So, Freeciv anyone?

[CurtSibling]

On the contrary, playing CIV2 would give you ALL the perspectives on what we CIV2 players like to see.

I think that at least, is pretty fundemental.

FreeCiv's extra tribes and various city and unit management options are quite nice.
If only it was a more convincing clone of CIV2, I'm sure you would attract more players.

If you refuse to research the game whose modders you wish to conscript,
then you are backing a loser from turn one. Not trying to offend you...

Just dishing out the reality here...Play CIV2, and then you will see.

 

[cazfi]

Yeah, trying civ2 again in somewhere in my long TODO list. I don't think I'll find it any better now than 12 years ago, but maybe it gives me some ideas what could be reworked in freeciv.

 

[CurtSibling]

That's the point...Learn some tips from a classic game...

 

[Ingvar VII]

I was not trying to say you should see wether you liked the game, or it's interface or somesuch, I was hoping you would see how scenario making is done in Civ 2.

Civ 2 is a great scenario creating engine, and a good scenario playing engine.

Freeciv is a bad scenario creating engine, but I see no reason why it should be a bad scenario playing engine. I was hoping you would look at Civ 2 only as a scenario creating engine, rather than a scenario playing engine.

Creating scenarios is already a daunting task(never finished one myself), but working with Civ 2 is actually fun, since everything goes so smoothly, as opposed to what it is in Freeciv.

 

[CurtSibling]

Indeed - Looking at CIV2 would allow the FreeCIv guys to see the essential elegance of the CIV2 system...

 

[jarhead_leif]

..i just read this thread today..
..as you can see in my post counts, i'm only a newbie to civ2(tot)..but hey, i already know almost everything about modding stuff here(w the help of SL of course)..
,the important part is since last 2 years until April this 2012.,.i was addicted to Freeciv..
..i got to tell you guys that this game is far too good(aside from being free)...
..i got hook to this game a lot before i upgraded to a higher computer and had the chance to play civ4(bts) and later on tried out civ2(tot)..
...i actually got disappointed the first time i played civ2(tot), i was expecting something like freeciv (i always thought they were almost the same..since freeciv is free version of civ2)..

.,producing settler or worker alone(in civ2 they are merged)..
..better diplomacy (open-border relationship forbidding specific units to get pass through rival borders when in terms of peace)
..i also read a thread in civ2 talking about civ2 ai stupidies..one of the things i understand in freeciv, ai doesnt assault w seige units alone..they are always escorted with a defending units(just like the barbarian leader unit in civ2(ToT if that matters))..
..fog of war..
.,those he mentioned above,
.and so much more..

..civ2 has its advantages..
..i love animated units..
..but the main reason that i still stick myself to civ2(aside from being much flexible than freeciv and other facts mentioned in previous posts) is that there are (still some) people here in this forum who are always willing to help those who are in need, especially in terms of modding/creating scenario.. (which freeciv lacks i think)..
..of course i love civ2 (as much as freeciv) that i'm currently trying to learn everything about it..
..And to those civ2 fanatics and freeciv developers i say...guys, dont compare civ2-freeciv too much..

..learning freeciv-civ2 doesnt mean his game is better than yours..

 

[caravaner]

I have been thinking about making somekind of Apocalypse mod for civ that expands the tech tree into sci-fi era. I thought freeciv would have better modding abilities as you could change the code when needed.

Yesterday I tried freeciv and was very disappointed. The interface was horrible. You could not get any information on the terrain. It seemed like every info was hidden somewhere.

I remember playing freeciv 10 years ago and I think it was very much like civ 2? I had no difficulties playing it and jumped straight into a multiplayer. Won some against newbies and lost against experienced players. What happened to that game?

Yesterday when I played the latest version I could not even adjust the science, tax, luxury rates. It made no sense. You keep on clicking on it randomly and just wish they would adjust to levels you wanted. And they did not.

I would love to see freeciv being more like civ 2, but without the restrictions. More mod friendly. But now it looks like it is some crazy unintuitive hard to play version of civ that has no sounds and all the diplomacy and other messages have been ripped off. The graphics had some serious problems too. Whats the point to make the city screen so complicated? Why is the terrain in city screen smaller than in the other game? Why is it adjustable? I want to see all the squares that I can work on. No point on viewing like only the squares that are on the left of my city.

 

[Dadais]

Got lost in freeciv too these days
A bad point was the impossibility to reproduce the "pixers" ability

Some concepts from later civs are welcome, through not all.

(And for my last project, civII lacks in units number and lands number)

 

[cazfi]

I have been thinking about making somekind of Apocalypse mod for civ that expands the tech tree into sci-fi era. I thought freeciv would have better modding abilities as you could change the code when needed.

Yesterday I tried freeciv and was very disappointed. The interface was horrible. You could not get any information on the terrain. It seemed like every info was hidden somewhere.

I remember playing freeciv 10 years ago and I think it was very much like civ 2? I had no difficulties playing it and jumped straight into a multiplayer. Won some against newbies and lost against experienced players. What happened to that game?

Yesterday when I played the latest version I could not even adjust the science, tax, luxury rates. It made no sense. You keep on clicking on it randomly and just wish they would adjust to levels you wanted. And they did not.

I would love to see freeciv being more like civ 2, but without the restrictions. More mod friendly. But now it looks like it is some crazy unintuitive hard to play version of civ that has no sounds and all the diplomacy and other messages have been ripped off. The graphics had some serious problems too. Whats the point to make the city screen so complicated? Why is the terrain in city screen smaller than in the other game? Why is it adjustable? I want to see all the squares that I can work on. No point on viewing like only the squares that are on the left of my city.

