[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Game Design: put up or shut up

[Ilkka Lehtoranta <ilkleht@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:

> > > Name *one* way it's superior.
> >
> > Multiplayer.  It works on the Amiga.
> 
> Ok, you guys have won those points.

By the way, actually (in my opinion at leat) the major point in Freeciv is 
that it is freely available Civ clone. You could play Civ on Windows, but 
when you are in Linux box you probably want have a game of "Civ" without 
booting to Windows. Or when you are a hobbyist on niche PPC platform (like 
me).

But I would not say Freeciv is superior. When I had my Amiga 1200 I was 
more often booting to MacOS emulation and playing CivII there rather than 
running Amiga native Freeciv client. Maybe the biggest problem for open 
source (or closed source shareware/freeware) games is not perfectinized 
look but everchanging source code and features. Maybe the major problem is 
that you are not targetting for "full release" like you were if developing 
commercially...

I would say often Freeciv development seem to be concentrating in things 
which are not interesting for the wider audience but making it perfect 
(tm) just sake of it. But after all, many of developers have a job or are 
studying in school or something... And Freeciv is the place where you can 
tweak your code on your spare time and give some toys to play for the 
rest.

And after all this project is all about fun. I don't know any Freeciv 
developers (just only on this ml) and I'm not involved in development 
really. But I believe developers are doing this because they think it is 
cool, they have good time with it and they dont have to work agains tight 
deadlines.

Oh and by the way, if current developers dropped this project in favor of
new better project there is always new talented generation coming and 
continuing the Freeciv project.



  Greets, Ilkka