Slashdot Mirror
3D Freeciv-Web (Beta) Released (freeciv.org)
It's the open source web version of the classic Linux strategy game, and now Slashdot reader Andreas(R) -- one of its developers -- has an announcement.
Now the developers are working on bringing the game to the modern era with 3D WebGL graphics [and] a beta of the 3D WebGL version of Freeciv has been released today. The game will work on any device with a browser with HTML5 and WebGL support, and three gigabytes of RAM... It's a volunteer community development project and anyone is welcome to contribute to the project. Have fun and remember to sleep!
The developers of Freeciv-web are now also working on a VR version using Google Cardboard, according to the site, while the original Freeciv itself has still been maintained for over 20 years -- and apparently even has its own dedicated port number.
The developers of Freeciv-web are now also working on a VR version using Google Cardboard, according to the site, while the original Freeciv itself has still been maintained for over 20 years -- and apparently even has its own dedicated port number.
its a empire building game, even the use of 3d is on the unnecessary side
I'm one of the developers of Freeciv-web. Please post your questions and feedback here or on the Github issue tracker. This is a beta-version, so there are many things to improve in the game. If you are a good developer or 3D artist perhaps you would be interested in helping improve the game also. Creating an open source game like this can be a lot of fun!
The game works nicely in Firefox and any other modern browser. It requires that your computer or mobile device has at least 3 gigabytes of memory, and will not work so well if you have less.
Why does it require so much memory? Is it because JavaScript is such an awful and inefficient language? It makes me laugh when JavaScript clones of old DOS games need multiple gigabytes of memory, while the original DOS games ran fine with only 1 or maybe 2 MB!
I'm not defending JS or claiming there's no waste because of it, but comparing the 3D version of this game to a DOS game is like wondering why Rogue needs less processing power to run than Quake.
The client is using JavaScript, jQuery, jQuery UI and the Three.js 3d engine. The server is running a Java web application on Tomcat, the Freeciv server is implemented in C and there are processes which use Python.
I have AAA games on my hard drive that will run on a system with 3 GB of RAM and don't look like games from the early 1990s.
Fantastic post.Much thanks again. Cool.
This is your boss. Important clients use IE 6. Can we get it to work in IE 6 before the end of today?
Thanks
http://saveie6.com/
Look at the screenshot in the announcement article.
Really, I insist that you take a look.
The graphics quality is rudimentary.
Somebody else described it as looking like "from the early 1990s". At first I thought that was an exaggeration, but it isn't. To be blunt, it looks worse than games from that time period.
I don't see how anyone can justify 3D graphics of such a low quality requiring 3 GB or more of RAM! It's unjustifiable, as far as I'm concerned.
Everyone spends their time making a prettier game, whereas most of the players just want an AI that doesn't suck. I know, graphics are easy. The results are obvious. No one wants to spend time doing something hard that can't even be seen on the surface.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
If the game still looked anything like what I played as a kid in the 90's it certainly needed a face lift but what were they doing going 3D? The screenshots dont look good at all, wouldnt some really nice pixel art have looked a ton better and been about the same amount of work to make?
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
I just don't get the desire for 3D interfaces for turn based strategy games like this. The move from text-based interfaces (Empire, 1970's) to 2D GUIs (XConq 1980's, Civilization, 1990's) was reasonable and improved the game experience. But I find the 3D interfaces that Firaxis introduced in the 2000's really made things worse.
So?
It's graphics quality is better than Minecraft and Tetris.
It's a tile based game so being able to tell one square from another is the aim of the graphics, just as with Minecraft and Tetris you want to distinguish blocks.
I quite agree. The original Freeciv game is at par w/ Civ 3: we are now at Civ 6. While Freeciv has some great advantages over mainstream Civ games - like 500+ 'nations', they could use a few of the other advances that have been added to subsequent versions, like culture, religion and so on. It would even be nice if they had things like cultural victories, diplomatic victories, religious victories and so on, like in Civ 6.
