Longturn

Planning and discussing Freeciv Longturn gaming
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Nimrod
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Location: Montreal, Canada

Re: Longturn

Post by Nimrod »

I would personally be more in favour of a flat yearly fee. It's less cumbersome for the user, plus minimizes time spent on administration of fees, and allows more time to focus on running the site itself. Just a thought.
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Nimmy
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Arbogast
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Location: France

Re: Longturn

Post by Arbogast »

I am with Nimrod on this. Seems like Grime's project would involve a lot of administration and paperwork.
I'm not against making a contribution to the site but paying for playing kind of defeats the spirit of Freeciv.

BTW, how does one make a donation? :oops:
evan
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Joined: Thu May 01, 2014 12:10 am

Re: Longturn

Post by evan »

So far very few have shared their views regarding possible changes to a payment system for a game whose motto is "'cause civilisation should be free."
I fear it's an indication of just how quickly an online community can fade away. I would like to hear the opinions of more people on this matter. Hopefully as the word gets around that will happen.
A few thoughts...
* More responses will influence my ideas and yours.
* No system is going to satisfy everyone.
* It can always be changed later.
* Are we talking about what is 'administratively' easy for the user, or, for the administrator.

In GT11 my neighbour became an idler, and although this advantaged me, the game was kind of ruined, strategically. Enjoying the game is more important to me than winning. Sometimes I would rather my nation found itself in a vast desert than play to win. And sometimes I would just like to play to win.
I remember when I first came across GT. I really had no idea what to do. I thought the game-play commands were communicated through IRC! If there had been a fee for playing a game I didn't understand I think I probabaly would have moved on. That's why @ the Grime's compromise is something worth considering, because it's a compromise - allows new-comers to take a nation, and then join the game.

As for combining the LT/GT communities... well,
evan
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Joined: Thu May 01, 2014 12:10 am

Re: Longturn

Post by evan »

I deeply miss my recent-game-country, The Reach, from GT11, even in the early days.
I can only imagine what some are feeling from other GT games that were stopped.
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GriffonSpade
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Re: Longturn

Post by GriffonSpade »

There's also the possibility of having open donations, and so long as donations are ahead, the fees could be waived completely until there are only X months of server-cost remaining (2, 3, 6, 12?), at which point there would be fees again, until it went high enough to start waiving them again.
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Nimrod
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Re: Longturn

Post by Nimrod »

Fund raising drives, perhaps yearly, with set goals to achieve. I'd be up for that for sure :)
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Nimmy
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Arbogast
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Re: Longturn

Post by Arbogast »

Fund raising and donations to the site are obvious, paying for playing doesn't seem to be the way to go. Let's help those that keep this site alive, they deserve it.
Again,

BTW, how does one make a donation? :oops:
the Grime
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Joined: Mon Jul 21, 2014 8:29 pm

Re: Longturn

Post by the Grime »

Excellent discussion. I'm waiting on making any final decision until I get Civland back up and running. Once it is, hopefully many of the community will return and we can discuss the matter in further detail. I'd prefer a donation based system, but I worry that may not cover the monthly outlay. I too question the ethics of paying to play freeciv, but unless suitable free bandwith becomes available, I don't see another choice. Freeciv will always be free to play by oneself, but persistent multiplayer services like Greatturn will either require a generous donor or some means of long term support to remain viable.

I will reiterate, that under my plan, playing one GT game at a time would continue to be free. If a player was really interested and enjoyed the experience that they wanted to play another simultaneously, then the fee would kick in. This could be adjusted based on how many people are willing to pay -- perhaps the limit could be raised to those players that wanted to play three or more games.

Davide has mailed me the website, GT code, and games, so it should arrive sometime soon. Civland will be the first to return, and after that we can figure out the details of how to revive Greatturn and how to continue to grow the community.
AndreasR
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Re: Longturn

Post by AndreasR »

Hi there Grime!

Great job on securing the Greatturn source code. Here are some suggestions:

- I strongly suggest you put the source-code of Greatturn on Github or some other public source code repository. Freeciv is open source software released under the GNU General Public License. From Wikipedia: "The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or GPL) is the most widely used free software license, which guarantees end users (individuals, organizations, companies) the freedoms to use, study, share (copy), and modify the software." If you want, I could give you access to create a git repository here. I would discourage anyone to donate to Greatturn if the project remains closed-source. In my opinion, Greatturn has been in violation of the GNU General Public License so far. I hope that the Grime will change that!

- I wonder if there could be some kind of cooperation between Greatturn and Freeciv-web. Both projects needs long-term server hosting. It would certainly be interesting to add support for running Greatturn servers to Freeciv-web, so that users could play Greatturn games in their browsers easily. What do you think of this suggestion, Grime? Feel free to contact me directly at andrearo AT pvv.ntnu.no.

- I don't think that many people are willing to pay for playing Greatturn. Freeciv (and therefore also Greatturn) is FREE and OPEN SOURCE software, so anyone can request to get access to the source code and run their own server. So my advice to Grime and the Greatturn players is for more openness and code-sharing, cooperation with Freeciv-web and hopefully easier access to Greatturn games for anyone!

AndreasR
(Freeciv-web developer)
the Grime
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Joined: Mon Jul 21, 2014 8:29 pm

Re: Longturn

Post by the Grime »

Hi Andres,

Point by point:
1) I believe that the Greatturn code should be released to the general public, and my plan is to do do just that. However, I don't agree that it is currently in violation of the GPL. If you read the GPL version 2 closely, access to source code is only necessary if the product is being distributed as a binary. In this case, Freeciv is GPLv2 and Greatturn is being used a service, so I don't think it applies. If Freeciv was licensed as GPLv3, then I think there's some clauses that handle just that specific problem.

2) I think that's an excellent idea, as it opens up the audience to anyone with a web browser. But there still will be those that prefer access via client, so we must figure out a way to have both coexist connecting to the same server.

3) Part of this is encapsulated in my response to point 1. And like I said previously, the payment is only to ensure continued hosting of the civland website and ongoing greatturn games. If we can combine hosting and ensure that Freeciv-web and other free-civ related projects have homes, then I'm more than happy to do so. I personally see Greatturn as an online game service. Other online game services are subsidized through sale of clients (Civlization), subscriptions (World of Warcraft), or advertisements/data collection/in-game micropayments (Facebook style games). If the service can be subsidized through donations alone, all the better. But if it can't, then it won't survive. I'm willing to cover the difference between the donations and the hosting costs for the immediate future (a year or so), but I don't really want a constant drain on my bank account (I've got enough other interests that do a good enough job). I really want to see Greatturn as something that's sustainable in the long term and that will help grow and provide resources for the greater Freeciv community.

As for the point about anyone setting up a greatturn server -- I can envision that long play games between a few people might happen on private servers, but an organized, persistent match system for more than a couple players would be unlikely in such an environment (GT9 had over 20 active players!). For me, that quantity of players is part of the appeal of longturn and greatturn style games.
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