

2. I liked the ability to hide opponents movements, but maybe it's an option to make a toggle between 'before' and 'after' moves of each player. hiding the full movement makes you playing your own game without keeping track of other people's game.

3. It's fun you don't know exactly what other players trade, though in a real game keeping your ears open helps keeping track of certain cards.
You might buil din an option of 'rumours say...' (for example: your informants tell you that a grain card was traded for a wine). Maybe giving options in now much imformation to let through. Calling out loud your own trades can harm you though it can help too by attrackting other player's attention.

4. While devellopping the Civ-Administrator we came accross some difficulties. We wanted a system where each player can mark some cards and see what the total costs are without distracting the credits immediately. Like a shopping cart at websites. you mark your cards and the system counts your costs. Once the AST is altered it actually couonts it up in your row of cards and adds the new credits to your credit pool.

Exceptions in these are cards like 'written record' and Monument where you get to choose a (combination of) color(s) and Library and Anatomy. Think about this.

A notice is, that sometimes at multicolored cards there are more options to count credits. our system immediately counts the highest possible credits. in fact you could choose for less credits to use more treasury but in practice this is seldom applied. (say you want to purchase literacy and have 30 blue credits, and 25 red credits, you might want to use only the red credits and use 5 more treasury to keep from tax revolts next turn)

5. Another Civ Administrator thing we forgot in the first place is 'Regression'. now it is solved and it immediately checks for 'fundamentalism and 'library' and then moves back your ast marker

6. Take a look at an opitional time-marker

7. think about requesters to buy tradecards in AST order and count in Wonder of the world on that if you want to use new rulings

8. At Play by Email I notice that it's often hard to tell whose turn it is. It might be an option to show a box message at all time to see who is about to do what. In a real game sometimes movement of a certain player goes before its actual turn because it speeds up the game and there is no intervention between these two player. Have you thought about an option for that. Think about a 'houserule' whether that player (who went before his turn) is allowed to change his movement afterwards. (it shouldn't be allowed but in reality he often is by other players)

Flo,
Thanks for the great ideas. Some of them we've already discussed and considered, others I hadn't even thought about yet.



That's a problem I hope we don't ever have! Although we are working on ways of ensuring that if something does go wrong, especially with the networking, then there is a good way to recover (i.e. load the last turn, like the original game did). That way, you would lose at most an hour of play, instead of the whole game.



When we release the alpha version, I plan on opening it up to this group, since you seem to be able to play the physical game much more often than I do. I live in a fairly rural area, and it's hard to find enough people willing to devote enough time. I guess that's one of the reasons for developing this game.

Also, I plan to have the game be open source, and the advancements be adjustable. So, if you want to make changes, there should only really be a few lines of code to change (and for the not-so-computer savvy, I'll write a tutorial on the simpler changes). This means that you can make your own "version" of the advancements, adjust them, and playtest with different variations.



Right now we have a color-coded mini-map to allow for easier scrolling over the board, and to provide an overview of who has what. Also, scrolling on the board will be much more intuitive.



I'll talk later (after your last point) about some of the ideas for movement. I've noticed that the method that's common is to move the piece to the border and flip it over, so that you know what's been moved from where, and what hasn't. I would like to adopt that, which means it will be clear what has moved and what hasn't.



The "trading" has been a little bit of debate for a while now. I think we may have come to an agreement on the first step, but I think that will likely require the most playtesting and possible reworking.



I hadn't even begun to think about how advancements would be purchased and credits would be accumulated. I know it's important, but that's a little later down the line.



We will likely be writing sections of code for each calamity independently, so hopefully we will get the effect of all of them appropriately.



I'm not sure what you mean by this. I was thinking about the option of a "timed game" where the game itself would give you a 1 hour warning, then finish the turn and ask about continuing.



I've thought about making two different WotW, since the discussion has been moving in that direction. As I said, I hope to make the advancements code-independent enough in the game that they can be adjusted without requiring any rewriting of other code.



Since movement is one of the biggest time strains, I planned on using a "finish in order" style, and make it really easy to "undo" a move. I was thinking that when you moved, your piece left a "tail" back to its starting area, and you could simply drag it back to undo the move. That way, everyone could be moving simultaneously, but the players must confirm that they are done in turn order. So, if you wanted to wait until you know someone has finished, you wait until they have confirmed (I plan to have a very simple indicator for confirmed movements). That way, if someone who moves before you attacks, you can undo some movement and defend yourself, but if someone moves after you, they can simply wait until you've confirmed that you are done before attacking. A player may also move some tokens right away, and wait to move others until after the other players move.

The best part is, this should be even faster than the board game, since players don't have to worry about their hands getting in each others way.

I think the hardest part is figuring out how to undo ships correctly. The difficulty lies when a person picks up and drops off tokens en route.

Thanks for the suggestions so far. I welcome any more thoughts.

1. the time marker has nothing to do with time spend during a turn but how many turn the game lasts.

The game doesn't end anymore at the point a player reaches the final step but at a point where a given number of turns is played.

we use this as optional, but in practice it works very fine. Especially when players have to catch busses, trains and so.

You know exactly when the game ends and you will not de unsure about how many turns to go.

downside is, you cannot really sack a player to keep him from winning cause the game ends anyway. and once you are held back on the AST you can never catch up again.

2. The tail function is interesting

Maybe just arrows can do the trick

every moved token gets an arrow head and a tail from where it came from.

for ships multiple crosshairs/flags with info on load/unload when hovering or clicking.