3D Freeciv-Web (Beta) Released (freeciv.org) 68
It's the open source web version of the classic Linux strategy game, and now Slashdot reader Andreas(R) -- one of its developers -- has an announcement.
Now the developers are working on bringing the game to the modern era with 3D WebGL graphics [and] a beta of the 3D WebGL version of Freeciv has been released today. The game will work on any device with a browser with HTML5 and WebGL support, and three gigabytes of RAM... It's a volunteer community development project and anyone is welcome to contribute to the project. Have fun and remember to sleep!
The developers of Freeciv-web are now also working on a VR version using Google Cardboard, according to the site, while the original Freeciv itself has still been maintained for over 20 years -- and apparently even has its own dedicated port number.
The developers of Freeciv-web are now also working on a VR version using Google Cardboard, according to the site, while the original Freeciv itself has still been maintained for over 20 years -- and apparently even has its own dedicated port number.
do you really need VR support? (Score:4, Interesting)
its a empire building game, even the use of 3d is on the unnecessary side
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I did a 3D version of Nethack for my senior design project. The characters were rendered at different angles, so you got depth perception with the goggles. I added extra emphasis to the pipes so you knew how tall the walls were!
FreeCiv needs to catch up (Score:5, Interesting)
I quite agree. The original Freeciv game is at par w/ Civ 3: we are now at Civ 6. While Freeciv has some great advantages over mainstream Civ games - like 500+ 'nations', they could use a few of the other advances that have been added to subsequent versions, like culture, religion and so on. It would even be nice if they had things like cultural victories, diplomatic victories, religious victories and so on, like in Civ 6.
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I quite agree. The original Freeciv game is at par w/ Civ 3: we are now at Civ 6.
In some ways that might not be a bad thing. I haven't tried Civ6 yet, I'm waiting for the inevitable gold version at 1/4 the cost and loaded with all the expansions.
Some of the "middle civs" maybe 2, but definitely 3, and 4, were amongst the best for playability and enjoyment. 5 was visually stunning, and no counter that UI has improved over time; but I feel playability peaked at 3, or 4 (with all expansions). 5 wasn't even playable until the 2nd expansion came out. It was a hideous joke at launch.
I hav
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I quite agree. The first time I played Civ V, it was miserable. Actually, I just wanted to get G&K, but it was unplayable w/o the vanilla edition, so I bought that as well. That particular one was really lame.
However, since then, there have been plenty of enhancements to it which make it currently better than either 4 or 6. Only thing I wish - that 5 & 6 had a scenario editor as well. Not b'cos I wanna cheat (even though I can do that), but to set up certain historical scenarios and play from
religion in civ (Score:2)
In Civ 4, they introduced concepts like religion and culture, and in Civ 6, they introduced the concept of a religious victory. In Civ 5, a religious victory mod exists where if 65% of all cities worldwide (depending on the level you are playing) convert to a religion, the owner of that religion gets a religious victory. In Civ 6, it's one of 5 regular victory modes, which can be attained if you've converted all your enemy cities to your religion, making them unable to even resurrect their own religion, l
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its a empire building game, even the use of 3d is on the unnecessary side
They have a 2D version.
Re:3 GB of RAM?! Does it work in FF? (Score:4, Informative)
The game works nicely in Firefox and any other modern browser. It requires that your computer or mobile device has at least 3 gigabytes of memory, and will not work so well if you have less.
Re: 3 GB of RAM?! Does it work in FF? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why does it require so much memory? Is it because JavaScript is such an awful and inefficient language? It makes me laugh when JavaScript clones of old DOS games need multiple gigabytes of memory, while the original DOS games ran fine with only 1 or maybe 2 MB!
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I have AAA games on my hard drive that will run on a system with 3 GB of RAM and don't look like games from the early 1990s.
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Look at the screenshot in the announcement article. [freeciv.org]
Really, I insist that you take a look.
The graphics quality is rudimentary.
Somebody else described it as looking like "from the early 1990s". At first I thought that was an exaggeration, but it isn't. To be blunt, it looks worse than games from that time period.
I don't see how anyone can justify 3D graphics of such a low quality requiring 3 GB or more of RAM! It's unjustifiable, as far as I'm concerned.
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It's graphics quality is better than Minecraft and Tetris.
It's a tile based game so being able to tell one square from another is the aim of the graphics, just as with Minecraft and Tetris you want to distinguish blocks.
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Memory used in MB:
Firefox 662
Chrome 780
Edge 1012
IE 1056
So for me, Firefox is actually using the least memory, I suggest you test with the browsers available to you, with a selection of tabs that reflects your usual usage.
I did find that over time as I opened new tab
Feedback is welcome! (Score:5, Informative)
I'm one of the developers of Freeciv-web. Please post your questions and feedback here or on the Github issue tracker. This is a beta-version, so there are many things to improve in the game. If you are a good developer or 3D artist perhaps you would be interested in helping improve the game also. Creating an open source game like this can be a lot of fun!
