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Emperor
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Oct 2001
time: 21:47
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OK, so I am still in the process of coding the backbone of the diplmatic system, and have much work to do before I get to the GUI, but I think it would be good to discuss how we imagine the thing working.
According to the Methodology of Contact section of the diplomacy model, there would be several ways to contact an opponent civ. And since nobody ever mentioned that part (in either approving or criticising manner), I assume that people generally agree that system would be good.
What I want you, people, to ponder is what happens after the contact is established. How should the process of discussing a treaty, for instance (or, for more current purposes, the process of discussing the change of diplomatic state) be visually represented? Well, declaring war is easy in some sense - you can attack a player with whom you have peace, and there you have it. But there should be clearly some kind of visual representation of the interaction between the player and the AI civ's for other, more advanced, actions.
There are basically two ways to do that:
1. A sort of bargain-table interface - as in Civ3 (which I happen to like a lot)
2. A sort of dialogue-based interface - more like SMAC. This is a little less streamlined and intuitive, IMO, but some people like it more.
If you happen to like either of those, or maybe have an idea of your own, please express it here. 
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1 sounds better to me, but I have to admit I haven't played Civ3 so I haven't seen the table-top bargaining in action.
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King
U.S.A.
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Mar 2002
time: 20:47
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Table-top.
It may lack the character and "fun" feel of the dialouge trees, but it more than makes up for it in flexibility of deals and ease of use.
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LDiCesare
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King
Ashes
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Jan 2001
time: 02:47
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I like CtP2's way, but know neither SMAC nor Civ3  . (MOM was poor, and civ2 pitiful).
I'd like to see how GalCiv handles it, someone said their model was nice.
For those who don't know CtP2, you have 3 tabs on the left part of the screen:
Give, request, treaty, you can more or less chose one from each, and the corresponding dialogue appears in the right part of the window.
I'd like something like this, where I can "shop" in a list of options in one part of the interface, and see it clearly in another part (kind of what you do if you go on Amazon.com: you buy a cart of books, I buy a cart of diplomatic options). It could be tabs, or a tree view or whatever else.
The important points are:
I want to be able to adjust any parameter at any time, i.e. no going back to change an attitude from cordial to hostile, then having to select all the options again because I made a mistake in step 1 (including selecting the bad civ).
Another very important point is the bargaining when your opponent refuses.
You should have options easily accessed like change proposal (or make counter proposal), threaten, forget it.
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Warlord
Tongeren, Belgium
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Apr 2001
time: 02:47
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Let the diplomatic status screen be the same as the "bargaining screen". Just make the changes you want, and immediately see the change in relationship for each change you make. If you think the proposal will be accepted, click the button "issue proposal" (which appears as soon as you have made any change). If the proposal is accepted, everything is applied as you have changed it, if it is rejected, everything is reset. Note that some changes, like a declaration of war, cannot be rejected. All the changes would either be accepted or rejected as one.
This allows for negotiating fine-tuned treaties and would be the simplest interface.
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Emperor
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Oct 2001
time: 21:47
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Well, since a lot of you here haven't seen how the bargain table works, I'll providea little screenshot from civ3:
As you can see, there are basically two panes - on the left for what you can request from the other civ, and on the right what you can propose in exchange. The different things are arranged in categories (which can be collapsed so that they don't clutter the space - I have expanded all of them to give you an idea). And you can basically pick and choose whatever you want to put on the table, and click on the different items. Once you do that, they are removed from the lists on the sides (so that you can't select the same tech twice, for instance) and put on the bargain table - the pane in the middle. Once again, the left side is for what you want, and the right side is for what you are willing to offer in exchange. Once you put all the stuff you want, you can click the "Will you accept this deal?" button to offer the deal. If it is accepted, then it is done. Otherwise, the leader (whose protrait is shown above the bargain table - I cut it off, since it is not significant) says the deal is bad, but the table is not reset, so you can either add something on your side, or remove something from what you request to make the deal sweeter for the other civ.
That's basically how it works in civ3. I haven't player CtP2, so I can't really know, but I searched the internet for some screenies, and it seems to me that the idea there is very similar, only that you don't get the instant feedback on whether the deal was accepted or not.
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Emperor
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Oct 2001
time: 21:47
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quote:
Originally posted by LDiCesare
No, that is a bad thing in CtP2. I mentioned it in order that we don't do the same error. |
That's what I thought, too. So, then we pretty much follow the model set by Civ3.
Now, to change the topic a little bit.
I was thinking about what graphics I might need specifically for the purposes of diplomatic GUI, and came up with one important thing I would to discuss: In all of the strategy games that I know of (not sure about CtP2, though), when you contact the leader of another nation, you can see some kind of a pictoral representation of its leader. A head, or a figure, or whatever. The question is: do we want graphical representations of leaders in Clash also?
Of course, that might be a little far off from now in the list of concerns, but it would be nice to know, so that when I get to coding the GUI, I could leave a placeholder for the image. Now, if we do want that feature, then that raises a couple of important concerns. Namely, there are no preset civs in the game. The nations are generic and are for the most part defined in the specific scenarios' xml files. So, if we do use that, then the leaderheads should be drawn for specific scenarios, and provided as images in the same folder as the scenario they pertain to, and the name of the images would be mentioned in the xml file. That would also provide great modding ability for the players.
Discuss.
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quote:
Originally posted by vovansim
The question is: do we want graphical representations of leaders in Clash also? |
Yes, at least I sure do. But its not clear leaders will be immortal. We were thinking more like a succession of leaders based on the Characters model. Of course that will be one of the last things coded, so static opposition leads as you speced out should be standard for quite some time.
