"How many pixels is a unit?"-I actually don't understand the question.- If you mean how many pixels a unit occupies: We can't say. They'd probably redo even the whole units and moving system if using a pixel-based map.

If you ask me: "Pixeled" maps are good for the eye and good for RTS but not for game-based games. Maybe graphically pixels should be used for the map, while game-technically the tile continues to be the reference frame.

Instead of being set on Earth, or even an Earth-like planet, CivIII can be a game about different civilizations fighting for survival and control of something like Larry Niven's Ringworld!!! This is a huge cylindrical world that orbits it's star all the way around!! Making this map will be EASY!!!

quote: Originally posted by Sir Hawkeye on 10-04-2000 07:11 PM I have a few questions.

>How big is a pixel?
There will be 1024x768 on your screen.

>How many pixels on an average world?
Still 1024x768. Pixels exist only for that part of the world which is presently on your screen.

>How many citizens to harvest a pixel?
I hope none, or there will be nothing left of your vision

>How many pixels is a unit?
A unit will have co-ordinates to indicate its absolute position, and will occupy a tile if it is on screen.

I hope this clarifies things a bit. A pixel is not a small tile!

Well, resource distributions will span many pixels.. For example, you could have 20 hectares (there would be an inbuilt pixel to hectare convertor) of plains next to your city. Its productivity will depend on the number of people you set to work it. Say 6 heads or so... Perhaps 1 head per hectare would yield the maximum...

Every city has available every resources in a controlled area (the area grow when the population of city is greater). The number of citizen + slaves (not specialist) is the workforce that use the area resources producing trade, food, mineral.

You can still tune the production converting common worker in specialist, to enhance food (farmer), research (scientist), or money (taxmen) against the other production (the baseground of common worker become reduced).
So you don't have to care to assign "head to pixel" still you keep the control of cities. You can have a hidden grid to define resources available per area, without the need of visible tiles at all.

Movement can be taken care of with the "assigned waypoint" method already mentioned with RTS.

"Step by step" tactic movement will go out of the window, but we can replace them (for fine tuning) with point & click general order (scout, charge, transfer, etc.) that troops will obey when needed during turn change.

Though I feel a Railroad Tycoon 2 or Shogun style map is what we want...

Anyway, another idea :-

Missiles shouldn't be moved around like units. They should be given a target and launched, and then they should attempt to hit it on their own... Accuracy would depend on guidance systems tech, distance etc.

It seems to me that the only units that should be going over the poles are subs and planes and other flying objects. Even in the early part of this century (yes, this century will end Dec. 31, 2000) people had troubles or died getting over the poles. It should not be easy to cross them and realistically, very few units would be able to survive the temperatures.
As far as using pixels, I like the idea, I'm just unsure how city borders will work. Pretty graphics are nice and all, but gameplay is more important.

What's the point to enhance the world reproduction from "buggy" to "patch 5.0 full tested"?

In the past the know shape of the world has been debated and changed until the (more or less spherical) globe was empirically then scientifically demonstrated.

Still I would go crazy if Firaxis will change the map midgame: don't try to pre-sale bugs for hidden feature

Basically a bump post, I wanna get to 100 replies...

quote: Originally posted by airdrik on 11-09-2000 09:54 PM I hate it when I post a new related idea on a post, and no one replies to it. It makes my feel like no one likes my ideas, so to get them out of the way they just don't reply to them. I would like it if, before not replying to such a post you come on and say 'your idea is stupid.' Then I'll just agree with you and go on thinking of new stupid ideas.

Airdrik, give it time! Sometimes even an entire thread gets plowed under, and then somebody will pick it up again and lots of people will reread the ideas and respond.

Sums up the entire thread.

Or better still, is anyone out there from Firaxis. I don't like 100-post topics just disappearing like this, u know ..

And another thing. How about incorporating city view onto the map itself. It would be really cool to be able to see city improvements, roads, cars, smokestacks and smoke etc. on the map. Not too big, just big enough to make out. For example, if you build a nuclear plant, you should be able to see its characteristic smokestack.

And, if tiles are done away with and the pixel/co-ordinate idea is used instead, it would make for good city expansion. The only problem I foresee is, at which point on the maps would cities be attacked. Three solutions - Any movement onto a city-containing region; The 'city centre' only; or, you could garrison forces all over the city and each would have to be picked off one by one... Which would make for partially captured cities and urban warfare and stuff.. Not Civ-ish, but cool anyway...

