How much would it cost?

SITS · March 30, 2002, 02:28

I was thinking after reading about the Free SMAC project about the cost to Firaxis doing another patch? I realise it wouldn't be economically feasible at all for them devote the time to do one but if the fan community can devote time to create a new game then maybe instead they could denote money to pay a couple of Firaxisian programmers do to a patch?

Pulling a figure out of my ass (ouch!)

lets say $10000. If we could get a firm commitment from Firaxis after we had supplied a list of things to include in a patch then we would know how much we had to raise.

It might be more attainable than writing a completely new game...

NorthSwordsman · March 30, 2002, 23:48

SITS, why pay FurX for something they should have done in the first place? Wasn't paying for the game enough? If a game company is going to make a game, they should have the ethics, not to mention the guts to support their product. Because they do not, shows what kind of men (and I use the term rather loosely here) they are.

SITS · March 31, 2002, 01:49

Quote:

Originally posted by NorthSwordsman
SITS, why pay FurX for something they should have done in the first place? Wasn't paying for the game enough? If a game company is going to make a game, they should have the ethics, not to mention the guts to support their product. Because they do not, shows what kind of men (and I use the term rather loosely here) they are.

I wholeheartedly agree with you. But I find it hard to square that with my desire to have SMAC fully patched up that would make a great game perfect. A new patch isn't going to happen. The best we can hope for is SMAC2 (which I think is unlikely.) Firaxis is a commercial company and the best way to get a 'capitalist pig' to do what you want them to do is pay them.

RedFred · March 31, 2002, 02:35

SMAC is the best game out there, certainly the best Civ game, on the market today. The crippling bugs are all the more noticeable because of it.

The economics may be against even a paid patch though. There are in my estimation thousands still playing but only hundreds are serious hard core players. And it is my belief that you could only get a small percentage of them to shell out more money for a patch.

It is also my guess that ten grand is chump change for a company like Firaxis. But I could be wrong and I shouldn't throw cold water on any initiative to improve the game. I know I'd shell out $50.00 more just to get three things fixed: interceptor and top of the world crashes and the stockpile energy bug.

I wish I had more feedback on Linux SMAC. Apparently Loki squashed hundreds of bugs before they went out of business. But they did get their version to market. I would be willing to ditch Windows if both Linux SMAC and SMACX were available and ran cleanly.

Sikander · March 31, 2002, 03:22

Hey Red Fred,

Do you have any idea what might cause the top of the world crash? All I know is that I never get it. The same is true of the interceptor bug also. Is this just a factor of my play style, or is it due to my hardware, OS, gamesettings? Perhaps some of these bugs can be avoided.

NorthSwordsman · March 31, 2002, 05:04

Too bad Firaxis/EA still own the copyright, else someone who is a skilled programmer could rip the game apart and fix the bugs.

The FreeAC project sounds promising; but it remains to be seen if enough people will volunteer ideas, time and effort into it. I would, if I knew the programming languages necessary, or had the graphic skills for the project.

Perhaps we should just see the bugs as game features and use them, except for a few that are especially overpowering.

MariOne · March 31, 2002, 05:21

"Top of the World" Chrash? LOL, I must have missed this one.
For me the most annoying bug, is that in a pbem the game ends everytima you eradicate a human faction, regardless of the victory conditions met, and you have to apply an unsatisfactory workaround to let a game go one. It happened to me *always*, in *several* pbem, with games set up/started by diifferent people around the wolrd.
Despite asked, no one was ever able/bothered to produce me a save where this doesn't happen.
Is this the same bug we're referring to, "top of the world crash"?

Let's say I'd even rather pay 200$ to see this and the above mentioned bugs fixed in SMAC rather than pay $50 for another game.
How many else would do it like me?
A programmer or two alone, can't usually support such effort.
A big program should be "usually", *IF correctly engineered* a team work, modular and the like.
Hiring one of two programmers could not be the solution.
The main pro should be that they know already where they should put their hands. So, you should pick the good ones. And above all, you should do it with the imprimatur of the company, because they should let them get the whole picture of the *source code*. And the company would want to get its $lice, on top of the money a worker/programmer need for his daily work.
Besides, seeing how most of the bugs look like due to SIMPLE BASIC LOW LEVEL PROGRAMMING SKILLS BLUNDERS, DISATTENTION, FORGETFULNESS, I frankly would not rate FurXs© *programmers* the best on the market.

To get SMAC fixed, the best would be to have the company RELEASE the source code, and hire a small team of GOOD programmers to study it and fix it.
Even if I'd win $1'000'000 at the Lottery, if think they'd never agree, out of stupid "professional pride".
And anyway, it's a pure daydream, like winning a lottery....

NorthSwordsman · March 31, 2002, 05:33

Instead of paying money, why not help out with FreeAC? I think the url is: http://www.blind-mind.com/freeac/yabb/YaBB.cgi

Find ways to help. FurXs won't do it, we might as well.

Blake · March 31, 2002, 06:54

www.freeac.org, now.

I certaintely wouldn't shell out any money for a bugfix for SMAC, quite frankly I don't think the bugs harm the game enough.

I derive much greater disatisfaction from the dubious and poorly balanced features, like Crawlers and some key AI defecincies (things like not planting enough forest). These aren't bugs, so wouldn't be 'fixed' in a bugfix patch.

And to 'fix' something like the AI (or even just the former automation code to 'only plant forests') would require a lot of programming time.

As I understand it the SMAC code is rather a mess (I recall a reference to "spagetti code" in an interview with the Firaxis w/ regards to SMAX, and the AI). For a programmer to debug it so long after it was written would be a nightmarish task. And then you get problems like new bugs being introduced.

