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Freeciv-2.0.0 Stable Released
Settler writes "Freeciv 2.0.0 has been released upon the world! 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.
To see what this game looks like, check out screenshots here and here. This goes to show what a great game an open source project can create."
I've taken a look at the screenshots and this game still looks like it's stuck in 1989. Is the game engine they're using remained the same over all these years ?
:(
I'm sure the gameplay & strategy is up there but these graphics are not the kind of thing that'll attract users to the platform
Let's go easy on their servers, eh?
http://screenshots.freeciv.org.nyud.net:8090/gallYes, it looks good, but does it run under.... Windows?! :-)
...by blatantly copying a commercial product.
:)
Not that I'm not on the edge of my seat for FreeOrion, though.
I just can't get enough of remakes of classic games, there are some real gems out there.
My personal favourite is Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe, it's multiplayer gameplay makes a nice change from the shoot everything that moves action of most things people play over the net.
Anyway, I'll end this post now, I'm feeling the urge to go play freeciv.
plz...I need it :)
While I think FOSS stuff is cool, is there any actual advantage for Windows/Mac users to play freeciv over Civilization 3, besides the price tag?
.. game engine and game graphics?
Clearly, you are clueless. The engine has nothing to do with the graphics.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Freeciv is neat and all, but as of late, I'm quite partial to the battle for Wesnoth when it comes to turn based strategy. Great community, excellent game, yet not well known. It's getting closer to a 1.0 release, albeit slowly.
Now, if I could get Settlers to work under Linux (not that I've tried), I would be a happy man.
Can anyone out there tell me if they have?
Get your own free personal location tracker
I want to rant at your post, but im not sure on the right words to use... Games Designers to Programmers ratio in the world is rather one sided to actually try and base your argument off. A good game designer is indeed a rare find. Programmers, on the other hand are a dime a dozen (in comparison). To say that OSS games such as this put programmers out of a job is a bit far fetched (especially after you first complain about this game being a clone of an old game). Programmers generally dont get creative jobs - thats what designers are for. Copying ideas, and giving it away is one of the main thrusts of OSS. You will find that the most creative and original ideas in OSS come in the form of programmers tools because the programmers know what they want themselves. Its hard being a game designer when your not a game designer. Different groups and cultures go about life differently.
You'd have a point if Civ 2 was still *commercially* available. For OS X. I know you might find a copy on ebay, but that is not commercially available. I have tried Civ3 and I much prefer Civ2.
FreeOrion? Where???????
Oh, www.freeorion.org. I see it's still in very early alpha stages.
You see, I still consider MOO2 to be the very best strategy game ever (and MOO3 to stink so badly to be next to unplayable).
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Care to provide an example? Care to point the last truly _original_ game (that does not suck)? And last but not least - are you sure that an original game will be more fun than not-so-original but more polished?
A friend of mine is a complete CIV addict. He has bought all the CIV games available, and all the expansion packs he could lay his hands on. Still, he tells me that he likes FreeCIV best, for various reasons. A game concept isn't bad just because it's old. If old things were boring just because they were old, there would be no war in the world - everybody would be like "yeah, been there, done that ages ago". Your reasoning seems to be flawed.
Hungry, so I'll bite:
wolfenstein
DukeNukem
Half Life
Unreal tournament
quake 3
andsoon.
All have very "original" gameplay ?????
or as you type it:
Free from original ideas (except for the first ofcourse:)
It's a great game, just not an innovative one, and this is important for one reason: it proves the viability of open-source games.
Other software (such as Co-Linux, Slashcode) help to prove that open-source can be innovative too.
Which was a copy of a board game (imho the best strategy board game ever) in the first place - and given some of the appauling boardgame-pc crossovers that have been done, I have my doubts about Civ being as popular today is it is were it not for Sid's guiding hand... As an aside, anyone know if there's a working OSS version of Colonization (much better than Civ I, and a lot of the later "new features" in civ 2/3 city management hail from here) around? I've found a couple in pre-beta, but nothing that is actually playable :(
Programming is an Art. I am an Artist. Does that mean I get to wear a daft hat?
katamari damacy
What all modern open source games lack though is decent content and polish. There have been some great classical text games (e.g. rogue, mud, nethack etc.) but this hasn't translated well to the new world of graphics and 3D.
Surely there must be designers and artists willing to produce content to go with a game engine?
Still, this version is free as in beer, and it comes with Windows and OSX binaries! It also features less primitive graphics than the original game.
Does it now have a reasonable ai for singleplayer use? or is it still "ther is an computer player, but th eAI still has many limitation".
There's a big difference between unoriginality (e.g. most FPS), and out and out plaigerism.
Take The sims 2. Not a remoteley original game, but expands on the original so much that it's quite clearly different.
Anyone can write a clone of an existing game. It's not hard. All the problems have already been solved.
Bloody Norwegians naming one of their cities 'Reykjavik', clearly trying to confuse the international community and steal our fish.
Thieving bastards the lot of them.
Concerned Icelander.
Being a civ2 clone, I hope this doesn't get a cease-and-desist order like http://freecraft.org/. So far it's been out of the radar. It would be a pity if the big guys went after such a great game like this. No, freeciv isn't just a copy. I actually like it better than its commercial counterparts. It's one of the best open-source games out here!
http://www.freecol.org/
NEWS-2.0.0
From Freeciv
(Redirected from NEWS-beta)
WARNING: This is a tentative list, by no means exhaustive. See the NEWS or ChangeLog files contained with the source for more information.
WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE 1.14.2
Rules changes:
* (Beta2) Research cost has doubled, effects of science buildings doubled. SETI now improves Research Labs instead of giving free Research Labs to every city. Isaac Newton's College now improves all the player's universities.
* New units: AWACS and Workers.
* New option: national borders. Units inside your borders do not cause unhappiness under Republic and Democracy.
* It is no longer possible for one player to be in alliance with a player who is at war with another player you are allied with.
* The Civ2 ruleset now has waste. Default ruleset does not.
* Incite costs changed, now cities closer to capital, with units and with buildings have much higher incite cost.
* Killing a defending diplomat now costs you 1 movement point.
* Units now have multiple, configurable veteran levels.
* Team mates now pool their research. You may opt out and research individually by cancelling the 'Team' treaty.
* Server has voting on commands and options. You need over 50% of votes.
* When moving a unit from a transport on an ocean tile to a land tile, you lose all movement points.
* You can specify a list of players that you would like to share victory with, using the 'endgame' command.
* Nations added: Swiss, Afghanistan, Ethiopian, Assyrian, Columbian, Elvish, Galician, Hobbits, Indonesian, Kampuchean, Malaysian, Martian, Nigerian, Quebecois, Sumerian, Taiwanese, Austrian, Belgian, Phoenician and Mexican.
* New wonder: The Eiffel Tower. Makes AIs love you and improves reputation.
* The building requirements of several buildings have been changed.
* The whale special is reduced to 2 food, 1 shield and 2 trade.
* Settlers / Workers / Engineers can never get veterancy.
* Trireme's high sea loss now considers veterancy level (green 50%, veteran 25%, hardened 5%, elite 0%) before being divided by 2 if you have Seafaring or 4 when you reach Navigation (previously only fixed at 50% before being divided).
* Glacier terrain is now unsafe for land units (15% chance per turn of being lost). Also doesn't count as coastline for Trireme safety or Fish and Whale generation. Roads/railroads can be built but all unit (worker too) get 15% chance per turn of being lost any way!
* King Richard's Crusade now made obsolete by Robotics (previously Industrialization).
* Fixed tech costs based on the number of prerequisites of the tech in the tech tree.
* Nations have preferred nations to fork off when civil war occurs.
Gameplay changes:
* AI is much improved, and does not use 'double-move' any more.
* AI now conducts diplomacy with you (and against you).
* New difficulty level: Novice. It severely handicaps the AI players.
* Smarter autoexplorer and autosettler code.
* Modpack options vastly improved: You can customize buildings, add buildings as requirements to units, restrict technologies to certain nations, have split technology trees, gold upkeep for units, new units and terrain flags and lots of other options. (This is still done by editing configuration files with a text editor.)
* Fewer popups (eg choose the new government from the menu directly)
* Alternative map topologies, e.g. real support for isometric and hexagonal maps, "donut" map wrapping.
* Incomplete support for drawing civ3 graphics. See the civ3gfx (ftp://ftp.freeciv.org/freeciv/contrib/tilesets/ci v3gfx/) tileset.
* Global observer can observe the entire game.
* New method of settings map dimensions: Just use 'size'.
* Modified map generators.
* Initial units can be selected with a server option.
* 'Home' key centers on
People do seem to have missed the point, probably because it's not FreeCiv 2008 Super-charged Turbo Hyper Championship Platinum Edition.
Games do not suddenly become non-games because they are old. In fact, I would argue that there hasn't been a decent PC game put out in years. Games are not just eye-candy, expensive system requirements and physics-driven. Games are fun.
"Chess? Cor, that game's just ancient. You should be playing Super-hyper Chess 2005, it's got cool 3D pieces, seven hundred different pieces, two-hundred new rules, every piece has 'hit-points' now and there's fifty types of board."
"No thanks. Checkmate."
People who think that "games" can only ever mean whatever is on display at your local videogame store are severely out of touch. Games are fun. These people like FreeCiv because it is, to them, fun to play, engaging, interesting, challenging.
There are not many games that have been released in the past few years that I would call engaging or interesting once the sheen wears off or the next game is released. I've seen people with cupboards full of games that they've bought, completed and never played again. That's not the sign of an engaging game.
