Slightly changing civ 2 rules to make life easier on the programmers

[Thue]

There are a number of thinks I would like to change. Unfortunently many people are very strict on the civ 2 complience, and I haven't yet been able to gain complete power over the freeciv design :

Automatically reveal all squares in city range

As it is now a square can be within city sight range, but still be unknown. This is how it is in civ 2, but it makes some code very complicated. And I even find it more intuitive to just reveal squares which your sight radius extends to.

Remove randomness when moving units

In civ 2 and current freeciv if you have 1/3 mp and a move takes 1 mp you have 1/3 chance to actually complete the move. The alternative way to do this would be to never be able to move unless you had enough mp, as is done in ctp. Removing the randomness will make it possible to display accurate time to arrival when planning a goto (as done in ctp), and make it somewhat simpler to program the AI.

Restrict triremes to near land

Triremes have a chance of dying if they venture away from shore. All fine, but it is practically impossible to make AI and goto algoritms that handle handle that well. In ctp they simlpy limit triremes to shallow water.

So what do you think? On which points should we compromise to make programming easier?

[CapTVK]

Thue,

I voted against the proposed changes, although for a reason other than rule compliance. After playing Freeciv for over a year and playing Civ evolution for a month (which does have a very different rule set, but feels very much like Civ2) I would like to offer some constructive criticism...

Reason one is that after four years Freeciv doesn't even fully comply with the original Civ2 rules (FreeCiv still doesn't have the Civ2 trading system for instance, the Civ2 mapping system nor actual AI diplomacy).
Need to change the rules? Fine, but please inform players (hereby I mean your average run-of-the-mill gameplayer, not heavy duty linux users) how the game mechanics work. A good manual, walkthrough and a proper in- game help systems.

I have to be frank, if you haven't played Civ1 or 2 so you know "what is what". The in game help actually scares the user away. In the end I didn't even bother with the in game help and just trusted on my basic Civ2 knowledge.

Reason two has to do with gameplay. I think the fundamentals of Freeciv are strong (Although the AI needs be seperated from the original code). My argument here is that Freeciv was designed with a different framework then Civ1/2. Codewise Civ1/2 was far from perfect, there were plenty of bugs that became apparent if you played it long enough. But on the aspect of gameplay Civ rules supreme. The reason for this was that Sid and a slew of the orginal programmers spend alot of time tweaking and fiddling with the units and game mechanics: "tanks too strong?"- "Let's lower their value by 50% and see how it works" Reading through the Freeciv dev archives I get the impression that most deal with technical issues on client-server migration, GTK and localized versions. Were's the fun in tweaking and twiddling with the game mechanics? Civ evolution isn't finished either but it's more compelling than FreeCiv at the moment, gameplay wise that is...


Reason three has to do with the way in which Freeciv is represented. It's ...Tja, was soll ich sagen?...not very friendly towards outsiders. Even experimenting with the rules.txt is a huge barrier....I have to make a seperate directory, refer to that directory while starting up the server and then setup the game again. In Civ2 it's just a matter of changing the units.gif and rules.txt and away you go. The reason that Civ2 became so popular in the mod community (beating AC, CtP 1/2 and ToT) is because USERS could EASILY alter the game. If that barrier is set high, users are frustrated and you lose the mod community.


There are a few other points i could make here but the main thrust is this: What we see here is the struggle between order and creativity. Freeciv is technically sound, but it ain't "fun".

What's the deal with sound support for example? If you can't get all GPL SF/X at least use some of them, or do something else in the meantime. Why aren't there any national anthems in midi format for example? I would like to hear "rule brittania" if i come into contact with the English.


In short: rule changes? Sure, as long as it makes FreeCiv fun to play I'm all for it.

[Thue]

Originally posted by CapTVK
Thue,

I voted against the proposed changes, although for a reason other than rule compliance. After playing Freeciv for over a year and playing Civ evolution for a month (which does have a very different rule set, but feels very much like Civ2) I would like to offer some constructive criticism...

Reason one is that after four years Freeciv doesn't even fully comply with the original Civ2 rules (FreeCiv still doesn't have the Civ2 trading system for instance, the Civ2 mapping system nor actual AI diplomacy).
Need to change the rules? Fine, but please inform players (hereby I mean your average run-of-the-mill gameplayer, not heavy duty linux users) how the game mechanics work. A good manual, walkthrough and a proper in- game help systems.

The civ 2 trade system is broken. I hope nobody implements that.

Actually there is a manual: http://www.freeciv.org/manual/
I don't think anyone is maintaining it right now. If someone wants to I guess they could take over.
The manual is not distributed with the main freeciv package. Maybe it should be.

