I plan to make game similar to Civilization Revolution for the TI-84 using Axe. It will feature grayscale maps, auto-generated continents/terrain, and computer opponents.

However, it will be simplified a good deal from the original due to space and time constraints. It will not have technology, resources, diplomacy, wonders, great people, etc. The only ways to win will be Domination (take over the enemies) and Economic (have a certain sum of money). There will be a few unit types available and a few buildings. I may add more features in later releases.

The challenges will be continent generation, making a user-friendly interface, and especially making a decent AI.

It will probably need to be compiled as an app to save on space. It's gonna be a huge program.

Sounds like a fun project! I look forward to your progress and screenshots. Also, for future reference, please edit your post instead of double-posting, if it's within 24 hours of your first post.

I sent a message to 2K Games through their website a week ago but they haven't gotten back to me yet. Do I actually need written permission to submit it? My game is pretty different from Civilization Revolution. It's not like a direct port or anything.

If you look at the contest rules, i beleive Kerm said that asking is simply a bonus. oh, and its polite.

Ok. I'll see if I get a response or not. I hope to post a screenshot soon, if WabbitEmu starts working right.

Sounds awesome

I am not sure if they would like it, but KermMartian had no issues with Civilization Simulator yet. Some companies are more lax about copyrights (eg: Valve, which lets anyone make Portal fan games, as long as they remain free), but with others you have to be more careful.

Well, it was originally called Age of Empires, and I renamed it for obvious reasons. I suspect the concept's inspiration is clear enough, but hopefully executed sufficiently primitively that Microsoft isn't going to get worked up about it.

I've got a lot of stuff working now, including random continent/terrain generation, the map view, a basic menu system, and units. I'll post a screenshot soon hopefully.

What has surprisingly taken me the most time lately is getting my custom input routine working. When you select a settler and choose to build a city, it prompts you for the name of the new city. I wanted to save on program size, so rather than check each key individually, I used a routine that would convert getKey values into their corresponding characters. The problem is that getKey→K always returns zero for me. So I did some research on WikiTI (thank goodness for that website, it's saved me more than once) and played around with the bcall KbdScan.

I figured out that if I put that bcall in my custom interrupt routine:
Code:
then getKey→K works, although getKey is quickly reset due to the interrupt running again. One could fix this by only running the bcall every few interrupts, but it works fine for what I need. It seems to me that getKey by itself (as in returning the last key pressed, not checking for a specific key) only checks kbdScanCode for the most recent keypress. However, kbdScanCode is only updated when bcall KbdScan is called, which normally happens during an interrupt. Since I was using a custom interrupt, I had to add the bcall into my interrupt routine using the above inline assembly. Please correct me if my getKey theory is wrong.

Anyway, I thought I'd share this solution with anyone who has similar problems. The extra bcall doesn't seem to slow down the game noticeably.

Unfortunately, I have to withdraw CivRev from the contest. As much as I want to finish it and get it submitted, I just don't have enough time to get it playable by the deadline. Don't worry, I still plan to work on it and release it eventually. I have so much done, yet there's so much left to do. There's just no way I can finish it in two weeks, especially considering all of my other obligations outside programming. I'll still keep this thread updated (hopefully) with any updates I have and when it gets closer to release.

Can you get into some sort of playable, demo, but unfinished state by the deadline, at least? Even if it might not win in its current state, it's still a nice feather in your hat to have hit a deadline, plus good motivation to continue working on it at a decent rate. Of course, I certainly understand if that's impossible, and if so, I still look forward to the progress updated.

As it is right now, you can generate a map, move your settler around, etc but it glitches a lot when you add a city. I'm working on fixing that now, but it will take a lot of rewriting. Anyway, that's as far as I am, and to make it playable (even stretching the definition of the word) would be out of the question. The only thing I could do is disable the city-building part and release the rest of the program, which is basically just moving around a settler on a randomly generated map. Although the terrain generation algorithm is cool, I just don't think that's really worthy of submission for the contest.

I've been working on CivRev on and off for the past few months. So far, I added a world map view so you can see your location in the world. I changed the sprites to be 16x16 instead of 8x8, which will make it much easier to distinguish between a warrior and an archer, for instance. I'm rethinking the game save file format, and I'm also working on implementing a unit ID system. At some point, I should probably make the menu implementation more robust, but that's minor right now.

Also: The name CivRev may or may not bring about copyright issues with Civilization Revolution. Any suggestions on alternate names I could use?

just an idea, but how about CityBoom? or are you trying to keep the CR initials?

That's not a bad idea. Initials don't matter.