New To This Thing

Can you help improve your favourite game? Hardcore C mages, talented artists, and players with any level of experience are welcome!
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ldvhl
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Dec 21, 2017 8:42 pm

New To This Thing

Post by ldvhl »

Hi all -

I'm new to FreeCiv but I figured I'd say hello. I've been playing Civ games since Civ 2 and Colonization. I did some modding for CiV as well, making Amalek and the Squamish and a couple minor mechanics mods. I'm thinking that FreeCiv might be closer to the type of gameplay I'm interested in, but I'd like to make some modifications to the tech tree and see if I can get a Faith-yield-based religion system working. I'm also interested in getting more civs into the Core set and maybe even making some (static) leaderheads.

Anyways, just my initial thoughts. If there's something else I could contribute to (mainly for art, historical research, or design), I'd be happy to help as well.

Thanks everybody!

ldvhl
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mir3x
Veteran
Posts: 110
Joined: Sat Jan 30, 2016 6:17 pm

Re: New To This Thing

Post by mir3x »

Hi. Welcome to Freeciv.

You can just look around what that to improve ( to be honest everything is to improved, most of it looks like 15 years ago).

You can try Qt client 2.6 beta and post some suggestions to design or add better icons, I'll try to commit changes fast then.
You can find interesting Empires ruleset in modpack, it might give you some ideas.

I would love tileset looking similar to google maps :D
ldvhl
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Dec 21, 2017 8:42 pm

Re: New To This Thing

Post by ldvhl »

Thanks mir3x!

I'm still learning the FreeCiv terminology so I'll have to parse out what that all means, but I should get there at some point. I could definitely do icons for stuff though, that's right in my skillset.

EDIT: I have a design concept to unify icons seen in the tech tree. Heres a sample using the Knight unit:

Image

The corner diamonds would be different colors depending on what the subject is (unit is red, buildings are blue, wonders are white, obsolescence is black, etc.). The diamonds themselves need some more texture added to them but this is just the concept at this point.

Thoughts?
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GriffonSpade
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Posts: 578
Joined: Mon Apr 29, 2013 4:41 pm

Re: New To This Thing

Post by GriffonSpade »

ldvhl wrote:Hi all -

I'm new to FreeCiv but I figured I'd say hello. I've been playing Civ games since Civ 2 and Colonization. I did some modding for CiV as well, making Amalek and the Squamish and a couple minor mechanics mods. I'm thinking that FreeCiv might be closer to the type of gameplay I'm interested in, but I'd like to make some modifications to the tech tree and see if I can get a Faith-yield-based religion system working. I'm also interested in getting more civs into the Core set and maybe even making some (static) leaderheads.

Anyways, just my initial thoughts. If there's something else I could contribute to (mainly for art, historical research, or design), I'd be happy to help as well.

Thanks everybody!

ldvhl
Welcome.
First up, the 'Core' nations are unlikely to change beyond the currently selected 50. There are actually just over 550 nations packaged that can be selected if you don't want to use only the Core nations with varying levels of translation into other languages.

Leaderheads are tough. Because we have so many nations we need an entire /set/ of them before we can do anything. Thus, we currently have no support for them or their use. I'm not even sure what style or size would be desired (Portrait vs Full Body, and assumably small, but not too small.)
For example, we'd likely need generic male and female versions of Northern/Western European, Mediterranean European, Arabian/North African, Sub-Saharan African, North American, South American, Indian, and East Asian to start. I'm uncertain where Central Asian would go, or if it needs its own group. Likewise, Australian could be used, even though they're not represented in the Core nations.

I'm curious what you mean by Faith-yield-based religion system?

Art is always in demand, if not by the standard package, then by ruleset modders. 3D units with proper licensing and appearance are especially hard to get a hold of.
ldvhl wrote:Thanks mir3x!

I'm still learning the FreeCiv terminology so I'll have to parse out what that all means, but I should get there at some point. I could definitely do icons for stuff though, that's right in my skillset.

EDIT: I have a design concept to unify icons seen in the tech tree. Heres a sample using the Knight unit:

Image

The corner diamonds would be different colors depending on what the subject is (unit is red, buildings are blue, wonders are white, obsolescence is black, etc.). The diamonds themselves need some more texture added to them but this is just the concept at this point.

Thoughts?
Currently, Wonders have a gold border, Improvements have no border, and Units use the actual unit sprites in the tech tree. While not visible on the tech tree, obsolete buildings have their text struck through on the city menu.
Improvements and Wonders are generally wide rectangles, while Units are generally square-ish to fit onto tiles.
The small Improvement set is filled in, but the large Improvement set has each building on a transparent background.
Likewise, all Units are all on transparent backgrounds rather than obfuscating full tiles.
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