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Games Entertainment

The History Of FreeCiv 127

Posted by Hemos from the welkom-to-the-stage-of-history dept.
dizzyPhoenix writes: "O'reilly net is running an article on FreeCiv and how the game came about." As is often true on O'Reillynet, the article's well-thought and interesting reading.
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The History Of FreeCiv More

The History Of FreeCiv

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  • It came with my Mandrake distro. I played it. Then I went online, and played against other people. I got my ass whooped. Then I got beat again (and again, and again, and again). That's the history of Freeciv (from where I'm sitting).

  • Better art? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Chardish ( 529780 )
    The game's "wish list" includes "better art."

    When are people going to learn that it's not art that makes the game? And sometimes it's what slows down the game? Freeciv is a marvelous program with art comparable to Civ2. Why do we need better?

    Is it because we've become too eyecandyish of a gaming society?

    -Chardish
    • If you are displaying pictures anyway (which they do) putting better images in will not slow it down, and better looking games do sell better, so i guess it matters to some people. I think game play is more important, but they did that part first, so they're doing things in the right order :)

    • Re:Better art? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by yobbo ( 324595 )
      yes it's not art that makes the game.

      but why play a crap looking game when you can play a beautiful looking one?
      • Because some like playing a crap looking game with a good gameplay more than playing a beautiful looking one with a crappy gameplay.

        Limited (human) resources given, you usually have to choose between those two.

        Why not have money and free time? :)
        • Did anybody read the article? They have an abundance of programmers, but hardly any artists. The two groups are mostly disjunct. Adding "art" would not make the game worse. Hell, they have two almost finished sound systems but no sounds.

          • Re:Better art? (Score:2, Interesting)

            by redcliffe ( 466773 )
            What is needed is a group of open source artists. They don't need to be attached to any given project, but as a team, they would move from project to project to work on artistic stuff on each. Musicians, sound people, and graphical artists would be needed. If such a team could be formed it would be a boon for open source development.
        • How in the hell does adding better art to freeciv suddenly make the gameplay crappy? "Hey I know, while we're at it, let's remove all the keyboard shortcuts, and make the units go into random directions when moving"
          • No, it wouldn't make it (necessarily) worse.
            Better artwork would surely be positive.
            But better graphics usually doesn't mean better artwork alone. Changes might include a new graphics engine, or generally a new UI, a.s.o.
            This could _potentially_ lead to worse gameplay.
      • but why play a crap looking game when you can play a beautiful looking one?
        Sometime adding graphics is hard, becouse it needs a lot of work, so you have to choose - write better code or spend time creating graphics, sounds, and music.
        Please look at nethack [nethack.org] - it's awesome, with no gfx/sound at all, now compare it with fallout or diablo - and remember, that nethack is opensource .
        You can also try other roguelike games. Yes - there are frontends, but they appear long after games were playable.

    • Re:Better art? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by kafka93 ( 243640 )
      If Linux is ever going compete with Windows on the desktop (don't laugh), then attention to eye-candy is essential. While it's doubtless true that great gameplay doesn't necessarily demand great graphics, it's also true that many games benefit a great deal from them. The whole "gameplay vs. bells-and-whistles" debate has raged ever since computer games first started to appear; in the meantime, computer games have continued to advance in terms of visuals and sound. And the situation right now is that there are a number of very good games for Windows that _do_ have fantastic graphics; given that, why would anybody choose to play more rudimentary Linux-based games?

      The great thing about Linux is that the options are always going to exist: a parallel with this issue is the desktop, which continues to become more sophisticated (via KDE/Gnome/etc.) - but where it's still entirely possible to run older setups, modify/roll your own desktop, or do away with an X environment entirely. Equally, the appearance of graphically impressive games isn't going to take anything away from the games that already exist; it's only going to provide the user with more oprions.
    • I haven't seen the code but I am willing to bet that the game's graphics can be upgraded without changing the gameplay.

      Art may not make the game but it does play a significant part in the total expierence. Why do we need better you ask? Simple - because we can have better.

      This isn't an instance where we have a game where its graphics were made first and the game was designed around it. On the contrary we already have an established game where we have the option of improving its visual appeal.

