So, dear development team, dear Mark:
You have already wrote some program code which is waiting for its release. It would be much more interesting to watch the ideas implemented and when there would be an interface and some rudimental gameplay, everybody could have better ideas (I nearly wrote "would know what he is talking about").
Sadly clash still does not work on systems without the whole development tools installed. This would be the first thing to fix and the second to release a runnable alpha demo. Before you do not do this all the discussions about interface and micromanagement must remain dry theory. Even not to talk about the higher-level thingies.

Peter

Hype? We're not clever enough to utilize hype , at least I'm not.

On the forum orgainization, this is a Working area. The current specs for the game will be posted on the new web page when it goes up. That should be in the next week or two.

The 'poll' thread "should the numbers be visible to the player" seemed to make sense to lots of people. If not, at least they were willing to provide a vote anyway! Some elections make me think such an effect is occurring.

On a release of the V0.05 code that's actually Useable (these potential customers are So picky ) F_Smith took on the job. Unfortunately, he had a surprise crash project at work, and then left for a conference. Hopefully he'll be back to work on it soon. I tried to bundle it all into a win95 exe but got numerous errors that I couldn't fathom, so I quit after an hour.

I disagree about the order of importance of things you assert. If we want to avoid doing everything three times we Must have a decent plan with some thought behind it. Our first alpha should have at least a decent sketch of Most of the game models so it can serve a purpose.

I am probably even more frustrated than you are that the 'write once, run anywhere' java with respect to V0.05 has not lived up to my expectations. We will move beyond the problems soon, but when I can't say.

Maybe some topics seem very abstract at a casual glance - I freely admit that I don't understand each and every thread if I don't follow it every day... but, then again, I think evereybody should concentrate on a few areas of interest only - no use to try to meddle in each and every aspect of the game.

Sure, we need a lot of imagination right now - so what? Every good programmer / designer needs that, otherwise he's got the wrong job

This was a suggestion from someone who is programming games since 11 years - take it or leave it, I will not bother you again until I see some program running.

Peter

what, please, do you expect?

This is a team consisting of people from all over the world, most of which have never met in person. From my point of view (and from my experience) there absolutely must be lots of talking before any serious programming is done.

One thing in your post, however, is IMHO outright wrong: There is a need to care for, as you put it, "stunning graphics" even in this early stage. Why? See, a player has exactly two things when playing a game: Graphics and sound, with the latter more being some nice add-on. Graphics is everything, in a way. Strip the graphics, and all that remains are numbers, boring numbers - this is true for each and every game, even 3D action shooters.
For each feature implemented in a game there must be a visual representation, and it must be convincing - if you have a fantastic feature, but are unable to visualize it, better drop it.
Btw.: Sometimes people tell me very nice things about the web pages I do and tell me they get the impression that everything fits together nicely - the reason is exactly that: Because I do the graphics and the coding / HTML-writing parallel, so each can depend on the other. While you are certainly right that there will be changes, many of these changes come from a constant exchange of program and graphics ideas (and problems, of course).

We try to think first and then do it. Our threads a kind of maps, so we know where we would like to go, what we would like to do. We can not guarantee to implement everything which is on the site, but we try to use the best and funiest of the idea's.

Peter

(strange for two Germans writing English here ), for one CLASH will be much more complex than WAY-X is to be, which makes more beforehand brainstorming and coordination necessary.

Two, graphics' task to visualize information is much more stressed in CLASH. CLASH will in no way try to simulate a "natural" look with real 3D etc. but will instead be played on an information screen. It is of upmost importance to know very early in the development phase what can and what can't be done graphically.

Btw. I don't see myself as an artist, but a graphics-oriented programmer. I did my share of game programming on C64 and Amiga...

Ah, since you posted the URL of your homepage, 2 short tips:

How can you say this if you even did not look? (There is no game called WAY-X...)

There are two projects:
1. 3DTT:
This is gonna be a Transport Tycoon like game in real 3D. Real 3D means it is not only a 2D tiled map that we display as 3D (like SinCity3000 was intended to be).

