My civilization-style game, based on the Wesnoth engine

[entropomorphic]

I just thought I'd mention this here to get the ball rolling on a project I've been thinking about for a few months now. I'm about to start work on a long-term, civilization-style TBS game, based on the Wesnoth engine (and OSS of course!). The Wesnoth engine serves my needs very well; graphically it's very full-featured, and the WML scriptability is very attractive. And I suppose it might be theoretically possible to do it all in WML, but it would be a royal PITA. Besides, I really don't want to be tied down to the Wesnoth development cycle as far as adding features is concerned. I suppose I'll fork off the code at some point and merge changes in if they would be useful.

Now before you go and complain about how many half-assed Civ clones there are out there, I want to say that I have quite a few ideas that would make this a very different game.

1. Rather than have static cities placed around the map, every hex will have a certain level of development. As the game progresses, land will become more or less developed based on how you run your empire, build supporting infrastructure, etc. Cities will form around city centers you build. Things like plagues and famine could be modeled to affect geographical areas.
2. War will be made harder to wage, increasing the attractiveness of diplomacy. For example, if an army raised in a certain city is defeated, the city morale will be hurt as the news of their sons' deaths comes back.
3. I want to include a realistic technology tree based on real history, and a model for trade that includes supply and demand. For example, China could become rich by trading pottery with Europe, if Europe didn't know how to make pottery very well.
4. I want to model trade routes and supply lines that can be compromised or cut, and gradual weakening of units that are overextended or cut off from supplies
5. I'm thinking 1 turn = 1 month, so it doesn't take like 20 simulated years to move your army across the country. Lots of things would be simulated and out of the player's direct control, so it might be common to click "end turn" without actually doing anything, during peaceful times.

You get the picture. To be fair, I've hardly actually played any Civ myself, only watched friends play it. I see this as a benefit rather than a problem; I don't have any preconceived ideas about the way things have to be done.

I appreciate feedback, but bear in mind this may not be 0.0.1-able for a while. Obviously I'll post here when it is.

edit The project is tentatively named Aristea. Points if you know what that means.

[Jetrel]

I salute you - best of luck. Of course, feel free to use any of the wesnoth images - especially our wonderful terrains.

I've been hoping someone would make another open-source game off the resources we've created, and I hope things are a success.

[Sangel]

Sounds wonderful! Please post news when you get something playable up and running - apart from being fun for players to investigate, playable builds also lure development talent such as coders and artists to help in your endeavour.

I've always been a fan of the Civilization genre, though truly fantastic games are few and far between. The features you plan sound like they'll make for a very different experience.

[*]I want to include a realistic technology tree based on real history, and a model for trade that includes supply and demand. For example, China could become rich by trading pottery with Europe, if Europe didn't know how to make pottery very well.

Hmmm... have you considered having multiple levels "within" technology? For a long period of time, China exported pottery to England - not because England had no potters, but because Chinese pottery was infinitely superior to English pottery, thus the term "china" for high-quality porcelain wares. "Lay out the china, honey, the boss is coming for dinner."

[entropomorphic]

Of course, feel free to use any of the wesnoth images - especially our wonderful terrains.

Oh, I will be, at least for the early versions. I'll need a lot more art eventually though, to represent various densities of city, realistic historical units, etc.

[*]I want to include a realistic technology tree based on real history, and a model for trade that includes supply and demand. For example, China could become rich by trading pottery with Europe, if Europe didn't know how to make pottery very well.

Hmmm... have you considered having multiple levels "within" technology? For a long period of time, China exported pottery to England - not because England had no potters, but because Chinese pottery was infinitely superior to English pottery, thus the term "china" for high-quality porcelain wares. "Lay out the china, honey, the boss is coming for dinner."

That is precisely what I plan. Pottery levels 1-10 ranging from crude cups to fine china. Textiles ranging from burlap to silk. Metallurgy from raw iron to Damascus steel. It will be interesting to see how different advances affect the game balance, especially by allowing peaceful industrious nations to exist alongside warlike ones that need to trade for goods.

