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Unciv

github.com

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Re: Unciv

#21

Post by HillRat »

thurn wrote: post #18
ericra wrote: post #11

Neat project. I love it. I read the "legality" section of your README, and I hope that someone can provide some advice. It would be nice to know where the lines are so you didn't have to constantly be concerned about 2K/Firaxis legal department coming for you. Just commenting here for visibility in hopes someone more qualified can provide some help.

Spry Fox v. LolApps (2012) was a case about a similar visual and thematic remake of a game (Triple Town vs Yeti Town). The Yeti Town developer decided to settle when it became clear that they would likely lose, and the remake is no longer available. Realistically, of course, it probably doesn't matter since I assume the author doesn't have the resources to fight Firaxis in court over this anyway.

The Spry Fox fact pattern is distinguishable, I think, given that the defendant had access to privileged IP and had been negotiating to port the app before creating the knockoff after negotiations fell apart.

Re: Unciv

#22

Post by huevosabio »

I really want to power civ AIs with LLMs for immersion and better play.

I looked at freeciv and the code was unwieldly. Maybe unciv is easier to tamper with!

Re: Unciv

#23

Post by [deleted] »

Waterluvian wrote: post #10

Is there a genre of online grand strategy games that are designed from the ground up to be played asynchronously? One of my favourite things was playing scrabble online where I could just do a move and then move on with my day. It’d take a week to play a game but it was on our terms and that felt so good.

[deleted]

Re: Unciv

#24

Post by chongli »

duozerk wrote: post #3

Along with shattered pixel dungeon, this is one of the only worthwile games on Android I've found. They don't call home, they don't push ads, they don't spy on you, they're just good games, well implemented and open source.

I love SPD. Evan, the author, is incredible! He puts so much work into that game and is extremely open and detailed about the development process!

Re: Unciv

#25

Post by wtallis »

ericra wrote: post #11

Neat project. I love it. I read the "legality" section of your README, and I hope that someone can provide some advice. It would be nice to know where the lines are so you didn't have to constantly be concerned about 2K/Firaxis legal department coming for you. Just commenting here for visibility in hopes someone more qualified can provide some help.

Freeciv has been around much longer without being targeted by any legal threats that I'm aware of. There have also been commercial competitors like Activision's Civilization: Call to Power and its sequel that only had to drop "Civilization" from its naming for lack of a trademark license.

I'm not sure any of those aimed to be as direct a clone of a specific mainline Civ's rules and mechanics, but rules and mechanics are the aspects of the game that are most clearly free to copy.

Re: Unciv

#26

Post by wmil »

ericra wrote: post #11

Neat project. I love it. I read the "legality" section of your README, and I hope that someone can provide some advice. It would be nice to know where the lines are so you didn't have to constantly be concerned about 2K/Firaxis legal department coming for you. Just commenting here for visibility in hopes someone more qualified can provide some help.

I think it's one of those cases where the lines are unclear because this kind of IP issue has never been fully litigated. IP owners like to take an expansive view of IP rights, but they are likely to loose on some issues in court.

Firaxis could certainly send a cease & desist.

Re: Unciv

#27

Post by wtallis »

eru wrote: post #17
wtallis wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably. But keeping in mind the mobile focus, a more judicious icon-style art design is important, and I'm not sure how good generative AI is at making stuff that's legible at small sizes. Also, the simplicity of the current art allowing the download to be only 21MB is an accomplishment.

AI can make pixel art, too.

Pixel art as used today isn't quite the same thing as old-school icon design. Unciv doesn't need to operate with a restricted color palette and even on mobile has quite a few pixels to work with, but has to make UI elements easily recognizable and distinguishable at small physical sizes. I think the design constraints are probably most similar to early iOS and some early OS X icons, rather than the constraints of Win95 and 2d video game consoles (where all art—icons and otherwise—had very limited color and pixel counts).

Re: Unciv

#28

Post by rtpg »

jrm4 wrote: post #6

FWIW, and I'm sure a bunch of people would hate it, seems like a dash of AI art tools could go REAL far here.

Maybe, but honestly a big issue with a lot of art in projects like this is the lack of a coherent matching style between assets. I think you can get generative tools to get close to that, but at one point you get diminishing returns compared to just opening up Aseprite and doing the thing yourself.

I think the biggest cause of jank from the look of that project is also more due to UI stuff. Font choices, color pallettes, "1px solid white" borders. Maybe generative tools could provide a good way to investigate a better looking set of things though!

Re: Unciv

#29

Post by hyperific »

Great app. I didn't know it was on desktop too. Distills everything from Civ V into a tidy package with minimalist graphics.

Re: Unciv

#30

Post by calvinmorrison »

duozerk wrote: post #3

Along with shattered pixel dungeon, this is one of the only worthwile games on Android I've found. They don't call home, they don't push ads, they don't spy on you, they're just good games, well implemented and open source.

Many years ago I found a pack of card games on f-Droid with a great solitare type game called Golf. I wish I could find it!
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