I Don't Wanna See this Happen Again...

Seeker · July 13, 2001, 00:11

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=14914

Especially note MWHC's last sentence in the last post.

This was from the last MicroProse game ever released and the last 'official' Civ game, ToT...

Please don't forget the little things, Firaxis, in all this hubbub over graphics and colours and other stuff.

Rasputin · July 13, 2001, 00:28

my point exactly. lets not get a great prahpics game at the cost of the game itself being crap

yin26 · July 13, 2001, 00:39

Good companies manage great gameplay AND great graphics. Why should you ask any less of Firaxis?

JellyDonut · July 13, 2001, 01:16

Good games are not about graphics. While great graphics may improve the game, there are plenty of great games without graphics at all! If you know where to look, you can find free games entirely in text that are quite entertaining, although you often end up sketching a map on a piece of paper so you know where you're going.

yin26 · July 13, 2001, 01:20

Quote:

...you can find free games entirely in text that are quite entertaining.

Absolutely true. Of course, when I pay $45 for a game, I expect a tad bit more. Don't you? If Firaxis wants to offer Civ 3 for free, they have my permission to strip out all the graphics and let me draw my own map.

TechWins · July 13, 2001, 01:36

If they "go to" command is very efficient then wars would be more entertaining not having to move every unit tile by tile. It would also increase the fun of MP by shortening the amount of time each player would take by moving his units tile by tile. The more the AI can do effectively the more fun you will have playing the game in MP, as well as in SP.

tniem · July 13, 2001, 01:45

Quote:

Originally posted by JellyDonut
Good games are not about graphics. While great graphics may improve the game, there are plenty of great games without graphics at all! If you know where to look, you can find free games entirely in text that are quite entertaining, although you often end up sketching a map on a piece of paper so you know where you're going.

Quite true, however if I want a great game with poor graphics I will get out my old copy of Civ I and play it on my old 286.

For this series to survive and to flourish in the future, Firaxis must at least give us adequate graphics. I do not believe the current graphics arrive at that point. That does not mean I won't buy the game or play it, just that the game will not bring in new audiences and wow the critics.

Urban Ranger · July 17, 2001, 03:36

The way I see it, graphics is only part of the means for an end, the game itself. While surely it's great to have awesome graphics, it extracts a terrible toll in the form of expensive hardware. Steep requirements prevent more people from buying the game, which is A Bad Thing.

Therefore, some kind of balance must be reached between "having mind blowing graphics" and "can be run on any Wintel boxes."

Since Civ is not a game that depends heavily on graphics, I don't mind if it's graphics aren't gee-whiz-wouldn't-you-look-at-that. Look at Black and White for a counterexample.

campmajor! · July 17, 2001, 04:11

I agree with you. The most important thing is that the gameplay is good. The graphics are less important. As long as you don't get a headache of the colours...

Adm.Naismith · July 17, 2001, 05:43

Playabilty is a must, anyone agree. I must tell that tniem point

Quote:

For this series to survive and to flourish in the future, Firaxis must at least give us adequate graphics. I do not believe the current graphics arrive at that point. That does not mean I won't buy the game or play it, just that the game will not bring in new audiences and wow the critics.

is right IMHO.
It's not that we are asking for highly real time scalable graphics that can leave a GeForce 3 face down on the dust.

We were asking a decent 3D map but, renunced to that, any decent looking group of mountain that gently blend into hills, then plain, without seeing rivers and road floating a mile over the map.

Is not that a low spec PC can't handle a better map: I'm playing a 1999 game with graphics better than that I see at Civ III screenshots, and the review of it mentioned of "low attention on graphics by game developers"

The cold attention the game received by E3 is a very big alarm sign, IMHO. A game magazine here in Italy mentioned the game with low relevance, mostly as a Civ sequel "signed by a Sid too old and rich to spend his time caring of programming the game"

.

Civ III have get same number of words as the SimGolf preview get, and quite less than others new ordinary games!

Consider that usually that magazine is quite good in rating games... well, you get the alarming news.

