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Civilization II is the best strategy and might be the best game of all time

Spectacle

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 25, 2006
Messages
8,363
Civ II was also one of the first games designed to be easily moddable, with most of the game rules and graphics stored in easily editable .txt and .gif files.

The fact that all the graphics are simple static images made it easy for people with only basic image editing skills to add new content that would fit in with the standard graphics.
 

Jeff Graw

StarChart Interactive
Developer
Joined
Nov 27, 2006
Messages
802
Location
Frigid Wasteland
This is the genius of MOO1. I don't know if there are other games that have this feature.

SoTS and (shameless plug) Dominus Galaxia. I'm sure there are others although they aren't coming to mind. I'd love to see a Civ game with a MoO 1-style tech tree.
 

Blake00

Learned
Joined
Oct 1, 2020
Messages
271
Location
Australia
Civ II was also one of the first games designed to be easily moddable, with most of the game rules and graphics stored in easily editable .txt and .gif files.

The fact that all the graphics are simple static images made it easy for people with only basic image editing skills to add new content that would fit in with the standard graphics.

Yup along with Doom Civ2 was one of the first game's I ever modded as a Kid. I recently returned to Civ2 after 20 years and have been working on a Heroes of Might & Magic mod, a Command & Conquer mod, a Red Alert 2 mod, and a Master of Magic mod.. all 20 years too late I know but damn its fun to get back into this stuff lol. Trying to mod the more modern 3D Civ games is too darn hard lol.
 

sser

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Mar 10, 2011
Messages
1,866,662
Gold Edition is quite possibly my most played game ever. I think Civ2 on its own is good, but all the scenarios really set it on high. Massive World War campaigns, alien invasions, B.C.-era dinosaur stuff. And most of them came with really kickass soundtracks. That type of scenario design seems to have completely departed the series which is a shame.
 

axx

Savant
Joined
Jan 9, 2017
Messages
804
A couple of years ago I started remaking Civ2 in C# and winforms and was quite satisfied with my progress, but had to temporarily stop due to real-life complications.
I plant to continue working on this (screenshot below).
civ2.PNG

Anyway hopefully we'll see a open source project of sorts some day. I'm really not a big fan of Freeciv.
 
Joined
May 11, 2007
Messages
1,853,653
Location
Belém do Pará, Império do Brasil
A couple of years ago I started remaking Civ2 in C# and winforms and was quite satisfied with my progress, but had to temporarily stop due to real-life complications.
I plant to continue working on this (screenshot below).
civ2.PNG

Anyway hopefully we'll see a open source project of sorts some day. I'm really not a big fan of Freeciv.

OpenCiv2 would totally rule. There is an OpenSMAC by scient as well. I wish we got an OpenCivIV.

I feel a big hunger for Civilization-style games but nothing seems to truly satisfy me anymore. Wish I could just cram the features I like in a new game.

SMAC is built on top of CivII engine, so you guys may even have some notes to exchange.
 

axx

Savant
Joined
Jan 9, 2017
Messages
804
Yeah I thought of moving this to Github but decided against it, I would have to redesign and clean up a lot of stuff before doing that as I don't want others to have to clean up my mess.
 

axx

Savant
Joined
Jan 9, 2017
Messages
804
Yeah I thought of moving this to Github but decided against it, I would have to redesign and clean up a lot of stuff before doing that as I don't want others to have to clean up my mess.

Just set it to private. Simply use it as backup.
I'm using Gitlab for that, I don't think Github enables private anymore (perhaps with paid version or sth).
 
Joined
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Messages
1,853,653
Location
Belém do Pará, Império do Brasil
Yeah I thought of moving this to Github but decided against it, I would have to redesign and clean up a lot of stuff before doing that as I don't want others to have to clean up my mess.

Just set it to private. Simply use it as backup.
I'm using Gitlab for that, I don't think Github enables private anymore (perhaps with paid version or sth).

You sure? I have a git and I remember the private function being enable-able for me.
 

Blake00

Learned
Joined
Oct 1, 2020
Messages
271
Location
Australia
A couple of years ago I started remaking Civ2 in C# and winforms and was quite satisfied with my progress, but had to temporarily stop due to real-life complications.
I plant to continue working on this (screenshot below).
civ2.PNG

Anyway hopefully we'll see a open source project of sorts some day. I'm really not a big fan of Freeciv.

Wow.. do you have any sort of thread over at CivFinatics or Apolyton talking about your work? Or has this been more of a secret project? I've seen threads there about people wishing for this very thing but no mention of your work.
 

axx

Savant
Joined
Jan 9, 2017
Messages
804
The Brazilian Slaughter You're right, it has a private function, although it appears it has some limitations.

Blake00 Just recently I saw there was a year old "let's make a Civ2 clone" topic on CF and I posted there, problem is I usually stick to Scenario league subforum. Otherwise it's been a project for me to learn c# and thus a private thing on which I stopped doing work half a year ago as I was too busy. Maybe I'll share it on Github, but I really don't like the way some things are implemented and I don't like others cleaning up my mess.
But yeah there was a Civ2 source code petition on Apolyton and CF WAY back (like 15 yrs ago) and it dragged on forever with no results. Using Winforms or Mono making this thing work really doesn't take that long of a time, I mean some of the core mechanics were posted on forums over the years and making isometric graphics is basically manipulating with Bitmaps. My point is, if during those lost source code petition years there was someone making a clone it would be done years ago already.
 

