[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Compound City Names

[Stan Shebs <shebs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Vasco Alexandre Da Silva Costa wrote:
> 
> 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. :)

Ironically, the very first public release of Xconq only had color
graphics, but in 1987, very few people had color X workstations (Utah
just happened to have some that were donated by HP), and so in
response to many requests, I added monochrome.  That mode lives
on only in code to print maps in PostScript form...

> 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" :-)

Xconq's code is even more scary now! :-)

Actually it points up a hazard for Freeciv, which is that if you
try to generalize everything, the code gets really really complicated
and hard to test.  Xconq actually has a testsuite, believe it or not,
because with so many different game modules, it's hard to anticipate
the consequences of any change.  This level of complexity discourages
many potential contributors unfortunately, since there's so much you
have to know just to get started.  Sort of like Mozilla, hmm... :-)

> 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.

Actually, Xconq's abilities do include Civ-type games now, and the
current library includes games like Magellan and Africa 1850
that are nearly pure exploration.  However, it will be a long time
before Xconq includes support for all the Civ-specific details that
Freeciv does now, because each new feature has to be implemented in a
generic fashion, including the UI and AI bits.  Not only that, since
Xconq proper is just an engine, somebody has to construct the game
designs too, and those are much more complicated than Freeciv's
rulesets.

Perhaps the most useful way to regard Xconq is as the R&D department
for Freeciv. :-)

Stan
shebs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx