OpenCiv3 - The Title

[Maniac]

Why do you call it OpenCiv3?

It's only the first game of the series - so it certainly can't be '3'. And you guys say yourself we don't have to keep our ideas in the sphere of eg Civ2. Your title - actually plagiarism - doesn't indicate that. It says that it just one more of those dozens of Civ-clones.

[Victor Galis]

Yes, a civ3 clone, with a little more depth. I think that was the objective.

[amjayee]

Just a quick answer, I'm in hurry... I have said Openciv3 is a project name only. Personally, I would have wanted to change it a long time ago, but the other team members objected it; they thought that civ3 is such a popular name it would draw attention etc...

My point in wanting to change the name is the same as you pointed out; it references to existing games, making it sound like a clone, which it will not be. Propose names for the game, so it can be changed as soon as possible! Since we want to be democratic in making this game, there's not much to do if people don't come up with a good name. And when we finally name the game, people complain that the name sucks etc... oh, well.

PS. Victor: a civ3 clone? How can we clone a game we know practically nothing about? Well, perhaps our view what civ3 should be like.
[This message has been edited by amjayee (edited June 16, 2000).]

[Victor Galis]

"PS. Victor: a civ3 clone? How can we clone a game we know practically nothing about? Well, perhaps our view what civ3 should be like."

-I think I left off the " " after "civ3 clone."

... since I'm in California now, I think I have access to some old ideas (/partial components of The List which never got sent, since they were composed at Firaxis.com)... I will post those shortly. I already have posted one in Population.

[dan ward]

Quite simply changing the name, or even discussing a name change at this point is silly. OpenCiv3 works. It's short, easily remembered and most importantly it gives the reader plenty of information about the project All these facts make it the perfect title for the PROJECT. The final game will have a proper title, this title will be appropriate for the final game.

For those people who seem unclear OpenCiv3 is a Civ-clone, it's not Imperialism, C&C, Quake or AOE. Why am I labouring this point? Because a project must have goals and if we can't decide on what type of game we're producing we will get nowhere. Developing a game where everyone adds features from their favourite game will fail. There must be a focal point that keeps everyone pulling in the same direction and for this project it is Civilization. Adding cool new features is fun but to produce a great game we must stay focused.

amjayee: the game will be in the same genre as Civ, our name associates us with that genre and will help attract more people to the project. This is a good thing because it means will have more ideas and more developers to make those ideas into reality.

[heardie]

To shed some light on this:
The name is a sort of manifestation. when the project was first organised I was called it Open Source Civ, due to its open source nature, which is evident at http://members.xoom.com/acchiron/opensource
Thehn over time the name slowly evolved into Open Civ 3, mainly due to the naming of the mailing list to that particular name.

[The Joker]

I agree that OpenCiv3 as name is far from ideal. The reason we called it that was propably that it would be our vision for what Civ3 should be.

I am for changing the name. But It must be done now, in the initial phase of the process. When the game is almost complete (although the point is that it would evolve slowly and always, as long as people wanted to play it) people will have gotten used to calling it OC3, and changing the name then will just add confusion and possibly mean that some people will not play it as they wont know that the game is what used to be called OC3.

When the project started I called it OpenCiv. I thought it fitted pretty good. I think that possibly OpenSourceCiv will be too long and odd a name.

But the coolest thing could be if we found a name that indicated more than a civ-clone - like Clash of Civilizations. At one point in the process I thought about the name Builders of Destiny, but after I heard about Manifest Destiny I realized that this name would be too similar to that.

I don't have any ideas for a good name right now, but I think we should change the name if we can come up with a good replacement.

[dan ward]

We could spend time discussing a name change and even more time doing the work to change it, & making sure everyone knows what the new name is, or we could;

1. Design the game
2. Code the game

[Guildmaster]

Yeah Dan! Naming the game now is like naming a child before it's born. You can try do it, but it takes away from the magic I think.

[amjayee]

Ok, I agree our agenda should be to make a game into the civilization genre, not some other... but also clearly state we will not simply copy civ or civ2. We will take what was good in them, and add new features. I agree that Openciv3 is a perfect name for the project. But also I agree that we need discussion about the name - it does not take away much time for other things, and we don't need to change the name right now.