2. Path of Mankind:
Mark already knows it. This will be a CIV-like game. It has as much ambitions as clash for complexity, ease of use, improved AI and realism but will stay closer to CIV. So cities will still be the main basic structures on the map and there will be building construction within cities.
In the beginning we had 15 different resources and planned to have 30. Now after several test playings we reduced them to 9!
In the beginning we distributed the city's workers onto the tiles similar to CIV: one worker on a tile harvests everything the tile provides. But we had the possibility to put up to 15 workers onto one single tile. To redistribute them was hell.
Version 14 now had an interface changing in the city view introducing the scrollbars for workers. For every resource there is a scrollbar and you can set the number of workers for every resource. This solution is the finest yet to make complex decisions with very few mouse action.
At the beginning we had pure numbers only but we returned to CIV's way to display numbers by icon masses - Call To Power missed this (it has an exemplary bad interface at all!).
These are basic things that you will discover on your own during development. - But only, if you begin to have a program.
This was my first statement and this will be my last: You can't develop the things that you are discussing if you don't have a program. The question f.e. "should the numbers be visible to the player?" is wrong. You don't have "numbers" at this time, you can't discuss their visibility. And when you will have them you will have to discuss this question for every single number.
PoM's interface f.e. has too many numbers disturbing the player - but we have real problems to decide which of them to wipe out.

Peter

The Clash project is a community project and much like a bazaar-style
open source project, so I recommend you all read the paper
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar.html
The Cathedral and the Bazaar if you are not already familiar with it.

Clash is not really open source though, which puzzles me, because I think you
all would do it even if you thought you would never get a single
cent (or pfennig) for all your work. Please, please, please tell me if
I'm wrong in this. But you should read the paper in any case.
For inspiration if nothing else.

Obviously, in a community project people will work to have fun,
and everyone is doing what they like the most.
Some people, like Mark, who will obviously have to do all the stuff that is
no fun for anyone :-), do some work because they feel an obligation, though.
But it is also clear to me, that the Clash project has a lot of people that
find great fun in writing long papers
about modelling the history of mankind but fewer that wants to implement
them and get their hands dirty with code (or perhaps management is too
restrictive and crushes any attempts at prototyping before all
design specifications are ready? ).

Most of what Peter says therefore makes sense to me,
as I believe in the positive
effects of the Show me the code and Release early, release often
principles (in networked community projects, that is - I'm not so sure how
great is would be in corporate environments).

Don't get me wrong, I actually like long papers about
modelling the history of mankind, and you guys have come up with
some amazingly inspirational stuff,
so I have fun just following the project, lurking in the shadows.

BTW, I'm a bit scared by the "if you want to join the team, you must be
willing to dedicate
10 hours a week to the project" requirement that I saw somewhere
(or was it a hallucination?). What if I want to do just a little work?
Like maintain a version control system, make suggestion about the
program design or implementation (if you ever get to that point :-),
write a little code (yes, I'm a Java programmer),
fix a few bugs or problems here and there, etc.

Also, I wonder how you're going to
divide any income while not deteriorating into micromanagement or
petty bickering over who did how much work
and how important/effective each person is?

End of ramble and Good Luck!

Martin

Well, we certainly would like to have more java coders on the project. I'm pretty beat tonite so I'll only respond briefly to some of your points.

We are a community project, and anyone that's interested can join. So we pick up at least half of the 'Bazaar' flavor IMO. All of us are doing this primarily for the love of the Goal, with the possiblility that it will never earn anything. However, there are many in the group who Would like to see some monetary return if Clash is a success. Thus I refer to what we are doing as Quasi-open-source.

On writing of long papers on game mechanics:
Actually, I think None of us enjoy writing these things. I certainly dislike it. But to have something of this size move ahead in a reasonable manner Planning is Required. When I was doing Clash on my own, an approach with simultaneous interactive design and coding Was the best way, at least IMO. But with many designers and coders I believe it would be a Complete Mess to move ahead too soon. July 30th will come soon enough, and then we will be in Active coding. (Until then we are certainly trying to have the people who are solely coders doing productive things.) There are other issues involved in the process we are going with that I don't care to go into here. Check out apolyton.net/forums/Forum21/HTML/000070.html if you want to see the plan and some rationale.

On the 10 hrs/week that was in my judgement near the minimum amount someone could spend to have a reasonable role in the project. My main reason is that below a certain threshold it is IMO very difficult for someone to contribute seriously to a complex project. For someone who drifts in and out, there is a much bigger chance of misunderstandings that can make their contribution worth less, or worthless. Perhaps and average of like 5 hours might be more appropriate for high-productivity people. For one-time Clearly Defined projects within Clash we'd certainly be happy to consider exceptions.

On splitting up the rewards if we get any... IMO we need to get along further before worrying too much about it. I know this is not a legally enlightened opinion . I think most people would like to have the opportunity to get Some money than to Definitely get None.

-Mark

And I think I speak for everyone virtually present.

• I thought we were open-source? I'd be willing to mail the source to anyone that wanted to see it. Isn't that okay, Mark?
  


