Ask Sid Meier

Sid Meier is a household name in gaming. Titles he's designed, such as Railroad Tycoon, Pirates!, and Civilization, are pillars in the history of PC gaming. This year the fourth chapter in the Civilization series of games is being released, and we have a great opportunity. Today we're asking for questions about design and philosophy to pass on to Mr. Meier. On Wednesday, we'll be asking for questions to give to the Civilization IV development team. That day you'll have the chance to ask technical questions about the moddability and design concepts that went into the game. For today, here's your opportunity to put questions to one of the most respected game designers in the industry. Keep them topical, and one question per post please. We'll pass on the ten best questions, his responses will go up as soon as we get them back.

Re:other uses

[Xarius]

I think you may have confused Sid Meier with Will Wright.

Meier is responsible for the amazing Civilisation series and Alpha Centauri, which are more games than attempts at simulation, whereas Wright is the creator of the brilliant Sim City games and its friends.

Re:Question on governement types

[Orne]

If you check the Civ4 sites, apparently this is how Civ4 is treating governments, basically you check-box the qualities out of 5 separate lists on how much or how little of certain civic freedoms you wish to endure.

Re:Originality

[TheRealMindChild]

Doom 3 is actually different in the whole scheme of things, in regard to "Sequels for money and profit". From what I recall, there was a big "gathering" at iD where the staff said "We make Doom 3 or else!!!". So the staff actually WANTED to do this addition to the Doom series.

Here is a quote from a non-difinitive source (found via some googlin'): http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/d/do /doom_3.htm [absoluteastronomy.com]

"Kevin Cloud and (Click link for more info and facts about Adrian Carmack) Adrian Carmack, two of the id Software owners, were always strongly opposed to remaking Doom. This is after many old fans complained that id was going back to the same well too often. However, after the warm reception of (Click link for more info and facts about Return to Castle Wolfenstein) Return to Castle Wolfenstein and latest improvements in rendering technology, most of the employees agreed that a remake was the right idea and confronted Kevin and Adrian with an ultimatum: "allow us to remake Doom or fire us" (including John Carmack). After the relatively painless confrontation (though artist (Click link for more info and facts about Paul Steed) Paul Steed, one of the instigators, was fired in retaliation) the agreement to work on Doom 3 was made."

Though, I THOUGHT someone DID get fired as a result of that ultimatum, I can't find anything to back that up

Re:What is your opinion...

[FinestLittleSpace]

Transport tycoon is Chris Sawyer, not Sid Meier

Re:Technical questions.

[Screaming Lunatic]

There has been a ton of interviews, developer diaries in the last few weeks covering this, along with an article in last months Game Developer Magazine.

The game is written in C++, with an C++ SDK that is exposed for the MOD community. Tweakable data is stored in XML files. They use Python as their scripting language. They use Boost.Python for binding. Google for "Who's using Boost".

http://www.dignews.com/feature.php?story_id=11457 [dignews.com]

And they probably use MSVC. Everyone uses MSVC. They'd be on crack if they didn't.

Technical questions are probably best answered by someone on the Civ team other than Sid Meier since he is a designer.

Re:The Wisdom of Alpha Centauri

[Jeffrey Baker]

Sid Meier didn't design Alpha Centauri. That game was designed by Brian Reynolds, who also designed Rise of Nations. That's why they call it "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri" instead of "Alpha Centauri: a game by Sid Meier". They are just slapping his name on there for some market recognition.

This also explains partly why Alpah Centauri was so much more fun and imaginative than Civ III.

Re:General Questions about Adventure Games

[dschmelzer]

Sid just released an adventure game himself. Sid Meier's Pirates [firaxis.com]. A really fun game. The game originally was created by Sid in order to break the mold of adventure games, as Sid thought the genre to be very unoriginal.

Re:Copyright terms

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but as the poster said, copyright originally lasted just 14 years. You're thinking 1970, they're thinking 1790.

