So, Freeciv anyone?

Some time ago (ok a LONG time ago) i recall some people in this community speaking of emigrating to freeciv so as to make scenarios with more players and other options. Anyone made the journey intact?

I might be interested in helping the project with some gfx

I installed it a while ago, but did not come to play it longer than half an hour yet. The most interesting thing is that you have mor civ's available.

I think the graphics and the lack of scenarios are major detractors.

It is a BUGGER to mod.

It's good, but lacks the fluid and robust feel of CIV2 - I just prefer the feel of ToT, hence why I continue to mod with that...

Does it have a user-friendly events language? IIRC, a few years ago they were asking on Poly what events are needed? Did anything come from that?

i tried....

it s hard......

FreeCiv is vastly more complicated to mod than Civ 2.
This is probably the single deal breaker. I really tried to find out how to work it, but I came to the conclusion that at the current stage it's not worth the time.

The biggest problem, I think, is that any scenario would need to be spread out over many folders. Keeping track of everything is very difficult.

The big advantage Freeciv has over the original is grater number of factions. Some scenarios could be mcuh improved by more factions, but good design can make this unnecessary.

First Strike is an example of a scenario with most of the world is adequetaly represented by only 8 factions.
Imperialism is a scenario where I feel a few more factions could be very nice, but again, not necessary.

I would love to make a few alterations to Civ2 (Elys' Civ2Unlimited was a godsend) but in some ways it is good to have limits else I would never finish any of my projects. Part of the challenge is to make the most of what the game can do, and with some imagination it is still possible to come up with new or modified ideas. Learning FreeCiv would be like starting from scratch and all the experience I have gained over the years would be of little use. ToT is still a fun enough medium for me to design with for some years to come.

Last time I (freeciv developer) were here, thread http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=412202 was the result. To sum: Freeciv is more totally configurable than civ2, but that comes with the cost that simple modding is harder (things are not simply something but one can configure what they are) SL at large seems to prefer simplicity over power and flexibility.
We can fix some minor problem here and there, but the big picture remains that freeciv devs and SL have incompatible philosophies to civ modding. It always amazes me to notice how the most minor things, byproducts, such as support for bigger number of nations, in freeciv are what you are interested about.

No hard feelings. The reason I'm checking here again today is that maybe we can achieve something together (between some individuals at least) even though larger movement to freeciv modding is rather unlikely.

If that "scenario must spread over many folders" is really the biggest problem, we've got it really easy Flexibility and power of freeciv: Nothing forces you to setup scenario that way, it's just customary (for a reason, but still). Your mymod.serv and mymod.tilespec files should be in freeciv data directory root, but as they contain paths to everything else, you can otherwise setup your directory structure as you wish.

Also, I'd still be interested to get feedback about the freeciv modding tutorial draft I wrote for you. I'm presenting it to other audiences as well... http://www.cazfi.net/freeciv/RulesetExample.txt

Oh, and self-promotion part: Today the Alien World ruleset I talked last time changed hands (well, I'm on both sides, but still). It's no longer mine alone, but now part of freeciv project. We're still not using graphics that would make any sense with the ruleset, but classic ruleset type gfx as fallback (See screenshot http://www.cazfi.net/freeciv/alien/ )

Sorry mate, but you have your business model arse backwards. Scenario designers were players before they ever became designers. You're asking designers from one game to hop on over to another in which they have little or no experience playing or designing. How many completed scenarios exist for FreeCiv? Last time I looked (a few years ago, now) there were none and the documentation was scant. If you want to hook new scenario players and designers, someone from the existing FreeCiv community is going to have to produce a scenario (or ten) that's really worth playing. That's a fact of life. If you're short of manpower in that department, then I'm afraid you're going to be stuck in a bit of a rut.

I can tell you, as a ToT player/designer, that it took years and many high quality scenarios to convince many Civ2 fans to take a second look at that game - and this is essentially just a newer version of a game they were already playing.

The other problem you face is one of numbers. You're trying to recruit from a dwindling community. The number of active Civ2 scenario designers is very small. This game is old. Your game is modelled on this one. My guess is that less people play FreeCiv than Civ2. If someone designs for FreeCiv, it follows that even less people would play their scenarios than if they continued with Civ2. Civ2 designers already have a numbers problem.

If you're trying to get current Civ 2 players/designers to participate in FreeCiv, you have to appreciate some things about Civ 2.

