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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."
kekelar 2000 owns you.
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.
It's looking awesome!!!
What's the system requirements to run it!?
"This goes to show what a great game an open source project can create."
Really? I had better games in the late 80'ies running on *DOS*
This goes to show what a great game an open source project can create.
Yeah, a crappy ripoff of a 10 year old game...
I never really liked freeciv, there are soooo much rules, they take away all the fun. I would suggest a game like the battle for wesnoth
Free to distribute
Free to modify
Free from original ideas.
Really, what is it with free softweare developers? Is it really that hard to find someone with an original new idea for a game? Freeciv is not only a copy of an existing game, but it's a copy of an existinggame that's so old the sequal has been available at a budget price for at least half a decade.
Where are all the talented games designers? I'll tell you where - In games comapnies. These guys know the value of their ideas and concepts. They know that if thye give their stuff away they'll be out of a job. Programmers don't seem to care though. 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.
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?
Although I appreciate that the core of the game is the engine, is it just me, or are the graphics lacking? I would have hoped that they could have at least done better than the graphics of a almost 10 year old game?
Unpretentious Sydney reviews by unqualified Sydney reviewers
.. 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
Yes.
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.
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?
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".
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.
We've managed to clone a game that's 10 years old. Fantastic work, guys...
What about you? Any ideas?
:)
hany
A cheap rip-off of a great game? I think I saw the same thing for $10 at Wal-Mart.
Nice to see a great OS game is compeating a crapy knockoff. Wake me when the OS version of "Deer Hunter" comes out.
New wonder: The Eiffel Tower. Makes AIs love you and improves reputation
;-)
/.'d orig:
but... everyone *hates* the French right?
Article
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 ob
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
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
...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?
This goes to show what a great game an open source project can create.
Um, by copying a 13 year old game? Where is the glory, creativity or initiative in that? Why is this a great advertisement for open source? I'm far more impressed by original ideas implemented as mods to existing games, than simply replicating an existing game.
P.
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.
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..........
'nuff said
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
.torrent anyone?
It just teased me and now I wanna play it!
-1: Part of the Problem
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.
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.
Someone with mod points please send this bullshit to -1. It's standard anti-free software flamebait and it's also quite transparently so. Not only it's completely off-topic, but it's clearly written to give rise to an endless stream of replies. Shame on those who modded this up for being so stupid.
Now kill it and let's move on.
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.
Am I the only one who thought FreeCIV was ANOTHER port of FreeBSD?
If you want better graphics,
try C-evo for Windows.
http://www.c-evo.org/
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
How long did this take?
Are there any real breakthru's in OSS here?
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?
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?
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.
I just heard something I didn't want to hear! It opposes my entire worldview! Lets make sure no one else reads the parent post!
...something with tits in it, if you can manage.
...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
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!)
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.
A nekid chick getting shagged missionary style is also not the best viewing angle as I would not want to see some blokes naked arse.
The best thing that the guy could do IMNSHO is to create a female only nude beach....
But we'll let you wear the daft hat.
Got to keep the loonies on the path
I still prefer the Simtex originals though. Even with their SVGA graphics.
Programming can be art, just like arquitecture.
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.
*8
Mirrordot link.
OLPC Australia
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.
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.
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.
"* 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?
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?
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
Link to open-source game site posted on /. without any mirrors. Guess what's happened to the server?
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.
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.
how about installing windows on that 5 gig partition you have on the side and playing civ 3...
i mean i guess if you like being like 8 generations behind the rest of the world i could understand...
fact: microsoft > linux
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?
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.
...does the game have the concept of "peace" yet? Constantly being at war with every nation on the planet was what turned me off to FreeCiv initially.
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.
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.
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.
Don't forget Scorched3d! It's one of the best games ever.
Cheers,
RoadkillBunny
You guys talk about commerical games being so bland and unoriginal in comparison to open source but in reality all open source people do is make poor imitations of old commercial games. BZflag = battlezone, freeciv = civ, wesnoth = one of the billion hex games out there. At least the commercial people are payed and therefore make good new games using new technology to keep it interesting. Besides the Freeciv devs are assholes.
Not to mention, who cares?
Triplea : an open source axis and allies clone
http://triplea.sourceforge.net/
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
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.
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
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
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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." ---
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!