The original 14 year (with optional 14 year extension for anyone who thought it worthwhile, which few did) copyright term helped to protect authors and other creative types, and represented a significant incentive over the pre-1790 situation in the US. It was fairly well argued this century before the Supreme Court that the many subsequent (and probable future) extensions had served as little further incentive to creators while being a substantial burden on the tax paying public. But, the Court held that Congress is basically entitled to screw this up on behalf of the people. As someone who believes Churchill spoke too kindly of democracy when he said it was the worst kind of government this was no surprise to me.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:What is your opinion...

[Spudley]

Freeloaders looks a lot like FreeCiv, but the only unit you get is a flat-bed truck loaded with moonshine, and you have to drive it around avoiding "barbarians" (who have a police car icon).

Flatterers, on the other hand, is a special version of FreeCiv released by the Flat Earth Society, in which the map doesn't wrap around at the edges.

(and for God's sake, please don't mod this 'informative'!!!!)

Re:Copyright terms

[deander2]

patents last 14 years. copyright lasts beyond the life of the original creator, or a fixed length of time for corporations. civ I is nowhere near expiration under any copyright law that has existed this century (or the last).

Re:Copyright terms

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

He said, "original copyright terms" which was 14 years originally, (with an extension possible). Since that time the laws have changed drastically and copyrights will no longer expire on any work for the foreseeable future, unless political power shifts away from big business. Every time they come close the terms are extended. This results in many works, like some of the author's original works, possibly disappearing or becoming unplayable within only a decade or so. It also means that the author's life work may vanish from public consciousness even before he dies, never to be recovered. That is certainly a concern of mine as a creative artist and something I's like to hear more popular artists comment upon.

Re:What sort of "original" game do you propose?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

For the Doom 3 they did hire a professional writer and it showed... Diablo 2 had a nice story? How is "Diablo Came Back Halfway Around the World" a nice story?

Lets see, In Diablo 2 there were what twenty four subplots, and dozens of characters with unique dialogue in each city. There was the overarching plot narrated by an interesting character and the whole thing was interesting enough that most people I know actually paid attention and read or listened to all the back story about their quests.

With Doom 3 I felt that the story was just sort of extra crap. You didn't need to really know any of it to play the game, and frankly I don't even remember what most of it was. Yeah, we're supposed to kill these demons, and then these demons. This differs from the original how? It did not hold my interest at all. If you want to see an example of an FPS with a plot and story that is really integrated and captivating, check out Marathon 2, I think it is available as an open source project now. Super intelligent AI's strong arming you into accomplishing various tasks, lying to you, Aliens who are really, really alien, plots where you are double crossed, where alien machines screw with you, and an insane AI beams you here and there while spouting bad poetry at you. All of this in a series of settings where computers you interface with have valuable data as well as meaningless, but often amusing, information about the neighborhood. I guess I just don't see Doom 3 as comparing at all. To me the story of Doom 3 seemed neither clever nor engaging. I suppose everyone has personal preferences, I'm glad you liked it.

Re:Or...

[Petrushka]

FWIW, I think the clones of Ultima IV that have been made in more recent years have tried to avoid cloning the bugs. Try this [wizardportal.com] and this [sourceforge.net].

c-evo!

[crhylove]

For us windites, C-Evo is a way better game. Too bad their site doesn't have a decent forum.

rhY

Re:Drugs in the gaming workplace.

[Anonymous Coward]

In the book "Hackers" by Steven Levy, there is an implication that Sierra, with Ken Thompson, implicitly tolerated drug and alcohol abuse in the early games development studios he commanded.

Ken Williams ran Sierra. Ken Thompson hacked UNIX.

Re:Colonization?

[Nasarius]

How do you feel about the largely unrecognized awesomeness of Colonization?

I have very mixed feelings about Colonization. The concept is really cool and much of the game is fun, but there's no sense of epic scale like in Civ. And I hate how it ends: you pack your coastal cities with troops, hit the Declare Independence button, and wait it out. Nothing resembling the guerrilla warfare tactics of the real American Revolution. That would be a fascinating game in itself.

What about open sourcing it so guys like me can fix it up to work on modern OS's?

Use DOSBox! Works for me.