Galactic Civilizations Mobile App

Yes I want a mobile android app. 25$ does seem reasonable. My choice would be galactic civilizations 3, but any version would be better than what they have. I think galactic civilizations 2 complete is reasonable. Bigger is better, but I am willing to use a shrink down map. I probably pay for the base game, but I'm am willing to start with galactic civilizations 2, and work from there. The real changes that would be needed are touch controls.

Here's the problem:

They'd have to write the App from scratch.  This wouldn't be a port of any of the existing codebases.  It would have to be a whole new thing.

That's a LOT of work, and there's not really much of a 4X market for Mobile. Especially given that something complex like a 4X places significant hardware requirements on the phone/tablet, so it would limit the phones to which it could be sold. Let's not forget that Android is about 60% of the market, and the other 40% is iOS, and porting between those two is decidedly non-trivial.  Doesn't help recoup your costs when your product can only run on 10% of the installed base.

Basically, you'd have to hire a whole new bunch of programmers, because (with all due respect to Brad and Co.), the demands of mobile programming are COMPLETELY different than for Desktop. The UI design is radically different, the UI coding different, the demands (and limitations) of the systems very different, etc.

It's also not a given that the experience of GalCiv is suitable for a mobile device. That is, the constraints of Mobile might produce a nice game, but it's highly unlikely that it will be "Galactic Civilizations" in any sense other than a superficial one.

It's never as simple as "just make it run over there". 

Android and ISO, can not own 100% of the market, you neglected Microsoft. I know they probably do not have much of the market atm due to them been new to it but its not 0%. And their products all run versions of Windows 10.

Insane/ludicrous map on smartphone display ...

Anyway, I'm too oldfashioned to enjoy a 4x on a mobile device

My Samsung phone has 2K resolution.  That's the same resolution as my desktop screen.  I see no reason it shouldn't port directly  :)

Seriously. I love the idea, but...

Thinking of all this one time, I tried using Steam broadcast to watch my own GalCiv game on the phone screen as a test of viewing a map on a phone screen.  With a handheld microscope, it would be quite useful.  Without, not so much.  The amount of map real estate you can discernably display at one time would require massive zoom capability or complete UI redesign.  Replacing the point and click operations on the map with the less accurate mode of fingers on a tiny touch screen would be very frustrating to any average user.  You would need another UI redesign or else be limited to stylus input.  And you won't have all those keyboard shortcuts.

More important than all that, you risk falling into the trap that was CivRev, a warning example to game devs everywhere.  

Platform matters.  Physical hardware limits matter.  Despite what your boyfriend tells you, size matters.  ;)

I'm hearing that most of the memory requirements are graphics. For the tablet I understand when we won't get 100 civs. We will have to deal with minors again. Your talking about ludicrous when we will probably get large for a phone. If we scale down most of the graphics dump the mini map. Quick battles. go back to dealing with minors. With maybe 10 majors I think it could be done. Please Frogboy for us.

I think most would understand that it would have to be a scaled back version for a mobile game.  The question is how much scaling back and like erischild states how would the input be with just touch screen.  I think it would be interesting things to work through and I'd be fine with basic graphics that give a feel of the game on small maps with basic AI.  Modern tablets/smart phones could easily handle Galactic Civilzations I, and I think we could push it to at least a basic form of Galciv 2.

Also things would have to stop spinning. The base game as is would be great. Maybe inporting starbases from crusade would actually help performance. Actually the way resources are handled in crusade might help. We could cut down on graphics on resources everywhere. The tech tree im not sure which one is better. Maybe just one like dark avatar is the only way.

I have zero interest in this, but then, I'm one of the rare people that isn't surgically attached to and/or constantly screwing with my phone.  At least half the time I don't even remember to carry it.  It's good to be free.

I'm interested, and came up with some ways to increase performance for the tablet, or phone, but wouldn't be good on a computer.

1. Remember that 70% of the game is text based. I'm going to let you on something I'm pretty sure is about html. On a editor the computer has to run 1 line at a time. More accurately 1 instruction at a time. The reason for this is that a computer doesn't understand english. It needs a translator, but a compiler is faster; because, it is closer to a computer language. If all the text was programmed instead it would then be faster.

2

I'm interested, and came up with some ways to increase performance for the tablet, or phone, but wouldn't be good on a computer.

1. Remember that 70% of the game is text based. I'm going to let you on something I'm pretty sure is about html. On a editor the computer has to run 1 line at a time. More accurately 1 instruction at a time. The reason for this is that a computer doesn't understand english. It needs a translator, but a compiler is faster; because, it is closer to a computer language. If all the text was programmed instead it would then be faster. This would take modding out of the game, but who mods apps anyways.

2. We could remove for a tablet custom civs, map editor, options, and the ship builder for better performance on a tablet, or make a seperate app.

3. We could remove the campaigns. Most tablet games don't have them, or make a seperate app.

4. You could quick battle. A lot of things like cut seens could be words only for tablets. 

I think the "building the game from scratch" issue could be resolved if Stardock could have an agreement with another developer with a similar game to create a mobile version built on top of their engine.

Sure there'd have to be a lot of simplification with personalised ships (perhaps just a list of parts that are placed into a default position) and a limitation on the amount of other civilisations and map sizes etc. But it is more than feasible. I think people's reluctance to pay for android games is the biggest barrier here though.

I can't really imagine GC on smartphones, even with simplified gfx.

May be on tablets though.

I primarily use a tablet, myself. My phone is an old flip one so yeah, definitely no GC on that