The Column
by Julius Caesar

    Although my last column was written in February, as a result of any little troubles it wasn't published till yesterday. I think that if they keep treating me so awfully, I'm going to demand them to double my salary. That column was fully dedicated to Civ3, so this time we're going to talk about Civ2 because something has happened. Something that should make every Civilization player pay attention.
 

    A group of fans, directed by our friend Javier Muñoz (yaroslav), based on “Civ2 Creation/Scenario League” forum, are making a petition to ask Atari for making free the Civilization II source code. There are any competent programmers in our community, and if we are right and Civ2 was written using C++, we can have a good workgoup.
 
    If we succeed and we achieve to have the source code, the possibilities are almost infinite. We'll be able, in the first place, to correct any little bugs that keep unsolved. In the second place, we'll increase the number of units, techs, city improvements, etc. It's too soon to say it, but we could even destroy the damned 7+1 tribes limit that every scenario creator heartfully hates.
 

    Because having the source code would be a huge help for scenario creators. Today, as a result of the work by many fans (Mercator, for instance) we know reasonabily good how the save and scenario files work, and the hex-editing of those files is quite common. But if we knew the program source code, we'd perfectly understand them and we'd be able to modify them completely and easily. The creation of a new and improved scenario editor could be one of the best consequences of the project. Not to mention the possibility of improving the scripting language or allowing more events (now the number is very restricted).
 

    As a conclusion, to know the source code would open to us an almost unlimited number of possibilities, and would turn a really healthy game in the best of the possible games; because we, those who perfectly know the game, will decide how to improve it. If we get the code, Civ2 will never die.
 
    Considering our experiences with Atari, is difficult to believe that they would give anything for free, but we are optimistic because there's already a precedent: Activision released last year the Call to Power 2 source code. As you may know, CTP2 is a civilization-based game that was quite successful and is newer than the game we try to make free. So we ask you to sign the petition: do it with a message at the forum (you have to be registered at Apolyton to do that) or sending a message to us. To sign the petition you have to send us your name (or your electronical nickname, as you prefer) and a valid e-mail address that will be your electronic ID. We grant you that we won't ever use the e-mail address list to spam sending (though we can't be sure that Atari will do the same). Please sign the petition; it's a great project where all of us are working with a lot of enthusiasm and, as many of us sign it, more chances of success we'll have.
 

Caius Julius Caesar, 16th July 2004.
 
 
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