The first is that it was good enough to still have an active community after more than 10 years, even if the community is rather small. This suggests that it is more than adequately meeting the needs and desires of the people who are still here. While things like extra cities and civilizations would be nice to have in some circumstances, they aren't exactly a compelling reason to switch games. As McMonkey indicated, the limiting factors can actually be an advantage. They serve as a check on the designers imagination, and can help to keep the game manageable to play. There is little advantage to having 20 civilizations, when it is hard to find 5 players for a play by email game.

The Civ 2 engine is like a template for a game, and the scenario is the game. It has a familiar interface and most mechanics are familiar, so the details of the game can be picked up relatively quickly. You are asking people to start to work with a new template, and if you expect them to do so, you must convince them that it is worth their while.

After downloading FreeCiv tonight, I spent an awful lot of time figuring out how to get information about the terrain if a unit wasn't standing on it. Civ 2's "view" mode is better (you can move the cursor to the square you want with the number pad, and leave it there without holding alt+click) even if FreeCiv gives more info about the square. You're asking people to re-learn a game in order to do the same thing they can already do, which isn't an overly inviting prospect

If your team is serious about recruiting from the ranks of civ 2 players, I would suggest that you: 1. Get the game and spend some time participating in the community, so you become familiar with the various aspects of Civ 2 and its community.
2. Design a few (good) scenarios for Civ 2, and then release improved versions for FreeCiv. This would give the Civers a specific reason to do something with FreeCiv, and give your team a chance to demonstrate the advantages of FreeCiv. Alternatively, take some existing scenarios and remake them for FreeCiv.

Catfish said:

If someone designs for FreeCiv, it follows that even less people would play their scenarios than if they continued with Civ2. Civ2 designers already have a numbers problem.

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I've written blog entry about problems of knowing size of freeciv userbase: http://cazfi.livejournal.com/183687.html Anyway, recently we got past 3.000.000 downloads mark on sourceforge. For last week there has been 700-800 downloads a day https://sourceforge.net/projects/freeciv/files/stats/timeline
Presumable majority of those users we have never play anything but the classic ruleset with default tileset, but freeciv-2.3 added utility for downloading and installing custom modpacks to game (freeciv-modpack). Most of that content is on my server, so I do have server logs at least (but no proper tools to parse them, so I rely on just reading them). For a couple of weeks in early April, after late-March release of freeciv 2.3.2, modpack downloads peaked to one every couple of minutes. Now we are down to levels where there's hours between individual downloads.

Prof. Garfield said:

If you're trying to get current Civ 2 players/designers to participate in FreeCiv, you have to appreciate some things about Civ 2.

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You present good points, but the fact is that you (and everyone who likes that model better) already have civ2. There's no need to make it to you now.

Prof. Garfield said:

After downloading FreeCiv tonight, I spent an awful lot of time figuring out how to get information about the terrain if a unit wasn't standing on it.

Click to expand...

For the record: That's middle-click (and holding it as long as you want tooltip to be shown)

Prof. Garfield said:

Alternatively, take some existing scenarios and remake them for FreeCiv.

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That would make sense from our perspective. The main problem from my perspective is that civ2 is Windows game, and I'm not getting Windows just to get civ2 to play some scenario. So if I'm going to port some scenario to freeciv, I couldn't test it in civ2 first, but rely on documentation and constultation. Any recommendations which scenario to pick?
1. I need GPL graphics for the scenario. If there's scenario with all original graphics that author is ready to license under GPL, it would be a big plus
2. It should be ok'd by the original author that remake of his/her scenario is released under GPL
3. Since freeciv scripting is not stress-tested under heavy load, and is likely to contain bugs, scenario should not use scripting too extensively. Simply rather than complex scenario first
4. If original author is willing to help and guide me, that's a big plus too.
5. Good documentation about the scenario would be needed.

I have also had this idea of really primitive scenario for a while, stone-age one. No way realistic, story telling rather cartoonish, fight between Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal tribes. Anyone wants to participate?

What's your goal here? If your goal is to recruit the scenario makers here to make content for the FreeCiv project, then you probably won't get very far without someone from your project spending time here and doing what I described. That said, I wouldn't bet the price of a new copy of Windows on being successful anyway.

Try the wine for Puppy Linux and the game from this site. On Puppy 431 I got the game to work (for a very brief test), although for whatever reason the cursor is a black box on the map.

On the other hand, if you are asking what scenario developers like about Civ 2 so that you can more easily generate your own scenario making community, then what you are doing should be sufficient, because all you are asking for is high level advice. The same is probably true if you are asking for high level advice on scenario making in a turn based setting.

