Call to Power 2 To Get Open Sourced?

An anonymous reader writes "Winnie Lee (st_swithin), who did the GUI programming for CTP2, has announced at Apolyton Civilization Site that Call to Power 2 should become available as open source in the near future. She says the news comes 'straight from the horse's mouth', as well as the lead, network, and gamestate programmers. This ends a month-long hunt and negotiation for the code with Activision." This looks close to a done deal, and is excellent news for strategy gamers and fans of this Civilization-related title if everything comes through.

Comments

Oh great, just what my addiction needs

[wowbagger]

I've started playing CivCTP once again, and had that truly amazing experience of:

17:00 - I'll just play a quick little bit here while I wait for dinner to cook....
19:00 - What's that smell - oh wait, I just got that War Walker build, MUHAHAHAH
01:00 - Shit! - and I've got that meeting with the customer tomor^WToday!

Now an open source CivCTP2 is announced - so not only can I play, I can hack. Great - now I can spend days creating the GPL Wonder and playtesting it....

Some suggestions

[sirmikester]

Some suggestions for use of the code :

1. Use it to improve freeciv
2. Continue developing it making improvements and such
3. Add the code into emacs so it can have a civ mode

Either way we all benefit!

Re:Some suggestions

[Kethinov]

1. Use it to improve freeciv

Oh yes, do that. Freeciv is terrible compared to the real thing. I still play the badly programmed crappilly skinned Civ1 originally designed for Win95 because it's better than Freeciv. Of course I'm weird like that. I despise all civilization games after the first one. So take my opinion with a grain of salt. ;)

Re:Some suggestions

[Poofat]

3. Add the code into emacs so it can have a civ mode

Don't forget to add it to mozilla too, no one wants it to fall behind in the bloatrace.

Re:Some suggestions

[sirmikester]

mozilla-civ, a new component of mozilla that alows the user to play civilization against other people using the civ:// protocol... hey it could happen!

Re:Some suggestions

[Tyreth]

I wonder if it will include the artwork?

Hmm.

[luekj]

This is definetely a good sign for the future of canned video games. Props to ID and Splash Damage for possibly starting the beggining of the free unshippableware revolution. And I mean that in a good way. If things keep up like this we may actually be able to play Duke Nukem Forever in some form!

Re:Hmm.

[Mike Hawk]

Hmmm, indeed.

ET was released by Activision. They just seem to be so generous lately.

Just make sure to give credit where credit is due.

Premature

[Webmonger]

According to the email quoted in the article, the release process "still has to go thorough more people".

Civ 3

[Azadre]

I will be the first to download Ctp2 if they can port it to Linux. FreeCiv owns, it even plays better on my system than Civ 2 on Windows. If only Civ 3 could be ported... I wouldn't come back to windows.
Great day for fans of Civ and open source.

Nah, Alpha Centauri is where it's at...

[Omicron32]

I'm a really big Civ fan, lost so many countless hours to Civ 2...

But I was very dissapointed with Civ:CTP. I couldn't play it for very long, they totally ruined the Civ experiance, IMO. I'm still not sure what it was, maybe it was the interface that totally threw me off... Things just didn't 'feel' right, it didn't feel like Civ.

What would be ultra-fscking-cool would be to see Alpha Centauri open sourced and ported to Linux (and made to work on my goddamn WinXP Pentium 4 box... grrr), that would kick so much ass. I actually have to admit loving AC, (or SMAC) more than Civ...

In fact, I'm gonna see if I can get it working through WINE now...

Re:Nah, Alpha Centauri is where it's at...

[xQuarkDS9x]

Check the Firaxis site I believe they have a Windows XP patch for AC and it's expansion pack, Alien Crossfire.

Re:Nah, Alpha Centauri is where it's at...

[Omicron32]

Yeah, they have the WinXP patch, and I did apply it, but SMAC itself told me it wasn't compatable with my processor and it might crash... which it does. It won't even start.

Guess SMAC isn't too keen on P4 2.53GHz processors then...

Re:Nah, Alpha Centauri is where it's at...

[eggsome]

Have you tried the native Linux port of AC? (done by Loki I believe before they went under).

Re:Nah, Alpha Centauri is where it's at...

[Newtonian_p]

There is a native Linux port made by Loki. I actually have it, it comes with the expansion set too. Its not free software/open source though.

Re:Nah, Alpha Centauri is where it's at...

[great throwdini]

What would be ultra-fscking-cool would be to see Alpha Centauri open sourced and ported to Linux ... that would kick so much ass.

Gah. Please, do something about the graphics (you know, the ones for which Firaxis had to "fix" for people who happen to be colorblind), then. :p

In all seriousness, I was greatly disappointed with SMAC. Sure, I loved the unit customization feature (probably the best thing about the game on the whole), but the remainder felt terribly unfinished. The AI was a joke, endgames were nearly always bore-a-thons (related directly to the weak AI), and it really struck me hard that not enough attention was paid to balancing the game. It was too frickin' easy compared to the Civ titles that came before and after, and SMACX didn't do much to improve things. Fun for the first couple games, but thereafter it really lost any charm that it had (have I mentioned the color palette for the graphics yet?).

At the time, I was an avid reader of the user forums for SMAC, and logged a fair number of bug reports or game shortcomings myself -- to join the chorus of hardcore players with similar complaints. No game is perfect, and I've never been duly impressed with the stability or feature completeness of most Firaxis products, but SMAC had more than its fair share of flaws the dragged it down off the pedestal and into the gutter.

But unit customization sure was cool. It would be nice to see the source for SMAC/SMACX, if only to see whether anyone is up to repairing its internals.

Re:Nah, Alpha Centauri is where it's at...

[AvitarX]

Unit customization was way too abusable.

You could make paradropping colonizers, drop in, build base, airport in an army.

Also paradropping 1,1,1 (well actually I think 1,3,1 was the same cost) units was brutal.

Pound city with helicapters till it was empty, paradrop in, move helicopters into city with there last move. Repeat. I could take about 5 cities in 3 turns before the helicopters got weak.

Blinking was also WAY to powerful, but I guess that is a balance issue. Blink hovertanks with max attack totally owned. The attack rating got incredibly high towards the end.

More balance problems, the Gian were so so so powerful. with the 2 efficiency bonus they could dominate late middle game on a large map. I played and got a sick high score, and it could have been higher. I was getting 2 or 3 futute techs a turn, but tired of it so became one with the planet.

Oh well, my friend and I used to play together and 0wn the computer all night long, and it was a lot of fun. but unit building was just another imbalace in my opinion, and not a plus.

Just buy it

[0x0d0a]

Just buy Civ 2. You now know that Civ 2 won't stop working next kernel release when HZ goes up or God knows what breaks. Stuff can be fixed. Not many Linux games like that.