[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Compound City Names

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

On Mon, 25 Sep 2000, Erik Sigra wrote:

> Stan Shebs wrote:
> > 
> > Erik Sigra wrote:
> I have now looked at the Xconq screenshots at
> <http://sources.redhat.com/xconq/>. It is very impressive. Xconq has
> many of the features I want in Freeciv. It has isometric view, hexagon
> map, contour lines (they look BETTER than I imagined when you told me),
> very accurate world maps, many terrain types, ...
> (I noted that the rivers flow between the tiles instead of in the middle
> of them.)

Eh :)  Yes Xconq has decent gfx now; as far as i know they were a recent
addition.  In the old days i remember a Xconq with wonderful (not) b&w
gfx. :)

> It even has the Freeciv unit graphics. And a CivII emulation.

Yeah, they seem to be using the trident tiles from Freeciv.  No matter...
we swiped lotsa city names (at least) from Xconq :-)

> Then I searched for "freeciv" it Xconq's mailing list archive. The first
> hit I got contained this text from you:
> > I follow Freeciv development, and must confess to bouts of envy at the
> > number of developers adding to it, even though the code is somewhat crufty
> > C, and the architecture is thoroughly wired to Civ emulation.  No matter,
> > every week one or another limitation is being removed.  Oh yeah, and the
> > networking works...

Well if i remember Xconq used some weirdo scripting language or something
for most of the game (at least that was what it seemed from a quick
browsing i did through the source all those years ago).
I was more scared by it at the time than freeciv's "crufty C" :-)

> The full message is at:
> 
>   <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/xconq7/2000/msg00269.html>
> 
> It seems like Freeciv and Xconq has a lot to learn from each other. You
> must have given it a lot of thought. What code and data do you think
> could be shared through libraries? (City name generation and network
> code are obvious.)

Well, most stuff would be useful, but i guess their code probably isn't
that modular to make such sharing easy.  Most game code isn't.  Anyway
since these are tile based networkable strategy games similarities in game
code should be fairly common.

However the end goal of Xconq and freeciv design is different.  While they
aim for a military simulation game which is very generic (kinda like a
souped up version of RISK IMHO), freeciv in spite of having the military
side too focuses a lot on production, development & management. It is
focused on emulating Sid Meier Civilization (tm) style strategy games even
if some people would like to emulate other games too (Master of Magic,
Master of Orion, etc) - i consider games like SMAC a natural extension of
the Civ concept unlike MOM & MOO which are a bit different.

In Civ like games you can win a game without conquest.  Even Civ 1 had the
space race to Alpha Centauri win option.  SMAC has even more:

* Planetary Ruler(?) if you have a huge majority of votes.
* Corner the Global Energy Market (basically you buy the oposition out).

In the end a Civ game focuses more on production than brilliant
military tactics IMHO.

Diferent objectives lead to diferent design choices.

> I think integration would boost development of both games (commercial
> game developers spend huge amounts of time playing competitor's games).
> Of course I will testplay Xconq now and even look at the sorce code.

---
Vasco Alexandre da Silva Costa @ Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisboa