Quick Details

Date: July 7-9, 2006 Location: Holiday Inn, Timonium, Baltimore (MD), USA (Hotel info: Map | Web site) Program: See the full event schedule

Participating Companies

ApolyCon 06: Meet the Experts!

APOLYCON 06 TOUR PHOTOS (2/2)
(23 May 2007, 01:49 | ApolyCon 06 Participants | 0 comments) During Apolycon '06 in Timonium, Maryland, Markos Giannopoulos and Daniel Quick were lucky enough to be allowed to go on a tour of the Firaxis studio. Otherwise closed to participants due to several titles being in a near-release state, Dan and Markos were allowed to tour certain parts of the studio and see into the inner workings of the Civ developer.

Here are some of the pictures from that event!

A railroad model used during production of Sid Meier's Railroads.

Models of the trains used in Sid Meier's Railroads.

No, these aren't the models for Sid Meier's Pirates!.

Civ4 won Gamespot's PC Game of the Year award. See, we can prove it.

Sid gets some press (Washington Post).

Some of the many titles Sid Meier and Firaxis Games have released over the years.

Some more of Sid's favorite titles.

That one in the middle holds a special place in my heart, as it's what brought me here!

That one on the right looks familiar.

Firaxis and Sid Meier have won just a few awards over the years...

APOLYCON 06 TOUR PHOTOS (1/2)
(10 May 2007, 01:40 | ApolyCon 06 Participants | 0 comments) During Apolycon '06 in Timonium, Maryland, Markos Giannopoulos and Daniel Quick were lucky enough to be allowed to go on a tour of the Firaxis studio. Otherwise closed to participants due to several titles being in a near-release state, Dan and Markos were allowed to tour certain parts of the studio and see into the inner workings of the Civ developer.

Here are some of the pics!

DanQ and MarkG at the Firaxis headquarters

DanQ and MarkG with tour director Dennis Shirk

An unnamed Firaxian's office

The Firaxis lunch room

Several SMAC concept logos

An Ultimate CivII lightbox

More photos from the Friday of [b]ApolyCon '06[/b] will be released in future. Post-coverage of this gathering continues exclusively here on ACS. - snoopy369

`FIRAXIS Q&A` (PART 5/5)
(26 March 2007, 21:43 | ApolyCon 06 Participants | 0 comments) During ApolyCon '06 held in Timonium, Maryland last July, Firaxis Games Director of Creative Development Sid Meier, Designer/Programmer Soren Johnson and Senior Producer Barry Caudill answered attendee questions about the company, the Civilization series and computer strategy gaming in general. Recorded by event Chairman Daniel "DanQ" Quick, what they said is now being made publicly available in a series of installments.

In the last of five parts, Johnson begins by reviewing the process through which Civilization IV's development began -- by playing all previous titles in the series, including the Call to Power side series, followed by some other strategy titles. Related, open source options in particular Freeciv are also touched upon. Failing to get permission from copyright holders for inclusion of particular items prompting change, and the limits to what Friaxis could make available for fans to modify, are also addressed. How CivIV is updated and manipulating in-game animation are the final topics explored.

Available for listening in streaming 64kbps MP3 format, Part 5 runs for 17m25s (7.9MB); please note that due to the approach to recording, its technical quality is not ideal even after numerous post-production efforts but is by and large audible. - DanQ

`FIRAXIS Q&A` (PART 4/5)
(12 March 2007, 21:07 | ApolyCon 06 Participants | 0 comments) During ApolyCon '06 held in Timonium, Maryland last July, Firaxis Games Director of Creative Development Sid Meier, Designer/Programmer Soren Johnson and Senior Producer Barry Caudill answered attendee questions about the company, the Civilization series and computer strategy gaming in general. Recorded by event Chairman Daniel "DanQ" Quick, what they said is now being made publicly available in a series of installments.

In the fourth of five parts the three Firaxis representatives first talk about how to adequately address the later stages of Civilization games more and then open up to take more questions from attendees. In addition to a follow-up on this discussion, other topics are the approaches that first went into each Civ title in the interests of game balancing, Civ on handheld platforms, the efforts ofCivStats.com, seeing CivIV multiplayer games through and how the introduction of resources in Civ came about.

Available for listening in streaming 64kbps MP3 format, Part 3 runs for 17m18s (8.3MB); please note that due to the approach to recording, its technical quality is not ideal even after numerous post-production efforts but is by and large audible. The fifth and final part is scheduled to be published on March 26th. - DanQ

`FIRAXIS Q&A` (PART 3/5)
(5 March 2007, 20:32 | ApolyCon 06 Participants | 0 comments) During ApolyCon '06 held in Timonium, Maryland last July, Firaxis Games Director of Creative Development Sid Meier, Designer/Programmer Soren Johnson and Senior Producer Barry Caudill answered attendee questions about the company, the Civilization series and computer strategy gaming in general. Recorded by event Chairman Daniel "DanQ" Quick, what they said is now being made publicly available in a series of installments.

In the third of five parts, Johnson talks about his first experience with Civilization college and how he first learned just how little he actually knew about the series. Caudill touches upon his experiences with Quality Assurance (QA) and the differences in approach publisher Take-Two Interactive brings to Firaxis since purchasing the developer. These two Firaxians then address common technical difficulties in playing Civ online with possible solutions in part in response to attendee questions, and finalizing User Interface (UI) design. The subject of modding capabilities in CivIV is then broached.

Available for listening in streaming 64kbps MP3 format, Part 3 runs for 17m51s (8.5MB); please note that due to the approach to recording, its technical quality is not ideal even after numerous post-production efforts but is by and large audible. Part 4 is scheduled to be published on March 12th. - DanQ

`FIRAXIS Q&A` (PART 2/5)
(26 February 2007, 21:08 | ApolyCon 06 Participants | 0 comments) During ApolyCon '06 held in Timonium, Maryland last July, Firaxis Games Director of Creative Development Sid Meier, Designer/Programmer Soren Johnson and Senior Producer Barry Caudill answered attendee questions about the company, the Civilization series and computer strategy gaming in general. Recorded by event Chairman Daniel "DanQ" Quick, what they said is now being made publicly available in a series of installments.

In the second of five parts, Johnson picks up Civ's story with CivIII with Caudill and Meier joining in part way through. The three also respond to the occasional attendee question posed in relation to the discussion being given.

Available for listening in streaming 64kbps MP3 format, Part 2 runs for 16m41s (7.8MB); please note that due to the approach to recording, its technical quality is not ideal even after numerous post-production efforts but is by and large listenable. Part 3 is scheduled to be published on March 5th. - DanQ