      What makes you so special as to prevent people from wanting better than what they have?
    • While I agree that gameplay is key, if you want to truly immerse a player you've got to give them a complete experience, and that means everything, gameplay, art, sound, story, etc. Immersion means overwhelming the player with just enough believable details and giving payoffs at the right time, while making sure that none of this detracts from gameplay.

      If other commercial developers were as willing to face their own shortcomings (ie: gameplay & story) the way these guys are willing to face theirs (art & sound), we'd all be singing about what a wonderful world this was.
    • What about quake3? Its gameplay is basicly a cookiecutter deathmatch fps(run around, kill, pick up powerups/ammo/weapons, repeat), but its still an incredible game due to its graphics.
    • When are people going to learn that it's not art that makes the game?

      Did anybody say that it was art that made the game? No. Hell, I've been playing Slime Volleyball [uwa.edu.au] recently. It has some of the lamest, most childish graphics I've ever seen, but it also has very engaging game play. Nonetheless, better graphics in both SV and FC would be nice, and their implementation needn't affect the game play one bit.

        • Hell, I've been playing Slime Volleyball

        You bastard! I thought I was doing great when I finally won - then I realised there was a level 2... Can I sue to to get my life back?

    • >> Is it because we've become too eyecandyish of a gaming society?

      Witness DoA3 [xbox.com]

  • 2nd attempt to post - thanks invalid formkey! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 25, 2001 @10:51AM (#2610098)
    I couldn't pass up this obvious error in the article:

    It being one of the more successful projects in the open source community, one would think after being in such active development for so long that Freeciv might rival its commercially-sold counterparts in quality and features. It does not, and similar strategy titles like Civilization II and Alpha Centauri clearly have slicker user interfaces, smarter AI, and generally better gameplay overall.

    As anyone who was played Civilization III can tell you, FreeCiv is far superior to its commercial counterparts when it comes to quality. It may be behind in graphics, but most serious players aren't going to care about eye candy. When it comes to music, I think I prefer FreeCiv's silence over Civ3's awful music. The Civ3 sound effects are okay, but some of them are really annoying (some of the ships are too loud).

    Two bugs in Civ3 that come to mind immediately are the fact that civilizations on the world map can not be made to start in their historic locations, instead you have stupid stuff like Japan starting in Africa, and Russia starting in California. Just plain stupid. The other bug that has given me problems is corruption is laughably unrealistic in Civ3. A city just one screen away will be practically unusable because of corruption -- a city two screens away is totally useless, even under Democracy. How is this realistic, or fun? It isn't. It's just plain stupid. You can tell that Civ3 is another game that the manufacturer decided to sell while it was still a beta test, rather than a 1.0 release.

    So what is my point in all of this? My point is that instead of going to the store and spend $50 to beta test Civilization 3, instead we should help the community effort of FreeCiv. With Civilization 3 the entire user community is stuck with an unplayable game while we patiently wait for Firaxis to release a 1.0-quality version. But with FreeCiv we have the source code so we are not held at mercy to a company that couldn't care less. This is the strength of the GPL and why we should support FreeCiv.

  • Why freeciv? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Naum ( 166466 ) on Sunday November 25, 2001 @10:57AM (#2610109) Homepage Journal

    I recently bought Civ3 but I still find myself playing freeciv as much if not more. Civ3 is a "pretty" game as far as graphics go (with the animations and all, though I still have a hard time distiniguishing gold from barbarian villages and a few other nuances) and there's been some nice improvements strategy wise. OTOH, Civ3 has evolved into "Civ for the masses" and to me thus far, there seems to be less variation in strategy (Age of Empires style tech tree, corruption, unforgivable bugs like tech trade exploits, air superiority bugs, etc. ...).

    Anyway, here is a list of reasons why I'm still playing freeciv over civ3.

