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Ask HN: Review my App - Freeciv.net

62 points by roschdal 17y ago

alexkearns 17y ago
Thanks mate, you have just destroyed my marriage.
- milkshakes 17y ago
  and my finals week
  - codexon 17y ago
    and my startup
    - eru 17y ago
      I hope you guys don't discover Nethack or Dwarf Fortress.
      - wlievens 17y ago
        WebDF would be the end of all things productive for me.
        baxter 17y ago
        WebDF could be the end of humanity.
yungchin 17y ago
Edit: nevermind what I wrote below. I just figured out I didn't understand the controls. Would it be impossible to create "drag and drop" for units? I tried a single-player game in Firefox (3.5), but it hardly reacts to my input (even though top tells me it's barely consuming any cycles). I thought I'd give it a try with the Chromium Beta (but couldn't login anymore, so I created a second account) too - same thing there though. In any case: love the idea!!!
- ugh 17y ago
  It might not actually be unresponsive but it certainly feels that way. There is no feedback, the screen just violently blacks out, units just jump from A to B, buttons don’t react to clicks at all and so on and so on. This games needs a ton of polish. If anyone ever again claims that animations are useless eye candy I will show them this game. I love turn based games – but, sorry, not this one. I gave up after a short time and was very frustrated. (By the way, I changed browsers, too. From Safari to Chrome to Firefox, just to see whether it might be the browser.)
- roschdal 17y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. How should the controls be for this to be more usable? The game is still under development, so any feedback would be very useful.
- nuba 17y ago
  Cool! Works for me on a firefox 3.6b4, but I found the interface a bit clumsy and lacking visual feedback, and also some may not notice the commands area in the lower-right corner. Otherwise, thanks!
city41 17y ago
In the chat console, the blue text on black/dark grey background is totally unreadable. So far I'm very impressed.
revorad 17y ago
Internet Explorer not supported Awesome!
- m_eiman 17y ago
  Awesome? I'd say it's pretty sad that ignoring IE is practically required to do advanced stuff on the web without resorting to Flash.
- gcb 17y ago
  What's an IE? btw, it would be neat if i could play on opera mini.
Maciek416 17y ago
Some notes: 1) I typed "G" to have a settler unit wander out into the wilderness and it founded a city on its own. That was unexpected. I'm almost certain I didn't have it in any kind of automatic mode. 2) It would be good if we had a stronger indication of which tile will be the target of an action, and possibly a preview of the path taken there. 3) More animated indicators in general of where we should be looking at any given moment would be helpful. 4) Try to test the game on a large display (I'm testing on 2560x1600). It looks fantastic, but some of the UI could be better-delineated and tightened up. It seems to be a little spread out right now. Overall, this is awesome. Thank you for creating it! Civ is very high on a lot of people's top-10-of-all-time lists, so this should become very popular very quickly. Good luck.
dannytatom 17y ago
I only have one real complaint, and that is this: The email or password contains invalid invalid characters. Only letters (A-Z) and numbers (0-9) are allowed. What's the point in not allowing special characters in a password (serious question)?
- eru 17y ago
  Good question. Some banks (and other large companies) also seem to dislike them in passwords.
  - pyre 17y ago
    Some stupid rule thought up by someone that is trying to force users to make passwords that they can remember. Like some sort of Web/IT version Clippy saying, "I see you're trying to enter a password with a '+' in it. Are you sure that isn't a typo?" Either that or their backend software is incompetent (as well as the people that made it) and can't handle pattern-matching outside of [:alnum:] or can't store character values outside of [:alnum:]. It's the same reason that there are many sites that you can't use the 'md5 a single password against the site's domain name' trick because they limit password length to 8 or 16 characters (as if they are some sort of 'accepted industry standard').
    - durin42 17y ago
      I like that idea of using some sort of standard hash and password pairing along with the domain to come up with a password that's site-unique. Is that original, or taken from somewhere? Have you considered using base64 or some other encoding to shorten the string?
      - janzer 17y ago
        I've used the extension from passwordmaker.org for quite some time. It implements this basic idea quite nicely.
      - crux_ 17y ago
jeff18 17y ago
Why require an account? Just let me click a "Play Now" button. If you want to be fancy, you could make it like EtherPad so if I want to play a game, I could just go to freeciv.net/jeffsgame I would not be surprised if by reducing the barrier to entry, you get three times as many players. Your bounce rate must be staggering right now. Please implement this and then post another YC article with the stats on your bounce rate. :) I'd be very curious how big of a barrier requiring an email, etc. really is on a site like yours.
- eru 17y ago
  I was in the mood for playing when I checked it out. But not enough to bother with email addresses.
- ricree 17y ago
  Or at the very least, add an openid option so I can just log without having to create a new account.
- ErrantX 17y ago
  or at the very least implement OpenID login
woid 17y ago
That was one of tasks on my list of "Projects to do before I die"! checked out, love when people are making things real, thanks man Ah, then next one is tough, "have threesome with japanese twins".
kalendae 17y ago
I see ads on the side, I may be completely misreading your intentions for having them of course (as it could just be why not?) but I am not seeing freeciv on web as being very high in traffic. Main reason is that the barrier to entry is extremely high. Without tutorials, and the way the ui is setup, it requires you to be a former civ player, and a former civ player likely has civ on their computer (or at one point). So with the free advantage gone for a lot of them (eg i have civ4 installed right now), how is this better than multiplayer civ4? my hope is that u have some cool plans for it that takes it beyond the commercial civ titles.
- bd 17y ago
  There is definitely an opportunity for browser-based Civilization game, though it's going to be tough to compete with Sid himself: http://www.facebook.com/civnetwork http://www.facebook.com/civnetwork
brandon272 17y ago
Chrome says "Waiting for freeciv.net..." but nothing loads.
AdamGibbins 17y ago
Server appears to be overloaded, just forever loading for me :(
- bshep 17y ago
  Same here :(
kunley 17y ago
It hangs. (2 minutes pass) No! But still slooow
taitems 17y ago
I signed up but the game never finished loading, so I had a play with the UI for a few minutes. http://i.imgur.com/fzB6i.jpg http://i.imgur.com/fzB6i.jpg
- kyro 17y ago
  Is there a tutorial you could point me to that'll teach me how to make buttons with a style similar to that 'Play Now' button?
  - taitems 17y ago
    It's something that I always saw and one afternoon decided to try and replicate. You can search for "MetaLab" style buttons, but it's as simple as fine-tuning the settings for inner shadow (normal mode, white) a darker stroke, a gradient overlay and a subtle drop shadow. That's probably not my best ever example of that button style either. EDIT: A pretty poor substitute http://blog.creativityden.com/design-a-pixel-perfect-menu-metalab-style/ http://blog.creativityden.com/design-a-pixel-perfect-menu-me...
plaes 17y ago
You've done a good job. I've been looking through the sources and found the "patches" directory. It would be cool if you had comments on top of every patch why it is needed.
roschdal 17y ago
Thanks for the reviews from everyone. I'll use this to improve the game soon.

