History book as an ending of the game

[MidKnight Lament]

I'm starting to have second thought sabout this. Perhaps it might be too much. I mean, it would be cool the first couple of times, but who's going to read it all, really? If you were going to do it that way, then maybe it should be really broad. Quite large timespans. I like the old map thingy in civ 1 because you could set it off to go as a fast replay, and see most of what you wanted to very quickly. it could be good for documentation, and reliving glory days, but who would read it all?

Sorry if I've trodden on any toes. Maybe I should go to bed already.

- MKL

[Adm.Naismith]

MidKnight, sure some balancing between too much info or not enough must be found.

We want to summarize around six thousand years of a Civ history, it can't be too short

The key is, IMHO, as in business reports: summarize then let the reader to "drill down" the detailed info.

Please consider that:
- old Civ reply only show to you the territory owned by every CIV;
- it doesn't work as an "in between" remainder about the situation of a previus save
- it doesn't help players to share good game results to learn from and enjoy

Our requested CIV III replay must:
- cover every path to victory of a civ, showing the evolution in tech discovery, military and diplomatic power, market dominance and any other useful info to help us to compare Civs. May be (as in SMAC terms) someone win cornering the global market just when another player is almost ready to launch the starship: please someone show to me how @#* can I deduce this from a stupid coloured map of territory owned

- I want to go back to old save an restart a game with some general briefing showing how my Civ is where it is on that turn, just to catch the right feeling and remember previus tactics.

- I want to "build history" and show the result to some friends of mine that don't know the whole CIV game but can be interested seeing some not boring reply (well, at least as interested as to see my photo or holiday movie . I want to see in a glance how good players reached their records, downloding their "replay" by some "Apolyton History Museum of Great Civs".

It will be more useful if (as others suggested) in Civ III your Civ will gain a positive result also if it doesn't last forever, as Romans or Egyptian in real history.

Of course someone can be bored to read everithing: just let him/her to skip unwanted parts, as I already wrote on previus post.

Come on MidKnight, don't leave us, just tell us what you would change of this proposal

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Adm.Naismith AKA mcostant

[MidKnight Lament]

I'm not opposed to the idea. And if it went into Civ3 as you suggested, I'd certainly not be disappointed with it. I commend everyone for putting effort into it.

I guess I'm just aware that it's going to take a fair bit of effort by designers to make sure that it stays relevant and doesn't become boring. Particularly when there's plenty of other things which I believe need to be improved upon first. That's what I'm thinking anyway. It'd be a great feature, but it's sort of an extra to the game rather than improving the game itself.

Don't take anything I say too much to heart though

- MKL

[Grumbold]

I like the idea of tracing the founding and capture of cities, declarations of war/peace, discovery of new advances and building of wonders. Showing key victories would be nice but I doubt the PC's ability to determine a key battle from a sideshow. I'm sure many, like me, don't plan to free up a 10+ GB harddrive for a single game just yet so the options on what to record should be taken at game start for maximum flexibility. Those with terabytes to spare could opt for "the whole game - in real time!"

[Gord McLeod]

How's this?
Instead of trying to come up with movies and novel-length history books, have a detailed, but not overly extensive summary of your Civilization's history and accomplishments. Include the option to spit out this history in a more detailed form, as an HTML file complete with world map in graphical form, maybe as an imagemap. Also include detailed statistics of all your civilization's statistics over time, preferably in a compact, platform neutral format, like tab-delimited text, for easy importing into almost any spreadsheet program you'd care to think of... that way the player can just get the quick summary for most games, but if there are some that are really special and stand out in comparison, you can "save" them, come up with as many graphs and charts as you like, and very easily share your accomplishments with others online.

[Adm.Naismith]

Grumbold, IMO it's not needed a terabyte of save space available.

Please read twice my proposal:

Mainly text (HTML format is good for me) means just some ten/twenty Kb added to the game save. Counters can be difficult to extimate, but you can really put lot of numbers into a bunch of bytes, can't you?

About movies and cut scene, I spoke about link to a game library (and reuse of in-game cut scene). That can take more or less space, just it's always the same from installation of game.

On another example, please take a glance at http://crisium.com/sn/snnews.htm (site of STARS! Supernova, a TBS about space empire) and browse to look at their "log" concept.

They will record relevant messages (as SMAC main events) adding the feature for the player to add (during evey turn, if you want), some written notes. ("Emperor diary", if you want .

So they are mixing part of computer generated report to human "glue" to fill the gaps. It surely is less programming intensive and still let you the ability to save as html and send it everywhere.

Some Australian Knight feel better now?

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Adm.Naismith AKA mcostant

[MidKnight Lament]

Heh, heh. I was actually at that site a couple of days ago. I just hadn't had a chance to post about it yet How good is Stars Supernova looking, hey? *rubs hands together*

I loved the replay at the end of Civ 1 - I'd love any sort of replay in Civ 3 no matter how advanced simple it is (I couldn't believe it when they left it out of Civ 2).

[JosefGiven]

Well, who'd have thought what ultimately is a cosmetic feature would be so popular?...Just look at the number of replies on this page!

It would be nice to have an HTML file that reads like a parallel 'World History Book', so that you can revel in your old glories, or wallow in your defeats!

I like this idea more and more as I type!

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Josef Given
josefgiven@hotmail.com

quote: Originally posted by JosefGiven on 01-15-2001 07:05 PM Well, who'd have thought what ultimately is a cosmetic feature would be so popular?...Just look at the number of replies on this page!

i think it's a about time we recognize that "cosmetic" features are not useless but are instead "fun increasing" which makes them very usefull...