Let's say that my goal is simply to make freeciv better. I'm constantly reevaluating what the right direction would be, and what it would require. I'm gathering feedback, discussing, and if something interesting comes up, proposing some kind of cooperation on various forums (SL is not the only one) Getting some seasoned civ2 scenario designers to join the effort would be nice, but we have to consider many other priorities too (I'm currently setting up project with people who consider freeciv modding too simple - they would like to adjust it even more - so, freeciv being open source, they are likely to make even source code changes for their own version)

It's not the price of the Windows, but lack of computer to conveniently run it in. My computers are in more or less server-like use so occasional dual-boot to Windows is not an option. I guess I could try running Windows on virtual machine (virtualbox) and hope that civ2 would work.

I cannot speak for all, but I can make a few observations...

CIV2 is a great civving platform for many people here, and is a very polished product.
The only things that hold us back are various hard-coded limitations in the game engine.
Apart from that, the game just has a intiutive feel, that no other CIV has captured.

I could not really ditch CIV2 for FreeCiv - While FreeCiv is indeed a very nice app, it does
not have the same ease of scenario and event creation we enjoy with CIV2. I have played
FreeCiv and it somehow feels more clumsy and lacks the fluid game structure of ToT...

Now, this is not a shooting down of FreeCiv, just my personal view and rationale behind
why I have never jumped ship from CIV2...Please do not take my opinions the wrong way.
I wish the developers all the best with the project...I plan to stick with CIV2 forever.

I was going to write a list of how the system is set up in Civ 2, but I realized that if you don't care enough to play it just enough to see how it works, you won't bother reading such a list. Unless you live in some remote part of Lapland you must have access to a Windows computer somewhere.
Until you at least make an attempt to see the issue from a Civ2'ers perspective this won't be going anywhere.

Ingvar VII said:

I was going to write a list of how the system is set up in Civ 2, but I realized that if you don't care enough to play it just enough to see how it works, you won't bother reading such a list.

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Such a list would help in seeing what things you consider relevant. We obviously think quite a different things important. While I have not played civ2 much, but a lot of civ1, SMAC, civ3, freeciv, simply playing civ2 would not give me revelation of what things you have opposite priorities to me. After all, I didn't play civ2 back when I had the opportunity, simply because I already had freeciv modded for my own tastes when I briefly tested civ2 and found civ2 so much less enjoyable.

Several times SL people have mentioned just some difference in User Interface to be big problem in using freeciv. Yes, it's unfortunate. I think that back when freeciv was mainly just civ1/civ2 modes, it had quite a similar UI too (at least it was very familiar for me when I first joined -97 with just civ1 experience). But as we have gained new functionality, functionality that must be easily accessible in the UI too, UI has been consantly reworked (I find it very unfortunate that we have to rearrange keyboard commands users are accumusted to in earlier versions. Consider the fact that "f" has traditionally used both fortifying and building fortress; if we want to support units that can do both, we will need to have also separate shortcuts in order to tell them apart) Another thing driving UI to different direction is that freeciv is multiplayer game - much of the UI design has evolved to be optimal in competitive play (I don't play fast-paced multiplayer myself, so I don't even myself know all the quick-select-potential-defenders features)

Rules wise I think I know civ2 rules quite well. For a long time it was freeciv development goal to make civ2 ruleset even bug-compatible with civ2. Those few rules that didn't actually make in there, were at least documented as missing features. Note that even civ2 ruleset is no longer as civ2 compatible as it was at best - we've chosen to completely drop some freeciv features, civ2 ruleset has depended on, usually because they have made development of more important features too hard. At least triremes are completely unable to leave shoreline (in civ1 & civ2 rulesets) instead of just risking sinking.

It's true that I don't have any civ2 modding experience, but I think that I've at least gathered quite a bit information of what is possible there, mainly from reading your threads back when SL lived on Apolyton.
Since I consider quite different things relavant than you do, I may miss some point completely, but I wonder if it would be worth implementing to do extra layer on top of existing freeciv modding capabilities that would limit you to civ2 mechanics - to implement civ2 like core system from which you can adjust only those things possible in civ2 editing. For example "diplomat slot" is often mentioned - you always have exactly one unit with diplomatic abilities. In freeciv you can give diplomatic abilities to any unit, or none at all. Such a layer to limit you to civ2 capabilities would predefine exactly one unit to have diplomatic abilities.