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Show HN: Full Freeciv client running on WebAssembly

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Re: Show HN: Full Freeciv client running on WebAssembly

#21

Post by freeciv21 »

kzrdude wrote: post #16
freeciv21 wrote: post #14

I've been playing Freeciv for years, but was disappointed that the pool of players was dwindling. A few of the members of the community stepped up to work on revitalizing the project. We decided to focus on WebAssembly to run on browsers, dropping support of the GTK+ and SDL clients in favor of the Qt client that we decided would make it easier to create a Wasm port, and eventual mobile apps. There's still a lot of U…

What kinds of games are being played? How is longturn? Regular multiplayer? When I played some multiplayer freeciv, the playstyle was weird to say the least, a lot of early agression. Then I spectated a lot of the extreme island/race to stealth fighters games too.

There are only about 4-6 players left who still do regular multiplayer, that is playing a whole game in a 2-3 hour session. And they tend to be a traditional sort who still use an old 2.0 "warclient" from over a decade ago. The playstyle there converged pretty quickly on radio around turn 65, and extreme fighting for the rest of the game. Longturn works pretty well, but it takes a bit of a commitment to play every day, which is one reason we are trying to revive other game styles.

Re: Show HN: Full Freeciv client running on WebAssembly

#22

Post by Corbeu »

Karellen wrote: post #19

Is this project related to freecivweb.org ? If so, how? If not, isn't there room for a fair amount of confusion there? What are the main differences from .org that players should be aware of? Is there a FAQ somewhere? I couldn't see a link to any help or anything.

It's not related, but we know of each other. Regarding technicalities, FCW.org is based on different client architecture. FCW.com has - or it is planned to have - most capabilities as the native client. Right now changing tilesets comes to mind. But if you played both FCW.org and Freeciv on the native client,l you know the differences.

Regarding organisation, the two sites are quite different when it comes to developing rulesets: FCW.org sticks to its own Multiplayer line of game rules, while FCW.com is going to go much wider and incorporate a lot of flexibility and development in different directions, something FCW.org has been refusing to do for years.

As for FAQ, this is just in its infancy, sorry, but we'll gladly answer all questions either here, if we catch them, or on Discord, which is much more lively. There is also a forum at longturn.net which is also a bit slow, but we get stuff eventually.

Re: Show HN: Full Freeciv client running on WebAssembly

#23

Post by freeciv21 »

kzrdude wrote: post #17
freeciv21 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have forked it and are allowing more C++, but it is still mostly C style. https://github.com/longturn/freeciv21

Who is "we" and what is the original freeciv project doing? Also alive?

The main freeciv21 developers you can see on the repo are mir3x and lmoureaux. The original freeciv project still has some activity, but we wanted to iterate faster, focus more on multiplayer, and allow modern C++ language constructs to make development easier.

Re: Show HN: Full Freeciv client running on WebAssembly

#24

Post by fouc »

freeciv21 wrote: post #12
hello0990911 wrote: post #3

Does not work on firefox

Admittedly we have not tested on firefox as much, but I suspect that is happening is that we have a race condition in waiting for the 30+MB package of wasm and data files to load.

I generally think it'd be wise to develop for either Safari or Firefox first. Then fix for Chrome after.

i.e. develop for the underdog(s) first.

Re: Show HN: Full Freeciv client running on WebAssembly

#26

Post by kzrdude »

freeciv21 wrote: post #21
kzrdude wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kinds of games are being played? How is longturn? Regular multiplayer? When I played some multiplayer freeciv, the playstyle was weird to say the least, a lot of early agression. Then I spectated a lot of the extreme island/race to stealth fighters games too.

There are only about 4-6 players left who still do regular multiplayer, that is playing a whole game in a 2-3 hour session. And they tend to be a traditional sort who still use an old 2.0 "warclient" from over a decade ago. The playstyle there converged pretty quickly on radio around turn 65, and extreme fighting for the rest of the game. Longturn works pretty well, but it takes a bit of a commitment to play every da…

haha, ok warclient is what I remember. I never seriously played myself, but it was intriguing. Happy to hear it's still going on

Re: Show HN: Full Freeciv client running on WebAssembly

#28

Post by pmarreck »

freeciv21 wrote: post #12
hello0990911 wrote: post #3

Does not work on firefox

Admittedly we have not tested on firefox as much, but I suspect that is happening is that we have a race condition in waiting for the 30+MB package of wasm and data files to load.

same issue in FF I think. "Couldn't start server"... and it is a pretty quick timeout, like 2 seconds

Re: Show HN: Full Freeciv client running on WebAssembly

#29

Post by freeciv21 »

postalrat wrote: post #25

Is there anywhere I could go to pay someone to port an open source project to webassembly? Would pay for a working version of vcv rack 2 https://github.com/VCVRack/Rack

Issues that I might anticipate there would be interfacing with the browser’s audio apis. Freeciv uses sdl audio, which works decently with browser apis, but “clipping” sounds can be observed. My email is in my profile.

Re: Show HN: Full Freeciv client running on WebAssembly

#30

Post by astlouis44 »

freeciv21 wrote: post #23
kzrdude wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is "we" and what is the original freeciv project doing? Also alive?

The main freeciv21 developers you can see on the repo are mir3x and lmoureaux. The original freeciv project still has some activity, but we wanted to iterate faster, focus more on multiplayer, and allow modern C++ language constructs to make development easier.

Are you a full time developer? Our startup is currently working to bring Unreal Engine to the web, we've also done various ports of classic games to WebAssembly. We're building a platform and suite of optimization tools to enable any game developer to be able to deploy 3D games and apps to the browser. WebAssembly, WebGPU, and WebXR are going to disrupt the games industry and create a whole new platform category that doesn't revolve around 30% fees or walled gardens. It's also the path to the metaverse.

Our Discord if you're interested: https://discord.gg/3t8bj5R

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