I have yet to digest Civ 6, since there are unreasonable restrictions on what we can do. In Civ 4, we had a scenario editor where we could edit anything - names of cities, civilizations, rulers - pretty much create a board w/ a set group of players, cities, religions, city buildings, et al. In Civ 5, the editor was gone, but there have been a lot of mods that have made it almost as flexible, while in the meantime associating each nation w/ certain attributes, like religion (e.g. if Islam hasn't been invented and the Arabs invent a religion, they get it, unlike in Civ 4 where whoever first discovers Divine Right gets it). Civ 6 is downright horrible - you can't edit the name of your ruler, nor the name of your civ. Like if you are Russian, you're stuck w/ Peter: no way to edit it to Katrina or Nikolai. Originally, even the city names were locked: if you wanted to start w/ Moscow instead of St Petersburg, you were out of luck. At least, that one's been fixed.
About the 3D effects, in Civ 5, one has to go into 3D to see the status of the city, like if it's been secretly converted to another religion: it's not something that's visible in 2D, and you don't get a status report until the conversion is done. But in the meantime, in the 3D view, it shows a delayed status: like if you've adapted a policy, it goes away in the 2D view, but in the 3D view, it still prompts you to select a policy, but when you go into it, you see that it's already been done. Oh, and lets say you change the name of a city early in the game. Like let's say you're playing the French, and wanted to change the name of your capital from Paris to Versailles. Even after you've changed it, it'll still show you 'Paris' in 2D, but if you go to 3D, you'll see the correct name 'Versaille': it's only after Versailles has grown that you'll see the correct name. This is really a bug: if you change the name of a city, the new name is what should show up immediately, no matter what stage of the game you are in.
I agree w/ you that 3D is less important to this game than feature improvements. As it is, FreeCiv is currently feature compatible w/ Civ 3: there is a whole bunch of stuff in versions 4-6 that could be imported. I'm not suggesting that everything be brought over lock, stock and barrel, but I am suggesting that some of the features, like religion, culture and the like, be brought in, and that we have several ways of winning in addition to conquest and scientific. Like cultural, diplomatic, religious, score, et al. I'd love to see those improvements brought in. It's nice that this game is being made available on the web, but given that it's FOSS, I don't think platform support is an issue here: I'm playing it on my new TrueOS system. Instead, make this game feature compatible w/ Civ versions beyond 3.
You can install the native version from http://www.freeciv.org/ Should run fine on just about any computer made in the past 15 years.
In Civ 4, they introduced concepts like religion and culture, and in Civ 6, they introduced the concept of a religious victory. In Civ 5, a religious victory mod exists where if 65% of all cities worldwide (depending on the level you are playing) convert to a religion, the owner of that religion gets a religious victory. In Civ 6, it's one of 5 regular victory modes, which can be attained if you've converted all your enemy cities to your religion, making them unable to even resurrect their own religion, let alone convert you.
In Civ 5, they have a unit called 'Inquisitor', which can eliminate all alternative religions in the city. As an example, let's say you are Arabia and owning Mecca, which has 5 Muslim citizens. Your enemy is the Byzantines, who are Christian, and who send Christian missionaries to convert your city. Every time a missionary strikes, you may see 1 or 2 of your citizens become Christian. If any religion has a majority in the city, as opposed to a plurality, the city converts to that. Let's say the Byzantines managed to make 3 of the 5 citizens Christian, Mecca would become Christian. But if you in advance created an Inquisitor, that inquisitor can reconvert all the infidels in the city back to Islam, w/o altering the population. In fact, even if your city had 3 Muslims and 2 Christians, you could still use the inquisitor to suppress the 2 Christians and convert them to Islam. Note that if you created the inquisitor in Mecca after it was converted to Christianity, you'd get a Christian inquisitor, and if you applied him, you'd end up wiping out your own religion in the city. So inquisitors should be built in cities that are still your original religion.
Aside from missionaries, they also have prophets in Civ 5 (which are Apostles in Civ 6), who are much more powerful and can strike 4 times, converting entire cities to their religion. In Civ 5, prophets have the option of declaring a religious war. If such a thing happens, all civilizations and city states that follow your religion will declare war on your target, which cannot be one of your co-religionists. So Arabia could declare a religious war on Byzantium, but not on, say, the Muslim city state of Kuala Lumpur.
Memory used in MB:
Firefox 662
Chrome 780
Edge 1012
IE 1056
So for me, Firefox is actually using the least memory, I suggest you test with the browsers available to you, with a selection of tabs that reflects your usual usage.
I did find that over time as I opened new tabs and closed others that memory usage crept up, but I can't be bothered to spend a couple of hours using Internet Explorer just to see how it's memory usage balloons.