There are 20-year-old games that I played then and still play now and still get as much enjoyment out of. My brother and I, both in our late twenties, the primary game market, love to play Age of Empires 2 and OpenTTD precisely because they are engaging games that have lasting appeal. In fact, we still even have the occassional game of Chaos, via the magic of a Spectrum emulator, because we enjoy it.
My brother recently invested in Half-life 2, which I must say looks fantastic. I played about half an hour of it while I was round there and already the sheen had worn off. Yes, I would still play on today if I could because the story was engaging, it's quite good to have a little experimentation with the engine etc. but once I've completed that game, there'll be next to no incentive to go back and play it.
Counterstrike, however, is a different story. Counterstrike I could still see myself enjoying playing when I'm 90.
Projects like FreeCiv and OpenTTD and the UFO remakes are existing precisely for this reason. They are/were great games, they are not just eye-candy and hype that lasts for about a week, they are based on good principles with well-balanced gameplay.
The fact that I can still play TTD on my modern Windows machines, my Linux machine, even a Mac, if i had one, increase the utility of the games. The fact that OpenTTD allows me to plug-in new, clearer graphics, even change the code and interface to suit myself like I couldn't do in TTD, that's the reason these sorts of projects exist.
Eye-candy is extraneous, gameplay is vital, being able to play an old favourite without compatibility issues, with customisations, bugfixes, with features that the game "should have had" in the first place, that's what it is all about.
Now go back to telling all your mates what your latest waste of $100 was at your latest game store.
Welcome to the reason why I've given up writing free software in my spare time. Too many people like the parent poster, not enough people who are actually willing to help out. I still haven't even updated my sig to reflect the mentioned project's abandoned status -- that's how little I care about some of the free-software USERS these days. If they aren't bitching about one thing, they're bitching about another.
I tell you, my hat's off to those programmers who keep going in the midst of what all-too-often seems like a huge population of spoiled brats.
More and more developers go under, and it gets harder and harder for programmers to get a job doing anything creative, because these idiots are copying other peoples' ideas and giving it away.
And I'll tell you, one of the reasons why you don't see more innovation in the free software world is because of idiots like yourself who would rather bitch about what is out there that they don't like, rather than put a little effort into finding a game they might like and helping them out, even if it's only testing builds. Want original games? Here's a starter's list: Wesnoth, Worldforge, XConq, Holotz's Castle, Glest, S.C.O.U.R.G.E., Cube, Gate 88, Globulation, Adonthell... oh, who am I kidding? If you weren't willing to look before, you're probably not going to now. That's not even including the really neat ones that are in development right now.
By the way, the preceding rant is no indication of my feelings towards simonc4, pronobozo, or lordsatan. Three great guys. Too bad those three great guys who helped out with the project were outnumbered by whiners with complaints or useless suggestions.
> Really, what is it with free softweare developers?
Ahh, yes, it's all of us here to conspire against YOU! Just because one (or all but one) team clones something doesn't mean every "free softweare developer" does it. That's the thing about free software; anyone is free to create it. If some of it's bad, then so what, there's good stuff too. Who really cares? It's free, and someone had some fun making it. Take it or leave it...
My other car is first.
Duke Nukem extended the concept to add more puzzles and a 3d map. Quake gave a proper 3D map, totally new levels, and better weapons. Half Life added a story element to it. Even Quake 3 had some advances over Quake 2. Different levels, improved graphics. And all people wanted was more of the same. At least they created a new game, even if it was the same basic concept, they expanded on what came before.
Freeciv looks to be exactly the same game as Civ 2.
What about you? Any ideas?
:)
hany
I don't rip off other people's ideas and expect people to be impressed though.
pac-pix for the DS. The game isn't original, we've seen pac-man eat ghosts before. But the gamePLAY is original, and that's what counts.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Is in its configurability.
What about standard size planet filled with great AI and slow research, no huts giving random military units. I just loved it. 2 settlers you start with, find a place to start then, its war for expansion immediately.
Basicly freeciv lets me hack with options that can change the gameplay of old game a LOT, and make it even more interesting. You can alter the population growth rate so that you get different variations on what will happen.
I can change the game options to play WAY different way compared to original civ. And there are lots of minor differences that make it different from CIV & CIV2 atleast in way of the strategies goes.
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
Was a rather original puzzle game on the Dreamcast. I thought it was different anyway.
See this is what happens when everyone gets a chance to add their input... Hobbits okay Elvish alright whatever... Galician.. uh... Martian.. alright thats enough... Quebecois... are you crazy?
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
We've managed to clone a game that's 10 years old. Fantastic work, guys...
We ?!?
YOU haven't done anything !
Your points are valid, and I do agree that more innovation would be welcome.
But I think there's room for valuable imitation too. Civ2 is a great classic game (superior to Civ3 IMO, but that's not relevant) and Freeciv has brought one of the real values of the OSS effort: extended it in new and interesting ways, with features that the original commercial version does not have.
So I agree that we need more new ideas, but I also think projects like Freeciv are valuable. One doesn't have to preclude the other.
Um... from memory doesn't FreeCiv have multiplayer hotseat? That actually works? I have distinct memories of playing against myself once... where as multiplayer in Civ 2 *SUCKED*
Programming is an Art. I am an Artist. Does that mean I get to wear a daft hat?
...by blatantly copying a commercial product.
Err which commercial Civ game has 30 player online multiplayer? Or provides a choice of rectangular, isometric or hex tiles?
I hope you don't go through life by looks alone.
Help a poor college student. Send a couple cents via paypal to chucks86@gmail.com
That doesn't change the fact that you're still a huge hypocrite.
Ummm Wolfenstein was actually not an origional idea... It was a combination of Return to Castle Wolfenstein I & II and a *REALLY OLD* First-person Fantasy Shooter (I forget the name & can't find it y googling, but it had only one weapon, which you charged up to different strengths before firing by holding down the fire key)... *REALLY WISH* I could remember the name of that game :(
Programming is an Art. I am an Artist. Does that mean I get to wear a daft hat?
In what way?
I was critical of Open source developers releasing software with no originality.
I have not done this, because I know I have no originality.
All we need is a few great games...
Well, how about:
No Gravity http://www.realtech-vr.com/nogravity/
Vegastrike (and mods) http://vegastrike.sf.net/
Bzflag http://bzflag.org/
glest http://www.glest.org
cube http://wouter.fov120.com/cube/
globulation http://www.ysagoon.com/glob2/
foobillard http://foobillard.sunsite.dk/
trigger http://www.positro.net/trigger/
netpanzer http://netpanzer.berlios.de/
I just don't know what you are talking about.
There are plenty of good games out there.
Can anyone else remember some good ones?
A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver.
And that's, incidentally, ignoring the utilitarian advantages of the project, for example that you can run this on platforms Civ never supported.
I think the Freeciv people have done a great job so far, and while you may dislike it, I think it's great they've done it, because for a Civilization fan like me, it's very valuable.
Let's hope this version will have a proper OS X client too (you could run the older one under OS X, but you needed to do so under X11)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Why sould open source copies of games be ANY different from the original "closed source" game?
This is just a news story that an "improvement" on an original game design has been released, any backslapping should be done carefully and with thought to who actually came up with the idea and who's standing on who's shoulders..........
Your comments have some merit but you need to work on your analogies.
Very few people like war, it's best practitioners least of all. It occurs for reasons far more complicated than preference.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
but... everyone *hates* the French right? ;-)
;-).
Not quite everyone, but only T.H.E.Y., which stands for The Holy Empire of Yanks. As you probably know, THEY usually call themselves US.
Well, in my currently running freeciv game year 1913, Washington is a small Hungarian village sized 2 near the north pole. I will buy it from Hungarians for tech advance of Monotheism next turn. Will be a good strategic port stationing my Czech submarines stuffed with nuclear missiles. Now, tell me about *hate*
Technically, best upgrade ever since classical Civ are visual borders.
There you are, staring at me again.
I remember in the commercial civ games, the ai's winning strategy was knowing the complete map and a big cash bonus every round, so a little bit lame.
I wonder how the freecivs ai compares to that
So, go buy original software instead of bashing great and hard work from talented developers.
E.
Yeah, a game of chess would have been a better example ;-)
if you create a mod to an existing game.. ..and roll 5 years... and the existing game becomes first non-existant and then even non-runnable. what is the mod good for then? freeciv is for people who want to play civ, forever. on whatever platform they want.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The freeciv "clone" has been around for 5 years or more, so it is not like it took 10 years just to get started. There are also lots of improvements, you probably don't know both civ1 and freeciv to appreciate this. It is far from the 16x16 screen of the DOS game, with city screens popping up every turn.
Freeciv's strength at the moment is that it cares about multiplayer, and that it actually has people playing it multiplayer.
The main reason it hasn't changed more is that cool ideas are not by themselves fun ideas, and that people love the standards set by the initial civ, and would be put off by big changes.
Not to mention that the game borrowed from "Empire" and the technology names from the AH boardgame, so everyone is standing on the shoulders of someone else.
Wesnoth has better graphics than freeciv, but for me, it hasn't yet delivered something strategy-wise that e.g. the Battle Isle series and free implementations don't do better. Especially the unavoidable skewedness of battles.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
* King Richard's Crusade now made obsolete by Robotics (previously Industrialization).
:)
I wonder why this rule change.
We would be better criticising those who choose not to make origional game rather than those who choose to make a tribute.