Blake00

Learned
Joined
Oct 1, 2020
Messages
271
Location
Australia
Blake00 Just recently I saw there was a year old "let's make a Civ2 clone" topic on CF and I posted there, problem is I usually stick to Scenario league subforum. Otherwise it's been a project for me to learn c# and thus a private thing on which I stopped doing work half a year ago as I was too busy. Maybe I'll share it on Github, but I really don't like the way some things are implemented and I don't like others cleaning up my mess.
But yeah there was a Civ2 source code petition on Apolyton and CF WAY back (like 15 yrs ago) and it dragged on forever with no results. Using Winforms or Mono making this thing work really doesn't take that long of a time, I mean some of the core mechanics were posted on forums over the years and making isometric graphics is basically manipulating with Bitmaps. My point is, if during those lost source code petition years there was someone making a clone it would be done years ago already.

lol I was literally just about to invite you to that thread as you may have noticed I've posted in there not so long ago lol! I was going to suggest you post about your work in there but I just got a notification to say you've already just done that haha! Shame about the CivONE project, looks like it hasn't been worked on in a while sadly.
 

axx

Savant
Joined
Jan 9, 2017
Messages
804
The guy doing CivONE (SWY) is busy with work and real life. Yeah it's a shame. The debug menu alone was brilliant. When the project started I remember testing the original for hours to learn some mechanics for him. You can't merge PRs into the master branch, so it's basically on hold till he gets back.
There's cdonge's fork, he's kinda making an effort to continue with the project.
And another guy on CF has started disassembling and posting pseudo code of game's mechanics on the forum, that would be massively helpful for CivONE.
 

scient

Augur
Joined
Oct 21, 2008
Messages
203
Civ 2 was my 1st introduction to the series then SMAC/X. :)

I think our projects are a bit different in methodology but definitely check out my OpenSMACX repo. There might be some of the utility engine code or map functions that translate between the two. I haven't decompiled a lot of the engine code but my IDA database has all the engine classes pretty much mapped out. Happy to share if you'd like a copy. Most are identified with the original function names (this took a couple years of work). Out of curiosity, I grabbed a copy of the non-wine Mac OS Civ II binary. Unfortunately, the binary isn't in MACH-O format that would include the original function names albeit in a different architecture.

I haven't used C# so not sure how well C++ code translates between the two. If you have any questions about my project or code, definitely shoot me a message.

After Microsoft acquired GitHub, they introduced some of the paid features like private repos for free. I had OpenSMACX set to private for a bit when I was first getting it set up and ready for initial release.
 

LizardWizard

Cipher
Joined
Feb 14, 2014
Messages
991
Civ 4 is clearly the best civ; there is no competition.

Vanilla Civ 4 was quite mediocre ass. It's only redeeming quality was the legendary modding community. Even then Civ 2 arguably had better mods. Heck, even took Civ 4 two expansions to implement paratroopers, which was something Civ 2 launched with.


I doubt you ever even played Alpha Centauri, which should be a prerequisite to even posting in this sub-forum
 

Blake00

Learned
Joined
Oct 1, 2020
Messages
271
Location
Australia
Civ 2 was my 1st introduction to the series then SMAC/X. :)

I think our projects are a bit different in methodology but definitely check out my OpenSMACX repo.

Wow.. I post occasionally on the Alpha Centauri 2 forum but hadn't noticed your thread there about OpenSMACX. What an awesome project! You sir are a legend! Shall follow your thread there for now on.

Vanilla Civ 4 was quite mediocre ass. It's only redeeming quality was the legendary modding community. Even then Civ 2 arguably had better mods. Heck, even took Civ 4 two expansions to implement paratroopers, which was something Civ 2 launched with.

I doubt you ever even played Alpha Centauri, which should be a prerequisite to even posting in this sub-forum

Agreed. Civ2 was pretty amazing even at launch and yeah Civ4 is a great game but it took several addons and a whole lot of amazing mods to get there. Although in some ways the same applies to Civ2 as the second addon Fantastic Worlds was really a game changer in the modding community. Plenty of cool scenarios were coming out before that but the really good stuff came after!

In fact the same can even be said for Civ3 too. Like so many I was not a fan of Civ3 at launch, god it was bad. So many Civ2 features missing and some pretty bad bugs (anyone here remember the save game corruption bug at release? urgh). Addon packs made it into a pretty decent game but still not a Civ2 or 4 beater. However in the decades since some utterly insane mods have come out for it. For vanilla players there some great terrain mods that turn the world map into a almost fertile green tropical paradise compared to the dry brown clay cr*p we originally got. While for players looking for totally new experiences then there's all sorts of amazing total conversion mods eg fantasy mods based of Master of Magic, Heroes of Might & Magic, LOTR, Warhammer etc.. scifi mods based on Star Trek, Star Wars and more that convert Civ3 into a space game like addons & modders did with Civ2 & 4... Cool Fallout and Warhammer apocalypse desert wasteland scenarios.. huge historical scenarios on Colonization and all the great conflicts and wars.. all with completely new cool looking world graphics, GUIs, custom animating units, and cool music and ambient sounds. Plus everything was too zoomed in and big back in the day but the game looks quite nice in HD and when you zoom out you can see heaps of the world.

