Somnium - Online

Fall from Heaven 2 0.33 introduced the game of Somnium to players of Civ. I'm now introducing the very same game to anyone with a web browser.

I've converted the game of Somnium to a javascript web-based game that anyone with a modern web browser can play online. Simply go here to play it against whoever you want.

This is very much an Alpha release, but for the most part should be perfectly playable. It doesn't work in IE, and this isn't likely to change in the near future I'm afraid. It should work perfectly well in Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome and any other modern browsers that you want to use. It is very Javascript heavy, and as such you will need to have Javascript enabled in your browser to be able to play or watch games.

Any other problems that come up - and unfortunatly I suspect there will be some - it would be very helpful if you could raise them in the Somnium Online Issue Tracker

In order to actually play games you need to have a valid OpenID. It's very possible that you already do as a lot of sites offer that service, but if not them https://www.myopenid.com is a very quick and easy service that offers them.

Other than that, go play and have fun, and let me know what you think

Wow!

I have only one word for this: Awesome!

Awesome!

+1 - online version of Somnium is cool
-1 - no credit given to the games designer = sad panda

In all seriousness it is cool that you were able to do this. Wish I could play a single player version without having to register. Please change the credits to:

Originally developed as a mini-game for the Fall from Heaven II (link: http://www.civfanatics.com/ffh) mod for Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword (link: http://www.firaxis.com/games/game_detail.php?gameid=16)

Game Designer: Derek "Kael" Paxton
Original programmer: Stéphane "Sto" Nadry
Art: Stephanie Pui-Mun Law and Jason Engle

And of course a credit for yourself for the web implementation.

Erm - Oops? Sorry, knew there'd be something daft I forgot

It's in there now

That was going to be my final project for Data Structures... of course, there's no reason I still can't do it.

Till sazzer gets a lobby built into the webpage, remember to meet up in #erebus to get someone to play against

Kael said:

+1 - online version of Somnium is cool
-1 - no credit given to the games designer = sad panda.

Click to expand...

That one is probably my fault - I kept badgering him to upload the alpha version so that people could give it a try so it was probably released a little before originally intended, without some of the bits that should have been there...

KillerClowns said:

That was going to be my final project for Data Structures... of course, there's no reason I still can't do it.

Click to expand...

If your at all interested, the code can be grabbed from the git repository for it. The repository itself is at git://grahamcox.co.uk/graham/somnium.git, and the web interface is at http://grahamcox.co.uk/gitweb/?p=somnium.git;a=summary. No promises to the quality of it right now though

Any chance of setting it up to play without needing to register?

Also, any chance of importing the single-player code from FfH2 to enable single player online?

Kolath said:

Any chance of setting it up to play without needing to register?

Click to expand...

The registering to play is required to a) distinguish the players apart and b) ensure that somebody doesn't play as somebody else. Would really irritate you if mid-game somebody else took your turn

Registering really isn't a big deal though. You don't register with myself but with any OpenID provider that you want, and there's a very good chance you already have one. In particular if you have an account with:

• AOL
• Blogger
• Flickr
• LiveDoor
• LiveJournal
• Orange in France
• SmugMug
• Technorati
• Vox
• Yahoo
• WordPress.com
• Any of this not small list

Kolath said:

Also, any chance of importing the single-player code from FfH2 to enable single player online?

Click to expand...

It's not just a case of importing the code - the online version is entirelly re-implemented in Java/J2EE so would mean re-implementing that code as well. Something I might well get around to doing though if I get a chance

The list says that Google accounts are usable as IDs but how do I use it?

After doing some digging, it seems that you need to visit http://openid-provider.appspot.com/ and log in there, and it allows you to create an OpenID that authenticates against your Google account. Alternatively, apparantly if you have a blog with Blogger - which is also a Google product - then you can just use your blog address as your OpenID...