• As for a new working 'alpha' right away, that's just not the way it works. Sound design is the key to a quality game, I feel. The possibilities for this machine to be used as a 'game interface' are developing so fast that a hasty decision can invalidate weeks of work.
  For example, the Java2 graphics classes will pretty much change everything we do in the way of graphics, so measure twice, cut once might be the best approach. We'll get one out soon. I can fix the old code up to be cross platform by Friday, I think. Then we'll go from there.
  


• Finally, I'm working for free, on my own time as I have it. It's just a hobby to me, and only one of several such projects I dabble in.
  

We're certainly open source now. Send it to whoever wants it. However, my plan had always been to close off the openness of the source to those within the group at Some point. We still have to have a full-group discussion on that concept at some point.

I don't demand working alpha-versions here and now, as that would be impossible, and I definitely recognize the value of a good design. However, I was worried that you would by default aim for close to perfect before releasing anything to people outside the core team.

Most of my worries stem from the non-openness (as I see it) of the project, as you risk losing a lot of potentially valuable input from those people that are not going to spend 10 hrs/w on the project in order to be allowed to contribute on the same terms as the core team. Also, some of those <10hrs/w people may later turn into "serious" contributors, but may not even consider looking into the project when they see the current requirements. As for making worthless contributions, sure, it will happen, but it is the risk of the contributor.

As for not worrying too much about splitting any monetary rewards, I think that it is not only "not legally enlightened" but "quite legally naive" and I think that if anyone is going to make money from this project, it is going to be your lawyers :-)

Finally: I am suprised! Did none of you enjoy writing what you did? Really? You all hated it did you? Oh well, now at least I know why money and lawyers will have to be involved. I can just imagine the court room: "...and this report from my client's psyciatrist clearly documents the trauma brought about by his work on the authoring of the game mechanics specs. Thus, he is eligible to receive greater compensation than he was initially granted...". *sigh* It is so sad. And to think that from the look of it, I could have sworn that the authors were quite enthusiastic about it...

Martin

[This message has been edited by mca (edited June 19, 1999).]

Peter

It's much easier to get feedback for a working demo, although the downside is wasting time designing and coding the demo interface etc.

I believe that getting each individual section into some kind of 'demo-able' form would be optimal, if we had the time. Even a simple 'combat results calculator' which people (even those not connected to the project) could experiment with would be a huge help.

Re lawyers: If we're even thinking about them, then we're in this project for the wrong reasons, IMO. Leave them to chase their ambulances around and rip off vulnerable people.

Re documentation: Yeah, I hate it. My design notes tend to be rushed scribbles, illegible to anyone but myself. Javadoc helps to ease the process, however.

A lot of this stuff should really go into the process thread I referenced above. If you want to propose a new way to do things, or elaborate upon our brief process document, that's the place where your thoughts belong. Or are you just "people that find great fun in writing long papers about" the way things Should be here?

Martin:

I agree, upon further thought, that the '10-hours/week' position I outlined above is too inflexible. I thought I'd put that 'requirement' down somewhere when you mentioned it, but frankly I can't find it in my documentation. It certainly has not been followed by us in recruiting new members. 10/week should only be the average requirement for 'core' team members. I do believe in a lot of the benefits of open design and coding, and certainly want to harness much of their energy for Clash.

If you (or anyone else) would like to do something more constrained without a huge committment, just propose it, or give a list of possibles. Several people have already entered the project in just that way. You already put some suggestions up above, but I'm not sure if these were just examples or what you really would like to do if you participated. Alternatively, say what you're good at, and what level of time committment you are willing to make, and we'll find something for you if you are interested.

BTW, I said I hated "...writing of long papers on game mechanics". Anyone who is willing to provide me a secretary for this purpose would be greatly appreciated . Obviously, I, and many here, love the design effort itself. I realize you're probably not a native english speaker, but next time before launching into a paragraph of sarcastic remarks, perhaps you should take more care to parse the statement to which you are responding?

Peter:

We are just trying to find a relatively efficient balance between design thought and coding efficiency. The process we are using (thread 70 ref. above) was proposed by me about a month ago and was accepted (with some modifications) either explicitly or implicitly by the group. Should we be flexible in its implementation, of course! Could we change it completely if desired by most members? Yes. Is the process we've chosen the best way to do it? Heck if I know.

We all know that every model we are proposing has a relatively low likelihood of making it into the final game unchanged. Many of the models are very aggressive. And who knows if they will pass the 'fun test'. But we need to ensure that we don't start with models for different game elements that are clearly incompatible. Also, because of our focus on good AI, it is necessary that each model have a character that we think allows for relatively effective writing of an AI. The only way I know of to do these things with a team, is to have each model somewhat documented before serious coding begins.