,its capitalism and the free market. If you cannot compete (IE: someone makes the same thing for free , that is as good , better or merely aceptable) then you will go under and be another failed bussiness. This has very little to do with OSS software , rather i would say its missmanagment !
.
No games house has ever gone under due open source
So why exactly would OSS groups cloning old games be removing creative jobs from the industry ? Wouldnt that be removing uncreative jobs as you said origionaly how unorigional it is , if people want creativity and origionality in the games market (I know i do , im very much adicted to wario ware) then they will buy it , if people want remakes they will buy or download an OSS version(I love remakes too , im playing super mario 64 DS right now). Frozen bubble is not denting taitos sales of puzzle-bobble
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Those programmers who are talented and ambitious work in game studios. Those programmers who aren't do it for free. FOSS just happens to fall into the mix.
I'd say that those programmers that are ambitious work at game studios (or, you know, other software-related jobs)...and lack of ambition is not necessarily always a bad thing. Game studios hardly have the market on talent cornered...in fact, I'd say many game studios are severely lacking in it.
Also, while I haven't yet had a chance to play the game, judging by the feature list this is NOT simply a clone of a commercial product. They didn't just reverse-engineer Civilization. I see several interesting features added into the mix that Civilization (even Civ 3) lacked. That would, of course, be the point of a project like this: take a game you love, and give yourself the ability to tweak and customize it.
That point seems to be lost on a lot of people. Is Freeciv the answer to bringing linux to the desktop, the path to world peace, or the secret to whiter teeth? Um...no. Is it even really an impressive programming breakthrough? I'll go out on a limb and say no. Is it pretty cool, especially for longtime Civilization fans? I'm feeling a yes.
Release notes
It doesn't mention that it supports up to 30 players (freeciv 1 did as well)
"Games Designers to Programmers ratio in the world is rather one sided to actually try and base your argument off. A good game designer is indeed a rare find. Programmers, on the other hand are a dime a dozen (in comparison)."
Amen to that.
I'm not a GD but I am a software developer. Piss poor programmer compared to the guys that work under me, but thats not my focus...my focus is soley in designing the best application out there.
Programmers rarely get it -- they think *THEY* are doing the hard part. Well they are -- its just they are the equivelent of bluecollar employees doing the heavy lifting. *ANYONE* can program...I can pick up a book and get something done a few days later. I have to admit, ASM wasn't this way, but I muddled through and got some of my applications working in under 64k to deal with embeded environments (I would have never survived in the days when guys were doing the same things in 4 or 8k or worse).
But it always pisses me off when I hear my programmers badmouth me as a lousy programmer -- if I have ever claimed to be one, I'd gladly accept the criticism, but I don't even claim to have the skills past getting something done enough to give to the guys that know what they are doing. But to then given them responsibility to come up with subdesigns to fill in my gaps, its obvious they don't have a fucking clue about what it takes to deliver software to the end user. To them its all about code. If they can copy someone elses work, its dead simple. If they can't -- 'there isn't an obvious solution to this, so lets just have them edit a text file to get to this' (a paraphrase of an argument one of my guys gave me a few weeks ago). Or -- but you *CAN* do it -- see watch, you click here, and then you do this, and then you select this from the menu and then then go back here and its done...do you want me to make a Macro pulldown and let the do it from here. Its obvious these guys don't understand workflow nor care that the average person doesn't want a hundred ways to get to the same thing -- especially if this is a core function and one they need instantly accessable without workarounds.
And again, this is one of the problems I have with the OSS nerds -- the know how to copy other peoples works and thus think the application was easy to make, Sure, it was an obvious idea when they copied it, making themselves feel better about it, but then why did no other application, OS or otherwise have this function until someone else walked in and put it in their own. Patents EVIL. Copyright EVIL. I have no problem with OSS but the attitudes. I use F/OSS almost every day. Its the hippy attitude that everyone is equal and should share equally and that anyone with a novell take on something should be put in their place and have this idea taken away from them as it was 'obvious'.
Again, the idea of F/OSS software is great. Its the negative attitude towards the creatives in the field that get to me.
So, for example, you could take this as evidence that it's not "just a clone" of the original game, it's what games should be: a constant and ongoing maintenance that will continue for as long as people are interested in playing it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
While I realize it's not free, I'm curious as to whether you played Locomotion, the kinda-sequel he wrote around the same time as Rollercoaster Tycoon 2. I received it in a bundle pack along with RCT2 and all expansions for $20 at Walmart. I don't quite get it, but then again, I didn't really understand the first Transport Tycoon.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
RE: Sig
Programming is NOT an art -- programming is a trade.
There is nothing artistic about programming. What you do to get to the programming part might be, but they are seperate items and should be treated as such.
To me, the key thing to freeciv is network play. In fact, when I first played freeciv (around early '97 I think), there was no AI! Network play was the only thing. At this time, the only comparable commercial product was CivNet (Civ I multiplayer), which I have never tried. But freeciv would work over the internet, and being free, there was no problem setting up large games with many players.
A few years later, an AI was made for freeciv, and that AI kicked my butt without cheating! It was far, far better than the AIs of Civ I/II (and even Civ III, I think!), although it didn't handle all aspects of the game at the time. That AI tought me how to play the game!
So while the game design was not new, there were many small things that made freeciv a better game than the originals.
Atgeirr
You tell me what's more helpful: Sitting around bitching about the lack of originality of games in the Free Software world, or actually lending a little expertise to a project that might need it? A creative guy might be an excellent designer with passable coding skills but completely without expertise when it comes to adding a multiplayer component, or maybe needs some help optimizing his graphics routines.
I'd be willing to bet that if the great-grandparent poster took a look at some of the games I mentioned in my previous post, he'd find one that had a need that either he or someone he knew could provide, be it build testing, doc writing, optimization, artwork, writing, multiplayer, polishing a translation into English, helping with autoconf/make and deployment, making rpms or deb packages, etc. Instead, he chooses to ignore the originality out there and instead, do nothing more than bitch. So, instead of helping be part of the solution, he's instead part of the problem, since he sits around adding to the undeserved stigma that the FS/OSS community is unable to produce works of both quality and originality.
I'm waiting for:
New wonder: Slashdot. Can DoS the AI.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
If you want better graphics,
try C-evo for Windows.
http://www.c-evo.org/
Just leave them to be happy they don't need to dual-boot to run a few entertaining distractions, 'k?
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
### Is it really that hard to find someone with an original new idea for a game?
No, but its extremly hard to find developers when you have an original idee and that is really not that suprising. When you clone a game, everybody in the team instantly knows what the goal is, most of the developers know the game to develop more or less in and out. There are forums, newsgroups and such for the game to clone that you can use to find new developers. In the long run you can even switch maintainer and the programmers without much a problem, since everybody knows what the goal is.
Now with an original idea this all falls apart, first of knowbody knows your idea, so you have a hard time finding people interested in it in the first place, but then you also have a very hard time to explain the idea to them. You can also not just swap out developers, since every newcome will have to be introduced to the idea again. If the gamedesigner drops out you can basically close the shop, since nobody will be left knowing exactly what the goal was. Last not least it all happens over the internet, which makes explaining stuff even more difficult then in a person to person meeting. In the end you can't even be sure that your idea actually works, stuff that might sound cool on paper might suck as game. So even if you get all those talents you need, you might still fail.
All this is not special for games, applications are as well much easier cloned than created from an original idea, KDE, Gnome and such are all just clones of Windows and a bit MacOSX, they are improved here and there, but the concept are pretty seldomly touching new ground and if they ever do they only to it in very small steps.
If you really want to run an old game, you can. Never heard of dual booting? Besides which, if you really like the old game, why settle for a recreation when you can have the real thing?
P.
Microsoft's chart of the top 10 games for Windows.
Of those, only 2 are not actually sequels or expansion packs to last year's popular games: Brothers in Arms, World of Warcraft, and Halo. Those "new" games are a team FPS, a MMORPG, and an FPS. Do you really think those are innovative?
And if you were to actually work in a games company you'd know how low a value is actually put on innovation. The big money is, like films, in replicating hits. Innovation is generally to be found more in (a) mods (who innovated CounterStrike?) and (b) free small timewasting flash games (which are free to be totally wacky as people aren't paying £35 for them).
It depends a lot on how repetitive the game gets when you play it again.
Homeworld, for instance, is great fun when you play it for the first time. But playing the same missions again, when you already know how to crack them, becomes old pretty fast.
Civilisation has the great advantage of offering a random map that you have to re-discover in every new game.
And Counterstrike has the human element:
while the maps are static, your opponents might come up with new and surprising tactics.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Hard work, maybe, and good for them; pity it is misdirected.
Great? What is great about duplicating a great work? Should I get kudos if I decide to rewrite "Moby Dick"?
P.
Welcome to capitalism. Undercutting competitors' prices is a fair way of competition.
As to copying ideas, the makers of the proprietary Civ game haven't independently invented turn-based games, programming, the computer, the transistor, or the wheel. In short, everybody is constantly relying on previous ideas.
Well, there are too many rules in the Battle for Wesnoth. Try xbill instead. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Duke Nukem Forever has features like no one has ever seen!
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
Not to mention square, cylinder and donut maps.
Knuth "The Art of programming" not "The Trade of programming". Perl scripts that are (& produce) ascii art. Obfuscated code. That is most definatly more art than a pile of bricks (see: Tate Modern)...
Programming is an Art. I am an Artist. Does that mean I get to wear a daft hat?
