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Some Random inside GalCiv III talk

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Some Random inside GalCiv III talk

from GalCiv3 Forums

Just want to give you guys some news that isn't really that spoilery and is way way too technical for the marketing team to care about.

AI

Technically speaking, FE: LH is probably the first multi-core AI.  But the GalCiv III AI is likely to be the first AI designed from scratch for multicore.  

What that means to you: I can run background simulations that last multiple turns.  I did this some in GalCiv II but late game, I had to disable them (I put in a setting in Twilight to allow people to set how much CPU to use for the AI which affected this).

Also, some AI calculations are going to be off-loaded onto your video card (just the hard number crunching stuff).

The reason for that is that unlike GalCiv II where the main evaluations only involved weapon types, GalCiv III has sublight speed, mass, rate of fire, weapons range, accuracy and evasion to deal with along with the roles of ships in a fleet.  So lots more number crunching than before but with DirectX 10/11 I can toss that onto the video card to deal with.

Steamworks

I don't plan to have the AI design ships in GalCiv III in the sense it did in GalCiv II.  I will give it a bit of a try but the ships have a lot more sophistication to them this time (very easy for a human but much harder for a computer, traveling salesmen problem here).  Instead, I am planning to have the AI look at every ship design any player has ever designed and do evaluation on that and pick from that.  So the better players get at designing ships, the better the AI will get.  While this might seem like "a lot" of ships, let's assume there are 15 million ship designs in the database.  I can narrow that down to a few hundred thousands for my purposes. That might seem like a lot but it is a lot fewer than the AI doing tons of permutations on the fly.

Right now, the above is theory as I haven't done this yet.  But in GalCiv II, I really only had to worry about weapons and defenses.  GalCiv III has more goodies you can put on a ship.

Multiplayer

We are not making any promises for MP to be "fun".  I am skeptical on whether 4X MP can be fun outside of very small galaxies. But the alpha will have multiplayer in it (it's not going to be a feature that comes late, it's already in now in our builds).   I do think that 2 vs. AI might be fun. It'll be interesting to see how this works out.

 

8,980 views 41 replies
Reply #26 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Surge72, reply 11

4X can absolutely be fun multiplayer.
End of Surge72's quote

 

Yeah! Civilization series has proven it years ago. 4X FFA games in MP are as fun and exciting as it gets, and the bigger scale the better. Bring it on. Coop vs AI... nah, that's rather dull. FFA with all human, or some humans, and rest AI: Thumbs up!

 

When it comes to the information about GalCiv3 weaponry system; my God this sounds just great! :)

Reply #27 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting NorsemanViking, reply 26


Yeah! Civilization series has proven it years ago. 4X FFA games in MP are as fun and exciting as it gets, and the bigger scale the better. Bring it on. Coop vs AI... nah, that's rather dull. FFA with all human, or some humans, and rest AI: Thumbs up!
End of NorsemanViking's quote

To each their own, but there isn't enough of us that want MP around here to start a coop vs FFA argument. ;)

Siege of Centauri
Reply #28 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

MP will open up a wider market for Stardock. Mark my words. :) Provided that it works well, and that you can play the SP game as it is in MP with all setup options etc.

 

They won't "dumb the game down" to fit fast paced MP, and I couldn't be happier about that. I like epic, large scale, strategical MP experiences. The grand SP game, but with some or all the opponents being serious NO QUITTER human players.

Reply #29 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I did pre order elemental one year before it was released, and one of the reasons I did that, was because it was supposed to have Multiplayer. It never happened, and game was mediocre at best on release. It is much better now, but still no MP.

Only thing I really want is working MP. I do not need any special features. I want it to be exactly as SP, but with my friends. I hope it will be working fine, and hope there will be option to play simultaneously. Mod support in MP would be sweet :-) as people would make balance mods just for MP. And stardock can create best SP :-)

I hope you will get it right this time stardock, I trust you and you got my money again :-P

Reply #30 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting NorsemanViking, reply 28

MP will open up a wider market for Stardock. Mark my words. Provided that it works well, and that you can play the SP game as it is in MP with all setup options etc.

