Re: [Freeciv-Dev] Opinion of a new player.

[Vasco Alexandre Da Silva Costa <vasc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 13 Mar 1999, Martin Christensen wrote:

> Hey, this can be one heck of a game. I am a fond player of CivII
> (actually it's one of the only games I've ever bothered to play, along
> with CivI, of course), and here are my first impressions of this game.
>   The graphics aren't what they could be, let's face that. I've never
> seen so much talent at creating spectacular graphics as in the Linux
> community, so it surprises me that FreeCiv is so comparatively dull
> looking. The colour dept should be increased a great deal, if you ask
> me, the terrain made less 'iconic' and more realistic. The Athena

The problem with graphics is that there haven't been many skillfull
volunteers poping up.  Also the graphics need to be consistent and there
are quite a lot of them.
The best tiles i've seen so far are the ones by Ralf Engels (great job
with the units, especially the ships), however his terrain tiles aren't
easily recognizable, as myself and my friends have noticed, Daniel
Bennet's tiles do a much better job at that.

This is a game!  Realistic can look nice but may end up getting in the
way instead of helping.  The graphics should look pretty but be easily
recognizable IMHO.

> widgets are not the best in the world. Is there a way that others can be
> selected during the configuration process, like, for instance, those
> standard to KDE or GNOME? That would also be a great help to the feel of
> the game.

Actually there's a GTK+ (GNOME) client that's nearly finished. That will
supposedly be included in freeciv-1.8.1.

There was a Qt (KDE) client being done but because of Qt licensing
problems "official" support was dropped.  You should still be able to find
it however.

>   The server part is harder to use than it should be. A graphical
> interface would be a valuable addition, if not as a part of the standard
> distribution then as an optional tool. The whole server-client structure
> will probably confuse many people who are not used to reading readme's
> in order to be able to start a programme, let alone compiling them on
> their system before use. :-) How about a single-player start-up script
> that configures the server and then starts the client? It might make a
> lot of things easier.

I disagree with making the server and client more integrated in that way,
FreeCiv is by nature a multiplayer game and it sucks a bit when playing
against AI (among the things which made AI in Civ2 more fun is the 
diplomacy stuff).  A Tcl/Tk interface to the server would be nice though.

>   The mediocre graphics I can live with, but the feel of the game should
> be improved, I think. My initial impression is that of awkwardness. I'm
> sure you guys are making a great game, probably even greater than what
> Sid Meier has made, but a more smooth surface etc. would boost the
> attractiveness of the game to a LOT of potential players, I think.
>   I'll fool around with this game some more and see if I change my
> opinion. In the mean time I hope my ideas are of help to you - after
> all, we all want the best game possible (easier said than done, eh?
> :-)).
>   Good work, guys; keep it up!

---
Vasco Alexandre da Silva Costa, student @ Instituto Superior Tecnico,
Technical University of Lisbon - Software & Computer Engineering