But we will need a name soon. When we have a name, we could request for our own forum in apolyton, and perhaps get a domain name for the game - there are places that give out domain names free, but no space for the site, they just add a link to the actual site. But of course there's no hurry...

But I do think we could use our own forum. Should we try to get one simply with the name openciv3, or wait until the name has been decided?

[The Joker]

Although OpenCiv is not at all a perfect name I think it could be a good one for our game. No matter what we need to remove the 3 from our name. Since we are making a first game the 3 has no place what so ever in our name. OpenCiv has the advantage of being very close to OpenCiv3, so noone will be confused about what our name is.

But no matter what I think we should change our name as soon as possible, before people will begin knowing the game as OC3. OC3 is really a bad name.

[dan ward]

I'll say it again.

OpenCiv3 works. It's short, easily remembered and most importantly it gives the reader plenty of information about the project All these facts make it the perfect title for the PROJECT. The final game will have a proper title, this title will be appropriate for the final game.

If you are confused the three refers to the version of Civilisation we are basing our game on. Civ came out around 1990, Civ2 around 1995 and Civ3 will come out around 2000 therefore we want to make clear to everyone that the game is using current technology.

[amjayee]

Well said, dan. I agree.

But you people can keep sending suggestions for the final name, though. It does no harm, and we will be needing a name eventually, so it's good to start giving some thought for it, too.

[VetLegion]

In another situation I would agree with you completely Dan. I a recent disk format I lost my folders with links, but believe me, both OpenCiv and OpenCiv2 exist. I dont remember exactly what are they like but I am 100 percent sure I ran into them. (I sometimes search the net for civ resources).

I sont know how comfortable you folks are with name "civilization". I dont live in the US and I dont care about their copyright laws. Civilization III sounds like a nice name to me

It would be best to keep some notion of civ in the title. A few proposals to think about:

III noitaziliviC
The Peoples Civilization
Call to Civilization
Clash of Nations
Path of Destiny
Manifest of Mankind

My all time favourite is however:
The Leader And His Little Tribe



But seriousely, the specifications we put for a name till now:
- have civ in the name, for association
- reflect the fact this is an open source effort
- reflect that we want to use modern technology
- the fact it is not a clone but a new game
- be easy to rimember and sing while you shower

are very difficult to obey. Let me hear yours

[amjayee]

VetLegion, you nearly got me killed with this message of yours.

quote: Originally posted by VetLegion on 06-26-2000 04:11 PMIII noitaziliviC

I was at work when I read this. I hope my workmates weren't too suspicious, but I laughed out loud. But; Noitazilivic? It sounds actually quite good. Kinda Russian.

But basically, your name suggestions had some good ideas. Keep suggesting, folks.

[heardie]

Seriously -
Antiquity is a pretty cool name, but I think I might have seen a freeware game called that somewhere
ANyone know whay anqituty is in Latin?


------------------
-Chiron Creators-
"http://members.xoom.com/acchiron"

[amjayee]

Antiquity is otherwise good, but the game spans all the time of written history and more. From Antiquity To Future? Too long... but keep thinking... one day we will come up with the best name ever - well, Civilization is actually the best possible name, but perhaps we can find the second best.

[The Joker]

How about

CIVILIZATION: PATH TO GLORY

?

Although it is a lot like ctp or the other civs, and it does not say anything about the game being opensource, it does have a great feel, it is easily remembered and it sounds great.

[dan ward]

The way I see it changing the title is nothing more than a work avoidance scheme. There are plenty of people out their who think they are improving things by making petty changes and constantly revisiting decisions that have already been make. Doing this is never benficial and usually harms the project. Quite simply it is very easy pick and snipe at a project it is a lot harder to make a worthwhile contribution.

Everyone who has posted on this thread has made an excellent contribution to the project elsewhere so why don't we get back to making OC3 the best damn Civ game on the planet? Afterall it doesn't matter what the name is if the game sucks.

[Guildmaster]

You know, I actually like
"The Leader and his Little Tribe"
Call me crazy, but I thikn it's cool

[amjayee]

Dan: Look at the other threads, we are doing that all the time. It does no harm if we sometimes use a minute or two to suggest a name we think is good. When it's time to choose the name, we have a complete list to choose from. Until that please comment the fundamental game system issues in the Agenda thread!