Re:React? Angular? NoSQL? (Score:5, Informative)
The client is using JavaScript, jQuery, jQuery UI and the Three.js 3d engine. The server is running a Java web application on Tomcat, the Freeciv server is implemented in C and there are processes which use Python.
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Any particular reason you can't manage to make it more memory efficient? I've done quite a bit of WebGL work, with both three.js and our own 3d libraries. While three.js isn't very efficient (compared to less general solutions) I can't imagine how poor the rest of the implementation must be to require 3 gigs of ram!
Is it something else, like tooling? Are your models just unnecessarily complex? Judging from the screenshots, that couldn't possibly be the case.
Something, I don't know what, has gone horrib
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The game itself uses about 800 MB of RAM on a typical map. On mobile devices with just 2GB of RAM the game will crash. 3 GB of total RAM always works without any problems. Most gaming devices have more than 3 GB of RAM these days anyway.
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Have you done any memory usage profiling to find out why it needs 3 GB of RAM?
If you haven't, you really should! Something sounds very wrong for a relatively simple game with simple 3D graphics to be using so much memory.
If you have, then you should be able to explain to us exactly why it uses so much memory. You should be able to give us details about the data being stored, for example, and any data structures being used.
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I put money on overhead from those frameworks.
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Sounds like a nice project for you.
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Sounds like a nice project for you.
While open source is all about scratching your own itch, I'm still very surprised the project has reached this state with regards to memory usage. Did not one of the developers think to profile memory usage and see what the fuck is going on?
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Not phones
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deeply troubling? Who the fuck are you. Its a free game. Get over yourself already.
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I actually wanted to play Free-Civ last summer. However, the program is randomly scattered over a half dozen sites. Can you put it in one place where a person can just download and install it?
I finally just gave up on it.
I am using OSx if that matters.
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Are you embarrassed to be associated with a product that looks like this [freeciv.org]?
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I dunno, I kind of dig the retro look. Reminds me of Win95 games. Not sure what's up with the ram usage though.
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I'm one of the developers of Freeciv-web. Please post your questions and feedback here or on the Github issue tracker. This is a beta-version, so there are many things to improve in the game. If you are a good developer or 3D artist perhaps you would be interested in helping improve the game also. Creating an open source game like this can be a lot of fun!
Just out of curiousity - are you also associated w/ the main FreeCiv project? How similar/different is FreeCiv-web from FreeCiv, other than being run from a browser?
I am not a developer, but FWIW, there is one suggestion I have about the game. The current FreeCiv game (2.5.5) is at par w/ Civ 3. Can you introduce things like diplomatic, cultural and religious victories as options to the game? In short, pick some of the more interesting aspects of Civ 4-6, and introduce them here. One major advantage
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I like the game, but wish to have more ways to win.
I wish the research chart and battle units can be further extend (maybe into the future with different directions?).
Anyway, those are content suggestion, rather than technical suggestion, maybe not as useful.
hey there (Score:1)
IE 6 support? (Score:3)
This is your boss. Important clients use IE 6. Can we get it to work in IE 6 before the end of today?
Thanks
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Take the C code of the original freeciv and port it to activex.. haha
AI (Score:4, Interesting)
Everyone spends their time making a prettier game, whereas most of the players just want an AI that doesn't suck. I know, graphics are easy. The results are obvious. No one wants to spend time doing something hard that can't even be seen on the surface.
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Dunning-Kruger in full effect.
Good graphics are not easy. The results are not always obvious (e.g., shaders on TF2 or Civ6 are believed to be simplified but are rather complex in order to do a lot of trickery with the environment such as FOW representation and reveals)
And if you believe no one spends time on AI, go to http://mobygames.com and look up your favorite AAA title. For most, if not all games that have a 70 or higher on Metacritic and require a computer to make decisions, there is at least one, i
Why 3D? (Score:2)
If the game still looked anything like what I played as a kid in the 90's it certainly needed a face lift but what were they doing going 3D? The screenshots dont look good at all, wouldnt some really nice pixel art have looked a ton better and been about the same amount of work to make?
2D maps are fine (Score:2)
I just don't get the desire for 3D interfaces for turn based strategy games like this. The move from text-based interfaces (Empire, 1970's) to 2D GUIs (XConq 1980's, Civilization, 1990's) was reasonable and improved the game experience. But I find the 3D interfaces that Firaxis introduced in the 2000's really made things worse.
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I'm still playing Civ 2 on XP in vmware because it has by far the best interface of any game of its type, worlds ahead of freeciv in terms of actual usability. (Being able to multiple-select and do different things in freeciv is very cool, mind you.) I can play civ so much faster.
FreeCiv vs Civ (Score:2)
I have yet to digest Civ 6, since there are unreasonable restrictions on what we can do. In Civ 4, we had a scenario editor where we could edit anything - names of cities, civilizations, rulers - pretty much create a board w/ a set group of players, cities, religions, city buildings, et al. In Civ 5, the editor was gone, but there have been a lot of mods that have made it almost as flexible, while in the meantime associating each nation w/ certain attributes, like religion (e.g. if Islam hasn't been in