62 points by roschdal 17y ago

alexkearns 17y ago

Thanks mate, you have just destroyed my marriage.

milkshakes 17y ago
and my finals week
- codexon 17y ago
  and my startup
  - eru 17y ago
    I hope you guys don't discover Nethack or Dwarf Fortress.
    - wlievens 17y ago
      WebDF would be the end of all things productive for me.
      - baxter 17y ago
        WebDF could be the end of humanity.

yungchin 17y ago

Edit: nevermind what I wrote below. I just figured out I didn't understand the controls. Would it be impossible to create "drag and drop" for units? I tried a single-player game in Firefox (3.5), but it hardly reacts to my input (even though top tells me it's barely consuming any cycles). I thought I'd give it a try with the Chromium Beta (but couldn't login anymore, so I created a second account) too - same thing there though. In any case: love the idea!!!

ugh 17y ago
It might not actually be unresponsive but it certainly feels that way. There is no feedback, the screen just violently blacks out, units just jump from A to B, buttons don’t react to clicks at all and so on and so on. This games needs a ton of polish. If anyone ever again claims that animations are useless eye candy I will show them this game. I love turn based games – but, sorry, not this one. I gave up after a short time and was very frustrated. (By the way, I changed browsers, too. From Safari to Chrome to Firefox, just to see whether it might be the browser.)
roschdal 17y ago
Thanks for the feedback. How should the controls be for this to be more usable? The game is still under development, so any feedback would be very useful.
nuba 17y ago
Cool! Works for me on a firefox 3.6b4, but I found the interface a bit clumsy and lacking visual feedback, and also some may not notice the commands area in the lower-right corner. Otherwise, thanks!

city41 17y ago

In the chat console, the blue text on black/dark grey background is totally unreadable. So far I'm very impressed.

revorad 17y ago

Internet Explorer not supported Awesome!

m_eiman 17y ago
Awesome? I'd say it's pretty sad that ignoring IE is practically required to do advanced stuff on the web without resorting to Flash.
gcb 17y ago
What's an IE? btw, it would be neat if i could play on opera mini.

