Really Great Ideas (Alot Questions too!) for Future Updates! forward this to the makers please!

[archeologistfossils]

Dear Gna/Freeciv makers and community, I would like to say that I really like freeciv and thank you so much for making something so free and so cool. I will try to make this well, not so complicated. I have failed to make an account here due to invalid form errors which gave way to proper registration account submission but never actually sent me an activation email. I confirmed that my account is inactive by a failed attempt to login to my account and failed multiple attempts because everything glitched out really bad, but finally I made my account and everything was okay, so here I finally am!

Anyways, I will just pour my heart out here about everything I wanted to bring to your attention.


It would be nice to be able to see AI players faces during dipolomacy meetings. I am aware of how much effort it would take to custom make a different face for every single civ out there, but maybe it could be a community artist project? maybe freeciv could begin using truly-free as in totally free images that already exist? It would be interesting.

I and many other players would enjoy the settings option to not "end game" when other civs are gone or defeated so that we could play a game all on our own, and just have a massive civilization for fun, and do whatever we want without a threat of invasion.


I had no idea how to install. at first I assumed I would download the game from http://www.freeciv.org/download.html and after extracting and clicking an icon inside that the game should just auto start but that didn't seem to be the case so I went looking through all the instructions and the "install" and "read me" files in the extracted folder and found some 10,000 page long complicated guide that made my get lost more than guiding me, then I went to all the online wiki's and found similar instructions until I basically just searched "how to install freeciv on debian" and found no results. I attempted to run the command "make" to compile the game myself as everyone seems to do (as the main instructions say to do) and I get errors saying that there is no correct command to do that or the location doesn't exist etc. etc. etc. I begged one of my favorite forums desperately for a simple and literal step by step guide that tells me exactly what I need to do in exactly what order get the game installed and running and someone finally gave me exactly that. if you request this guide I will post it for you. I ended up installing the latest stable freeciv on my junk dead laptop I revived with debian that I use as a backup so that is what the guide would be specifically for.


I have played many games before that came bundled in a compressed folder and only needed to be extracted to function, and just simply contained an icon of the game inside that needed to be selected to just start the entire game. many of these also had folders inside ready for simply placing mods into that would function instantly upon being in the correct place. essentially the game was fully portable and could be moved anywhere because it was all inside only one folder. that struck me as just excellent and I wrongfully assumed that it would just be that way with freeciv.


does the latest version of the game come with the automatic modpack installer like the severely outdated version available on synaptic on debian?
Yes it does! assuming you install correctly. (answered when I finally installed successfully)


how do you terraform?

how do you fly to other planets?

how do you go to alien worlds?

I always hear other players talking about that but I never understand what they mean and I have never been able to do that before.

can there be a diplomacy option to tell the AI to get off my territory? can they also warn me?


why isn't http://www.freeciv.org/ and http://forum.freeciv.org/f/ not instead

https://www.freeciv.org/ and https://forum.freeciv.org/f/ just like https://gna.org/support/ ?

https would be really great, if that's something you would be willing to do.



I and many others noticed we are unable to change the ownership of citys in the editor. we would like that alot!


I thank you for reading this and I hope things work out somehow.

we should also have a special ground tile that is called "fertile lands" that is basically a combination of all the different land "grass/plains/hills/mountain/forrest/oasis/desert/everything" in the sense that It can hold any combination of all the bonuses like gold/crystal/farmland/wine/ and much more. these would be rare of course, but the editor would allow you to place them where ever you like and load them up with all the bonuses. that would be cool for those wierd freeciv games I play when I get bored.


also, is there any specific idea's thread anywhere on this forum? I'm still very confused getting used to the layout.



also how do you use the mods "big tileset" or whatever that's called? I want to see my game a little bigger, it hurts my eyes.

I also notice that when changing rulesets (some of which were mods) like "alien" nothing really seems any special or different. I can still go in and change all the settings and customize my play style but nothing ever makes me feel like "yea this feels alien" why don't I notice any differences?

[GriffonSpade]

'big' tilesets are actually separate tilesets that are bigger.
Wishlist is indeed the ideas thread, so you're in the right place.
The lack of face-to-face is probably due to two reasons that really boil down to one: lack of art. (We would indeed need a lot of art for all the nations, much less all the nations' leaders. We'd at least need to have a male and female of each civilization style.) It'd take some time to implement even if we did get some good-looking, properly licensed art, though.
Playing past 'end game' would indeed be nice.
Hmm, not sure how your system installs, as a Windows user, I just downloaded an executable, ran it, then when it was done I could run it from start menu.

Terraforming, I'm not sure about, if you mean Transforming terrain, other than basic 'mine' and 'irrigate' commands on some terrains, you need Engineer units available about midway through the tech tree.

Flying to Alpha Centauri is available late, late game, if enabled, when you have pretty much all the techs and someone has built Apollo Project wonder. Getting your spaceship there is a win-condition.

Other than being a win condition, there pretty much isn't any going to alien worlds.

[archeologistfossils]

Hey! thanks for the feedback. I'll be checking back every now and then for more feedbacks! I like hearing what others have to say sometimes. Except politicians!

[GriffonSpade]

If you really wish it, you can mod a ruleset and create a terrain with any special resources you want available on it. I strongly suggest copying an existing ruleset(rather than simply edit an existing one), change the name of the copy, and edit that.

Rulesets only change the game rules, not necessarily the appearance of the game. For that, you need tilesets. Which means art. And good artists willing to create things for us with usable licenses are in short supply and high demand.

The 'alio' tileset is actually intended for use with the 'alien' ruleset. Alio isn't prepared for 2.5. For 2.6 it will have alien terrain at the least. Sadly, we've not any good alio units to use with the terrain.

Both(along with a music pack, apparently) are currently available for 2.6 Alpha ModPacks (Though, of course, they're still for alpha versions, whose stability is dubious).

You may also have to manually switch the terrain over to the appropriate one from within the options menu in-game.
In 2.6 Qt:[Game->Options->Set Local Options->Graphics->Tileset(Isometric-Hex) then apply after selecting it]
Selecting tilesets in 2.5 is pretty much the same, only they're not divided up based on how they're drawn.