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But otherwise does this mean my game console could be infected by Word macro viruses?

Maybe I've been playing Civilization too much, but it seems like they're building an obsolete wonder and won't get any effect from the expense. On the other hand, maybe this is just a tech advance intended to allow them to build more formidable units. It would be easy to criticize them for investing their research efforts in this direction, but I can't say that I could make a better choice. I never know what to do once the other civilizations have blown past me either. What else could they work on? It would take them 900 work units just to get Alphabet at this point, wouldn't it?

There is allready a GPL civilization gane (freeciv) it has civ I and civ II modes. It is also fully network multiplayer enabled along with various other enhancments (build qeues in the next version to be released ~15 feb!) I wouldn't play civ 2 even if it were ported :)

I've been playing freeciv a lot lately, and am very happy with it. I can do without the bells & whistles -- I'm in it for the sim. The freeciv team has done a wonderful job.

Did you try Freeciv ?


I think it beats all other civ-likes hand-downs :

- it's free
- it has many improvements over civ and civ2

Definitely agreed. Linux (or rather, the open source development model in general), can have a profound and beneficial effect on the quality and innovativeness of games. Games on Linux are great and welcome, but if we're still not able to mold and shape them into new forms, we're losing out on a lot of potential.

So in addition to supporting GUI development, web development, driver development, et al., don't forget about FreeCiv, WorldForge, CrystalSpace, and the like. :-)

[OFF-TOPIC]

This is excellent news.

However, I'm not entirely happy with the assertion that Lokisoft makes 'most of the uber-cool games' for Linux! This article was about how cool it is that Creative are open-sourcing their SBLive drivers. And it is very cool. So remember, that Loki don't make open source games.

Now, I do of course understand why they don't. And I do think Loki is a very exciting company, and they're doing exciting things for Linux, and I'm sure it won't be all that long before we see some more open source offerings from Loki.

But, I'd just like to remind people that there are some excellent open source games for Linux. My personal fave has to be FreeCiv - http://www.freeciv.org/ - and pingus will be excellent when it goes 1.0 - http://pingus.seul.org/

For many other superb linux games, many of them open source, pop over to http://happypenguin.org/

Jules

Wow, you guys really did some cool work in only 48 hours. Could I ask for another 48 hours with the source code of Freeciv?

I'm drooling when I'm thinking what such a talented bunch of coders could do to my favourite game. :-)

Wow, you guys really did some cool work in only 48 hours. Could I ask for another 48 hours with the source code of Freeciv?

I'm drooling when I'm thinking what such a talented bunch of coders could do to my favourite game. :-)

Make your contribution to Civilization! No, not all civilization, but rather you have the chance to take part in our Freeciv Hack 2000 contest to improve Freeciv. Recent improvements include more races and nations, city build lists, and the addition of more CivII rules (paratroopers, more terrain specials). Other improvements such as GUILE scripting, improved AI, hex maps, and stacked combat are being developed. (Read our mailing list archives for more info.)

What is Freeciv Hack 2000? It's a special contest in cooperation with an international term of developers, where you can show off your Linux (and BSD, commercial Unix, BeOS, Java, even Windows) hacking skills to everybody...and win prizes to boot! First prize is the ego gratification of getting your name in the PEOPLE file.

Here's how it works: download the source from ftp.freeciv.org and get to hacking. Everybody with a C compiler will be chosen. If you're chosen, you can show up to our hackfest, which will conveniently be held on your own computer!

Any and all changes and improvements worthy of improving Freeciv (and, by extension, civilization as a whole) will be included in the CVS snapshots and new public releases starting with 1.8.2. So what are you waiting on? Download the source and get hacking!

JMC

Make your contribution to Civilization! No, not all civilization, but rather you have the chance to take part in our Freeciv Hack 2000 contest to improve Freeciv. Recent improvements include more races and nations, city build lists, and the addition of more CivII rules (paratroopers, more terrain specials). Other improvements such as GUILE scripting, improved AI, hex maps, and stacked combat are being developed. (Read our mailing list archives for more info.)

What is Freeciv Hack 2000? It's a special contest in cooperation with an international term of developers, where you can show off your Linux (and BSD, commercial Unix, BeOS, Java, even Windows) hacking skills to everybody...and win prizes to boot! First prize is the ego gratification of getting your name in the PEOPLE file.

Here's how it works: download the source from ftp.freeciv.org and get to hacking. Everybody with a C compiler will be chosen. If you're chosen, you can show up to our hackfest, which will conveniently be held on your own computer!

Any and all changes and improvements worthy of improving Freeciv (and, by extension, civilization as a whole) will be included in the CVS snapshots and new public releases starting with 1.8.2. So what are you waiting on? Download the source and get hacking!

JMC

From what I hear, CTP is a great game. Good work, lads.

However, if you care about free software (and, if you're reading slashdot, I imagine there's a chance you do) why not think about open source alternatives?

Freeciv. OK, it's probably not as good as CTP. It's at least as good as CivII, and it has net play built in.

But more to the point - if it's not as good as CTP, then help us make it so! Contribute ideas, or better still, contribute graphics and code. FreeCiv has a modular 'ruleset' based model, so total conversions are possible with less code changing. (OK, not _no_ code changing, some things are hardwired).

Open source gaming is only just taking off - but games developed cooperatively by the community, with all those people thinking of ideas, have the potential to be out of this world..

Jules

I'm too busy beta-ing Freeciv 1.8.0. :-)

Daniel

www.freeciv.org

Freeciv, as you might expect, is a GPL Civilization clone. It's quite good, in both multiplayer and single player modes. You really don't have an excuse for booting Windows to play Civ any more, unless you really like those annoying little songs that get played over and over...
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The Linux Game Tome