I wish I could make a screenshot to illustrate my point. RT2 screenshots could give a rough idea.

And another thing. Unit sprites should be easily editable. Also, the thing I don't like about the sprites in CTP2 is that they stop on each square. In civ3 they should move continuously and at uniform speed to their destination or till they run out of movement points. Not in a series of one-square movements.

Just imagine - A lush, detailed landscape, large smoothly moving phalanxes and panzers and riflemen moving between proportionately large, bustling, distinct cities. It makes me feel warm all over...

8 maps some with eastern hemisphere some with western
like so: e=eastern hemi. , w=west hemi. +linked -not linked

w+e+w

+ + +

e+w+e
n
w+w
s

a west can link to any other place another west links to ditto with east

if the link goes s from w then both south lines are touching and if it goes north from w then both north tips are touching(ignore directions from e)

eg central w is connected upwards to higher e therfore
north tip of w is linked with north tip of e where as in civ2 there was just
e+w+e i.e. a tube world.

e+w+e is the same as in civ2 when in globe formula.

uh woh talk about a brainwave.

And Ferdi, this vectorized map sounds interesting. Exactly what I had in mind...

If the map is expanded as has been proposed in this thread, then it will be possible to disallow two units to occupy exactly the same spot on the map. This could simplify stacking, and could in some way involve an expansion of the battle map concept.

I haven't given it any thought yet... Maybe someone could develop on this?

The main window would look much like it does now, the world window would show a globe with a rectangle outlining the view of the main window.

Units would have movement points. When you clicked on a unit, its possible move area would darken (imagine a blob around your unit - circular if you're on a plain, long fingers heading down roads, shortened when it gets up against mountains, stopping at impassable terrain.)

The POV or "camera" would be fixed in the main window at roughly the same height and angle it is for CivII. You could side scroll on the main window and it wouldn't act much different than it does now. Only watching the world window would demonstrate how the globe was actually rotating under your main window's rectangle. The main window of course would contain a slightly distorted view of the section of the world you were looking at (it would be stretched the further you got from the centre of the screen). But balancing terrain design and the actual size of the territory displayed should be able to keep us from getting too queasy - remember, with a dynamically generated mercator projection, the centre of the screen you're looking at is always on the "equator". Look at a classic mercator map of equatorial Africa, there is very little distortion needed.

Unrealistic movement (like the CivII pole problem) would be eliminated. The calculation of each units "movement blob" would be based upon a spherical world, and just displayed with the same distortion as is inherent in the main window. That way there is no unrealistic movement possible.

This method gets you the feel of the classic side scrolling map, without the unrealistic movement near the poles. Dispensing with a grid (be it hex or square) also helps, because vector movement gives more realistic movement and doesn't result in a picture with a bunch of weirdly distorted squares or hexes on it.

Whadda ya think?

I'm not sure how can be implemented and I suppose map design it's already a taken decision (you don't draw final units, with animation and all, as showed ud on the Firaxis site, if you haven't already defined how the map appears and works, otherwise map and units will graphically "clash".

Some details will be tweakable, but I suppose the main design is done.

As for how the mercator projection would work, think of it like this: the actual map is a sphere and the computer does all of its movement and range computations based upon units moving on the surface of a sphere. The main movement map however, contains a mercator projection of the portion of the sphere you're looking at. Essentially, you would spin the little globe in the corner of the screen (or hold your pointer near the edge of the screen) until the rectangle projected on the centre of the globe screen surrounded the area of the globe you wanted to look at. The computer would then "cut" that area out of the sphere and compute a mercator projection (one way to do it that is is easy to visualise is to cut the sphere section into a bunch of horizontal strips. The centre strip in the section would be longest and the strips above and below it would get progressively shorter. The computer would then stretch each strip so they were all the same length as the centre strip, and then stitch them all back together and display them as a map. Voila, a mercator projection).

As for vector movement, yeah it could lead to overlap problems, but one solution would be to just have a footprint around the base of a unit that constituted a "no stop" area for other units. In other words, units could pass through each other, but only if they had enough movement points to get all the way through.

or ...

Echinda, great idea about the blob thing. And regarding stacking, you could group units which are close to each other and then move them preserving their grouping and relative positions... eg. Phalanx on the outside, catapults on the inside, knights on the flanks...