Which version and which client you were using (which file you downloaded)? The default, and most complete, client is gtk2 (2.4 to be released this month has also gtk3-client). There's also sdl-client available for Windows, but as there's no active maintainer for it, it suffers from many problems. The "terrain in city screen smaller than in the other game" sounds like you've been using sdl-client. One of its biggest problems is that terrain in city screen is always scaled so that maximum city radius supported by freeciv would fit in, even when civ2-like static 21 square city area is in use.

As for adjusting tax/sci/lux, you can either open dialog with draggable adjustments from menu "Civilization -> Tax Rates" or you can click icons on left panel. Each of ten icons represent 10% rate. Righmost ones are tax, middle are sci, and leftmost are lux. If you click tax next to sci, it turns to sci. If you click lux next to sci, it turns to sci. If you click sci next to tax, it turn to tax. If you click sci next to lux, it turns to lux. All assuming that you would not exceed max rates for your government.

Tile information is available by holding down middle button.

 

[cazfi]

A bad point was the impossibility to reproduce the "pixers" ability

What's that?

 

[cazfi]

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.

Reading some civ2 scenario RULES.txt this becomes quite apparent. In RULES.txt you define just name, cost, upkeep and tech requirement for buildings:

Library, 8, 1, Wri, 7

In Freeciv rulesets you define a lot more, including what the building does (its effect). Library at freeciv's civ2 ruleset:

[building_library]
[b]name		= _("Library")[/b]
genus		= "Improvement"
[b]reqs	=[/b]
    { "type", "name", "range"
      "Tech", [b]"Writing"[/b], "Player"
    }
graphic		= "b.library"
graphic_alt	= "-"
obsolete_by	=
    { "type", "name", "range"
    }
[b]build_cost	= 80[/b]
[b]upkeep		= 1[/b]
sabotage	= 100
sound		= "b_library"
sound_alt	= "b_generic"
helptext	= _("\
Increases the science output in a city by 50%.\
")

[effect_library]
name	= "Output_Bonus"
value	= 50
reqs	=
    { "type", "name", "range"
      "Building", "Library", "City"
      "OutputType", "science", "local"
    }

 

[cazfi]

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.

I just copied civ2 ruleset (as that's closest to what you are used to), amplio2 tileset and stdsounds soundset to same directory named SLtemplate, and fixed references from file to file to look from SLtemplate -directory instead of civ2/amplio2/stdsounds. Resulting freeciv-2.4 compatible modpack is available with freeciv-modpack.exe utility by entering "http://www.cazfi.net/freeciv/modinst/2.4/SLtemplate.modpack" as modpack URL, or as zip-archive from http://www.cazfi.net/freeciv/SLtemplate.zip

Once you have started the game with the modpack, you may want to check client "Help -> About Ruleset" to make sure you are really using it (it's hard to tell otherwise as it's practically identical copy to default ones, so game looks the same until you do some modifications of your own).

 

[Prof. Garfield]

I think you are going about things the wrong way if you are trying to show people how to code (or that it is not much more difficult than the coding they are already doing) in order to convince them that Freeciv is an adequate scenario design tool. I suspect that very few Civ 2 scenario designers began their career by opening notepad and changing the text files given in the game. Civ 2 Gold Edition comes with a fairly powerful scenario editor that you can use right from inside the game. This makes it easy for people to dabble in scenario making and even make some decent scenarios. When they want a little more power, they can then move on to editing the text files directly or even hex editing the saved games. They are then motivated to figure out the more complicated methods.

I suggest that you write a program that automates the scenario making process. Have the player enter values into fields or make selections from several options, while your program organizes all the files and writes the script. You are then likely to have people from your own community step forward to make scenarios. I've attached some images of what the Civ 2 scenario editing tools are like.

 

[McMonkey]

@Prof. Garfield
That is precisely how I got into scenario design using Fantastic worlds, many years before I joined in at the Scenario League. I drew a map from a fantasy book project I had worked on as a teenager and used Fantastic Worlds editor to make changes. It was only when I found some bugs with the editor that I took a look at the text files and realised it would be easier to edit them directly.

Some kind of editor tool for making simple scenarios would be a great gateway into designing.

 

[cazfi]

I know we need such a tool, but we don't have it now, and we won't have it soon. I actually started work on such a thing about a year ago, but that harddisk went down and I were too frustrated to start again immediately. In any case such a tool would be part of freeciv-2.6 at the earliest (2.6 is where the active development currently is even if latest release made it all the way to end-users is 2.3.4 - 2.4.0 is about to be released soon, and 2.5 is already stabilizing.) And given the complexity of the system and amount of work needed (upwards from 500 working hours) version in freeciv-2.6 would be very limited, only a starting point for further evolution to complete system.

 

[cazfi]

I know we need such a tool, but we don't have it now, and we won't have it soon. I actually started work on such a thing about a year ago

Now I started again. Your chance to contribute to freeciv is by suggsting name for the tool in ticket patch #4144. And yes, the name is important theing already - code will refer to it everywhere.

 

[cazfi]

Obviously we've always been able to load the rulesets. Before freeciv-ruledit we've had no need to be able to save the rulesets. That code is now mostly implemented. In practice this means that we have a freeciv-ruledit that can load a ruleset, and save it again, and that result works as a ruleset for freeciv. There's practically no editor functionality yet (for testing that changes made in memory make it to the saved ruleset there's possibility to edit tech tree by setting what requirement techs tech has)

 

[cazfi]

Screenshot from current development version of freeciv-ruledit