FreeCiv now in 3D via WebGL

[Julius]

http://play.freeciv.org/blog/2017/01/fr ... available/

https://play.freeciv.org/

Looks pretty cool

[onpon4]

That's neat. Kind of slow, though.

It would be nice to have the 3-D graphics in the non-browser version too. I'd assume it would probably perform better as well.

[Lyberta]

Deleted.

[farrer]

Is there an offline version?

If by offline you mean an standalone version that doesn't depend on a browser to run, probably no: on a quick glance it seems to use a javascript library as 3d engine: (quoting from the announce):

A big thanks to the Three.js Project, which is the 3D engine used in Freeciv WebGL.

If by offline you mean by running not connected to the internet, probably yes, just clone the repository and run it locally.

But, as I believe the assets are Free/Libre, it could be possible to someone create a render to original freeciv using directly OpenGL or any other rendering engine (that shouldn't be too hard, as there's also some parallel renderers implementations for freeciv using gtk or SDL, the code seems modularized enough for this task).

[Julius]

Yeah, you would need to set up a local webserver, but I think there are also ways to package any webapp into a container with a slimmed down browser so that they appear to be normal desktop apps.

[Lyberta]

Deleted.

[onpon4]

That's silly. If it's on your own computer (meaning you can reasonably change it), what's wrong with the fact that your interpreter for the code is a Web browser? You can even put it in offline mode if you're worried that it will fetch something from the Internet.

Still, it would be nice to have a regular OpenGL client (or maybe a Godot client?) using these 3-D graphics, since I doubt JavaScript will be fast enough for this to perform very well any time soon (at least assuming you don't have a gaming PC).

[Imerion]

It looks very impressive!

+1 for a native client though. Besides issues with performance for browser based content I never can get browser based content to behave the way I want. There are usually problems with fullscreen, right-clicking opens browser menus, etc. Will try this anyway though, because a 3D version of FreeCiv would be really nice to play!

Edit: Seems I need an account to play. Another problem with browser-based games seems to be that settings and saves can't be stored locally, which forces impractical account systems instead.
Again though, I really do appreciate that someone has taken the time to create a 3D client for FreeCiv. Not that there is something wrong with the old 2D version, but it feels like the world comes alive a bit more like this.

[c_xong]

Local storage is possible for browser games but it's not persistent (e.g. can blow it away if you clear browsing data). For settings that's probably ok but definitely not for save games.

But the advantage of online accounts is that it's portable across machines, which makes it a natural fit for browser games.

[onpon4]

You don't need an account to play single-player. I didn't create an account. (To be fair, though, I only fired the game up and moved the units around a bit.)

[AndreasR]

I have just released a new version of Freeciv-web to the live server on play.freeciv.org , and would really appreciate some feedback on the latest version.
I'm currently working on improving the 3D WebGL version. New developers and artists are welcome to join the project.
In particular we need good artists who can help improve the 3D models of the WebGL version.

Freeciv-web game page: https://play.freeciv.org
Contribute: https://github.com/freeciv/freeciv-web

[Julius]

Awesome and welcome to the FreeGameDev.net forums. I hope you don't mind me merging it with an older but recent topic we had on this.

[AndreasR]

Awesome and welcome to the FreeGameDev.net forums. I hope you don't mind me merging it with an older but recent topic we had on this.

Thanks a lot! Wow, there was already an existing topic on Freeciv-web, cool! I'm particularly interested in learning about specific things that I could improve in the game to make it better. Do any of you have any suggestions?

I wonder we could get a project forum for "Freeciv-web" here on freegamedev.net? The existing forum on forum.freeciv.org is being overrun by spam-bots. This seems like a nice community for talking about Freeciv.

Thanks,
Andreas R.

[charlie]

Sure. I wonder if it is needed for the wider freeciv audience then? I guess you don't speak on their behalf.

What forum structure do you need? Just a single forum or e.g. General and Development?

[AndreasR]

A single forum would be great. It's just for Freeciv-web. Thanks!

[charlie]

Added: viewforum.php?f=97

You are the Freeciv-web moderator for the moment. Let us know if you need more users adding to that group.

[AndreasR]

Thanks, I think this will be good!

[Arthur]

charlie: you need to make the list of projects alphabetic so we can have
Freeciv-web
OpenDungeons
SuperTux
SuperTuxKart

The first letters align so perfectly.