Maciek416 17y ago

Some notes: 1) I typed "G" to have a settler unit wander out into the wilderness and it founded a city on its own. That was unexpected. I'm almost certain I didn't have it in any kind of automatic mode. 2) It would be good if we had a stronger indication of which tile will be the target of an action, and possibly a preview of the path taken there. 3) More animated indicators in general of where we should be looking at any given moment would be helpful. 4) Try to test the game on a large display (I'm testing on 2560x1600). It looks fantastic, but some of the UI could be better-delineated and tightened up. It seems to be a little spread out right now. Overall, this is awesome. Thank you for creating it! Civ is very high on a lot of people's top-10-of-all-time lists, so this should become very popular very quickly. Good luck.

dannytatom 17y ago

I only have one real complaint, and that is this: The email or password contains invalid invalid characters. Only letters (A-Z) and numbers (0-9) are allowed. What's the point in not allowing special characters in a password (serious question)?

eru 17y ago
Good question. Some banks (and other large companies) also seem to dislike them in passwords.
- pyre 17y ago
  Some stupid rule thought up by someone that is trying to force users to make passwords that they can remember. Like some sort of Web/IT version Clippy saying, "I see you're trying to enter a password with a '+' in it. Are you sure that isn't a typo?" Either that or their backend software is incompetent (as well as the people that made it) and can't handle pattern-matching outside of [:alnum:] or can't store character values outside of [:alnum:]. It's the same reason that there are many sites that you can't use the 'md5 a single password against the site's domain name' trick because they limit password length to 8 or 16 characters (as if they are some sort of 'accepted industry standard').
  - durin42 17y ago
    I like that idea of using some sort of standard hash and password pairing along with the domain to come up with a password that's site-unique. Is that original, or taken from somewhere? Have you considered using base64 or some other encoding to shorten the string?
    - janzer 17y ago
      I've used the extension from passwordmaker.org for quite some time. It implements this basic idea quite nicely.
    - crux_ 17y ago

jeff18 17y ago

Why require an account? Just let me click a "Play Now" button. If you want to be fancy, you could make it like EtherPad so if I want to play a game, I could just go to freeciv.net/jeffsgame I would not be surprised if by reducing the barrier to entry, you get three times as many players. Your bounce rate must be staggering right now. Please implement this and then post another YC article with the stats on your bounce rate. :) I'd be very curious how big of a barrier requiring an email, etc. really is on a site like yours.

eru 17y ago
I was in the mood for playing when I checked it out. But not enough to bother with email addresses.
ricree 17y ago
Or at the very least, add an openid option so I can just log without having to create a new account.
ErrantX 17y ago
or at the very least implement OpenID login

woid 17y ago

That was one of tasks on my list of "Projects to do before I die"! checked out, love when people are making things real, thanks man Ah, then next one is tough, "have threesome with japanese twins".

kalendae 17y ago

I see ads on the side, I may be completely misreading your intentions for having them of course (as it could just be why not?) but I am not seeing freeciv on web as being very high in traffic. Main reason is that the barrier to entry is extremely high. Without tutorials, and the way the ui is setup, it requires you to be a former civ player, and a former civ player likely has civ on their computer (or at one point). So with the free advantage gone for a lot of them (eg i have civ4 installed right now), how is this better than multiplayer civ4? my hope is that u have some cool plans for it that takes it beyond the commercial civ titles.

bd 17y ago
There is definitely an opportunity for browser-based Civilization game, though it's going to be tough to compete with Sid himself: http://www.facebook.com/civnetwork http://www.facebook.com/civnetwork

brandon272 17y ago

Chrome says "Waiting for freeciv.net..." but nothing loads.

AdamGibbins 17y ago

Server appears to be overloaded, just forever loading for me :(

bshep 17y ago
Same here :(

kunley 17y ago

It hangs. (2 minutes pass) No! But still slooow

taitems 17y ago

I signed up but the game never finished loading, so I had a play with the UI for a few minutes. http://i.imgur.com/fzB6i.jpg http://i.imgur.com/fzB6i.jpg

kyro 17y ago
Is there a tutorial you could point me to that'll teach me how to make buttons with a style similar to that 'Play Now' button?
- taitems 17y ago
  It's something that I always saw and one afternoon decided to try and replicate. You can search for "MetaLab" style buttons, but it's as simple as fine-tuning the settings for inner shadow (normal mode, white) a darker stroke, a gradient overlay and a subtle drop shadow. That's probably not my best ever example of that button style either. EDIT: A pretty poor substitute http://blog.creativityden.com/design-a-pixel-perfect-menu-metalab-style/ http://blog.creativityden.com/design-a-pixel-perfect-menu-me...

plaes 17y ago

You've done a good job. I've been looking through the sources and found the "patches" directory. It would be cool if you had comments on top of every patch why it is needed.

roschdal 17y ago

Thanks for the reviews from everyone. I'll use this to improve the game soon.