    • Performance - my box is well above the "recommended" civ3 requirements and it generally runs good UNTIL the map is loaded up with units. Then it is a dog and I really miss the rapid keystroke progression possible with freeciv. I can complete a game in freeciv in the fraction of a time of a similar civ3 game.
    • Superior user interface - I'll probaly get flamed here, but I prefer the freeciv interface. The civ3 GUI is "pretty", but civ style games are all about information. I hit F1 in freeciv, it pulls up a city report where I can easily examine and edit worklists, center on any city, sort by any possible report category and customize report, briefly scan for cities in state of disorder, instantly pop in the help browser informing me of what benefits of potential city improvments or what unit stats are for build consideration. Yes, it's sort of there in civ3 - but a lot of space is devoted to giving rows of bread icons instead of giving me a simple readout. And finding cities in civil disorder is a challenge - especially when I have a message log in freeciv, but that's all gone in civ3. And the civlopedia deal is nice in civ3, but it hits the CD drive and there is a second or two delay - not a lot but not the instant retrieval I'm accustomed to in freeciv. And not all of the unit commands are even labeled in freeciv or on the civlopedia. I guess it's a part of "safecopy" protection or something, but a lot of the unit commands are only available in the manual.
    • Infinite customization - 61 civs to play with (current count), and you can easily add any tileset, ruleset, techset desired. The graphics are not the greatest, but you can easily change them and there are a variety of tilesets available now - and you can go with the isometric view or the old-style civ1 flat view. Instead of selecting from a general parameter palette (60%, 70%, 80% ocean coverage), you can set whatever generator percentages you desire - sure, some of the settings might be really wacky, but hey, it makes for much more replay value. And if you don't like something that can't be changed or added on by creating a new unit, building, tech ruleset, then you have the source so you can dive in and change however the game works for yourself.
    • It runs on Linux - I usually am in Linux but reboot into Win-doze (like many others) for games - however, with freeciv available it allows me to play without rebooting. Freeciv is also available for a bunch of other platforms (Windows, BeOS, etc.), though I've not had experience with them.
    • Improved multiplayer - freeciv was setup to be multiplayer. The AI is good - the "easy" AI is probaly too good - will smack down the inexperienced player, and the "hard" AI probaly isn't enough of a challenge for the expert player. Only negative is that the AI doesn't do diplomacy so it's either conquest victory or race to space (if enough map space for the number of opponents).

    If I had the time, I would love to contribute to the freeciv project (I don't know current state of developers - I know that it is a dynamic deal, with new developers joining and old ones departing ), so I'm not sure if there is enough dedicated enthusiasm for development of a civ3 ruleset and/or revising the AI.

    • I'll probaly get flamed here, but I prefer the freeciv interface. The civ3 GUI is "pretty", but civ style games are all about information.

      The interface in Civ3 is notably bad, so I doubt you'll find many people disagreeing with you. Some of my favorite gripes:

      • Inability to use screen resolutions greater than (or less than) 1024x768, compounded by the availability of only two zoom levels.
      • General visual sloppiness, making it hard to distinguish units (e.g. workers/spearmen, riflemen/infantry) or determine where cultural-influence borders are on some terrain.
      • Lack of facilities to get information in the middle of a decision process, e.g. on an improvement/wonder/unit when choosing what to build from the city-management screen.
      • Production menus that include dozens of items in a single non-hierarchical list, which is bad enough but gets worse when obsolete units (e.g. archers in the modern age) are included.
      • Way too many poorly-documented command keys, especially for workers.
      • Generally, way too many holes in the documentation - formulae (e.g. corruption, resistance) not specified, unit capabilities (e.g. precision bombing) never mentioned, visual items (e.g. red/yellow/white for city growth) and preferences (e.g. "city governor is default") never mentioned.
      • A crappy AI, for which the game compensates by giving AI players huge production bonuses and you huge corruption.

      I still love the game, I'm still hooked, there are some things - e.g. culture/trade/diplomacy - that have improved, but...but, overall, I think Civ2 might still be a better game. I haven't tried FreeCiv but, to the extent that it seems to resemble Civ2 quite closely, it seems like it might well be a better game than Civ3 too.

      • Re:Why freeciv? (Score:2, Informative)

        by jsoderba ( 105512 )
        * Inability to use screen resolutions greater than (or less than) 1024x768, compounded by the availability of only two zoom levels.

        Read readme.txt:

        • Ini file tweaks: The first time Civilization III is run, it will create a file called 'civilization3.ini'. The following lines can be added and allow you to tweak the game:
          • KeepRes=1 - When set to 1, your desktop resolution will be what the game uses. 1024x768 screens will be centered, but you will be able to see much more of the map on one screen.
          • Video Mode=1792 / Video Mode=1600 / Video Mode=1280 / Video Mode=1152 - Force screen resolution to one of these settings.