Is it really that hard to find someone with an original new idea for a game?
So what? They're doing it for their own fun, not yours. Why should you judge them by market standards which are inapplicable: Its free. Therefore, it doesn't have to push the event horizon in order to lure suckers...
Honestly. What is with you "oh, this is passé" dilettantes? Must everything be fresh and new? That route leads to fascism, you know...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Those programmers who are talented and ambitious work in game studios. Those programmers who aren't do it for free. FOSS just happens to fall into the mix.
.. life is not as polar as your society inclines..
Blatant dialectic materialism.
Such logic is not the finest, you know
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Ever tried playing a old arcade game on a 1ghz+ processor? Even with MOSLOW running in a (emulated, not dualbooted) system, they *can* run so fast as to be unplayable... Oh, and i *DON'T* want to have to reboot my machine just to be able to play a DOS only/Win 98 Only/Linux Only/Win NT only game thanx...
Programming is an Art. I am an Artist. Does that mean I get to wear a daft hat?
I think you just accidentally came up with a sollution to the "eew, the tiles don't look good"-problem that some people have been voicing. Can't say that I actually read all the licenses for the FreeCol game but since it's GPLed then I assume something similar is up with their graphics.
1. Download FreeCol
2. Implement tiles in FreeCiv
3. Profit!!!
Karma: 2.71828182846 (Mostly due to small, fun pills)
The AI completely thrashes players who are new to freeciv, even old civ players, and without resource cheating. It has even turned into a problem by itself, sort of, because in most difficulty levels, the AI does well, only differently.
However, the AI has problems adapting to special settings(islands, min/full tradesize) and strategies that are prevalent in the online games, which means the AI does well especially when it has land contact with you or when it got a little economic lead to make up for its initial deviations from human strategies(read:stupidity), which are noticeable if control is turned over from human to AI. Maybe stupid is the wrong word, it just has a different battle plan.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
are you thinking of:
Rise of the Triad
Welcome to capitalism. Undercutting competitors' prices is a fair way of competition.
Why bother writing the code then? Why not just copy the CD directly? Even cheaper.
Coming up with a new idea costs money. It takes time. If they wanted, whoever owns the rights to Civilization probably have good grounds to sue for copyright infringement.
As to copying ideas, the makers of the proprietary Civ game haven't independently invented turn-based games,
No. There are many turn based games that are similar but clearly not the same game.
In short, everybody is constantly relying on previous ideas.
And the idea is they extend those ideas.
Oh, and i *DON'T* want to have to reboot my machine just to be able to play a DOS only/Win 98 Only/Linux Only/Win NT only game thanx...
Since we're talking Civ here, you don't have to; it runs fine in DOSbox, and I'd be surprised if it didn't run under a similar emulator on Linux.
If it doesn't, I think spending time creating an open source emulator to run those old great games as they were meant to be is far preferable to simply copying one old game. It would certainly take less time than the 7 years it has taken for Freeciv so far.
P.
...I found it incredibly annoying. The mantra is "Never let a unit die". Experience is everything. If you must, sacrifice cannon fodder. If you have bad luck, your unit may die at any time (seeing as how units deal full damage no matter how surrounded and hurt they are, and if they suddenly hit on all strikes... Space on the battlefield is precious beyond belief, more often than not the reason you can't kill a unit is that all hexes around it is taken. In other words, you need few and powerful units.
First time around, I was rushing through scenarios (getting lots of bonus gold), doing "damn well" as far as I could tell. Then I hit a brick wall. I got 2000+ gold (if you don't get more on your own, you start with 100 each scenario) and I couldn't win. I could send endless streams of units. They were picked off in short order on a tight pass. Their units leveled, mine perished.
Somehow, I don't feel it rewards "right" gameplay, if you ask me. I had to slow down where I could (the clock is running in each scenario, but no carry), kill units, gain experience instead of concentrating on the mission objectives. Though the two were *mostly* the same, some missions could be over insanely fast. I remember one in particular where you was supposed to kill one of three leaders (though you didn't know which). Kill the first and you were done almost before you started.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
And the idea is they extend those ideas.
Exactly. If you'd bothered to actually play the game you'd see that freeciv has.
Whoah. I thought you was joking, but a bit of googling shows it actually exists... just in pre-alpha now. Now look what you're done! I'm on the edge of the seat, too!
Let's see, my strategy thirst has been largely quenched - we have FreeCiv, MegaMek, Stratagus, and one day we'll have FreeOrion. Now I just wish someone hacks FreeCiv to have Alpha Centauri stuff, and I'd be happy happy happy! (Hope that happens before Linux SMAC stops working! Or alternatively hope it will never stop working!)
What a crap argument. What is your point? Are reviewers no longer entitled to criticise books unless they're a published author? I'm criticising because these people can't come up with a new idea. Once you have a spec as complete as a full published game, it makes life a lot easier.
Who measures difficulty based on how many lines of code there are anyway?
Haven't tried game yet (does it work on Mac OS10.2.8?). Does the structure of the game include "how and why people use cities" - from a personal and social pyschological point of view? I am interested in a game that thousands of people could play simultaneously in a specific city - in order to defeat land speculators (often named developers) and their puppets - architects, landscape architects, urban planners, road engineers and politicians.
Think of it like early FPSes. The infrastructure for rendering, AI, etc. has now been built. In the same way that Wolfenstein and Doom were the source, or inspiration of, the rendering engines used in today's game, this is part of OSS's required infrastructure. Now a lot of the heavy lifting has been done and we can get on with the more interesting job of not making it work, but making it more interesting/fun/better.
But we'll let you wear the daft hat.
Got to keep the loonies on the path
I was critical of Open source developers releasing software with no originality
Dude, the writer of Ecclesiastes 1:9 said well, when he wrote: "there is no new thing under the sun".
> Are there any real breakthru's in OSS here?
Is OSS about breakthroughs, or about continual refinement?
> Considering when Civ2 was released, I could have only used money I found on the street and under my couch and still had the real game in my hands 5 years ago. What is so important about freeciv?
It would be interesting to know how many people are playing Freeciv vs how many are still playing Civ2.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I still prefer the Simtex originals though. Even with their SVGA graphics.
That's a harsh accusation. Either you have some proof that Freeciv is infringing a copyright (then post it, please), or you are just trolling.
Your comment is also off-topic, since we are not discussing implementations, but ideas here. Copyright doesn't protect ideas.
Programming can be art, just like arquitecture.
> Free from original ideas.
What percentage of games on the shelf at your local computer megamart have any original ideas? Aren't most of them just competing implementations of some trendsetter?
> More and more developers go under, and it gets harder and harder for programmers to get a job doing anything creative, because these idiots are copying other peoples' ideas and giving it away.
Do you have any actual evidence that FOSS games are killing game companies?
And if you do, doesn't that imply that FOSS games have more gameplay appeal than you're giving them credit for?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Well, the zillion small city problem is rooted in the game dynamics since civ1.0DOS themselves, because big cities grow slower(larger foodbox), a city of size 1 works two tiles, while a city size 2 works only 3, and new size 1 city will also be able to use the best tile(s) to work on(specials). And progress allows freeciv to have bigger maps and more cities. So the question is really where to have progress heading in freeciv.
Maybe I would try myself to design around some problems myself by coding, but I had problems settings up the toolchain.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Mirrordot link.
OLPC Australia
Are reviewers no longer entitled to criticise books unless they're a published author?
It's generally best if the reviewers actually read the books before criticising them.
(a different AC)
Had it occurred to you that a million original games have been passed over because this one is a clone of a popular game?
Having developed two (admittedly not terribly original or polished) games myself, I can attest that there ARE games that aren't direct clones of others, but the clones will get more publicity because of the built-in fanbase.
While the creators of original games need to get the word of their creation out there because nobody has ever heard of "Rambo vs. Kitty Cat", news of a freeware/gpl version of civilization, or stunts or whatever will spread through the communities of people still enjoying older games.
It's been a long time.
Yeah, just downloaded it. The bad news is the OS X client is still X11 based. But it's fairly well integrated and, yup, it has a host of improvements upon the original.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
goose-stepping is good for burning calories, ya know.
It's our fish. We can't steal what belongs to us.
And since everything belongs to us, we can't steal at all. That makes us the most honest people on the planet.
Honest Norwegian.
Try taking software engineering classes. LOC is one measure of complexity in a piece of software. A rather blunt measure, but then again, so are STREAM benchmarks like Sandra or BogoMIPS, and yet people use them.
You did not provide criticism. You provided nagging. Criticism is supposed to be constructive.
FYI, even Paul Graham, which was a proprietary software developer, thinks ideas are a dime a dozen. Ideas are irrelevant, turning them into the concrete which works is what is hard. If someone manages to turn out a new product, then that is value. The idea per se is meaningless. Ask any VC, he will tell you the same.
Nice to see this get the moderation it deserved. Hopefully the parent doesn't have a bunch of sock-puppet accounts to try to get it resurrected...
Actually, if you look at sites like elysiun.org and deviantart, it's obvious that lots of talented artists are happy to put their work online, just for the hell of it. What we need to do is market Free Software as a place to explore and exhibit their talents.
Even the artists who use GIMP, Audacity, or other free software are often unaware of how they could contribute to that same cause that helps them. More integration would be great.
Maybe a standardised link from every free software app that goes to some site which requires talent related to that kind of app would help. You know, like a DMoz of free software projects, but with GIMP pointing to the "Projects in need of Artists" section. It would be even better, if apps let artists automatically update and release their work to a Free repository.
