Show HN: Freeciv, HTML5 open source version

The best way to control units is to learn the keyboard shortcuts for unit commands, and use the keyboard commands in combination with the mouse, just like in the desktop version of Freeciv. So for example, first use the mouse to select a unit, then use the keyboard shortcut for goto (G), and then click on the tile you want the unit to move to.

Thank you! The Freeciv web client is one of my favorite projects. As a civ fanatic I thought often about contributing, but never started to do it.

Maybe someone from the team could say a few words about the projects organisation, plans and communications.

I know there's a github repo [1], but you seem to use a TODO file [2] instead of the issue tracker and/or wiki. Is that a conscious decision? Because any issue tracker would make it easier to discuss the details of the task at hand. Or is there a mailing list/irc channel which gets used for coordination?

I would be especially interested in the client-side code which is readable but, on first sight, a bit overwhelming[3] for something one would do after a regular day job. API docs and/or (more?) unit tests would be awesome because I think one of the benefits of freeciv-web is be that some of it is/could be easy to customize for advanced players.

[1]: https://github.com/freeciv/freeciv-web

[2]: https://github.com/freeciv/freeciv-web/blob/master/TODO

[3]: https://github.com/freeciv/freeciv-web/tree/master/freeciv-w...

Thanks for the kind feedback, phaer!

> Maybe someone from the team could say a few words about the projects organisation, plans and communications.

The Freeciv web client started as a fork of the Freeciv project in about 2007, at the time called Freeciv.net. Today the Freeciv web client is a part of the Freeciv project. However, the code-bases are still separate, so the Freeciv web client is maintained in Github, and has code in Javascript, Java, Python and C, while the Freeciv project is mainly implemented in C and is still hosted in SVN on gna.org. As for future plans, I hope to continue improving the game and making it work on more mobile devices. There are also plans for a WebGL version, but that would take much more work.

> Because any issue tracker would make it easier to discuss the details of the task at hand. Or is there a mailing list/irc channel which gets used for coordination?

There is a TODO-file, but the main issue tracker is on gna.org here: https://gna.org/bugs/?group=freeciv

> I would be especially interested in the client-side code which is readable but, on first sight, a bit overwhelming[3] for something one would do after a regular day job.

I would be happy to help anyone setup a development environment. It is quite quick to setup a Vagrant image if you follow the description found on the Github page.

The Freeciv web client is a volunteer non-profit effort. However, all our services run on a single server, so we absolutely appreciate donation to keep the server running: http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Donations

Which browser and device are you using to play the game? The controls in the game take some time to get used to, hopefully you should get it to work with some practice. Please let me know how it goes!

Ideally it should be possible with a scenario script, I know that feature isn't that well explored though.