Guildmaster: Somehow, also I like that name.

[The Joker]

I was thinking. Maybe we could name the game after a book, which Clash has done (sort of).

Possible names:

The rise and fall of great powers
(or The rise and fall of civilizations).
The book of this name is an excellent book (I haven't actually read it yet) by Paul Kennedy on why civs rise and fall. It was actually what gave me and S.Kroeze the name of the later very famous idea, that civs should not stay strong. It works pretty good, as it shows something about us trying to make the game realistic, and that we are trying to implement the rise and fall idea. Unfortunately the "fall" part of the name doesn't fit too well into the title of the game...

Or my personal favorite:

Guns, germs and steel!

I have found the inspiration for this name from a book by Jared Diamond, that describes why the european civilization and not other ones were to spread across the globe. The title seems a bit unserious and "piraty", but on the other hand it is fun, easy to remember and it describes what we are trying to do: Create a game where guns (technology and military might), germs (our very own disease model) and steel (an advanced economy and trade model) is the key to succes! It would propably work even better with a subtitle of some sort.


So what do you think about these names???

------------------
"It is only when we have lost everything
that we are free to do anything."
- Fight Club

[amjayee]

Guns, Germs, and Steel sounds actually quite good. If we manage to find a good subtitle to accompany it, I think it would be good. And you are right, it describes the idea in the game pretty well.

[Guildmaster]

I like that,

Guns, Germs, and Steel

The Leader and his Little Tribe could be the subtitle! hehehe

------------------
Goober

[The Joker]

Thanks, guys!

Should we mail the programmers and see what they think about it?

But I agree, it definately needs a subtitle.

------------------
"It is only when we have lost everything
that we are free to do anything."
- Fight Club

[korn469]

due to things outside of my control i haven't had time to contribute anything lately but if you don't mind i'd like to suggest a subtitle

Guns, Germs, and Steel: Tools of Conquest

An Open Source Civilization Alternative

also since The Joker suggested that title the scope of OC3 has became crystal clear to me...

Our game like civ will be an empire building game, however unlike civ our game will have a different focus.

The player should represent the the forces of man that marshal people to greatness. By this i mean institutions of the state (governments, religious institutions, corporate empires ect.). However forces outside of the player's control should always be ready to put an end to a player's dynasty. Having an unbroken line of succession should almost never happen. It would be like pitching a perfect game in baseball. However the player should not worry about being the last emperor of a great dynasty.

I propose that this game have a sort of quantum leap quality to it. I have the following suggestion. Unlike in every other empire builder, when your original empire dies, the player should leap into a new role. Throughout the game the player should oversee several empires as they rise from nothingness, until they achieve greatness, and then watch them fade and play until the bitter end. Then the player would get to choose from a short list of sveral new promising positions.

For example, the player starts out as the king of Mesopotamia. There are several other city states surrounding Mesopotamia, and the player was lucky enough to start out with a culture who knows the secrets of bronze working. Through unsurpassed military might, Mesopotamia conquers all of the surrounding city states, and a golden age begins. Great works of art, literature, and philosophy become the mark of this civilization. However it lies on a continant seperated from the rest of the world by a long ocean voyage. This isolated society thrives for centuries then it disappears mysteriously. It could have been a plauge, a civil war, or a famine, or an invasion by a seafaring race. A small radioactive meteor could have struck this isolated continant, or tidal wave could have been the end of the line. Each of these should be able to happen in our game. However once the kingdom of Mespotamia met it's fate the game should not end. A little box should appear and ask the player what new role he wants to take charge of next. For example he could be Senator Lunis of the Iberian Republic, or Thesalon Guildmaster of the Fonecci Combine, or maybe Ulhan first Pontiff of the disiples of Shangri-la. What i'm saying is that the game play of OC3 or G2S: ToC should be different from the other empire builders out there, and certain features should be totally unique. This should be one of the killer features of our game that could attract a following.

Starting a game and playing various leaders throughout a history of a huge persistant world in my opinion would be a huge draw. It would also allow a person to start a single player game then have people join his game, being able to come and go as they pleased.

