Complete.Org: Mailing Lists: Archives: freeciv-dev: November 2001:
[Freeciv-Dev] Re: For those living in a cave...
Home

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

[Top] [All Lists]

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index] [Thread Index]
Cc: Freeciv developers <freeciv-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Freeciv-Dev] Re: For those living in a cave...
From: vze2zq63@xxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2001 20:57:44 -0500
Reply-to: jdorje@xxxxxxxxxxxx

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



[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]