[Freeciv-Dev] Re: For those living in a cave...

[vze2zq63@xxxxxxxxxxx]

Per I. Mathisen wrote:

> Freeciv just hit Slashdot again...
> ...read the discussion and enjoy.

Here are a few excerpts from user comments that I found either 
informative or merely interesting.  Of course, they should not be taken 
as representative.
"It's hard to say, but Freeciv is much worse than any  Civilization, 
when you play in single player mode. Simple reason - there is no 
diplomacy with AI. So it's war only game. When you play Civilization3 
you survive for a long time without single fight. In Freeciv you must 
fight, you can't trade, you can't share science, you can't have peace, 
you can only destroy, steal and conquer."
                                        --Jacek Poplawski

"Here is a list of reasons why I'm still playing freeciv over civ3.
    "Performance - my box is well above the "recommended" civ3 
requirements and it generally runs good UNTIL the map is loaded up with 
units. Then it is a dog and I really miss the rapid keystroke 
progression possible with freeciv. I can complete a game in freeciv in 
the fraction of a time of a similar civ3 game.
    "Superior user interface - I'll probaly get flamed here, but I 
prefer the freeciv interface. The civ3 GUI is "pretty", but civ style 
games are all about information. I hit F1 in freeciv, it pulls up a city 
report where I can easily examine and edit worklists, center on any 
city, sort by any possible report category and customize report, briefly 
scan for cities in state of disorder, instantly pop in the help browser 
informing me of what benefits of potential city improvments or what unit 
stats are for build consideration. Yes, it's sort of there in civ3 - but 
a lot of space is devoted to giving rows of bread icons instead of 
giving me a simple readout. And finding cities in civil disorder is a 
challenge - especially when I have a message log in freeciv, but that's 
all gone in civ3. And the civlopedia deal is nice in civ3, but it hits 
the CD drive and there is a second or two delay - not a lot but not the 
instant retrieval I'm accustomed to in freeciv. And not all of the unit 
commands are even labeled in freeciv or on the civlopedia. I guess it's 
a part of "safecopy" protection or something, but a lot of the unit 
commands are only available in the manual.
    "Infinite customization - 61 civs to play with (current count), and 
you can easily add any tileset, ruleset, techset desired. The graphics 
are not the greatest, but you can easily change them and there are a 
variety of tilesets available now - and you can go with the isometric 
view or the old-style civ1 flat view. Instead of selecting from a 
general parameter palette (60%, 70%, 80% ocean coverage), you can set 
whatever generator percentages you desire - sure, some of the settings 
might be really wacky, but hey, it makes for much more replay value. And 
if you don't like something that can't be changed or added on by 
creating a new unit, building, tech ruleset, then you have the source so 
you can dive in and change however the game works for yourself.
    "It runs on Linux - I usually am in Linux but reboot into Win-doze 
(like many others) for games - however, with freeciv available it allows 
me to play without rebooting. Freeciv is also available for a bunch of 
other platforms (Windows, BeOS, etc.), though I've not had experience 
with them.
    "Improved multiplayer - freeciv was setup to be multiplayer. The AI 
is good - the "easy" AI is probaly too good - will smack down the 
inexperienced player, and the "hard" AI probaly isn't enough of a 
challenge for the expert player. Only negative is that the AI doesn't do 
diplomacy so it's either conquest victory or race to space (if enough 
map space for the number of opponents)."
                                        -- Naum

"What really annoyed me about Civ/Civ II was the fact that the nations's 
cities lists were SMALL (20 names or less) - considering that I like to 
build large empires (and that I have the nasty habit of renamig the 
cities I conquer), it was really annoying to have to think of a new name 
each time. Even nations (my favorite being Spain) with lots of cities 
available in any decent map were prone to this problem.
     "In Freeciv, nation rulesets are as open as the source code. So I 
made LARGE lists of cities for several of my favorite nations (the 
spanish ruleset's list has 200 entries, thanks to several days worth of 
work), and now I play happily."
                                        -- mfarah
(Why aren't these in CVS? :-)

"If Linux is ever going compete with Windows on the desktop (don't 
laugh), then attention to eye-candy is essential. While it's doubtless 
true that great gameplay doesn't necessarily demand great graphics, it's 
also true that many games benefit a great deal from them. The whole 
"gameplay vs. bells-and-whistles" debate has raged ever since computer 
games first started to appear; in the meantime, computer games have 
continued to advance in terms of visuals and sound. And the situation 
right now is that there are a number of very good games for Windows that 
_do_ have fantastic graphics; given that, why would anybody choose to 
play more rudimentary Linux-based games?"
                                        -- kafka93

"I am a musician with entirely too many analog synthesizers, samplers, 
drum machines, etc., however my coding skills cover HTML and a little 
JavaScript. I would be very interested in creating sound effects and 
music for open source games and software, but I don't know where to go 
in order to offer my services. SourceForge seems to almost never mention 
musicians or audio techs."
                                        -- AnattaRadiate
(Responses told this person to send mail to "the mailing list", but that 
  she would probably get a rather limited response.  Perhaps a more 
organized art-project would be beneficial?  A separate mailing list, maybe?)
jason