If you jump around as you wished every so often even if your empire was doing ok would do alot to ease boredom, and think about this...you could start out as a little upstart and eventually take out the juggernaught you had just built.

tell me what you think

korn469

[amjayee]

Hi Korn! It's nice to see you around here. I really liked your title suggestion. If we don't find any killer title better than that, I wouldn't be upset if we chose that name. But we can wait for some time before we make the decision.

I think your suggestion of a new goal for the game sounded very interesting. Since all empires will eventually fall, this would give the player something to do for the entire game. It might be interesting, if the new choices of race for the player would be chosen always from the minor civilizations; so, the player would throughout the game lead a minor tribe from nothing to greatness. Also the player could have a possibility to remain as the leader of his former tribe, if it was only conquered, not totally eradicated.

[korn469]

amjayee

yes i agree that the new character should always be of a minor power, someone that has yet to prove themselves. Since there could be many chapters to this game we would have the ability to mak the game very very long (+1000 turns). To make this work though we will need to further develop the following parts of game play.

*The game should of course include a detailed model for how a state could implode because of internal strife, disese, famine, ect. (Germs)

*Also the game should include a stagnation model. Why for example didn't guns really take off in china which developed gun powder first? I really believe it was because china was powerful enough to not see the need at having to do things differently. I also think that europe was a more competive and cutthroat place than china. So what i'm promoting is the idea that when an empire gets way ahead in their local area they stagnate to a degree. So if you had one empire with a power score of 80 and four others with a power score of 5 each, then the rate of advancement would slow and the rate of deploying a prototype would rise. While if you had five empires with a power score of 20 each they would all develop and deploy technology much faster. (Guns)

*Have a top of the line trade model. It should be complex yet elegent enough for anyone (especially the AI) to master. It should be fairly automated but the player should have some control over it. After having played starknights recently i really think that we should adopt something similar to their economic system. Maybe make it a little more hands off but still have something similar. (steel)

anyways those are my thoughts for now...

more to come later

korn469
[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited August 29, 2000).]

[The Joker]

HURRAY Korn!

It is great to hear from you again!

And not only do you come back, you give us the ultimate subtitle!

Guns, Germs & Steel: Tools of Conquest!

Fantastic. We should really mail everybody. As far as I'm concerned this is by far the best title we have ever had.

And your new idea on the scope of the game is nothing less great. Really nice! I think that it should of cause be possible to choose to rule new civs when your original one has been destroyed (just a small note: I would like to know why my civ is collapsing beneath my feet!). But I don't think that your civ should very often just collaps. Often it would be conquored, which would mean that you would become the leader of the rebels and fight for independance. Even if your civ just collapses, it would often be fun to star all over. You would rise as the leader of one single hex somewhere in your old empire. Maybe anarchy will rule throughout the civ, but you could try to conquor the civ once again. In other scenarios you could choose to leave your old civ and become the governor of a colony. You would then have to fight against the civ you have built to get your independance.

Later we could add the ability to be the leader of a coorporation or a religion. Endless replayability!

I completely agree with your ideas on how to add further depth to the 3 aspects of the game. When doing this we can propably use most of the ideas in your old anti ICS (there were 3 types of ICS, weren't there? Infinite City Spread, Infinite China Syndrome and one more...)

I will download the Starknights demo when I have some time to play it and check out that economy model!


It is truly great to have you back!

------------------
"It is only when we have lost everything
that we are free to do anything."
- Fight Club

[Guildmaster]

Korn, your ideas are freaking beautiful! I absolutely love what you have done here, you have solved the most puzzling thing outside the economy model...

"How do we make it realistic for a player's empire to collapse and still let it be fun?"

You have answered this. I am reminded, that in Civ2 I usually end up using cheat mode to swap to a more challenging foe and go beat up the empire I just built up. (I play too much)
As for starknight, I do not have the ability to DL it and thus play it, so would someone please describe to me what the big deal is about?

BTW:
Guns, Germs, and Steel: Tools of Conquest

My vote for the official name for our little game

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Peace and trust can win the day despite all your losing
-Led Zepplin