        I agree with you on a lot of the other stuff. They should probably have waited until they had finished the game to print the manuals. But then, the Civ2 manual had errors too...

        It would be nice to be able to mark units obsolete, like in SMAC.

        There's supposed to be a patch before Christmas. Not that that's an excuse to ship a shoddy game.

        • Inability to use screen resolutions greater than (or less than) 1024x768...
          Video Mode=1792 / Video Mode=1600 / Video Mode=1280 / Video Mode=1152

          Cool, thanks!

          It would be nice to be able to mark units obsolete, like in SMAC.

          In a similar vein, it would be nice if they'd document the unit-upgrade paths and costs. Maybe they're mentioned somewhere, but not where they should be.

          There's supposed to be a patch before Christmas. Not that that's an excuse to ship a shoddy game.

          I agree. It's good to hear there'll be a patch soon, though, because there are many aspects of the interface that are just too bogus for a shipping product.

      • I have to admit, though I am playing it, Civ 3 is a disappointment. On many levels, it is inferior to SMAC or even Civ 2. I strongly get the impression they wanted to make it more mass-market friendly by simplifying everything... But it irks me they didn't allow the option of setting it to "Advanced" or something, for people who like more micromanagement.

        Another annoying thing about it is they way that SOMETIMES, the game pops up a window to tell you when a city completes construction, and sometimes it just starts the next item for you... This, combined with the fact that only one city can build a wonder at a time, has caused me to lose out on a wonder when I realized that a population 2 city has been trying to build it for 20 turns when I have plenty of larger cities available.
        • Another annoying thing about it is they way that SOMETIMES, the game pops up a window to tell you when a city completes construction, and sometimes it just starts the next item for you...
          This is not a bug. It's a feature. RTFM "City govenors". They sometimes have agendas of their own.
          This, combined with the fact that only one city can build a wonder at a time, has caused me to lose out on a wonder when I realized that a population 2 city has been trying to build it for 20 turns when I have plenty of larger cities available.
          Again RTFM. You can exclude a city from building wonders (great and small) on their own by adjusting the city-govenor settings.
          • See, I find this to be a game design problem. I've never read a game manual and don't plan on starting. You shouldn't have to read a manual to play a video game. Everything you need should be in the UI.

            Also, things like that should be able to be set in the main options screen. Upon first starting the game, I deselected the option "use default govenor", I assummed taht would let my micro-manage.
          • Ugh, just fired it up to check out the govenor settings... Badly implemented. Why, oh why did they choose to have so many things accessable only by right clicking cities (this includes the fact that you can't see what's in a city without right-clicking now)?

            To change these settings I have to go to each city and right click on it? By the end of a game, I might have over a hundred cities, I want my cities' vital info in the city screen. That way I can zip through them all in a quick fashion. At least give me the ability to skip to the next or previous city on any city-related screen.

            The old system, where you could get to pretty much every piece of data or control via the function keys was worlds above this one, IMHO. I like to fly through the game, and having access to EVERYTHING via a few keys is important to me.
        • "I have to admit, though I am playing it, Civ 3 is a disappointment. On many levels, it is inferior to SMAC or even Civ 2."

          Agreed. SMAC isn't perfect and did have some annoying bugs, but even in that state it was, IMHO, a much more polished product (interface, gameplay, and AI) than Civ III currently is.

          As many have already said, Civ III has the feel of a game that just isn't quite done.
    • * Superior user interface - I'll probaly get flamed here, but I prefer the freeciv interface.

      Hey, one of the local gaming mags [pelit.fi] reviewed Freeciv in May, and they too said that in some respects Freeciv's interface rocks when compared to Civ2 and CTP series.

      Why? Civ1-style top-down view is very clear and unambiguous way of displaying the map, compared to the isometric maps in Civ2. (They actually complained about the screenshots of some development version that had an isometric view...)

      And one of the biggest things I needed to get used to when I got Civ2 was the isometric map...

    • What can I say? Yes please!. I'm not a developer, but I did contribute screenshots [freeciv.org].

