News: FreeCiv in the Browser, Sid Meier about Kickstarter and the cultural victory

[The_J]

Different important things have reached the ears of different civfanatics.
One of them:

The free civilization version FreeCiv is now finally available as browser game! The developers have implemented a HTML5 version of FreeCiv, which should be playable in all modern browsers, and no additional plugins are required (which means it does not only run on desktop computers, but also on e.g. various iDevices without Flash).
This has also been covered by PCGamer.

Otherwise, the father of Civilization, Sid Meier, has given 2 interviews about different topics. In this article on Eurogamer ("Sid Meier's cultural victory") he talks about the design philosophy, the development of games over time, and the fascination of games.

"That's part of the reason why turn-based games work in so many cases, I guess: you feel like you have the freedom to take whatever time you want to think about consequences and possibilities. Your mind is doing all this cool stuff, and that's what we're trying to get to happen. We still remember that it's important to get the player's total brain engaged and not just the tips of their fingers."

Discuss this further in the related forum thread (thanks to Oridan).

In the other article on GamesIndustry.biz ("We must not forget the value of the core gamer") he talks about mobile games, casual and core gamers, concept of "free to play" and Kickstarter.

"I think it reinforces for us the value of our core gaming audience and how important it is for us keep in contact with them and reach out to them, and in this case to kind of follow them to where they are going now, from PC to playing some mobile games; wherever else they're playing games, we want to be there and meet them on those platforms."

(thanks to Thorburne for that hint)


Discuss .

 

[kaltorak]

Nice.
But it's not working for me. I just see the buttons on top, Start, Leave, Observe, and so on. And the box I suppose is the game zone. But it's empty and start game doesn't do anything :/
I've tried Tutorial and New singleplayer game.

Edit: I managed to get a game started, but units wouldnt move. After some tries I got a game where I could move units. Then it failed again.
Is it beta or something like that?

Another question, why are other players joining when I select the singleplayer option? I want it to play from work, I have to take lots of time for each turn and can't have players waiting.

Edit2: I see the game has a timer for each turn, so I can forget about playing at work. I thought that would be one of the main pourposes of this game. Maybe traveling, but meh. Too bad

 

[Horizons]

Shame Freeciv is so bad.

 

[pepe26]

Shame Freeciv is so bad.

ya no sh*t... quit after 1min

 

[BSPollux]

ya no sh*t... quit after 1min

Me too, it seems worse then civ2, which it seems to mimic. The interface is just unbelievable bad

 

[Hans Lemurson]

The biggest problem with Freeciv is it's finnicky and unintuitive interface. The web version added into the mix some latency to registering commands.

I found it nearly impossible to command my units and trust that they would do as I wished. Which is a pity, since Freeciv is just as good as Civ2 ever was.

...Once you can PLAY it, that is.