When I was working alone I spent a lot of time and effort designing and coding an economic model that I now, in retrospect, think is garbage. Opening the design process to all interested parties, and discussing the models in some detail first, will hopefully seriously reduce the likelihood of further big mistakes like this. Clearly the talking can be overdone, but so can the rush to 'get something out'. Only with Both drives IMO can this project succeed.

Jim:

I agree that mini-demos are a good way to go, providing they don't add too much to the workload. Why don't you put the suggestion in the process thread and we can see at what level we can make it 'spec' for the process.

-Mark

quote:

---

I realize you're probably not a native english speaker, but next time before launching into a paragraph of sarcastic remarks, perhaps you should take more care to parse the statement to which you are responding?

---

You're right. I'm not a native speaker, and I certainly do not generally read a distinction between the physical effort and the mental effort into the word writing, and therefore I thought that you were being ironic. Had you said typing then I certainly would have understood. But the really horrendous error, I made here, is that I forgot to place a smiley after the paragraph to indicate that I was not being too serious about it. Sorry. It's there now.

Anyway, forget about the lawyers, I'm going to give you a (short) list of what I think I'm good at, but I'm not going to tell you how much time I'm going to put into the project. What I can tell you, is that I'm mostly booked until the end of July, then I have "lots of time", but things may change.

In general, count me in on the following items:
- Program design and architecture.
- General, networked, and multi-threaded programming in Java.

Martin

Oh well, I misunderstood your post too. Now I can see it... Duh. You're right the emoticon does wonders too.

Welcome to the project. If you have the time in july, please look into the architecture threads as they appear. As it gets close to your free time, and you have a better idea on your constraints, we'll try to figure out the best way to use your talents .

I found this thread very interesting and I decided to bring it to the surface, for the benefit of all, specially for us who are younger here.

Some questions for everybody to consider:

What do you say about the current progress of Clash? Is I doing as it should have?

What is your opinion about the current demo release policy? Do you feel that the Clash team should go easy on the models and start serious coding?

Do you still regard Clash as a quasi - open source project? At which point do you think it should be closed - up?

What I am hoping to do is stirr up some discussion in a time when the Clash forum page has shrunk dangerously. It seems to me that there are very few people actually posting nowdays and, ecxept for a couple of threads, the place looks abandoned. Unless everybody is busy, quietly working on the next demo (which I think is not the case), it is an alarming sign.

Some of the things in the research/tech//lore whatever u want to call it model have been pretty much nailed down, barrring any major changes. There are too many to state here, but one of the things that isn't is the exact items or whatever that will be in there, basicaally the strcuture is for the most part with just fine tuning left and maybe some additonal modifiers. (The social//cultural modifiers will have to wait till we get a new person to do that new model since manurein seems to be missing....)

current progress...

Too slow, but that's life! More on why below.

release policy... go easy on the models and start serious coding...

Your phrasing betrays a bad assumption about what is holding things up. The basic root of it is lack of programmers and programmers' time. We have by my count four basically reliable programmers. My working definition is programmers who have said they were committed and have Actually Done Something. The four are me, Darren, Garth, and Anton (rentgen). Darren and Garth are both sidelined with Real Life for perhaps a month more yet. Rentgen has just become available again, but for the moment only for 'light duty'. I have no good excuse for why I'm not coding other than that I need a break. For about half a year I was putting in about 30-40 hours a week on Clash in addition to my job. Mid-January I felt that if I kept going like that I was going to get burnt out. So I am currently goofing off and only putting in 10-20 hours a week. That leaves very little for coding. However I will rise to the challenge again when necessary. Anyway, if the coders would have been available I would have done my best to accelerate the progress on the models for demo 5, we would have cut some corners, and we would be much further along. Although possibly with missteps due to poor planning. When the coders become available again we will make hard decisions and cut the debates off on the models so we can Do Something

BTW historically I have usually thought that we had more coders than we actually did. This is because I foolishly believed it when people said they wanted to help in programming Clash, and had the requisite amount of time to commit. Most of these people just waste a lot of my time in figuring out what they could do, and getting them up to speed, and then disappear without a trace. That's why now a days I only refer to coders who appear reliable (if not always available) based on a track record. If we can get firing on 'all four cylinders' we will make rapid progress, but its not happenin' yet. Of course we could practically use 10 or more motivated programmers, but that is as yet the stuff of my dreams.

Forum contributions shrinking...
That goes in phases. I personally am less concerned about that then about getting further along the specific models targeted for demo 5: Econ, Mil, Tech, and Diplomacy.

As for the java, they say that if you know C it is very easy to switch, but all I've had in programming experience is one semester course of FORTRAN 77. If I ever learn java, I will let you know.