      The developers are fairly active on #freeciv on Openprojects [openprojects.net] so drop past. You can probably guess my nick. :-)

  • Freeciv is long-term fun... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DocSnyder ( 10755 ) on Sunday November 25, 2001 @11:16AM (#2610163)
    Freeciv was the project to teach me how free-software development works, especially in a quite complex piece of software.

    I remember playing Freeciv about three or four years ago: the client was based on libXaw, which is far from the GTK+ eye candy, and the AI was uncomparable to what it is today (yet still being improved). It even crashed and behaved obscurily. Since there wasn't any game of this kind running on GNU/Linux, I gave it a try. Nonetheless it was fun to play, and I was really happy when I won in a 100x60 map against three AI players for the first time, after playing for two weekends.

    Some time later, the client has been ported to GTK+, matching my desktop theme and looking like most other applications. The AI became better (and harder to beat, as it behaved differently after a major upgrade), worklists and some other useful stuff went in. Freeciv got the space race and finally the isometric tiles.

    The special fun on Freeciv is seeing it evolving over several years, getting a new version and see the differences, following the discussions on the developer mailinglist, even just "playing Lego" in single player mode with a 200x100 map is really fascinating.

    It is rather wrong comparing Freeciv to any closed-source Civilization-like game, as most of the fun with Freeciv isn't available on proprietary games. If all you want is eye-candy, go with one of the eat-or-die Civ* variants. If you want to be in between the "making of" a great, complex and fascinating game, you're welcome to give it a try. :-)

  • Isn't it amazing that so many programmers gladly give away their hard work in free software, while so few artists, musicians, and writers do? Like the article says, it's a shame that there aren't any (or enough) contributers in areas such as sound. (The programming is there--it's the actual sounds that are missing.)

    • You might be interested in the OpenMusic project [linuxtag.org] - it's a project of the LinuxTag [linuxtag.org] and already has a few artists who contributed free music.
    • It's probably because, generally speaking, programmers can make a more than adequate income at their 'day job', while artists and musicians are, well, starving.

      After all, 'free time' is basically how all the comforts of life came about in the first place! :)

    • Where do we go to help?

      I am a musician with entirely too many analog synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, etc., however my coding skills cover HTML and a little JavaScript. I would be very interested in creating sound effects and music for open source games and software, but I don't know where to go in order to offer my services. SourceForge seems to almost never mention musicians or audio techs.

      In any case, I would be very interested in helping out, if someone could point me in the right direction for where to go or whom to talk to...

      • Talk to the project leaders even if the project's page doesn't mention musicians or audio techs.

      • Re:Just an observation. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Hobbex ( 41473 )

        Mailing lists. Almost all free software projects revolve around their mailing lists, just join, lurk for a while (listen to the tone, learn the basics) and then start producing sounds.

        A thing to consider is that free software projects do not usually have any real management, and posts like "I am really good, how do I join?" or other attempts to offer your services will often be ignored or given a very lukewarm response. In a free software project you need to be self managed, and the only thing that will buy you status in the project is work. So simply start off by finding a set of sounds that are not very good, make new ones, put them on the web, and post about it to the mailing list. If people see that you are actually producing results on your own, you will get accepted very fast.
      • http://www.freeciv.org/mailinglists.html [freeciv.org]

        Just do it... I can promise you that someone will reply... ;)

        /Daniel

    • This most likely happens for a couple of reasons. The first being that joining a project instead of starting your own usually requires a strong purpose. Imagine a world of projects where an entire game idea was set in stone, and three artists and a sound guy collaborated and created everything for a game but the code.

      So you have masses of incomplete game projects out there in this scenario (much like real life). It's one thing to come up with an idea to scratch an itch. It's another to join a project when your authority status is 'do what other people say' and work your ass off. Remember, this is a game project and a lot of the creativity is already thought out and completed before you come on board.

      The second reason is that Free software doesn't tend to reach an operating system for artists. Get those games ported, and make it super easy to share resources with the developer, and see them in the game. I'm more than fairly convinced artists are out there -- we have four non programmers working at Threewave including one guy who pumps out images all day long. Has any Free software game/multimedia tool team campaigned for artists? As in, really made an effort?

    • Isn't it amazing that so many programmers gladly give away their hard work in free software, while so few artists, musicians, and writers do?

