Freeciv-1.13.0 Stable

Martin Willemoes Hansen writes "Freeciv-1.13.0 has been released upon the world! There has been almost a whole year of dedicated hacking. A big thanks goes to the people, who made it all come true. Remember to read about the exciting news and hurry up and get it here."

Comments

Re:huh?

[bcrowell]

and civII is like, what? 5$ to buy? find some old dos disks and play the original.
Mmm...so you're assuming that everybody has a Windows machine?

seems like an awful waste of man hours
For a long time my wife and I had an old intel box that we kept around for the sole purpose of playing the original Civ. Now that's a waste of man-hours: maintaining that machine only for that purpose.

why is this important? i really want to know. civII came out in 1997 or so, right?
It came out in 1997, and what's your point? Do you think that before 1997, all was void? Civ was a great game. IMHO, the later versions of Civ weren't even as much fun to play. Y' know, chess was invented hundreds of years ago, but people haven't stopped playing it.

A couple of lessons from the open-source movement:

• When people spend their time writing open-source code, I guarantee you that at least 50% of all dentists surveyed will consider that project a waste of time. The other 50% will think it's cool and useful. Luckily it's not based on voting or popularity. The beauty of open source is that developers do what they think is fun and cool.
• Bits don't rust. MS would like you to believe that if you keep on using the same old software for year after year, the consequences will be dire. Not true! A sufficiently well-desigend piece of software deserves to live forever. Now pardon my while I go back to working on the book I wrote using LaTeX.

Tips for solo play....

[(H)elix1]

A few tips if you want to play on your own...

Start the server, start the client, click join on the client.

from the server console,

)create youraiplayernamehere -- adds easy ai player
)set endyear yyyy - sets the year the game will end. Worth bumping this up the first few times you play.
)start

Re:Tips for solo play....

[smallstepforman]

Are moderators on crack? This is rated +5 informative? Holy smoke!!

Maybe I should have a go.

To open can, simply lift the ring and pull towards you. Drink.

Mirrors

[phyberop]

Just a couple of mirrors from the MIRRORS file on the FTP.

ftp.netc.pt/pub/freeciv/
ftp.freeciv.org, webaccess also provided http://www.freeciv.de
ftp://ftp.doc.cs.univ-paris8.fr/mirrors/ftp.freeci v.org/

Of course it runs on FreeBSD

[Arker]

Of course. Both with and without GTK+. Sites slashdotted but the download page in googles cache will give you the pointers...

You can ALL participate in Freeciv development

[mfarah]

I first met Freeciv back in version 1.11.4. I loved for its superior user interface, and wasn't really bothered by the inferior (compared to Civ II) graphics.

But the one thing that REALLY annoyed me about Civ 1/2 was the SHORT city lists for each nation. What did I do? I took the time to do a really long list of cities for my favorite nation (you guess which one it was) and submitted it. Now my 200-names list is PART of the game. I extended/made better some other nation's city lists, and now they're part of the game. Then I created a map of my favorite country in the world, and was incorporated, too.

I can proudly say that even though I have NEVER touched one line of Freeciv source code, I can call myself a developer of the game. And I love it.

Re:You can ALL participate in Freeciv development

[anshil]

Sorry, you are not a developer. You are contributor.

No, he is a "developer". Who says that developing has something to do with code. You can also "develop" graphics, the same way as you "write" source code.

Especially IMHO the free software community should treat contributing artist with great respect, since very often this is a weak point in free games, as artists and programmers seldom meet naturally in a non commercial environment.

To underline the importance of the artistic elements in a game most gaming software industrie calculate development costs for a game with 50 / 50 for source code progamming, and the artistic resources like graphics, music, and so on.

Before you get the wrong intention, I'm a programmer myself not an artist, but I highly respect and appreciate them, and if they want it we should them call developers too. remember? 50/50 !

Re:Importance of graphics to me

[dspeyer]

Freeciv is paying more attention to graphics now. The new version ships with a new tileset, and two others are available for download (not counting the old one). Some code has been altered as well (e.g. oil wells now look different from coal mines, fortresses have four sides). I intend to keep working on this, so detailed criticism is appreciated.

I've also written a patch (not yet included, but probably soon, now that feature-freeze is over) that breaks up some of the map's monotony, You can see a screenshot here. (BTW: if this screenshot seems too busy, remember that there are more specials here than in a default game, and that some the pure eye-candy disappears when tile is built upon.)

That's not really true...

[Arker]

Freeciv is a fantastic port of civ2[...]

No, it's not a port of civ2. It's a very different game really, inspired by civ2, but it's very different. It's a much better game for network play, really optimised for that, and (last I checked at least) not really built for solo play at all. It's more like Civ3s more social cousin...

Re:I don't get this

[Daniel]

But that's the whole fun about playing against the Great Wall.. Onward to metallurgy! >=)

Daniel

Short summary of changes

[perrin]

Here is a summary of the changes, pluss a request:

NEW FEATURES
- You can now automate workers and specialists in cities
- We have sound support and ship a new, improved insometric tileset
- A new and much improved city dialog in the GTK client
- Windows and GTK 2.0 versions of the client
- Lots of other changes, see the NEWS file for more

RULE CHANGES
- Leftover research bulbs will carry over to next advance
- Trade routes are more effective
- You can build city walls even though you have Great Wall wonder
- Unit food cost under Communism has been reduced to 1
- If you lose your palace, you get a new for free in random city
- Units attacking ships in cities double their firepower, while defenders get only 1 firepower.
- Helicopters defending against air units get 50% penalty, and have their firepower reduced to 1 against fighter units.
- Stealth fighters and bombers are partially invisible like subs, and stealth bombers have increased attack strength from 14 to 18

A REQUEST
We are in great need of more sound effects and better graphics. If you have some talent in either direction, please considering giving us a hand.