Re: What to do with Xconq

[Stan Shebs <shebs at shebs dot cnchost dot com>]

Ed Roskos wrote:
> 
> I have known and played Xconq since the days of xc5, and have spent
> many, many hours writing a series of modules for that game.  When xc7
> came out, I also got to work.  My first step was to tweek existing games
> such as time to allow priests to "convert" enemy troops, add more
> unit types, etc.  A whole new module I wrote emulated Babylon 5, complete with
> Omega/Hyperion/G'Quan/T'Loth/Shadow/Vorlon/
> Primus/Drahk/Earth-advanced-destroyer/Brakiri/Vree/Drazi/3rdSpace
> /the-others-I-forgot warships, many fighters, troops, and built starting maps
> with ships in various areas, alliances, etc.  It was a large module
> with tuned parameters, firing with different ranges, detonating mines,
> even Babylon 5 itself.  Oh, I forget White Stars and Excalibur.  So, where
> is this module?  That's another story :-)  I didnt backup the game, since
> I don't backup games in general, and a HD crash toasted much of it.  I still
> have an earlier version and the graphics which I can toss out if others are
> interested.  Ok, I kicked myself enough on this point :-)

Are you sure it was enough? :-)  Just think, if only you'd posted it,
there would be copies in mailboxes and archives all over the world...

In any case, I'd sure like to get a look at the remnants, perhaps some of
the graphics can be usefully made available to other games?

> 3) Civ2 AI seems much better than XConq, especially in diplomacy.

Have you comparing with the latest snapshot?  Hans added lots of IQ
for Civ-type games.  I've been watching this area in FreeCiv closely
too, might be possible to steal some algorithms (I already stole
one from them, it was very pleasurable...)

> 4) Civ2 has sound.

That's another one of the half-implemented things - there's a limited
version on the Mac but nowhere else...

> 5) XConq is infinitely more configurable in unit-to-unit fighting and
>     terrain interaction, as well as unit capacity.  Different city types rule.
> 
> Point (4) is relatively minor.  But (3) is a major issue.  In XConq, I have
> always emulated politics and diplomacy by saving the game and
> editing the save.xconq file.  I typically also edited the source file to
> be sure mplayers didn't wimp out on me too soon :-)  CivCTP died in
> strong part to the machine players flakey diplomacy.  It just killed the
> game.  I am not sure I was ever able to understand how to write my
> own AI from the given documentation, and so resistance to digging
> into it won out.  But perhaps some better AI's, and adding diplomacy,
> could improve the "fun" of XConq.  Multiplayer is fine, but single player
> can win the hearts of many :-)

That's another good point about the AI.  While the mechanism is there,
I haven't wanted to expend a lot of effort on documenting until at least
one completely separate AI type is written.  That will give a better
sense of what the developer needs to know.

For instance, Hans R has suggested that it would be better to add more
knobs and switches to the existing AI code, which is attractive because
it lets you exploit existing code better.  My intuition is that an AI
for, say, gettysburg.g would actually be simpler to do from scratch,
but without an example it's hard to know either way.

> Well, what do you folks think?  Hopefully, my statements above are
> clear, as it has been a LOOOOOOONNNNGG day :-)

Perfectly clear, and thanks for the feedback!

Stan