      I think there is a different problem here. I don't think that all artists and musicians are against doing some work for free. Rather, I think that the open-source community doesn't contain that many artists, musicians, and writers. How many artists, musicians, and writers do you know who use Linux? That's what I thought. There are tons of guys out there who would be willing to do this stuff, I'd be willing to bet. However, either they aren't involved with open source, or they don't know how to contribute. There isn't much precedent for artists or musicians contributing to open source projects. It needs to be made easier for non-coders to get involved with open-source projects. Documentation, artwork, sounds, and many other things often lacking in OS software can be done by non-coders (preferably, in fact :-). But there just isn't much of a way for these people to contribute in many cases, and Linux still isn't mainstream enough for non-coders to be using it much.

  • This is not flamebait (Score:5, Troll)

    by chazzf ( 188092 ) <cfulton AT deepthought DOT org> on Sunday November 25, 2001 @11:56AM (#2610284) Homepage Journal
    At the risk of losing any karma that I might have, let me make a few points here:

    Freeciv is a very nice game, and very fun to play. However, all things considered, it is nothing more than a souped-up version of Civilization II-minus the graphics, sound, and impressive documentation. Building queues and simultaneous turns are great, but really don't represent evolution.

    As far as the eye-candy goes, I consider it to be PART of the gameplay experience. I have played the Heroes of Might and Magic series for a long time not just because the gameplay is good but because the game is visually pleasing.

    Finally, I have to ask why the Linux/GNU/FreeBSD/Open Source/Free Software community is so obsessed with trumping the "closed" community by producing open source replicas of hard work. Don't you think that Sid Meier, Brian Reynolds, or Jeff Briggs are geeks, hobbyists, innovaters. They created this game. You've reverse-engineered. The open community ought to dedicate itself to creating something original, something that it can call its own.

    Sensible replies please, no flames.
    • This complaint is valid not just for FreeCiv, but most Open Source software in general. For all the snickering the OSS crowd does when Microsoft talks about innovation, what exactly has Open Source done in the past 10 years or so that is really original?

      I really do support the concepts of OSS in theory, but over the years I've come to see that the vast majority of Open Source projects are poorly implemented, perpetually three-steps-behind, clones of closed source projects.
      • Personally I think innovation comes in small steps. Examples:

        I can disallow all javascript popups in my web-browser(Konqueror) with a single checkbox, or I can have it ask me before doing so. This is innovative to me because it gives power to me as a user and it stops me from having to chase never-ending popup boxes when surfing. A small detail but one that makes a huge amount of difference in the enjoyment of my computer.

        I can browse the MP3 files on my Creative Jukebox using my filemanager (once again, Konqueror) without having to deal with Creative's software interface. This is innovative to me because it's one less interface I have to learn.

        Furthermore, I think your post really isn't all that innovative. You bring a tired old argument against open source without adding anthing more to it in the way of evidence or wit.

        Score : -1 Non-innovative.

      • lyx (Score:2)

        by hawk ( 1151 )
        >what exactly has Open Source done in
        >the past 10 years or so that is really original?


        LyX. It's only relationship to anything else is its early role as a latex front end.


        It's different enough from everything else that it *caused* my switch to full time unix.


        hawk

    • What is so original about the civ games? I don't believe there was any need to 'reverse engineer' civ. It actaully builds on Sid Meier's game by allowing for online gaming (why oh why doesn't civ3 have that option?) and has many other improvements over the gameplay of Sid's creations.

      I don't beleive there are any original ideas (in regards to gaming) left, just original ways of presenting those ideas.

      • The open community ought to dedicate itself to creating something original,

      Look over at sourceforge and you'll find pots of games. Most of them die before they flower. I'd suggest it's because the developers would rather work on a clone of something that they already know that they'll like. Sad, but perhaps if that's what open source is good at, maybe that's what we "should" keep doing rather than creating a lot of still born half implemented ideas.

      On the other hand... have a look at Netrek [netrek.org]. That borrowed the names and some gfx/sfx from Star Trek, but the idea and implementation was truly original. In fact, commercial games can learn a lot from looking at the Netrek client/server model, and a good game of Netrek is still more fun than a barrel full of monkeys.

    • Building queues and simultaneous turns are great, but really don't represent evolution.

