Clarifying relationships: Freeciv.org, Freeciv-Web, Longturn.org

[Schwartz]

A question has been raised inside the New Freeciv-Web server on Discord about the relations between Freeciv.org, Freeciv-Web and Longturn.org. This was what I wrote in reply, it would be great if the broader community could confirm or correct:

1. Freeciv.org is the central hub of the broader Freeciv gaming community, which also includes Longturn.org.

2. Freeciv.org is administered by a core group of game developers.

3. Freeciv-Web was hosted on its own server separate from Freeciv.org's server. However, it was integrated into the latter via the https://play.freeciv.org subdomain.

4. Therefore, Freeciv-Web is an autonomous project of Freeciv.org (whereas Longturn.org, by comparison, is an independent initiative).

6. Because Freeciv-Web is neither the main focus of the core developers nor their responsibility, it is up to us (i.e., those of us in the New Freeciv-Web server) to relaunch it. Freeciv.org will provide us the space on their website, but the server, virtual machine, coding, etc. is our responsibility.

Is that correct?

[cazfi]

There's more than one point of view to all this, but here's my take:

freeciv.org = Freeciv project = Freeciv team
longturn.org is a separate project, that just uses freeciv program. There has been some very limited flow of contributions back to freeciv upstream. AFAIK nobody is part of both freeciv and longturn teams.
freeciv-web started out as a separate project (originally freeciv.net) but was later officially part of freeciv project, though largely kept its autonomy (freeciv maintainers team wasn't really making much of the decisions about freeciv-web except the server machine related stuff, freeciv-web development was not subject to same rules as freeciv proper development)

Freeciv-web would probably benefit from keeping ties to freeciv server development quite close. Freeciv proper codebase currently incorporates some of the freeciv-web stuff (there's build time selection between normal/freeciv-web modes). For example all of json network protocol stuff in freeciv is there for supporting freeciv-web. I haven't been talking about it even to Freeciv team yet, but I'd like to see one of the future freeciv-web team members representing freeciv-web in the freeciv maintainers team (when we do decisions that affect server machines or server development roadmaps)

[Schwartz]

Thank you, Cazfi!

freeciv.org = Freeciv project = Freeciv team

Right, that's what I thought. And the Freeciv team are the core developers/maintainers.

longturn.org is a separate project, that just uses freeciv program. There has been some very limited flow of contributions back to freeciv upstream. AFAIK nobody is part of both freeciv and longturn teams.

Corbeau can probably clarify that.

freeciv-web started out as a separate project (originally freeciv.net) but was later officially part of freeciv project, though largely kept its autonomy (freeciv maintainers team wasn't really making much of the decisions about freeciv-web except the server machine related stuff, freeciv-web development was not subject to same rules as freeciv proper development)

Absolutely! In the New Freeciv-Web server on Discord, we are discussing the future administration, which should include a new group of maintainers.

Do you know whether Andreas was the sole maintainer before?

[louis94]

Hi Schwartz,

Do you know whether Andreas was the sole maintainer before?

Several Github users were contributing to Freeciv-web, the most active lately being lonemadmax.

Louis

[wieder]

Yes, there is really no Freeciv development with longturn.org. We are basically using the software so that people can play online against other human players on games that will last very long time. In addition to that the only "development" is pretty much modifying the ruleset files for the games. That's currently pretty much all that can be done there. Hopefully one day the rulesets played there can be used for contributing back something to the actual Freeciv project. That however is not the goal at the moment.

[Schwartz]

Yes, there is really no Freeciv development with longturn.org. We are basically using the software so that people can play online against other human players on games that will last very long time.

Right. Could you provide a general figure as to the average daily number of players on Longturn.org, as well as how it is organized as a community?

For comparison, Andreas reports that on a daily basis, Freeciv-Web could expect an average of 1200 unique players. This number -- coupled with what became manifestly evident, namely, that a single person cannot manage Freeciv-Web in its entirety -- is what has been underlying my sense that Freeciv-Web will probably need to follow a different trajectory than both the core Freeciv project and Longturn.org, namely, by creating for itself something like an internal "government".