 

They won't "dumb the game down" to fit fast paced MP, and I couldn't be happier about that. I like epic, large scale, strategical MP experiences. The grand SP game, but with some or all the opponents being serious NO QUITTER human players.
End of NorsemanViking's quote

 

How can you play a large scale, epic game with MP...?  You'd have to be able to save the game and go back to it day after day, but still find the same people to play with?  It doesn't sound easily feasible.

Reply #31 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting charon2112, reply 30

Quoting NorsemanViking, reply 28
MP will open up a wider market for Stardock. Mark my words. Provided that it works well, and that you can play the SP game as it is in MP with all setup options etc.

 

They won't "dumb the game down" to fit fast paced MP, and I couldn't be happier about that. I like epic, large scale, strategical MP experiences. The grand SP game, but with some or all the opponents being serious NO QUITTER human players.

 

How can you play a large scale, epic game with MP...?  You'd have to be able to save the game and go back to it day after day, but still find the same people to play with?  It doesn't sound easily feasible.
End of charon2112's quote

 

I play 100 hour games of Europa Universalis IV MP for instance. Take a look at their forums. They have an own multiplayer page. People organize games playing one particular day each week, 3-7 hours at the time. After 10 sessions you have played 30-70 hours. No problem finding games going the days and times suitable for you. Very popular.

On the other hand, quick speed, small/tiny map games should be possible to play in a one day sitting I guess. Playing with mates in the weekends are also fun, a 20 hour gaming sitting is no problem in one go, then do the same NeXT weekend and you have 40-50 hours. Should help getting a far way in an epic game. :)

Reply #32 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting charon2112, reply 30
How can you play a large scale, epic game with MP...?  You'd have to be able to save the game and go back to it day after day, but still find the same people to play with?  It doesn't sound easily feasible.
End of charon2112's quote

I don't know why it doesn't sound feasible, people have been doing it every day in other games for years. I've played Civ IV that way, Civ V, AoW:SM, AI War (realtime, but very lengthy games), Shogun 2, etc, etc. Tons of people do this.

It works. It's time to put to bed this notion that MP TBS doesn't work.

Reply #33 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

My only concern with having to talk to the "cloud" to get ship designs for the AI is to make sure that it is tolerant of faults in the network stack, such as still letting you play even if the network is dropping 30-40% packets.  A lot of consumer networks are notorious for failing partially rather then completely where you will have sustained periods of 5-30% packet loss for a few hours / days until someone figures out what connection to wiggle.

 

Reply #34 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting wuphonsreach, reply 33
My only concern with having to talk to the "cloud" to get ship designs for the AI is to make sure that it is tolerant of faults in the network stack, such as still letting you play even if the network is dropping 30-40% packets.  A lot of consumer networks are notorious for failing partially rather then completely where you will have sustained periods of 5-30% packet loss for a few hours / days until someone figures out what connection to wiggle.
End of wuphonsreach's quote


You do not need to have internet connection to play the game. Game will be able to update ship database, if you will want to. And it will simply download most current database, when you have internet access and want it to. It will not be connecting to the internet for newest designs during your game. They have already said, that you will be able to play offline just fine.

Reply #35 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Achronous, reply 25

I was going to mention Spore, but it doesn't deserve to be mentioned here or compared to GalCiv 
End of Achronous's quote

The creature creation and sharing sure does!  That aspect of Spore was very well done.  I hope we see more stuff like that in games to come, too.

What could be trouble are the shapes these ships will come in.  That should probably be altered so you don't have to worry about rude/lewd ships being built by the AI.

Reply #36 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I think the Ai should also involve tech research and how it builds planetary improvements. I think that this should still allow for the game to function without the internet. Only downloading a new Ai when you want to. The game should be able to download a new Ai from the internet upon request.I would like the ability to download this into my computer for single player and hotseat games. I would like to see only the best not just all the posted designs on the game. Since these ships will actually do things where spore didn't actually do much with their ships.

