Assignment- Review your most favorite game
When I was younger, one of my first played games was Civilization 3, a game of epic scale, and immense value. In 2005, I saw on the store flyers that my favorite game had been given a equal and I immediately went out to purchase this game. At first I was overwhelmed by the amount of new concepts that they had implemented, but there was a force which kept pushing me forward, to keep playing. One of the driving factors was how beautifully the game had evolved, from plain isometric game in Civ3, to a living and breathing world in Civ4.
One thing that was improved was the units, not only did they have new animations, but now they also spoke too. With this improvement, the developers used a new 3D engine, Gamebryo, instead of using the existing one. With the units, they are basic 3D models, mostly likely animated using key frame animation, due to the number of idle animations which they have. One positive advantage of 3D,as the developer said, was it was easy to modify units for different scenarios. For example if we wanted to make a race specific version of the archer unit, we could just apply another texture for the skin and armor.When a unit is selected, there is a 3d circle rotating around that unit, to do this the circle rotates around the center of the tile, which is where the unit is centered.
With the units, they truly show their animation when they are in combat. First off the unit's model will rotate on the spot to face the direction of the unit which they are being attacked from, or attacking. In the situation the unit is mechanical, a tank or helicopter, and is losing the fight, its textures will change to show it is more damaged with bullet holes and fire. Fire is shown as a particle effect when the units are dying/dead, always rising from the center of unit's body. When the unit dies, it will show its death animation, made using keyframes, usually resulting in their body falling to the ground or blowing up. Strangely enough the infantry in general all share a similar death animation.
Finally the game's immersiveness was fully enhanced with the living and breathing environments of Civ 4. In Civ 4 the developers decided to give life to their game tiles, whether it be the many land masses, the improvements in the , or all 32 resources by animating them. As seen in the video, the forest tile seems contain many tree objects, and these trees will disappear if it is in the way of a road or a unit is on the tile. With resources they will have 2 different animations, 1 without being used and one which is not being used, such as the pigs in the video. With time, technology advances, and land improvements will change, such as a aluminum farm, instead of wooden shed. For this change, a model change is involved whenever a civilization advances in the game's 6 technological eras.
With all this in mind, the creators wanted a more modifiable game, to allow fans to create easier, but better Mods. Game data and rules are stored in Civ 4's XML files, and a SDK for the game was released in April 2006 to allow for AI customization. Major parts of the interface, map generation, and scripted events are written entirely in Python and can be customized. With this, 3 expansion packs, containing new scenarios, units and Civilizations were released, on a yearly basis along with the dozens of amazing mods.
That year Civilization 4 receiving many near perfect or perfect reviews, while being nominated for many awards including best PC game and game of the year.The jump from Civilization 3 to 4 was such a great leap, it sets a great example of what any game should do for an excellent sequel. In the end Civilization 4 is truly an amazing game, one which will suck you in and make you waste hours on the game. A game which will truly make you say the words
No comments:
Post a Comment