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- The Clash of Civilizations is
a computer strategy game we are developing that attempts to sketch out pretty much the
whole of history in game form. The player(s)
of such a game make decisions about their civilization’s economic stance
(guns vs. butter), military and diplomatic actions,
and a host of other things. Moving from antiquity into the current time,
fostering technological and social progress of the
civilization (civ) is generally a main concern of the player. Arguably, the
modern progenitor of this sort of game is "Sid
Meier’s Civilization", now about a decade old (and its sequel, imaginatively
named Civilization II or Civ II).
- I started this project because,
although fascinated with the general concept, I got disgusted with all the many games of
this
type available. I had different quarrels with
different games, but the biggest problems shared by most of these games
were fairly poor AI, huge amounts of unnecessary
busywork, and that they just didn't feel right in terms of the "history"
they produced. The Clash of Civilizations will try
to answer these defects in the others. We are now a group approaching
20 members, with similar views, working to get a
game out that fixes these defects.
- We have about 30K lines of Java code
in the current version, which I think is about 20% of the way to completion. Right
now we are working on the rules framework and the
AI. Unlike most game projects these days, we are putting the
emphasis on a workable model for the world and AI
first, and will figure out how many clock cycles we have left to
devote to graphics at the end. Our current
target is to have the rough design spec finished by the end of May. I hope we
can have a solid beta version out by the end of the
year. A screen shot of the development interface so far is shown
below. Clicking on it will get you a higher
res version with some detailed information about the interface as it currently
exists, and plans for it in the near future.
- The Clash project is still looking
for people to join. Especially needed are Java programmers with an interest in this
type of
game, since the biggest bottleneck right now is
coding. As the project gets further along we'll also need more graphics
people, and playtesters. We also need people
who can criticize all the aspects of the game, from a perspective of
economics, military history, AI, etc. The
criticism group is needed because I think getting Clash as close to reality as
possible will make it both a significantly better
game and of some educational value. If the project works out as well as I
think it will, the game will be put out as
shareware (free demo, pay for full version). Collaborators will earn returns
depending on the amount of work they've put into
the project (TBD). If you're interested in participating drop me a line.
- Mark
Everson |
