WTF is this?

WTF is this?

Postby Wuzzy » 27 Oct 2017, 00:37

Sorry, I don't get it. What exactly is the justification for this? We already have Freeciv. Why does everything have to be “ported” to the browser nowadays? It's pure madness.

Tried to check it out in the browser, then I got told I need a Google account? lulwut?

Then I learned Freeciv-web even has a 3D mode … Awww man, why is this not in the real Freeciv?
And the UI seems much more fleshed out as well, compared to the desktop UI.
That's really frustrating to see. That apparently the browser version seems to be more important than the real Freeciv.

So, here's my ignorant question: Why is Freeciv-web a thing?
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Re: WTF is this?

Postby Julius » 27 Oct 2017, 15:13

Why not? :p

It scratched someone’s itch (and browser games can be played on company PCs that are locked down to installing software...).
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Re: WTF is this?

Postby charlie » 27 Oct 2017, 23:18

Saddens me to say it but 'browser games' or games that don't require installation are probably the future. Freeciv, a 2D tile based game, lends well to this. No installation. Log in and play from anywhere on (theoretically) any device with a HTML5 browser.
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Re: WTF is this?

Postby Wuzzy » 29 Oct 2017, 00:40

That still doesn't explain the forced Google account. ;)
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Re: WTF is this?

Postby charlie » 29 Oct 2017, 12:10

Well user registration is a royal pain to maintain. Anti-spam measures are constantly in flux, account verification and restoration procedures need to be kept up to date, and it's all rather difficult to implement well. By outsourcing that to a Google API call the project is cutting down on its work so it can focus on the game itself.
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Re: WTF is this?

Postby AndreasR » 11 Nov 2017, 07:23

Freeciv-web has many good improvements compared to the old desktop version of Freeciv:
- Freeciv-web can be played using any browser, so it is available on many platforms, such as iPhone, Chromebooks, Android and any device which supports HTML5. It doesn't require admin-access to install software to play.
- Freeciv-web has support for 3D graphics using WebGL and the Three.js 3D engine. The Three.js 3D engine is not available on the desktop version, because it doesn't support WebGL.
- Freeciv-web supports Play-by-Email, hotseat multiplayer and LongTurn games with up to 300 players. The desktop version doesn't today. Play-by-Email requires running on a server which is configured and programmed for sending out e-mails.
- There are more players who prefers to play Freeciv-web in their browsers than the desktop version of Freeciv, when comparing any statistics that I've found, for example the number of downloads of the desktop version vs. the number of players on Freeciv-web.

Playing Freeciv-web is free for anyone. It doesn't require a forced Google account as Wuzzy incorrectly stated in this thread. Only LongTurn-Web games require a verified Google account, and the only reason for that is that is because we had problems with some players cheating in LongTurn games by playing with multiple accounts, and requiring a verified Google account solved the problem with cheating-by-multi-accounting.

So I hope you will give Freeciv-web another try!

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Re: WTF is this?

Postby gouessej » 18 Jun 2018, 09:29

Hey

charlie {l Wrote}:Well user registration is a royal pain to maintain. Anti-spam measures are constantly in flux, account verification and restoration procedures need to be kept up to date, and it's all rather difficult to implement well. By outsourcing that to a Google API call the project is cutting down on its work so it can focus on the game itself.

You could simply use an existing library for anti-spam measures to show a captcha. I'm sorry but those APIs aren't fully open source and force your end users to have a Google account which means that they give their personal data to Google. Some measures aren't very time consuming to implement, it's not that hard compared to writing a 2D game like freeciv-web, it's nothing you would have to do once and you would rarely have to improve those measures. In my humble opinion, "focus on the game itself" is an admissible argument in some situations but not in this one and forcing people to have a Google account whereas more or more people worry about the abuse on their personal data and their privacy is a bad idea.
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Re: WTF is this?

Postby Alayan » 30 Oct 2018, 15:30

Sorry, I don't get it. What exactly is the justification for this? We already have Freeciv. Why does everything have to be “ported” to the browser nowadays? It's pure madness.
[...]
That's really frustrating to see. That apparently the browser version seems to be more important than the real Freeciv.


100% agree.

Playing a deep and long game in a browser sucks.
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Re: WTF is this?

Postby Ntech » 01 Aug 2019, 20:36

I like freeciv-web, it's pretty cool. Oh, and +2 for getting rid of the google account requirement :) Freeciv-web is so good, it can run on a small linux box with 1gb RAM, and a 1.44Ghz processor ( and a optimized build of Firefox-ESR).
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Re: WTF is this?

Postby freemedia2018 » 02 Aug 2019, 19:11

Alayan {l Wrote}:
That's really frustrating to see. That apparently the browser version seems to be more important than the real Freeciv.


100% agree.

Playing a deep and long game in a browser sucks.


I can definitely appreciate both viewpoints here. It sucks to find so many things "require" a browser. The web just gets increasingly bloated by it.

On the other hand, for any graphics OTHER than canvas-based ones, which I would much rather code for something like Pygame than JS, I find most gui-like tasks are less tedious to implement in HTML/CSS/JS than in any library I can think of. GODOT (which I think has applications beyond gaming, as does Pygame which I use all the time) could be a step in the right direction, but despite finding JS tedious in so many ways in general-- it really makes implementing gui tasks trivial and friendly. I know there are schema-based guis for app builders related to GNOME or GTK for example-- nothing beats JS in this regard. I hate that it's true (and it's just my opinon) but I think it results in a lot of people learning to do stuff like this "in the browser" and that's part of why such projects get more attention. More and more people are capable of contributing to it, because "everybody" knows Javascript.
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Re: WTF is this?

Postby rubenwardy » 04 Aug 2019, 13:40

I'm all for web-based games where appropriate, but the dependency on Google is troubling
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Re: WTF is this?

Postby Julius » 09 Aug 2019, 19:23

If it is OIDC based auth we might also offer it linked to our groups.freegamedev.net (chat.freegamedev.net accounts) or social.freegamedev.net systems... but it is still a bit buggy and not well tested.
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Re: WTF is this?

Postby Ntech » 13 Aug 2019, 15:54

rubenwardy {l Wrote}:the dependency on Google is troubling

Very true. It wouldn't take much to make a custom login.
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