I will happily take some more down moderation for this (aint going to hurt my karma much). But who the funk moderated this flamebait ... jeshh .
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Even Wolfenstein 3D was obviously inspired by Eye of the Beholder and other old RPG games. You can see with Quake that ID has tried to make First Person RPGs, but making the engine has always turned out to be so much work, they soon give up trying to add too many RPG elements to it.
Probably the same prat who moderated the grandparent offtopic...
Ooooo
Pooling research in teams. That's a cool feature. The Civ series should implement that. I've always been pissed off when I'm closely allied with another nation who is fairly even with me technologically. We'd always have to trade technologies to stay ahead of our enemies.
I've kept a vague eye on this game for a while, on and off. It's main problem is that, for my money anyway, the game it's based on wasn't all that great...and FreeCiv for the most part also doesn't have most of the things that the original/s had which were capable of keeping people's attention. (Lots of in-game cinematics, AI using diplomacy until very recently, etc etc) Although FOSS is strong on code, multimedia seems to be a major problem for FOSS developers...Presumably because at least some of them are used to playing games like Nethack. (Graphics? What on earth do you need those for?)
The main game I really want to see a FOSS clone of is the Sims, in all honesty. The reason why is that with the Sims 2, EA basically killed the main reason why the original game was so popular...i.e., the degree to which it was editable with new wallpapers, floors, objects etc...and of course, the possibility of modifying something is one of FOSS's main strengths.
It would need to be given a completely different name though, and probably kept underground for a long while...EA in particular are extremely paranoid about the proactive amateur phenomenon...Their TOS for The Sims Online specifically outlaws the construction of server emulators by anyone who plays the game.
I realise that a Sims clone would also be very difficult from a coding point of view, so it perhaps isn't possible. I can dream, though.
It's worth noting that civ3 tilesets for freeciv are mentioned in the release notes.
Sword of the Samurai - Abandonware but not on the-underdogs.org. 15 minutes with Google should find you a copy.
Janie took my gun...
Freedom IS an actual advantage.
Ahhh...yes. Here is the dividing line. "I have to think about it and can't just jump around shooting things, just like in my 85 favorite games that have come out in the last 4 years." Does anyone remember when games HAD to rely on substance, because there wasn't anything else to sell? Are any gamers out there NOT adrenaline junkies with 35s attention spans? Granted, there are some exceptions, but they are few and far between. I used to consider myself an avid gamer, but now the extent of that is juryrigging my OS around to play MOO, or some other golden oldie. *SIGH* Rant over. Sorry about that.
"* It is no longer possible for one player to be in alliance with a player who is at war with another player you are allied with."
Why?
Lets say I'm Switzerland, and I'm allied to both France and Germany. Germany and France declare war on each other.
So since France is fighting Germany, I can no longer be allied to both? How does it decide which one I'm forced to drop? Why can't I remain a neutral party?
Maybe there should be a "neutral party" civ advance?
System requirements:
Freeciv2.0 works with Windows2000 or better, 333MHz+, 128MB+ ram. 1.14.1 worked with win98.
However it really depends on the size of the map, minimum city distance and the number of players, and on how much time you want to spend per turn.
You could host several games at once on a good computer, like the games hosted on freeciv.org.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Are the photos on your weight-loss site legit? I'm just wondering because you lost so much weight, but the skin is tight (not loose, which often happens after massive weight loss). Also, what were your before/after ages?
Just curious. I need to lose weight myself.
Other software (such as Co-Linux, Slashcode) help to prove that open-source can be innovative too.
Slashcode? Innovative? What's innovative about it?
Very few people like war, it's best practitioners least of all. It occurs for reasons far more complicated than preference.
Besides possibly sex, name another human endeavor that has produced as much literature as war. As far as its best practioners, well, personally I have immense respect for the Generals who won WW2. No, if war was disliked as much as you think it is people would have quit partaking it in it millenia ago.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Try Space HoRSE
"This goes to show what a great game an open source project can create."
Why do you believe only after seeing? Why such little faith?
Yes but your tech research would slow down due to cyberslacking.
No keyboard detected. Press any key to continue.
I said Woot!
I used to love colonization but the darn game wouldn't run so hot after windows 95.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I'm really not sure I get the point of this post. Sure, the guys behind this project might have worked hard on it, but this should not in any way shield it from criticism. If you read the accounts of the development of Daikatana, it's pretty clear that a lot of people worked extremely hard on this game at various points (often while the top brass sat around playing games in their fancy offices). Was the game well received because of this?
No.
It was widely slammed, because it was at best mediocre and, in many people's opinions, it was dire.
Every single comment in this thread diminishing the scale of this "achievement" has been modded troll or flamebait. However, the only message that this article sends to me is that open source games development is a decade behind the commercial sector.
Link to open-source game site posted on /. without any mirrors. Guess what's happened to the server?
OK. I'll bite.
The Coen brothers got a lot of Kudos for rewriting the Odyssey by Homerus.
Geek runner, motorcyclist and professional know-it-all
As to copying ideas, the makers of the proprietary Civ game haven't independently invented turn-based games, programming, the computer, the transistor
To be fair, they started the game with The Wheel, stole Computers from the Iroquois and traded Electronics to Flight with the Americans.
All we need is a few great games...
Well, how about:
No Gravity http://www.realtech-vr.com/nogravity/
Vegastrike (and mods) http://vegastrike.sf.net/
Bzflag http://bzflag.org/
glest http://www.glest.org
cube http://wouter.fov120.com/cube/
globulation http://www.ysagoon.com/glob2/
foobillard http://foobillard.sunsite.dk/
trigger http://www.positro.net/trigger/
netpanzer http://netpanzer.berlios.de/
I just don't know what you are talking about.
There are plenty of good games out there.
Can anyone else remember some good ones?
I have a question...
Why is that, until I read your post, I had never heard of any of these games?
How long have most of these games been around? Why aren't they getting talked about more?
Jay (=
You can remain neutral to both, just not allied.
..)
;-)
There is a Peace treaty status different from alliance for that.
civ1 AI would get angry too, in such a situation(or at least voice its general aggression to that effect, and then after you declared war on the AIs enemy, it would make peace with the enemy
The Eiffel tower makes AI treat you with more friendlyness.. maybe it should be Swiss cheese.. go figure
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Care to point the last truly _original_ game (that does not suck)?
liquid war And its free software too.
Now I just wish someone hacks FreeCiv to have Alpha Centauri stuff.
The freecivac project might be dead, but it supplied patches to add some SMAC features to freeciv. I took a look at it, but since the Carbonized SMAC runs perfectly well under Mac OS X, I'll stick with the original for now.
The tileset would look alright if they just didn't black-outline so much.
Really, I it looks like they set out to clone civ2 and succeeded. The game was good but fraught with so many AI and usability issues - why not just make a game from scratch and use civ as the inspiration?
One set of great original enhancements to the KDE project are the kioslaves.
in particular fish(ssh) and ftp make my life so much easier and i really miss them in non-kde applications (fortunately, hopefully the fuse patchset is coming to the kernel in 2.6.12 so sshfs and ftpfs will provide similar functionality to the entire system).
This goes to show what a great game an open source project can create.
More like, this goes to show that an open source project can clone a great game. Isn't FreeCiv just a free remake of a game created by non-free developers?
...or "Swiss banking industry."
perhaps there should be "economic allies" in addition to "military allies?" IE - just because we're making a NAFTA-like treaty with countries in South America, doesn't mean we'll come to their aide if they are attacked by someone. I mean, we may come to their aide anyway (Monroe Doctrine and all) but...
Well, ok, bad example. We'll go to war with anyone. How about - just because Mexico and Canada are economic allies due to NAFTA, doesn't mean Mexico will send troops if Iceland attacks Canada.
Because recreation is better then original. More playable. I can change rules a bit and play freeciv forever.
And it is still improving. I played civ3 only 3 or 4 times and freeciv2beta several times for few last weeks and i want more.
Robert
I have a question...
Why is that, until I read your post, I had never heard of any of these games?
How long have most of these games been around? Why aren't they getting talked about more?
I can only guess that you didn't really care about the subject of cool freeware Linux games, or the thought that they exist didn't occured to you. Anybody interested in Linux gaming would find out about at least a couple of them at some point.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
Mmm... donuts
### How long have most of these games been around? Why aren't they getting talked about more?
Most of them have been around for at least a year, some of them more, some less. If you never heard of them before, you should probally visit:
* http://www.happypenguin.org/
Which has those and a lot more.
You remember incorrectly.
Please read some of the FAQs on CIV, the AI while not overly complex, is many times more complex than you state... perhaps in the first CIV that's the way it worked but it has not been that way in many years.
--- I do not moderate.
Great Googly Mooglies! How the heck are we supposed to undercut FreeCiv's price? Tarnation! Business Plan: FOILED!
http://www.cdaccess.com/html/quick/superstrpr.html /-/videogames/B0000BVGNY/qid=1113834407I R&eq=&Tp=
http://www.cdaccess.com/html/quick/civ2pj.htm
http://www.cdaccess.com/html/quick/civ2goldpo.htm
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detai
http://www.chipsbits.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=CIVI2%2E
I accept that Civilisation is not a game for everyone but if I don't mind you racing round a track in a car sim, why do you give a damn about this?
Not everyone, particularly the older generation like me, believes that graphical complexity lies at the heart of a good game - it's as much about mechanics and gameplay which is why retrogaming is so popular currently. Some people agree, others disagree, so what?