      AFAIK, both these features were in the "Gold" edition of Civ 2, anyway. At least, I KNOW that simultaneous turns were. And Queues were available in SMAC, weren't they?

      Not that FreeCiv isn't a cool piece of software- it is, for sure.
    • IIRC Civilisation was a board game LONG LONG before it got converted to a computer game.

      Therefore the use of this is an example of the innovation in commercial software development is a poor choice.

      Not that I disagree with the posters sentiments, I'm just being pedantic...

      • IIRC Civilisation was a board game LONG LONG before it got converted to a computer game.



        Civ the board game and Civ the computer game share the name Civilization. That's it: literally every other thing is different. (Well, they both have a tech tree I suppose, although they're handled very differently.) For example, one of the single biggest management tasks in AH-Civ is making sure you don't tax too much since otherwise you won't get any unit tokens. Not exactly the same as SM-Civ.

        Both are awesome games: a 7 player game of real-world Civ is one of the true greats of board gaming, but they couldn't be less alike if they tried.

    • Finally, I have to ask why the Linux/GNU/FreeBSD/Open Source/Free Software community is so obsessed with trumping the "closed" community by producing open source replicas of hard work?

      One issue is immortality. There are a number of fun games from the past that are very hard to obtain now, simply because it is no longer profitable for the companies to provide it or they're out of business. Take X-COM Apocalypse (the first game I thought of), for example. The developer's page is now a porn site, the publisher has no records for it, and I can't find a place to buy it (maybe ebay would work.) But essentially, it no longer exists. Open source games tend to live forever if they reach a certain level of quality.

      The second is that it becomes the basis for new and better versions, including ones with better graphics. Perhaps one could create a 3-D model rather than using 2-D tiles, and have much better zooming ability. I think it would be an interesting experiment, and "innovative."

  • Why isn't there... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Lurkingrue ( 521019 )
    A thought keeps occurring to me whenever I see anything about FreeCiv -- why on EARTH hasn't someone set it up for Mac OS X installation?

    Admittedly, I'm a medical-geek, and my hobby/interests lie in history and not coding, so I could very easily be overlooking something that most /.'ers would see as an obvious impediment...

    ...but still -- I was under the distinct impression that OS X/Darwin was very BSD-ish, and that a package allowing easy Mac installation should be easy...Not trivial, but certainly more do-able than the Windows port.

    So, I ask again, is there a good reason why I can't install this on my OS X machine?

  • Hey quote whore, how's the whoring? (Score:4, Funny)

    by jorbettis ( 113413 ) on Sunday November 25, 2001 @12:38PM (#2610418) Homepage
    As is often true on O'Reillynet, the article's well-thought and interesting reading.

    I don't know what's worse, that Hemos is quote whoring* for O'Reilly now, or that he's so bad at it. I mean, god damn, show some tact man! It's like when Jon Katz tried to claim that an Afgani emaied him from a war zone, everyone knew he was full of it from a mile away. If you're going to be so obvious about blasting away your journalistic integrity (does slashdot have any left?), you might as well get a job reviewing movies for the LA times or something.

    *For those who don't know (and will probably moderate me down for using a 'naughty word') a "quote whore" is somone in some imagined place of authority on a subject who is paid by a cooporate entity to say good things about it. Like a film critic being paid off by a movie studio.

  • It was great day when FreeCiv was ported to Darwin/Mac OS X. I love FreeCiv; its eye candy lite, solid and playable. The music in Civ III is a Kenny G Greatest Hits parade. I'm sure I'll play Civ III when it comes to the Mac in January but I wont be in a rush to do so.

  • Freeciv is much worse in single player (Score:4, Informative)

    by Jacek Poplawski ( 223457 ) on Sunday November 25, 2001 @02:12PM (#2610666)
    It's hard to say, but Freeciv is much worse than any Civilization, when you play in single player mode. Simple reason - there is no diplomacy with AI. So it's war only game. When you play Civilization3 you survive for a long time without single fight. In Freeciv you must fight, you can't trade, you can't share science, you can't have peace, you can only destroy, steal and conquer.

    Of course Freeciv is very nice when playing in the Net. Old versions had big problems with lags (one lagged player could destroy whole game!). When you are in multiplayer for a first time - you see that you just can't play - it's completly different game than with AI. And that is bad thing.
    • Finally

      I've just read every +2 post there is (8:15AM GMT 26/11), only one mentioned diplomacy, and that was in passing.