Eg. Zoomed out vanilla with terrain mod / MoM / HoMM / Fallout / Colonization / Star Trek / Star Wars


Probably the Civ3 mod that blew me away the most was the Heroes of Might & Magic 3 mod by a fellow named Tom.. he friggin changed everything! Not just the world, units, techs and GUI, but also the city screen and the palace upgrade screens so you're actually building HoMM3 buildings in them. It's so immersive it actually feels like HoMM3 but with Civ's open sandbox experience. Something I dreamed about as a kid playing Civ and HoMM in the 90s.



Back on the main topic of Civilization 2 I was so inspired by the above Civ3 HoMM3 mod that I started thinking about how much fun it would be to create a total conversion Heroes of Might & Magic 2 mod for Civ2 and use DLL hacking and various other tricks to try and convert all parts of the game to look like HoMM2 eg not just the world, techs, buildings and units.. but also the GUI, the advisors, the throne room, the diplomacy screens, the city sky view screen, hell even the friggin wonder & dip herald videos lol! I went hunting to see if any HoMM mod existed for Civ2 and found an abandoned one (with the similar ambitions) by a German fellow named Metropolis who had similar ideas. He was still around so we teamed up and brought the project back to life! If it's of interest to anyone I've been doing Dev Diaries over on moddb...

.

HoMM2 Dev Diary 01 - Creating Cities For The Civilization 2 Heroes Of Might & Magic 2 Mod:
In the first dev diary we look at importing HoMM2 castle/city graphics into Civ2.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/civilization-2-heroes-of-might-and-magic-2-mod/news/creating-cities



.

HoMM2 Dev Diary 02 - Creating Nice Backgrounds For The Civ2 Heroes Of Might & Magic 2 Mod:
In this second dev diary we look at ‘HoMMafying’ all those Civ 2 advisor, city and event screens.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/civilization-2-heroes-of-might-and-magic-2-mod/news/creating-backgrounds



.

HoMM2 Dev Diary 03 - Creating Custom Leaders & Wonder Vids For The Civ2 Heroes Of Might & Magic 2 Mod:
In the third dev diary we look at changing Civ2’s leader portraits used for diplomacy with HoMM2 heroes and make a bold attempt at replacing Civ2’s original wonder videos.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/civilization-2-heroes-of-might-and-magic-2-mod/news/creating-leaders-wonders



.
 
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axx

Savant
Joined
Jan 9, 2017
Messages
804
Nice job replacing the screens in the dll. Just like units and tiles, they should've made those dll GIFs available for easier modding. I have yet to figure out how to import those dlls into my c# program, unmanaged vs managed resources :?
Those screenshots take me back in time when I spent countless hours playing Civ2 scenarios from Spanish Civ2 site (remember that?), Apolyton etc.
As for Civ3, plain and simple I don't like it, me and my brother bought it immediately when it came out and were instantly disappointed.
 

Blake00

Learned
Joined
Oct 1, 2020
Messages
271
Location
Australia
Eg. Zoomed out vanilla with terrain mod / MoM / HoMM / Fallout / Colonization / Star Trek / Star Wars

Any links for that Star Wars mod? Asking for uh... scientific purposes!

Can do! I've been working over the last year to collect/rescue/restore long lost scenarios for the Civ series (mostly Civ2 and Civ3) with a particular focus on franchises that I love so I've got links to 'all the things' lol. In fact I'll probably post a thread here soon about my scenario hunting as I'm noticing there's quite a few Civ fans lurking around this place who either A - may be able to help me find something cool, and B - might find something awesome in my lists they didn't know about.

Anyway that pic above was from Civ3 Star Wars The Mod Awakens. Super impressive! Only 2 years old too! There's a number of other cool SW Civ3 scenarios out there I can link you too however they are much older and 'planet based' instead of space based.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/star-wars-the-mod-awakens.631116/

Nice job replacing the screens in the dll. Just like units and tiles, they should've made those dll GIFs available for easier modding. I have yet to figure out how to import those dlls into my c# program, unmanaged vs managed resources :?
Those screenshots take me back in time when I spent countless hours playing Civ2 scenarios from Spanish Civ2 site (remember that?), Apolyton etc.
As for Civ3, plain and simple I don't like it, me and my brother bought it immediately when it came out and were instantly disappointed.

Well I guess you could use one of the popular dll editors/extractors in the civ2 community to get all the images out and stick them in a zip or something for your game. I can link you to the ones I used if you want.

Yeah I found a backup of that spanish civ2 sites repository in a archive.org backup of apolyton lol. So while it's long gone I think all of its scenarios are preserved which I can probably go dig up a link to.

lol yeah that's how I felt about Civ3, I hated it at launch, but like I said above fan mods have really turned me around on it recently though.
 
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