As the big cheese of the FreeAC project I intend to have FreeAC done right, that means the code and design will be modular. One somewhat big design aim of mine is to have a fully moddable engine - it should be equally possible to turn FreeAC into a swords & archers type game - and with a vast majority of editing done through the text files. By minimising the amount of the game which is actually hard coded it ought to be possible to keep the project managable, and make for easy modification by non-coders. The engine will be a small, clean, core. Being small and relatively simple the chances of bugs will be minimised. Additionally the OO structure will make adding new coded functionality relatively easy and painless.
Everything else will be defined in a vast number of text files, if it can possibly be defined in a text file, it will be. Not everything can be defined within a text file, for things which cant (for example, weapon type = res) it will be assigned by giving the weapon a TYPE or property, rather than some daft Furoxis method like making it depend on the weapon slot number.

About the only problem will be the large quantity of data in the text files, this will mean people who want to manipulate text files will have more power, and more debugging to do. This is still a much prefferable solution to large quantities of hard coded rules, because it allows users to quickly fix bugs and try things out.

If your interested as to why a commercial company, like Firaxis, wouldn't use a method like this, there are a number of reasons. Firstly, it takes a bit longer, and a bit more designing. If your goal is to get a product out of the door quickly it adds a lot of unessecary baggage.
More sinisterly it gives the community much more power over the engine, allowing the creation of new games, and potentially reducing demand for future games by the company. This is good anti-incentive for the game company.

PS. Sorry about the thread jacking.

Ogie Oglethorpe · March 31, 2002, 08:57

Quote:

Originally posted by NorthSwordsman
Too bad Firaxis/EA still own the copyright, else someone who is a skilled programmer could rip the game apart and fix the bugs.

Yeah I think I heard there is this really talented guy at Big Huge Games. Seems he has some really innovative means to revitalize the whole TBS Civ-style games. He came up with CIV2 and SMAC if IIRC. Baaah FurX, Baaah Sid. Brian is the one we should be pinning our hopes on.

Too Bad BHG doesn't own the rights and is going RTS and that Brian left in the first place (Makes you wonder why tho'. Creative differences perhaps as he saw the direction CIV3 was going? But perhaps I presume too much)

Seriously though, why do we as gamers look to FurX to be the salvation for SMAC or make SMAC2. Even if they did commit to a SMAC2, SMAC was most definitely a Brian Reynolds game and without his creativity, vision and leadership FurX would have about as much chance of making a good SMAC2 as they would of making a modern enhanced CIV style game.

So, Please Please Please Please. You guys at BHG please make a Brian Reynold Alpha Centauri ASAP!!!!! I'll pre-register for BRAC if thats what it takes.

Og

NorthSwordsman · March 31, 2002, 16:32

Well said, Ogie! I'd do the same. Anyone have the email addy for Reynolds at BHG? Let's fill his box with pleas!

RedFred · March 31, 2002, 18:32

I'd preregister for BRAC just because I like the acronym.

But iirc, part of the 'separation agreement' included a proviso forbidding BHG from TBS games in general, let alone SMAC.

As far as the whole FreeSMAC idea, again I don't want to throw cold water on the idea. But I sure hope that you have Firaxis's blessing. There would seem to be legal issues if you got it off the ground.

Another option, open code, also seems unlikely. I suspect that Firaxis would not be willing to share it with the SMAC community. Partly because their programming techniques might cause them embarrassment and partly because they will likely resurrect the same old engine for 'new' games as long the public keeps buying them.

Volumes have already been written about the two most common crashes, so if you only have vanilla SMAC read no further.

The SMACX 'edge of the world' crash plagues many PCs. What happens in the most benign case is that moving a unit away from position (0,0) causes the game to crash. You can often work around it by putting the unit on 'go to base' or 'explore automatically' if you have a .sav from just prior to the crash. In its most malignant form, any unit, human or AI, in the top or bottom two tiles of the map all the way across can trigger the crash. And the 'automatic override' may not help.

I notice that the small 'replay' map that runs at the end of a game is messed up as well. I am not sure if these two bugs are related.

Interceptor scramble crashes also typically plague SMACX players only. But I know of at least one player, Misotu?, that was the opposite: SMACX ran cleanly and vanilla SMAC had interceptor crashes. There are about five 'fixes' I have tried, all to no avail. This crash may be dependant on your rig or configuration, or version of windows, or maybe your astrological sign. All I know is that at least some of the P3 Win 2000 people are not troubled by it and some other people with P2 Win98 like me were able to fix the bug using methods that were unsuccessful on my rig.

Shai-Hulud · April 1, 2002, 06:49

Firaxis is a commercial company and it has a responsibility towards its shareholders: they HAVE to make profit. Otherwise no one would have invested their capital to make SMAC/X possible. It takes money to make great games and it's a bad deal if both sides don't profit. Firaxis has supported SMAC with five patches and they have made the difference - it's not that bad. Quite simply it doesn't make sense to release more patches. There are only few of us left. Not enough consumers. I'm really fascinated to see what will happen to FreeAC. I know a lot of creative people are working on it. But I'm also sceptical about it. They don't lack will power or skill, but they lack resources and it makes all the difference. If non-commercial products would succeed there would be no need for commercial products...but, we all know how it works.

note: people often consider me as a cynic

Jac de Molay · April 1, 2002, 20:59

Quote:

note: people often consider me as a cynic

Judging by that sig, I'm not surprised.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I ...have to go...return....some....videotapes.

Dave

gwillybj · April 21, 2002, 16:36

In my experience, "The Top of the World Crash" does not happen if none of the spaces in the top row are higher than Level 1 (0-1000m). They can be sea of any depth.
This applies only to Row 0. Row 1 does not have to be Level 1 or lower (but, obviously, if Row 0 is never higher than Level 1, Row 1 will never be higher than Level 2).
IIRC, the same applies to the very bottom row.