[Freeciv-Dev] Re: freeciv feedback (was: Nice article about Freeciv in O'Reilly Network)

[Jules Bean <jules@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Nov 23, 2001 at 02:05:56AM +0500, Jason Short wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Nov 2001, Miguel Farah F. wrote:
> 
>  > There's a nice article about Freeciv in the O'Reilly Network. Go check
>  > it out:
> 
> At the end of the article it says:
> 
> "It being one of the more successful projects in the open source
> community,  one would think after being in such active development for so
> long that Freeciv might rival its commercially-sold counterparts in
> quality and features. It does not, and similar strategy titles like
> Civilization II and Alpha Centauri clearly have slicker user interfaces,
> smarter AI, and generally better gameplay overall."
> 
> I think, and I believe most developers agree with me, that FreeCiv has a
> much better user interface than old Civ games (certainly CivI/CivII and
> arguably SMAC).  The gameplay is, AFAICT, identical.  And FreeCiv's AI
> isn't that bad - it can certainly frustrate beginners.

Yes.  The author doesn't mean quite what he says.

By 'slicker user interfaces', he means 'better graphics'.
By 'better gameplay overall', he means 'better graphics and sound'.

Actually, freeciv has a good UI: more powerful than the Civ II UI, and
generally rather good. It just hasn't been rendered in pseudo-3D ;-(

(perhaps the freeciv UI isn't as well documented, so he might not even 
realise about several features..)

Jules