[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Freeciv and Civ II

["Sam BC" <sambc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

What this compatability comes down to, really, is doing as much as possible
to be identical to CivII. This may not be a good thing, but it was my
impression that this was part of the 'mission statement' of Freeciv. It
certainly seems that everyone gets that impression. Now, eitehr that's
changing or everyone ought to be working towards that as a goal.

Otherwise, I hate to say it, we are falling into one of the pitfalls VinodV
identified in those ol' Halloween Documents (spit, spit). A project needs
goals or it gets sidetracked and fragmentates. My belief is that we should
have two main goals for the core development:

1)      CivII 'compatability'. This I take to mean that gameplay should be
*potentially* identical to CivII (with the exception of improving
algorithms to an equivalent effect, or perhaps a differently-focused AI).
Cosmetic similarities (eg Isometric landscape) may be taken as well, but I
believe that they are less important. What is important is making a game
that _plays_the_same_.

2)      Advanced expandability. We should produce, as we are doing, a system to
expand freeciv. This should certainly include *every* good idea that
anybody can be bothered to code, as well as certain things already
identified as important or favourable. These should all be options,
configured from rulesets or server options (or in some cases client
options).

It should be noted that there is no reason that the features not thought of
as 'A Good Thing' in CivII can be made part of the expandability. So, with
the example of Fundamentalism, on which we seem to be divided:

        - Render governments abstract with all variables necessary to represent
CivII government types. Add more variables later as well, maybe.
        - Produce more than one standard ruleset for this, including a
clearly-labelled (but not neccessarily default) CivII ruleset, and perhaps
a CivII as well.

It is clear from the discussions I have seen that this approach is already
pervasive, so why has there been discussions recently about compatability
with CivII? If that is still a goal, there is no reason to sacrifice what
we feel about quality to meet it, just make more features abstract. This
also solves the problems with the idea of SMAC version or of FreecivNG.

I gather from many peoples posts that this has already been considered. How
about the admins/leaders make a clear statement, what the goals are and the
abstracts of how we intend to acheive them.

Rather more than my 2p worth....

SamBC

----------
> From: Egbert Hinzen <egbert@xxxxxxxxxx>
> To: Freeciv Developer <freeciv-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [Freeciv-Dev] Re: Freeciv and Civ II
> Date: 28 April 2000 12:42
> 
> On Thu, 27 Apr 2000, Tuomas Airaksinen wrote:
> > On Thu, 27 Apr 2000, Egbert Hinzen wrote:
> > > AFAIK there was the idea that Freeciv should become compatible to
> > > Civ II... 8-)
>  
> > Why should we make Freeciv COMPATIBLE with civ2? 
> > I suppose our goal is to make freeciv much better than civ2 
> > (and IMO, it is already!).
> 
> That's right. But better means more than as good as...
> ... and I don't think that Freeciv is as good as Civ II...
> or CIV I, BTW.
> 
> -- 
> Egbert Hinzen
> --- ICQ 45698606 or 51826579
> --- PGP Public Keys available at www.ehinzen.de
> 
> 
>