I have to be frank, if you haven't played Civ1 or 2 so you know "what is what". The in game help actually scares the user away. In the end I didn't even bother with the in game help and just trusted on my basic Civ2 knowledge.

Reason two has to do with gameplay. I think the fundamentals of Freeciv are strong (Although the AI needs be seperated from the original code). My argument here is that Freeciv was designed with a different framework then Civ1/2. Codewise Civ1/2 was far from perfect, there were plenty of bugs that became apparent if you played it long enough. But on the aspect of gameplay Civ rules supreme. The reason for this was that Sid and a slew of the orginal programmers spend alot of time tweaking and fiddling with the units and game mechanics: "tanks too strong?"- "Let's lower their value by 50% and see how it works" Reading through the Freeciv dev archives I get the impression that most deal with technical issues on client-server migration, GTK and localized versions. Were's the fun in tweaking and twiddling with the game mechanics? Civ evolution isn't finished either but it's more compelling than FreeCiv at the moment, gameplay wise that is...

The civ 2 developers tweaked the diplomats too?
does civ evolution have multiplayer?

Reason three has to do with the way in which Freeciv is represented. It's ...Tja, was soll ich sagen?...not very friendly towards outsiders. Even experimenting with the rules.txt is a huge barrier....I have to make a seperate directory, refer to that directory while starting up the server and then setup the game again. In Civ2 it's just a matter of changing the units.gif and rules.txt and away you go. The reason that Civ2 became so popular in the mod community (beating AC, CtP 1/2 and ToT) is because USERS could EASILY alter the game. If that barrier is set high, users are frustrated and you lose the mod community.

Actually it is pretty easy to change the rules in freeciv. Just edit the files in data/default. For changing teh graphics, just edit the gfx files.
Freeciv however gives you more flexibility if you want it. Civ 2 could only have one set of rules installed at a time. With freeciv you can have multiple rulesets coexisting. This of course requires a little bit of extra work, as you say.
Just editing the default files will work, just like in civ 2. There is just an alternative and way smarter way of doing it.

There are a few other points i could make here but the main thrust is this: What we see here is the struggle between order and creativity. Freeciv is technically sound, but it ain't "fun".

What's the deal with sound support for example? If you can't get all GPL SF/X at least use some of them, or do something else in the meantime. Why aren't there any national anthems in midi format for example? I would like to hear "rule brittania" if i come into contact with the English.

It is a bit silly there isn't sound support in freeciv. It is real simple to add, and we could just put in sounds as we got them.
National anthems would be cool

In short: rule changes? Sure, as long as it makes FreeCiv fun to play I'm all for it.

Btw, fell free to start new threads in this forum...

[paulz]

I don't think there is any thing too terribly wrong about any of the proposed changes, although I think they should probably be discussed on freeciv-dev.

[CapTVK]

Originally posted by paulz
I don't think there is any thing too terribly wrong about any of the proposed changes, although I think they should probably be discussed on freeciv-dev.

Yes, but the Apolyton crowd differs a little from freeciv-dev crowd. The fact is that 98% here use windows for their daily tasks.


Same object, different perspective...

[paulz]

Yes, but the Apolyton crowd differs a little from freeciv-dev crowd. The fact is that 98% here use windows for their daily tasks.

Wow, I belong to a 2% minority.

I guess I don't understand why the platform is important. We aren't talking about anything platform specific.

[Darkstar]

You do realize the AI Triremes never get lost at sea in Civ1/2. They are just ships to the AI.

As far as the randomness, leave it. And it's mp/move cost. So you aren't very likely to get into that mountain without good pointage.

It would certainly be EASIER to not include a special check in the code around a city for seeing what it can't. Then normal sighting would reveal all around the city in 2 squares, yes? It never made sense in Civ that it didn't, but if you are trying to port Civ2 and make it free/open source, shouldn't you maintain consistancy with the original?

[blah]

Originally posted by paulz


Wow, I belong to a 2% minority.

I'm one of those too.
I want to try FreeCiv in Linux, I hope its real good. Does it do multiplayer?

[Thue]

Yes. See http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=19257

[Nightmare]

On slight civ II changes

Hi, Thue!

Well, I noticed today that you're now co-admin of freeciv.
Congratulations!

On the topic of this poll, I have to say that for me civ II compliance is really important, but what I really desire is the choice. To use you're slight changed version of the rules or not! Perhaps that option could be enabled by default, but I really hope that we'll continue to have the choice to use old civII like rules, even if this turns out in using lesser good AI (I really don't care much of AI, I'd like playing human beings!) and mantaining of awful code.

My two cents!