As for F_Smith, I tried to lure him back, but...

Computer programming is one of those things that I always wanted to learn but never had time or reason to. Currently I can only program in TI-80 series Basic. What would be the best way to go about learning the code and about how long do you think it would take? Currently about 90% of my free time, or about three hours a day, is spent keeping up with the project and working on the tech tree and algorithms for research progress (which will be posted soon, I promise). But after the model has been fixed mathematically, I might have more time.

I think that we should put a lot of thought into the models before anything gets coded. This is especially true if programmer time is scarce.

Well, you will find differing opinions on the difficulty of picking up programming. I am assuming that what programming you have done seemed relatively 'easy' to you. IMO if that is true, for java and Clash, with some help defining objects, you could quickly pick up enough to work on model 'guts'. That means just the equations and interrelation between objects in a model. Specifics for graphics and GUIs require more knowledge and experience.

Axi -- I'm sorry, but my free time is very sketchy, at best. I usually get one to two hours a day, if the wife and children don't demand that time then I can keep up with Clash. Which is barely enough time to read the posts, some days!

I am willing to help, and have done a little in the past. I'm just not the master of my own time anymore! I can not take any kind of pivotal role. I tried that once upon a time last year, and I was so unavailable that it created more havoc than help. Mark is very kind in putting up with me at all.

Anyway, if, now or in the future, you have any chores I can do, other than posting here, I'm willing to relieve you.

Idea: Hey maybe we could draft a list of things to do, for people that feel useless, like me, so that they become more useful (and more devoted). I am sure that towards the end, when the modeling will stop, there will be a whole bundle of things that a less gifted person can do for Clash.
Systematic playtesting will be one, but this is waaay ahead...

If you are scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to do, then I have a suggestion. Only a few clicks away from this post there are forums filled with player ideas and suggestions for Civ 3. This would be a gold mine of ideas, opinions, and other good input, if anyone took the time to sort through it all. I read some of this in the past, but now I simply don't have the time. You can read through all the stuff in that forum, see what people want, and see if Clash will deliver.

Closer to home, there are many old threads from the early days of Clash (like this one). You could dig through those and see if there is anything useful that might have been forgotten about.

Since then there was indeed released a demo for download. I gave it a look but was unable to reserve enough time to figure out how it worked.

A word for everybody considering to learn a programming language:
To learn any language is not difficult, especially if you know someone who can help you if you are in trouble. But it is difficult to think in algorithms and it requires years to become able to transfer a problem into math and loops.
So if somebody has to learn his first programming language he cannot serve any _current_ project in the world. Only future projects.

To Mark: I have the same problem as you: Programmers show up, I explain everything to them and then they disappear turning my invested efforts into wasted time. - Did you find a way to distinguish reliable persons from unreliables?

Well I haven't got a detailed list, but here are some things off the top of my head.
We need a full-time Diplomacy lead. With the web site Kull just doesn't have the time to do Diplomacy also.
Rodrigo is working on a revised government model, and I'm sure he would welcome your input.
TK is working on a revised and simplified social model, again I'm sure he would like someone to help out with that area.

This is not to say that your present role of roving contributor is not also valuable!
That's because many of the people doing the work on particular models consequently don't have the time to look at the whole picture. I try to, and Man does it take a huge amount of time... So having another brain around that has the time to look at the whole picture is very useful.

Peter:

I was off for 3 days, at a ski resort on Mt. Parnassos, not far from the Oracle of Delphi...
At last I learned how to ski but now my whole body is acking...
Now I find myself plunged again in the usual routine, concerning my studies, my involvement in politics and my participation in these forums. None of these is of course unpleasant for me, but I am feeling some kind of lag. I am now trying to synchronise myself with Clash too, like I did with my other activities for the rest of today.

Enough about me - to the point:

Richard Bruns: Why bother with the civ3 forums when the job is already done for us? The Apolytoner's ideas for civ3 have been compiled by Xin Yu and are available in html and also in a Word .doc format in the civ3 section. I have read almost all of it in the past, but now there must be some fresh ideas (there was a contest I think) It gives some good directives, but I believe it is heavily influenced from the standard mentality of the existing games, so it's usefulness for Clash, which strives to be innovative, is rather doubtful. Anyway, I kinda feel that it isn't right to copy these ideas. If all these people there prefer begging for a hearing from Firaxis than contributing in the Clash project, they must have a reason for it. I will not post my opinion on this, because it's unprintable...

Mark_Everson: Maybe it is worth the trouble to maintain a current list of job descriptions or things to do (other than the page in tha website) as a thread in this forum. As for me, I'll go for #2 for the time being, since Rodrigo was so kind to ask me.