I'd remind these same people that original Doom is over ten years old now, the mechanics of it serve as the basis of just about every FPS ever written & original Doom is still being commercially ported to platforms like the Gameboy Advance even to this day.
Civilisation is, in itself, a milestone in computer gaming, albeit one focused more on strategy rather than action - however, again, its mechanics are at the core of many current day RTS games also...
As far as I'm concerned, the fools are the people who ignore a game purely because its old, not the rest of us who enjoy playing old and new games purely because of their entertainment value.
And, while we're at it, a big pat on the pack to the programmers involved in FreeCiv - kudos to them for their devotion in making FreeCiv one of the longest on-going OSS game projects there is.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Too bad you're modded Flamebait. No one has been able to explain to me how Freeciv can copy Civilization without infringing upon any copyrights, either of the boardgame or the Sid Meier versions.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
Ahhh...yes. Here is the dividing line. "I have to think about it and can't just jump around shooting things, just like in my 85 favorite games that have come out in the last 4 years." Does anyone remember when games HAD to rely on substance, because there wasn't anything else to sell? Are any gamers out there NOT adrenaline junkies with 35s attention spans? Granted, there are some exceptions, but they are few and far between. I used to consider myself an avid gamer, but now the extent of that is juryrigging my OS around to play MOO, or some other golden oldie. *SIGH* Rant over. Sorry about that.
Testify brother. In ye olden days (early eighties) when I was a wee lad, my dad and I would play the original Starflight. Maybe that had something to do with my later tastes in computer games, but I always prefer substance and gameplay over flashy eyecandy and adrenlin fueled rampages. Not that I don't like the occassional RTS or well nuanced FPSs like System Shock and Systme Shock 2. However, I do agree that mindless action has crowded out all others on the old store racks. Even the remaining non-arcadish games too often use graphics (and to a lesser extent sound) as a crutch to feeble gameplay.
P.S. If you haven't already, check out Dosbox on Sourceforge. It emulates a 386/486 DOS environment on modern computers, including drivers that let newer sound cards emulate cards of that era. They have Windows XP, Mac, and Linux versions. I use the latest XP version, 0.63, and haven't run into any problems with old favorites like X-Com and Alien Legacy.
I think that if more people actually paid for commercial games, rather than copying and downloading them, free ones like this would be a lot more attractive. The fact that it's free would be an actual factor.
Wow! I thought I was the only one who even knew about Stunts! I stopped trying to dig up that game on the Internet a long time ago. Has someone made an open source clone? That would rule; I'll have to look. =)
Another great game that I would wax nostalgic to see done well and updated: Scorched Earth (The Mother of All Games). I think I remember seeing an xscorch before, but had a hard time getting it to work. Now that I'm a little bit older, though, I bet I could make some decent contributions, if it's still active.
Don't forget Scorched3d! It's one of the best games ever.
Cheers,
RoadkillBunny
They're all first person shooters. That's hardly *very* original. In fact I would describe them as an evolutionary process that naturally occured starting way back with games like Eye of the Beholder, Ultima Underworld and of course Wolf3D (which you mention). They were ground breaking in their own ways - new graphics, more freedom, different story - but the concept hasn't really changed. Everybody goes on about Halo these days. I completed the story mode in under a week and then I was left with yet another FPS *yawn*.
Not to mention, who cares?
Triplea : an open source axis and allies clone
http://triplea.sourceforge.net/
An asshole is a person too blinkered in their attitude and too lacking in their knowledge to realise that they might actually be doing themselves out of some free entertainment by making generalisations like you are.
Commercial people are paid to make games that make a profit for the creating company, not to make good games. Games sales these days are as much about product branding as they are about good quality. Sure, there are a lot of good games out there but they are a minority amongst the bland, overpriced dross that fills most of the computer store shelves.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
If it interests you, here's what I found on usenet
I get the feeling that you have never played any of the Civ games before. It is a complex game that takes a long, long time to be mastered.
However, the game works in such a way that by tweaking small rules or unit values you can significantly change how the game plays. As like most classic games the real fun comes from the competitive aspect of playing against what can be quite good AI or other players. The commercial games lacked the full tweakability that players wanted. Several aspects of the game were a bit limited in the commercial version, (diplomacy, automating of settlers/engineers) and these improvements were incorporated into the free version.
Its kind of like the core of basketball- the game that we call basketball is the most popular instance of the many games that we can play on a basketball court using the same basic framework of rules- that is, we will shoot this ball into the hoop and whoever is most successful at it wins.
There are many variations, half court, horse, one on one, Around the world, etc. Same basic concept, but by tweaking the parameters you get a much different game.
Another example would be the many forms of poker. Same basic rules, but with different variations that force you to use different strategies. It is kind of like the commercial version of Civ only comes with 7 card stud. Freeciv allows you to play whatever you want.
You say, "In fact, I would argue that there hasn't been a decent PC game put out in years." I suspect you were going for hyperbole to illustrate a point, but still... that's wrong.
Now we could aggree that on the average the chance to pick a good game has went down, and doubly so for the chance to pick an _original_ game. But claiming that no game in years even came to the level of "decent", no, sorry, that's just not true.
I'll also argue that judging a game _only_ on replay value is a piss-poor criterion. That excludes from the start any story-based game, and a lot of us actually like those. Pick your own favourite movie or book: could you see that movie or read that book, again and again each day, for years? Probably not. Does it make it automatically a bad book or movie? I'd say definitely not. Well, then I'd say the same ought to apply to games.
Anyway, if we're talking about no good games being released in years, just off the top of my head (and bearing in mind that my favourite genres may not match yours), I can think of games like:
- Tropico (and more recently Children Of The Nile, as a clone of it set in ancient Egypt). Very nice game, and very nice job of simulating your subjects as living beings instead of building statistics.
- Knights Of The Old Republic. Not only a very nice RPG with a very good story, but also a better prequel to Star Wars than what George Lucas ever made. I'm not even a SW fan at all, and I found the game to be worth every cent on its own merits as an RPG.
- Fable (ok, so it's not yet released on the PC.) I was _very_ weary of buying a PM game again, after the shameless fiasco that was Black & White, but I can honestly say that Fable was one of the most entertaining things I've ever done with my pants on.
- The whole Europa Universalis/Victoria/Hearts Of Iron/Crusader Kings series. "Real Time Strategy" doesn't only mean "Dune 2 clones", you know. Paradox's games are actually about _strategy_ and at a strategy level. Very welcome change, if you ask me. (And BTW, they still have 2D graphics.)
- Vampire Bloodlines. You know, this is one game which I really didn't play because of the graphics. See, I had the resolution set to 1600x1200, 8x FSAA and 16x aniso, so the game engine compensating by a piss-poor texture resolution and polygon-count level-of-detail, to keep the frame rate playable. So I had graphics that looked debatably worse than in some Playstation games, if the PSX character had stuck his/her face in a clogged toilet. Even in that context, I found the game most entertaining to play.
- Die Gilde ("Europa 1400 - The Guild"). Very nice take on the business strategy sim genre, and probably taking third place as number of hours played among the games I've played. (Right after The Sims and Fallout 2.)
- "Rome: Total War". If you ignore the RT combat (i.e., skip them and let the AI play for you), it _is_ a turn-based Civilization-type game. A very nice one, too.
Etc.
I realize by now I could go on for hours. (That's what not having a life and buying almost every game released will do to one.) So let's just say, a lot of us _do_ find good games to play, among all the crap being released.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Amen, brother
"we" as in, you didnt do a damn things because you are a useless indvidual?
http://www.happypenguin.org/images/freeciv2.jpg
the freeciv.org hosted ones seem to have been slashdotted
Very well said. Bravo! As you have figured out, there are a lot of people on Slashdot whose net contributions to free software is less than zero. I'm talking about the people who think they have some God-given right to have a really fantastic free game without doing one iota of work to make the game better. I'm talking about losers who just sit around all day bitching about how horrible the world is without going one thing to make the world better.
What a lot of Slashdot posters don't get is they they aren't entitled to anything. If they want to see a better free game, they can help; I'm talking about contributing graphics, if they don't like the graphics, for example. Or, if they aren't an artist, contributing money to a fund to pay artists to make some really good artwork for FreeCIV.
You know, I have an open source project. I'm not going to tell the people here what project it is, because I know that a lot of Slashdot deadbeats will then attack the project. The only place where this project received baseless criticism (I'm talking assholes who say "I hope no one uses this program") is here on Slashdot.
The kinds of people who post stupid things like "oh, FreeCIV looks so 80s" really need to get a life. They need to either pay someone to make FreeCIV look more, errr, 21st century, or stfu. OK, they have the right to say what they want to say, just as I have the right to set up a web page explaining why a given poster is an asshole.
I haven't seen Planeshift discussed here yet. It is the coolest looking FOSS game I have yet seen. It is a bit like EverQuest. The download is an astonishing 250MB, most of which is artwork. It is based on the CrystalSpace 3D engine, a truly great piece of code. If you look at the "related projects" link on the CS mainpage, you will find links to many, many other FOSS games based on the CS engine. Truly a vibrant community, yet mostly unknown. Check it out.
Battle for Wesnoth http://www.wesnoth.org/. Great RTS game.
You definitely need a spell checker.
Let's get back to the part where you say: "I would argue that there hasn't been a decent PC game put out in years."