[Dave]

Sounds like a cool project, and I wish you well with it.

I was actually originally going to write a Civilization-like game, but decided I should start off with something simpler.......and I'm still working on the 'something simpler'

David

[Sangel]

Sounds like a cool project, and I wish you well with it.

I was actually originally going to write a Civilization-like game, but decided I should start off with something simpler.......and I'm still working on the 'something simpler'

David

Well, it is "simpler". There just turned out to be quite a lot of it...


I hope you know your C fairly well, entropomorphic (or is it C++?) - while there are many beauties to the Wesnoth engine, and a fabulous terrain base to start with, there will be huge amounts of C code needed for the city system, technology system, etc - not to mention the AI (which Dave has indicated is the most challenging part of coding). The nicely modular Wesnoth is a good base, but little more than that.

Still, taking it one step at a time should get you to a playable state, with luck, and then the fun can really begin.

[entropomorphic]

Sounds like a cool project, and I wish you well with it.

I was actually originally going to write a Civilization-like game, but decided I should start off with something simpler.......and I'm still working on the 'something simpler'
David

Yeah, thanks Dave for doing the hard part for me... Honestly I'm much more interested in doing the city/empire modeling than the graphics, which is why I'm glad to have a good graphical basis to work off of. Helps me get that inspirational first-day-feeling you talk about here. And as far as KISS goes, I'm more of the feeling that one should have a reasonable vision of the final goal (which could be complex, in my case), but start simple and be flexible on the way up. I'm going to start with a simple simulation of cities growing up around infrastructure and terrain features.

I hope you know your C fairly well, entropomorphic (or is it C++?) - while there are many beauties to the Wesnoth engine, and a fabulous terrain base to start with, there will be huge amounts of C code needed for the city system, technology system, etc - not to mention the AI (which Dave has indicated is the most challenging part of coding). The nicely modular Wesnoth is a good base, but little more than that.

As a matter of fact I'm a C/C++ developer during the day, so that won't be a problem. The challenge will be having energy after I get home from work to do personal projects. And I'll be satisfied for the early development to do without AI whatsoever. I did take a few AI courses in college, however.[/url]

[Sangel]

Excellent! You clearly have the skills and have put in the thought, which bodes well for the future of this game. Careful Dave - give this guy enough time and he might steal Wesnoth's crown as king of OSS games.

As a matter of interest, entropomorphic, what platform do you primarily develop on/for?

As Wesnoth has shown, OSS games running across multiple platforms can be highly successful. Of course, the majority of players rely on binaries crafted by platform-expert packagers, who may only flock to the banner once the game is quite advanced.

[Jetrel]

Oh yeah - feel free to kype graphics from FreeCiv.

http://www.freeciv.org/

A free software clone of Civ II that happens to have a few decent sets of city graphics.
It may help you on your way.

[quartex]

Best of luck, if you every need alpha testers you know where to come. A ton of people have plans for the next bug amazing huge game, few people actually have the programming knowledge to implement their plans. Building even a small game is a lot of work, but I think the trick is to constantly chip away at it, to never give up. As you probably know programming can be frusterating and exhausting, but at the end it's all worth it.

I think one reason why Wesnoth is so popular is that it has been ported to so many platforms. As a mac user I hope you can design your game so that it can have a similarly broad base of players.

[grand921]

i cant program sadly but i luv all of ur concepts i just wish i could help

but i would love to alpha test it




WORD OUT!

[odegard]

This sounds very interesting indeed!

Haven't found anything about the project through google though, and this thread is quite some months old. Wonder if anything happened?

I'd be interested in playtesting, and possibly making some of the art, depending on your standards

[appleide]

entropomorphic -> To be honest, I think it might be a little too complex... but if you can make it very well, then even a little too much complexity won't matter...

(I don't really like civ-like games because they usually require tons of micromanagement... just imagine owning 50 cities...)

[turin]

It seems that grand921 resurrected this thread. The idea was dead, just so everyone knows. I haven't seen entropomorphic for half a year, and I strongly doubt he is working on this.