This is going to be hashed out. Caedo, Fuzzydunlop and I are basically thinking in tripartite terms: those responsible for developing and maintaining the underlying game infrastructure (developers), those responsible for the gaming experience itself (gamemasters), and those responsible for the social, out-of-game communal aspects ("administrators", for lack of a better term).

In addition to that the only "development" is pretty much modifying the ruleset files for the games. That's currently pretty much all that can be done there. Hopefully one day the rulesets played there can be used for contributing back something to the actual Freeciv project. That however is not the goal at the moment.

Very cool. The gaming experience is really the center of everything, and the rulesets are the center of the gaming experience. You guys seem more experimental than Freeciv-Web has heretofore been, I'm sure you will turn up something eventually.

(For myself, I still love my idea of a Eurasian Steppes-inspired ruleset: one settler, one worker, 10 horsemen, randomly spread on an enormously flat map with sporadic mountain chains and rivers, and raging hordes of barbarians with very weak technology growth. The Northwest Alliance from Game X was trying to play this as PBEM right before Freeciv-Web was shut down.)

[wieder]

Few comments and stuff about this.

There is really no organization structure in traditional sense for longturn.org because there are so few people doing the stuff. The idea is that people can participate and do some stuff to help with the games. Currently it's akfaew who takes care of the technical stuff and I'm kind of managing the rulesets but not alone. For most of the recent games I made the final calls about what to include or not to include but while I'm making the final calls it's more like iterative process where everyone can participate and suggest ideas or do stuff. It's all based on the suggestions people make to improve the games and the rulesets.

We have volunteers for ranking the players, for making the decisions when something needs to be done etc. There is however no one who would code or implement new features. Some lt.org people know how to code but no one really does do Freeciv coding.

There are few other people besides me preparing the rulesets. Or helping to prepare the rulesets and the games. Or scenarios. Would be nice to have the 2nd scenario game at some point. That was also a learning process for all of us.

1200 daily users is a massive number. I'm guessing that most of them were from single player games or from something else than 23h turn games? Longturn.org only does those 23h turn games and there are about 600 registered users. Most are currently not playing and there are some duplicate user accounts. Some of the unused accounts were deleted not too recently. With the currently running LT41 and LT43 there are maybe 50-60 daily players. LT41 has 20 players and LT43 38. LT39 and LT40 just ended and LT42 will start at a later time. In any case the idea has not been trying to get the max number of players but to make possible to play interesting games in the longturn format.

I said that contributing a ruleset back to the Freeciv project is not a goal there. Maybe better to explain that. The current games all have more or less different rulesets. Those are virtually always modified between the games and there is no single lt.org ruleset. The current more traditional rulesets has been working well for lt.org games and for the players there but we don't want to push or force others to play with less conventional rules. Then again it might be interesting to pick one of the lt.org rulesets and call that something like Longturn2018 ruleset or something like that. Doing something like that might help new players to pick a ruleset for local games if they want to play LT multiplayer with few friends. After all the more traditional ruleset is maturing and not that many changes have been needed lately. More like some mild tweaking.

[sveinung]

In addition to that the only "development" is pretty much modifying the ruleset files for the games. That's currently pretty much all that can be done there. Hopefully one day the rulesets played there can be used for contributing back something to the actual Freeciv project. That however is not the goal at the moment.

Very cool. The gaming experience is really the center of everything, and the rulesets are the center of the gaming experience. You guys seem more experimental than Freeciv-Web has heretofore been, I'm sure you will turn up something eventually.

Heads up: one of the reasons why the ruleset experimentation in Freeciv-web was smaller than in regular Freeciv is that the ruleset variation support in Freeciv-web is limited. This is caused by the Freeciv-web client hard coding assumptions about rules that lives in the Freeciv ruleset. (The Freeciv-web client is written in JavaScript. It therefore has to reimplement everything the "normal" Freeciv-clients gets for free. The support for ruleset variation is growing but not complete. A (probably small) part of what is missing is documented in the TODO)

Don't get me wrong. Some ruleset variation in Freeciv-web is possible. (See civ2civ3 and webperimental for examples of what can be done. The former will become the default ruleset in regular Freeciv. The latter tries to be different while still working in Freeciv-web.)