Recently, I appeared on Three Moves Ahead Episode 76 podcast on modding strategy games, along with Derek “Kael” Paxton of Fall from Heaven fame. I need to do something about my terrible audio quality (and my overuse of the word “um”), but it’s always a blast to be on Troy’s show. Hopefully, I’ll be back sometime soon.
Last month, I also gave a Google Tech Talk on AI and Civilization, examining the difference between “good” and “fun” AI and how that affected the development of Civ4:
Finally, a user on YouTube named Kaszman posted a extensive and detailed documentary on the prototyping of Civ4. This piece is a much more polished version of the talk that Dorian Newcomb (Civ4‘s lead animator) and I gave at GDC 2006, which was a bit of an A/V disaster – the projector would only work at the wrong resolution, some of the demos didn’t work when off the network, and even my cell phone went off. Thus, we were happy to get another shot at it, and the video turned out quite well. During development, I saved a version of Civ4 every couple months with a eye towards using them to show how the game grew over its two-and-a-half years of development. I got a chance to show them off here; for people curious to see how the sausages get made, these videos are a great place to start:
The GoogleTech talk was very interesting! On a regular basis I have debates with people about whether strategy game AI’s should play a role or play to win – what I seem to notice is that a lot of people expect both at once, ignoring the fact that the choices are often incompatible.
I watched the entire 7-part making of Civ thing. So impressed by the professionality of your work, I mean, even your slideshows have user-orientating features like that timeline along the top. I also can’t believe the graphics you whipped up in the first 2-3 months.
It took so many right decisions to make Civ a good game like it is. Wow. And coordinating all the people working on it. I’m sure there was one person who was absolutely in love with 5-unit units and hated to give it up. I’m sure there was one guy who championed the “City Billboards” idea and had to sell it to everyone else (that’s probably why it has the catchy title).
Hate to be negative but Brad Wardell should have watched this video before starting Elemental. Are you aware of any similar videos for other games that might show different kinds of design process used in different companies?
This video did kinda spoil the civ 5 demo for me though as I would see the new things like hexes and 5-man units and not think “Whoa cool new stuff” but “Oh, I see they are trying something else to make the coastlines look fluid” and “oh, I see they now think computers have the processing power to animate five units.”