I would like to see Multiplayer allowing mods. I think that the computer on multi player should take over for the players after a reasonable amount of time. This way the game wouldn't stop because a player decided to leave, and maybe the player could come back to his player later. I think the game should allow for players to join the game later by taking over an Ai opponent.

 I would say the the customization of spore were nulled for several reasons that after the creature stage the customized stuff didn't effectively do much, unlike Galactic civilizations where when you customize it affects how it affects your ship and what you research. In a type of settung like a civilization stage there are a lot of tech steps instead of one vehicle, airplane, or boat. That one step process was just silly and empty. In the space stage a small stradegy game turned into a roleplaying game. Both stages were empty. For a computer game they took several steps backward and couldn't decide what kind of game it was. I would like to see the kind of customization like in the creature and cell stages, but the rest of the customization was the worst I've seen.

Reply #37 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I love 4x Multplayer. Check out a game called Starbase Orion on IOS. It's a MOO/GalCiv clone through and through and they've done a fantastic job implementing multiplayer through IOS GameCenter.

My concern is having to buy two copies of GalCiv because of Steam DRM so that I can play it with my 9 year old son. (Not that it wouldn't necessarily be worth buying two licenses.)  

Reply #38 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I agree MP is key to any game.  Me personally I would love GC3 to allow me to play with 3 friends on one game as we do in Civ V.  Sure the turn times can sometimes be quite long but that's our choice and we love it so please don't take that choice away from us.

 

If you want MP x2 x3 x4 x 5 ect go for it.  Turn times we chat discuss the game and generally have fun.  We don't play together to rush through to the end at all we like games to last days or weeks

Reply #39 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I thought the cell stage and creature creator in spore to be nice, but there were some improvements that could've been made. Then I thought the tribal stage was mediocre. Only for the civilization stage to be the worst stradegy lineup I've ever seen. Then to turn around and try to be the worst role playing game I've seen. The clothing was mediocre at best, and because of the space stage was inadiquate. As far as the rest of the customization I thought they were fune looking stuf that didn't do anything. Which really turned it into useless customization with no applicable game mechanic.

  As far as the sim games I've played the only one that seems to be good is simcity. As far as some of the sim games I haven't played some of them look interesting. Simcity was a good move, but spore was not. I think the spore concept could be rethought as a stradegy game, and could be redesigned to work.

I'm not saying that we should not have games that last days or seeks, but the reason I didn't play the multiverse is that I didn't care to request time off work to play the game. I would still want an option to play a game that people want to randomly play. I'm sure there are enough players across the planet who would do the same thing. I want a multiplayer game that I can play without scheduling people to play with. Both ways sound good.

Lets not forget the social communication that comes along with modern multiplayer games I wouldn't mind a coversation between turns anyways.

Oh yeah if you look at Galactic civilizations up to this point they have proven that single player works. I agree with their philosophy that their main concern should be single player at least until theu know for sure that their will be more multiplayers than single players.

Reply #40 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

since spore has been brought up

i thought the game had a ton of potential but failed miserably i have it installed on my comp and occasionally  load it up to play the cell stage which was by far the best part of the game the creature stage was playable but a lot of it didn't make sense and after that it just went downhill

i wouldn't mind buying a new spore game if they fixed the 95% of the game that was just horrible but id have to see it first

Reply #41 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I very much rally in the idea of having a nice big fun multiplayer game in GalCivIII, but I agree that this doesn't sound like something that would translate well into a versus combat, no matter the scale or scope. A single game would simply be too long for that - and if most people are anything like me; they hate losing to a vastly superior player. Co-op multiplayer however sounds amazingly fun, and I would very much enjoy it being one of the core aims for the game. There's simply nothing as much fun as having a buddy join in a game aiming to conquer the galaxy.