Now I supposed you were going for hyperbole to make a point. But I would have answered much the same that he did, if I had thought you literally mean that. Now on the average there _are_ a lot more of "me too" clones released and some focus being shifted from gameplay to graphics. But averages are averages, and claiming that no game in the last years was even decent is just false.
For a start your world seems to be just divided into "repetitive PacMan-style gameplay = good, anything story driven = bad." But even then:
1. The recent deluge of MMOs already catter to the same market. Expect no story there, just doing the same thing over and over again.
2. It's some major self-centeredness in claiming that only that's good gaming, and anything else is bad and sold only on graphics. A lot of us actually _like_ a story in a game, same as we like to be told a story in a movie or book.
Yes, that cuts down on replay value, but I'll live with that. Sometimes it's better to eat a steak for 20 minutes than to chew the same gum for 16 hours straight. Or in the case of games I'll take for example some 40 hours of good story in KOTOR, over 400 hours of mindless repetitive clicking in some other games.
3. The "Black And White" example really doesn't say much. It was just a crap game, sold by massive shameless hype, no more. It's not representative of every single new game in any form or shape.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Because even though the game is a clone, it's an original clone which uses no copyrighted material from the original.
Do I get a prize?
It's been a long time.
Howdy!
/. is the same as on gmail).
I've been wanting to code an open-source Sims variant for a while not. Even started on it a little bit, thinking it should be called something like "Persona" or whatever.
You say it will be no use without sim models and furniture and wallpaper and stuff -- that's very true. However, check out some fan sites with such freely available content at places like "7 Deadly Sims" ( http://www.7deadlysims.com ) and dozens of other sites with player-created content.
What would be the issue with creating a Sims clone that could import Sims graphics/textures/whatever.
One advantage that a game like FreeSims would have over other clone projects (like FreeCraft/Stratagus) is that there is already SO MUCH fan-made content, so that in theory, one could have a complete Sims clone without using ANY of the original game CD's (yet could still take advantage of them).
If anyone's interested in this, e-mail my gmail account (my username on
Cheers!
--clint
Open source development only works if you can release early and often; you've got to have something useable along the way. Creating a new game is fairly easy but it's really hard to get a user base, and hence, a developer base, for it. Freeciv started out as an exercise in multiplayer mode design, not in game rule design, so creating a new game wasn't an objective initially.
It is still a major objective for Freeciv to find new games within the existing game, and new extensions of its configurability to allow these games. Many such games can already be defined, for example, you can already create a configuration that is quite similar to board games such as chess or stratego.
First, for the challenge.
Second, because the open source version gives more game play options and can be tweaked more. Other posts on this story go into more detail.
Third, Linux support without Wine or other emulators.
Finally, platform support. The hackers can always port FreeCiv to the latest and greatest OS/Hardware combo, assuming there's enough interest in such a port. Civ 3 is already broken on XP SP2, and may not be fixed, but Freeciv, if it were broken, would likely have a patch out within a few weeks or even days.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Your already modded down so ...
OSS is still just starting. Once one of these apps or games get notice other than in the community I firmly believe will catch like wildfire.
Many of you bitch and whine but by doing that we can all see you are just sitting on your ass hoping that mom brings you down your next warm milk and cookies. You will be the people who cheer that they have been pro OSS all along when it does become big.
At this point OSS is not at the level it needs to, to come up with new genres and the such. They have gotten a game out though. Wheres your code we would love to see it!
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
Why is that, until I read your post, I had never heard of any of these games? I'd say the majority of OS X users have visited the following link, since it's built into the system menu, right next to "Software update" and other often used menu items: Games for OS X Notice the strong presence and popularity of open-source projects!
Well, there are some similar techs in the AH Civ board game and Sid Meiers Civ. Not many, ok, but specifically the text that scrolled down in the intro of civ1 mentioned some techs that were not implemented as techs in civ1, such as roadbuilding, but were familar from the board game.
I'm not implying Sid's is a continuation of AH's board game, but there is some link.
Sid's civ had AI that "talked" and that had character. Many games after it are lacking that.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Calling it turn based strategy is pushing it, there's very little strategy involved. The gameplay is incredibly simplistic and boring, and the client is a bloated pile of crap. Freeciv at least involves strategy.
I disagree completely. I've been hooked on FPS' since Wolfenstein and the gameplay is constantly evolving, albeit slowly. Capture the flag was probably the first innovation, but has largely been replaced by the round based combat that began with Rocket Arena. Action Quake brought in "realistic" weapons, Classes came in with Team Fortress, etc. My favorite game at the moment is still Battlefield 1942 which uses all of these elements, and integrates vehicle based combat for a highly complex game that has kept me captivated for years. I'm hoping the boys at DICE will have even more interesting changes in store with Battlefield2.
Its incredibly slow compared to commercial games that look ten times better graphically. The game is constantly lagging, and the most basic things like turning your character don't even work right, your character floats around in some bizzare arch instead of turning.
You're describing Alpha Centauri, the 'real' Civ 3. Some found it a bit too abstract -- many loved it.
All the 'Unit with armor type X and attack power 7 that moves 4 squares' units were a little hard to empathize with, though.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
How does this relate to open source?
(btw, I love that game)
But it's innovative when MS does it.
My thoughts exactly. The freeciv developers may have added numerous features compared to Sid Meier's Civ, and FC is a great game. But so was Civ. Yes, this is a clone.
Are you happy yet?
Their goal, which I think they're close to, is to make AC a pure modpack (ruleset+tileset) and have all the code integrated into mainline freeciv. For now, you need to apply some patches.
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
Care to point the last truly _original_ game (that does not suck)?
http://darwinia.co.uk/
suprise, suprise - their development department is bigger than their marketing department, I guess (unlike others *cough* EA *cough*)
mirrors are slammed/unavailable, putting the source and win binaries up on my ftp:
ftp://152.18.67.135/
user: slashdot
pass: [no password]
, (for verification, SHA1 available on http://www.freeciv.org/index.php/ )
Some of these have been around quite a while, or have made significant leaps during their short existence. For example, Cube has been around only for a year or two but it's very mature. BZFlag has been around forever and then some, and has been very popular for all the time. (It was quite an amazing game ages ago, the old beards say, but kids and their toys nowadays have made them to add just a bit more eye candy and probably will add more later...)
Why aren't they talked about more? Well... um... I don't know. Some of the games are still experimental or not very good; I know BZFlag is fun in small doses, yet I rather play ETF if I want to kill somebody for work. Or, if some games are good, they're kind of like Nethack - already part of the landscape. Everyone knows Nethack exists, it is there, and is the best bloody action-RPG ever made. You don't need to discuss it every time someone mentions RPGs. Imagine, if you will: "Hey, there's this game called Nethack, ever heard of it?" "Yeah, I know, I've been trying to beat it for the last 15 years, goddamnit. And I play every day." See?
Freeciv is an awesome game (thou the ai's too hard for me, but that's cause i suck).
.net/mono using the sdl. This would make it run on linux. This would give hundreds of begining game developers and artists access to a community of people (oss people) who would play their games and give them feed back on how to make their games better.
There are plenty of other open source games that don't run on linux that have active game creating communities with some great artists that could use help. The rpg toolkit is an open source project that's written in vb. They have a sourceforge page. I've looked at the code and there's no reason this couldn't be ported to
I'm sure there are other programs that are floating around that could benifit from non-windows developers looking at their code. The whole more eye's thing doesn't work if eyes aren't looking.
Linux is really boring from an os standpoint. Now Plan 9......
There have been plenty of replies to this type of post in the thread so far, but I'll take another whack at it with the ol' clue stick.
First, this isn't a copy. Network play is much better, the AI is much better, you can tweak the rules in many different ways that you couldn't in the original, and you can make mods, like middle earth.
Second, even if it was an exact copy, the idea of having an open source version of a really excellent game appeals to a lot of people. Having source code available for good AI, pathfinding, map display, etc. can help out all kinds of other games.
Third, who are you to tell other people what to do with their time? Guess what, people are still making and playing clones of Asteroids. You want something different, do it yourself.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"This goes to show what a great game an open source project can create."
You mean, this goes to show how someone with no creativity or talent of thier own can spend years and years trying, without much real success, to copy one good fifteen year old product.
Way to go open source. Another great 'accomplishment'. What will you.. err.. they.. think of next for you?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Err, Wesnoth is turn-based.
If only there really were a good real-time strategy game... it sure sucks that FreeCraft got shut down : (
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
FreeDroid http://freedroid.sourceforge.net/
Actually there are two games: A clone of the classic game ParaDroid and FreeDroidRPG, which is kind of like a ParaDroid/Diablo mix.
Note: Don't download FreeDroidRPG 0.9.12, it's utterly obsolete. The CVS version works much better and version 0.9.13 is expected to come out soon.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Wesnoth is not about all powerful characters. Yes a level 3 character is powerful (some get to level 5, but most stop at level 3), but a few level 1s can take it out. Wesnoth is designed so that those high level characters die once in a while. You should always have some low level characters moving up so you can afford to sacrifice those high level characters without losing much.
As for tight passes, Don't fight in them, retreat a little so you have some room to work. They can only fight on low level character at a time. Keep wearing them out.
Not all the maps are balanced. If you were not playing the Heir to The Throne map, start there because it is generally the best balanced. Some maps are impossible.
Your other criticisms are by design. Part of the game is working around limits. The game is designed so that you cannot use overwhelming numbers to win. In fact getting 2000 gold is generally a sign of a map that isn't working anyway. You should be fighting an enemy that is for the most part equal to you. (except for the controlling intelligence)
Nope :( (fyi, Rise of the Triad was based on the Duke Nukem "Build" Engine... One of the first if irc)
Programming is an Art. I am an Artist. Does that mean I get to wear a daft hat?