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Emperor
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Oct 2001
time: 21:47
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And also, Mark, now that I have described the system of diplomatic interactions in Civ3, do you still like that approach more? Maybe you would like to add some suggestions / thoughts / questions / other input?
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quote:
Originally posted by vovansim
I know this is not a big concern right now, but could you maybe elaborate on that a little more? I can see how that would work out in theory, but how would one change the "looks" of the leaders as time progresses? And if the leaders change in the course of the game, there should probably be some system of their clothing or surroundings to distinguis the leaders of one nation from those of another. |
We were thinking of making a generic cartoon-like design-a-face system. . . You know, 15 nozes 13 sets of eyes, 20 types of hair, different culturally-specific clothing (shoulders-up only) etc. If you look at the characters model threads you should be able to find it, if you need more details.
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Emperor
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Oct 2001
time: 21:47
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quote:
Originally posted by Mark_Everson
We were thinking of making a generic cartoon-like design-a-face system. . . You know, 15 nozes 13 sets of eyes, 20 types of hair, different culturally-specific clothing (shoulders-up only) etc. If you look at the characters model threads you should be able to find it, if you need more details. |
In that case, I suppose that the ethnicity of each nation should be defined in the xml file in order to pick the right set of facial features. (In other words, a zulu leader with greek facial features would look a little odd. Or a roman leader with japanese looks.) And the culture-specific clothing would be provided with each scenario in the scenario folder, and pointed to again by the xml file. Good. I suppose we will leave it at that for now.
Something else I was wondering: I guess for now I will just add the button to bring up the diplomatic options on the top toolbar together with the rest of the generic command buttons, untill we come up with a better interface?
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quote:
Originally posted by vovansim
Something else I was wondering: I guess for now I will just add the button to bring up the diplomatic options on the top toolbar together with the rest of the generic command buttons, untill we come up with a better interface? |
Works for me. They will be icon-buttons eventually. Can't make it too long though or 640x480 res button bar will overflow the screen size. I don't know what the margin is now. You can start the program using the -640x480 command line switch and see how much room is available. Hopefully at least a 'Diplo' button will fit.
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Emperor
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Oct 2001
time: 21:47
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Well, I think the button might fit, though I will also add that to the "Views" menu, together with econ. and tech..
As for forcing the frame to be less than 640x480 with the appropriate command line parameter, the game doesn't even scan for -640x480, it does for 800x600, however. But the function called if you supply that parameter does not seem to do anything...
Any way, yes, it would be nice to rework those buttons into images, but I guess we can do that when we rework the whole gui to get away from the windowsish look.
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quote:
Originally posted by vovansim
As for forcing the frame to be less than 640x480 with the appropriate command line parameter, the game doesn't even scan for -640x480, it does for 800x600, however. But the function called if you supply that parameter does not seem to do anything... |
Sorry Vovan, temporary brain malfunction. . . Gary must have turned the switch off at some point, as he did with several others. I think the code to make it work is still in FrameSettings if that's the right name. Just to let you know in case it becomes important. If you search for "480" you should be able to find it at a guess.
quote:
Any way, yes, it would be nice to rework those buttons into images, but I guess we can do that when we rework the whole gui to get away from the windowsish look. |
Yep, definitely not now!
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LDiCesare
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King
Ashes
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Jan 2001
time: 02:47
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quote:
So, if we do use that, then the leaderheads should be drawn for specific scenarios, and provided as images in the same folder as the scenario they pertain to, and the name of the images would be mentioned in the xml file. |
That is currently the case.
Look at the Delenda scenario, there are Hannibal and scipio images in the folder used by the xml. The image must be used by the government stuff.
quote:
We were thinking of making a generic cartoon-like design-a-face system. . . You know, 15 nozes 13 sets of eyes, 20 types of hair, different culturally-specific clothing (shoulders-up only) etc. If you look at the characters model threads you should be able to find it, if you need more details.
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As a portraitist, I doubt this could be done with nice results, unless you keep the image very cartoonesque, which I believe wouldn't have a good effect. I'd rather have a set of portraits from which you can choose. I could even draw some if you like, but photographs and paintings of statemen would also be fine.
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King
St. Louis
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Sep 1999
time: 20:47
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quote:
Originally posted by LDiCesare
As a portraitist, I doubt this could be done with nice results, unless you keep the image very cartoonesque, which I believe wouldn't have a good effect. I'd rather have a set of portraits from which you can choose. I could even draw some if you like, but photographs and paintings of statemen would also be fine. |
I could do Japanese Animation style characters. Those aren't cartoony.
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King
St. Louis
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Sep 1999
time: 20:47
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As to the bargaining table:
We're not trading specific techs, but the ideas and knowledge.
Things that could be added:
Territory
Military Units
Food
Specialities
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Warlord
Tongeren, Belgium
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Apr 2001
time: 02:47
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- Information
- Weapons, rather than troops
- Any kind of infrastructure ( a way of helping without losing your technological lead)
Laurent:
Seeing what effect the changes you make have could be compared with the bargaining proces in diplomacy, where many proposals are considered before a final, official one is actually proposed. You could limit it, though, since messengers need to travel etc. But three views of an opponent's possible reaction in one year of game time would not be too much, or would it?
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Emperor
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Oct 2001
time: 21:47
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Well, I kind of think that the player should not be able to see a message saying "The other nation will like this proposal"or such when drafting the treaty. Instead, in my opinion, it would make more sense for the message to estimate the chance of it being accepted. In other words, it would not tell the player the effect of the treaty on the attitude / reputation, but rather how likely it is to be accepted. The player can gauge for himself whether or not a certain treaty will please the other civ. However, the player might not be able to easily see whether a treaty will be acceptable.
For instance, the player wants to propose a mutual-defense pact with the strongest nation in the world. Let us also say that the player is known by th | |
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