CIT112 Ch11 Multimedia project – Civilization III
Knowing the complexity of the human experience, one would find it daunting to simulate that in an entertaining way in a board game. Computers allow game designers to accomplish things never even considered with little plastic pieces and a printed board. The Civilization series of games is a long running example of fantastic programming and flawless planning.
Starting out, the game loads several splash screen ads, for Infogrames Ltd. and Fireaxis Games, then it goes into a 3D opening animation of a castle looking structure surrounded by a lake. Clearly ascending around a cylindrical object it pans out showing the size of the building, the further up the camera goes to the top, the more modern the building looks. Ultimately you find yourself looking at the Title of the game, “SID MEIER’S Civilization III”
This is the beginning of the game, from here you need to choose where you wish to go, I chose to click on “New Game” But as the image shows there are 10 options to choose from. Most often I would choose to start a new game, because the credits are pretty boring, and I like to customize the gameboard. Quick Start randomy assigned game options and places you in the game without hesitation. The tutorial is a partially interactive “walk through” of the basic game controls, and I would recomend this to anyone who has never played the game before.
Taking a few screenshots along the way… You can see several buttons, and clickable options that aren’t very descriptive, but as the player becomes more familiar with the game, he or she can see all relavant information at a quick glance. I feel the interface to this game is exceptionally well made. Not very confusing once you understand the controls.
here we see the 1st setup page.
here we see our “Earth” options, such as age, Climate, and level of Native activity, which is important later in the game.
Not much is happening in the first 5 minutes of game play, initially you have a piece that has attributes such as strength, moves, and special abilities. Most often you start out with a setteler and a worker. These are non military units, and are very vulnerable to attack, and defeat. The 1st order is to build a city, and the first one is the Civilization’s center and capitol. The worker who is mostly defenseless has the capability of building things like roads, irrigation, and fortresses, all of these things benefit the city or the units that are to come. Every unit uncovers more of the map as they explore the surrounding area, to find firtile land, and resources used to make certain military units, improvements, and luxuries.
A closer look at the built city of “Rome” shows more details and more game features which are all explained in the tutorial.
As you can see, there are Many details that must have taken quite some time to link and program.
In this screen we see, for the first time, our Science advisor, who alerts us to the progress of our scientific advancement. We are starting to see that this program is very in depth, there are dozens of aspects that we have not even begun to see yet.
Here we are just starting to set out and explore our world. We see more and more every time we move a play piece into the darkness. the excitement of the unknown is shadowed by the urgency to progress as quickly as possible. The high stakes of building a civilization and developing it into #1 are under way.
Knowing the complexity of the game, and what it takes to play it well, I couldn’t immagine the effort it took to put together the relationships between the pieces the units, the cities, the percentage of the population that is supporting the scientists, and the money aspect, it’s all very well put together.
Countless hours if not entire days of entertainment are credited to this game, there are even ways to edit the code of the play pieces to create unknown forces for your militaries. Even a detailed map editor and scenerio builders are available for this game. It’s simple complexity explains why it has been an award winning game for many years, and there have been many versions. I have been playing it since the original version was developed for IBM compatible 80-486 computers. I still enjoy it when I can.