Allies are groups that agree to do battle for each other. You cannot be allied with both France in Germany in a WWII setting. You can ignore the war as neutral Switzerland did, or you can join one side and piss the other off. (sometimes you don't have a choice depending on geography it is either become our allies, or we will kill to get your resources)
France and England had an Agreement before WWII that if one went to war the other automatically would too. (though that doesn't mean it is enforced, France and Checkoslovakia had such an agreement yet France ignored it when Germany invaded Checkoslovakia)
It is open source. If the graphics are ugly that means they are waiting for you to make nice ones!
I'm a coder. I can write great code. I have no talent for graphics. I'll write the game, but until someone who has talent does graphics it will look ugly.
They should have gone l33t and made it Scorch3d, thereby conveying both meanings and saving 2 letters as well!
The simple fact that an group of developers have devoted their free time and effort towards making a game for free deserves praise and admiration! I'm a HUGE civ fan and am excited to try this rendition.
Had it occurred to you that a million original games have been passed over because this one is a clone of a popular game?
Actually no. Not until aendeuryu listed a few.
I've just noticed that there are quite a few games that are blatent clones. Not just similar - virtually identical to games such as Mariocart or Puzzle Bobble. The graphics may be slightly different, but that's about the only significant difference.
Because even though the game is a clone, it's an original clone which uses no copyrighted material from the original.
IANAL, but I know copyright is more complex than this, and as far as I can tell, there's very little case law for video games.
While this doesn't copy anything directly, it could be considered a derived work. For example, Blade Runner was based on Do Androids Dream of Electric sheep. Harlan Ellison sued James Cameron alleging that Terminator copied ideas and concepts from various stories he wrote. Neither of these works used any substantial material from the source, but were still required to credit the original creators.
Now you know why. :)
:)
If I wasn't so far from the next releases, I'd throw Nietzsche SE, Quest for a King, Star Phalanx, and Rambo vs. Kitty Cat to the mix. Unfortunately, for now all of them need to be polished up before I send them out into the world.
Complexity, or lack of efficiency? Blender is a pretty complex piece of software, but does it in a remarkably low LOC. This results in a nice tiny (compared to commercial apps with similar functions) fast binary.
Programmers today all think everyone has a 3.0 + Ghz processor, and a gig of ram. Coupled with a Uni system (at least here in the US) that follows the "more is less - sell software by the Mb, but hold the functionality so we can sell plugins and upgrades" corporate mentality, is it any wonder that American commercial software companies are world famous for producing bloatware?
You did not provide criticism. You provided nagging. Criticism is supposed to be constructive.Oh, so that explains why most of your (Anonymous Coward - uid 12268242) posts are just a string of insults. You need to grow up and get over yourself. You aren't smart and superior as you seem to think, you're petty, insecure, and vile. See, I can insult people I've never met too. That must mean I'm superior and smart also. (Do I need to add the sarcasm tags, or are you smart enough to see it for yourself).
TommyOpen Source for Open Minds
The point of Free Civ wasn't to recreate Civ II it was to pick up where Civ II left off and make it better. The AI is very good now. In the Original the AI was dumb as a box of rocks. The only reason it was a challenge was that the AI "cheated".
All generalizations are false, including this one. Mark Twain
OSS is still just starting. Once one of these apps or games get notice other than in the community I firmly believe will catch like wildfire.
But there are a lot of talented people. And, while this is a stereotype, there are a lot of role players and board gamers involved. They know about game mechanics and balancing mechanisms. And there's nothing wrong with being inspired by existing games, but I find myself irritated by exact clones. I feel the same way about commercial games as well, but exact clones are a lot rarer there.
At this point OSS is not at the level it needs to, to come up with new genres and the such. They have gotten a game out though.
New genres are not needed. Just some innovation. Make 100 little changes, such as a totally new technology tree, improvements to the combat, coming up with new ideas about how cities work and how they produce resources, and you might be getting somewhere.
Wheres your code we would love to see it!
Could take a while. I only work on it at the weekends, and I seem to be busy 3 out of every 4 of them.
Opps, I meant comment # 12268242, not uid. And yes I know what "Anonymous Coward" is. My comments were a slam against all those losers who are afraid to admit who they are.
If you can't log in and let us know who you are - you're not worth listening too.
Tommy
Open Source for Open Minds
Well, from the list in this very thread, glest is RTS.
Just because something doesn't have a new idea doesn't mean that it isnt a great game. Look at the Blizzard games: World of Warcraft and Starcraft.
Did either of them create a new genre? No. They just were really really well designed and fun. New idea != good, polish == good.
It is like using some version of Tetris to show off any gaming console past the original Nintendo or Gameboy.
One word: Lumines.
Dosbox has linux as its primary platform, doesn't it?
I am trolling
just to make the whole computer game/board game connection completely confusing some makes Sid Meier's Civilization: the board game.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
It's also Windows-only. I use both Linux and Mac OS, but not Windows.
On the bright side, however, I just discovered that FreeCraft apparently lives on as Stratagus. I'm gonna install that as soon as I can motivate myself to go find my Warcraft CD.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Don't forget the roguelikes.
rogue, moria, angband (my favorite), nethack, omega, and the variants.
Good stuff. Not for everyone. But good stuff.
"It is no longer possible for one player to be in alliance with a player who is at war with another player you are allied with."
seems like a horrible idea to me. What business do my allies have in knowing who I ally or who I do not ally with?
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Yeah, they should have to send spies to your city to find that out.
How we know is more important than what we know.
War is certainly interesting, but big wars mostly occur because of conflicting social pressures and management failures of government in not forseeing and dealing with those pressures.
ritual warfare (war as sport) comes into vogue when ruling elites can be reasonably sure they won't get hurt. (knights in armour beating up peasants)
when they're as likely as not to bleed too they get much more cautious.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
it assumes I want to play in (badly translated) Japanese language mode and won't let me set the default language to English.
This is the same reason I can't use the win32 version of GIMP.
A good troll deserves an answer in kind, and it seems you are focusing on the trees and missing the forest. Freeciv is a complex piece of software, measure it in bogo LOC, or using more sophisticated measures involving types, numbers of inputs/outputs and possible actions. Try mapping out all and then tell me it isn't complex. It has a complexity level for the main game close to something like an office suite, while something like an FPS usually has a complexity level similar to edit.com or notepad.
Most code in an FPS is for the graphics engine, which needs to be complex in order to be fast. In Strategy games, the complexity tends to be in the game mechanics themselves, which are usually even more complicated and weirdly interacting than modeling a simple physical world.
I have personal experience on both from other projects, which is probably more than either of you can say. FYI, I have seen people in the Freeciv project actually reduce the line count *and* add more features to boot, but that is not always possible.
I AM impressed by this particular OS project in that it has made it, where many have fallen.
(IE: DISCLAIMER FOR ALL THOSE ZEALOUS MODS WHO MODE FIRST AND UNDERSTAND POST SECOND!!)
However, I think this quote is a little over the top.
This project is a clone of a closed source project, not created at all. This is retrogaming/cloning, not an innovative project.
Also, as far as "retrogaming" goes, and I am a BIG fan of it ever since I remaked "Taipan" at 14, it is rather vanilla. No graphics upgrade, interface is pretty boring.
Note: http://www.remakes.org - awesome site!
But having said that, they made, so all good to them. I just don't think this is the best OS has to offer or a front page slashdot?
Still, I guess some people might find it +5 interesting...
Hobbits??
With tanks? and cruise missiles?!
...
(nasty hobbitses!)
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
just wanted to let you know... glest runs just fine in linux!
http://happypenguin.org/show?Glest
That should point you in the right direction. Unfortunately, there is no network play yet. Now that it's GPL'd it probably wont be long before MP is there; the code is being cleaned-up as we type.
If you're a fan of the classic board game Battletech, try MegaMek. Its a net-play enabled clone of the board game, with an AI tacked on if you want to beat the heck out of defenseless silicon. Feature set and stability are good enough to keep a couple of thousand users, including a few persistent campaign servers, coming back for more. Disclosure: I code for it, so don't trust a word I say, try it for yourselves.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Some SMAC ideas, such as multiple veteran levels and borders, are part of FreeCIV 2.0.
You too, huh? I'm glad I'm not the only one! Family and friends all look at me like I have a screw lose when I say I prefer to play civ2 instead of 3.
It's like, when you don't like the 'improved' new version better, there is something wrong with you.
But, heck, I'm not sure why exactly, but civ3 misses something that civ2 does have. I agree the graphics are better in civ3 and what not..but, somehow, the added complexity gets in the way of game-pleasure. Or something like that. I don't know *what* it is, really, but I do know I much prefer civ2 - it's just more (lasting) fun, while with civ3 I get bored real quickly and have a lot less fun.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Ok thanks for the information :)
I forgot that RotT was after Wolfenstein, which I had on my tandy...
No matter how you cut it - this is a tricky front-end to make...
An interesting approach to this would be to have the front end generate Tiles procedurally. This could allow you to zoom into the tile to get it to render it's statistics iconographically - it's the transitions that would be a serious puzzle. The other problem with this approach would be the slippery slope of extensibility - where do you stop? Possible design obsticles aside, it takes challenges like these to get me excited about coding.
I Love games like this, but I've not tries FreeCiv - I can hardly wait to install it!