      It is impossible to play a game of freeciv without diplomacy. I dont care if its as complex as civ 3's, or as rudimentry as the originals, if I cant make peace with my neighbour its not civilization, as my empire is not civilized. Even the mongols and huns didnt attack some empires, partly for their own survival. In freeciv you cant, you have no choice, its basicly a bloodlust.

      I've played games of civ where I've never built an attacking unit until I roll out 30+ armors in one go, use my rail network to get them to the enemy lines, and take over the empire in an extremely speedy way (10 turns later and I've conquered almost africa and europe from aisa.

      Without diplomacy, freeciv is only a curiosity.
      • It is impossible to play a game of freeciv without diplomacy.
        I hope you understand, that there is no diplomacy only when you are playing with AI. There is very good in multiplayer mode. When I first time saw Civ3 - my first though was "hey! they stolen diplomacy idea from Freeciv!".
      • Well, the problem is with AI. Not, it doesn't perform very bad, it is quite reasonable and even too difficult for many beginners, even when it lacks features like diplomacy. The problem is that it is coded terribly. The code is covered by the mist and fear, marked as 'hic sunt liones' and things like 'int a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i;' aren't very rare, as opposite to blank lines and spaces, not even mentioning any explaining comments. The AI was generally developed by one man, who disappeared magically around 1998, and we are still trying to clean it up in order to be able to make any changes into it. Diplomacy support is really high in the TODO after the major cleanup then, but still someone has to do the dirty work before... It looks we are speeding that up now and hopefully we will be able to push that forward soon. Let's hope... :)
  • One of the things I find most interesting about technology is that it's pushed forward by the strangest things-- here's an open source program, the prime example of open source theory, and it's pushed forward why?

    Because it's a game. "It's geeky."

    Funny.

  • What I like most about Freeciv... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mfarah ( 231411 ) <miguel@NOspaM.farah.cl> on Sunday November 25, 2001 @06:56PM (#2611417) Homepage
    ... is that is open source.

    What really annoyed me about Civ/Civ II was the fact that the nations's cities lists were SMALL (20 names or less) - considering that I like to build large empires (and that I have the nasty habit of renamig the cities I conquer), it was really annoying to have to think of a new name each time. Even nations (my favorite being Spain) with lots of cities available in any decent map were prone to this problem.

    In Freeciv, nation rulesets are as open as the source code. So I made LARGE lists of cities for several of my favorite nations (the spanish ruleset's list has 200 entries, thanks to several days worth of work), and now I play happily.

    • Just to note, both games held their city lists in a completely editable file. Want to add "Anon Town"? Go right ahead! Anything was possible with them, and the games didn't mind the larger file sizes.

      • Just to note, both games held their city lists in a completely editable file. Want to add "Anon Town"? Go right ahead! Anything was possible with them, and the games didn't mind the larger file sizes.

        What I forgot to say is that after I made those city lists, I submitted them to the freeciv-data mailing list, where they were accepted and incorporated into the Freeciv package: now everyone can benefit from my effort!
  • First of all, kudos to all who participated in FreeCiv. Nice stuff :)

    My question is: how does FreeCiv stand on legal grounds? I mean, it's
    basically a reimplementation of an existing game (whose owner is Hasbro, at
    the moment, if I follow company acquisitions correctly).

    I ask this, because some years ago I started implementing
    Advanced Civilization (originally a tabletop game by Avalon Hill, now bought
    by Hasbro). The server part is 90% finished, and the GUI client could be
    ready in 2-3 month if I put some effort in it. Unfortunately I don't have
    much time to work on it nowadays, but I'm reluctant to make it available to the
    public so that someone could finish it up, 'cos I'm afraid that simply making
    it available "free" won't save my hide if Hasbro's lawyers wanted to come
    after me.

    I tried contacting Hasbro on this matter, but I only got back some sales
    brochures.

    Could someone with some experience or legal background enlighten me on this
    matter?

    cheers,
    mitch
    • The answer is that nobody knows.
      Hasbro certainly doesn't seem to care.
      Freeciv doesn't actually compete with any of the commercial Civs, which have thousands of times as many players.

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