So, apart a stunning AI, probably too much for realistig game level standard, it will be better that Civ III playability blow reviewers socks off, or we'll be in low rating list

The shortcut to attract casual players and reviewers is still the same: enhance that #@!*&@ map graphics

Urban Ranger · July 18, 2001, 05:27

I guess we'll just have to wait and see. So many recent games with "bleeding edge" graphics turn out to be duds, which seem to me that reviewers pay too much attention to graphics and nothing else.

I don't trust in most magazines anyway they seem to be unable to tell a good game from a bad game.

"That does not mean I won't buy the game or play it, just that the game will not bring in new audiences and wow the critics. "

How does a game without staggering graphics not be able to bring in new players? My contention is a game with lower hardware requirements are better at getting new players, since there are a lot more new players with older hardware than those with super duper computers.

Adm.Naismith · July 18, 2001, 08:05

Urban Ranger, graphics alone isn't enough to sustain a game selling, but surely help at game kick-off

Reviewers have limited time to rate a game: add some limits to some reviewers by themselves...

Anyway, magazine reviewers have a place, as Internet sites have (and more people still look at newsagents easily than at Internet, at least in Europe).

Some bad review can probably damage game selling more than hard core fans opinion: without some strategy hint most players would never realize how stong or weak some part of game is, IMHO.
I learned more tricks on forum about SMAC that playing it ten times.

Casual, new players, will decide mostly looking at box and game graphics, with an eye on a magazine review "Overall Rating" box.
A star rating of "two or three out of five" on graphics can't help, IMO

Now, it is not that I think I can teach this to anyone, Firaxis team included: only hope my external point of view can help them with last minute changes

Dida · July 18, 2001, 10:36

Gameplay is very important, but so is the graphics. Remember, no one will ever use MS Windows, if not for the Graphical User Interface.

death_head · July 18, 2001, 12:27

Long live MS-DOS!

Provost Harrison · July 18, 2001, 17:39

Quote:

Originally posted by death_head
Long live MS-DOS!

Yes, the blasted thing still hasn't died properly. It is a pain. I see that it just isn't microsoft that has a penchant for ancient pieces of code...

death_head · July 18, 2001, 17:41

DOS is simple, easy to use, and virtually crash-free...

tniem · July 19, 2001, 01:21

Quote:

Originally posted by death_head
DOS is simple, easy to use, and virtually crash-free...

Do you have DOS mixed up with Linux by any chance?

Quote:

Yes, the blasted thing still hasn't died properly. It is a pain. I see that it just isn't microsoft that has a penchant for ancient pieces of code...

My Windows machine is running Windows 2000 and it has properly killed DOS as will Windows XP. I recommend a switch, it is much more stable.

Ari Rahikkala · July 19, 2001, 03:13

tniem: I don't think he has... Linux is by no chance simple, it is not easy to use, and not completely crash-free (I've had a kernel panic resulting from "trying to kill the idle task" after just keeping yes '' on for too long and trying to shut down... I regarded it as an extremely occasional and random crash).

On the other hand, DOS was quite simple both to the computer and to the user. In fact, it was so simple for both that if you knew how to program your programs wouldn't crash (that is, they wouldn't crash randomly... they WOULD crash for hardware differences, as there weren't so many interfaces to use. OTOH, now that there are interfaces, the crashes are random

).

And I thought that DOS was easy to use until I found out about the auto-completing in Linux. The very best thing after sliced bread and multithreading

.

Provost Harrison · July 19, 2001, 07:07

My problem with Win2000 is the problem of backwards compatibility, although I am interested in what Windows XP has in store. I will have to 'acquire' it somehow

I would probably vouch for a memory upgrade on my PC if this came out, get my 128Mb up to 384Mb

Zealot · July 20, 2001, 16:10

Quote:

Originally posted by Dida
Gameplay is very important, but so is the graphics. Remember, no one will ever use MS Windows, if not for the Graphical User Interface.

May I add that people only use Windows because of the ms office and games!! Because games are much easyer to program with all the available tools for windows.