4 ms·

Show HN: Freeciv WebGL 3D

105 points by roschdal 9y ago

roschdal 9y ago
Freeciv WebGL has been updated with new 3D models today. Please post your feedback here on HN. https://play.freeciv.org https://play.freeciv.org
- BatFastard 9y ago
  First few times I tried to start a game, I entered my name as required. But then it would prompt me for a password while still telling me I could play without an account. After trying an few times with no luck I tried a more complicated user name, and it let me it. You should give people better feedback when they selected a user name that is already taken. Personally using a user name to create an account is bad, better to use an email address which is unique.
  - BatFastard 9y ago
    Gave up a couple of turns later when I got into map moving mode and we unable to get out of it to move my units.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
bhouston 9y ago
Please allow for easy registry via integrating Google or Facebook logins. I know that many are philosophically against that, but it sure makes it easy to sign up and remember the password.
- roschdal 9y ago
  Playing Freeciv-web is free and it doesn't require creating an account. For single-player games, just choose any name. You can signup with a Google account to the "One turn per day" games, and you can sign up with an e-mail address for the Play-by-e-mail games.
- camgunz 9y ago
  Yep I'm against it. Please don't require me to hand over my private information in order to play your game. Same thing for Google Captcha (though Freeciv isn't using it); please stop using this.
  - BenjiWiebe 9y ago
    That's actually why I prefer to log in with Google; my passwords stay safely hidden away from whatever site I'm logging into, plus I can easily revoke that site's login if I choose to.
    - Fnoord 9y ago
      How about a password manager instead?
fartcannon 9y ago
Incredible work! Forgive me if I overlooked it in my excitement, but what technology handles the networking of this masterpiece and could something like socket.io handle it?
- roschdal 9y ago
  Thanks! The technologies in Freeciv-web are described here: https://github.com/freeciv/freeciv-web https://github.com/freeciv/freeciv-web Some techs used are Nginx, Tornado, the server is implemented in C and there is a proxy implemented in Python. The 3D engine is Three.js.
SwellJoe 9y ago
It looks great (and is playable on HiDPI, which FreeCIV native isn't, or wasn't last time I tried), but I still find the controls in the WebGL version entirely unusable. They're so fidgety, click-drag to move doesn't work (at least in Firefox on Linux), and I keep unintentionally interrupting my workers or just selecting the wrong unit to move. I want to like it; as I love FreeCiv and have played it off and on for years (when I get bored with Civ, I might fire up a FreeCiv game for different mechanics), but it's really tedious to explore and do things. Hotkeys work, and I might be able to get comfortable enough with them to be efficient with them if I play a little longer to get my muscle memory back (it's been a few years since I really had much time for long Civ games), but the mouse is almost worse than useless.
- LoSboccacc 9y ago
  I've been working on a browser game and they're hard and awkward to work with, eventually did the ux in DOM but on mobile it's still sluggish especially with images scrolling on top of the game canvas.
- ChickeNES 9y ago
  Yeah, I accidentally zoomed out and it's almost impossible to zoom in on Firefox on Mac
fsiefken 9y ago
Perhaps someone can come up with a WebVR / A-frame variant.
- roschdal 9y ago
  -Anaglyph support: http://play.freeciv.org/blog/2017/08/freeciv-webgl-now-has-anaglyph-3d-support/ http://play.freeciv.org/blog/2017/08/freeciv-webgl-now-has-a... -Google Cardboard support: http://play.freeciv.org/blog/2017/06/freeciv-webgl-with-3d-vr-cardboard-and-speech-recognition-beta-support/ http://play.freeciv.org/blog/2017/06/freeciv-webgl-with-3d-v...

105 points by roschdal 9y ago

Freeciv WebGL has been updated with new 3D models today. Please post your feedback here on HN. https://play.freeciv.org https://play.freeciv.org

BatFastard 9y ago
First few times I tried to start a game, I entered my name as required. But then it would prompt me for a password while still telling me I could play without an account. After trying an few times with no luck I tried a more complicated user name, and it let me it. You should give people better feedback when they selected a user name that is already taken. Personally using a user name to create an account is bad, better to use an email address which is unique.
- BatFastard 9y ago
  Gave up a couple of turns later when I got into map moving mode and we unable to get out of it to move my units.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

bhouston 9y ago

Please allow for easy registry via integrating Google or Facebook logins. I know that many are philosophically against that, but it sure makes it easy to sign up and remember the password.

roschdal 9y ago
Playing Freeciv-web is free and it doesn't require creating an account. For single-player games, just choose any name. You can signup with a Google account to the "One turn per day" games, and you can sign up with an e-mail address for the Play-by-e-mail games.
camgunz 9y ago
Yep I'm against it. Please don't require me to hand over my private information in order to play your game. Same thing for Google Captcha (though Freeciv isn't using it); please stop using this.
- BenjiWiebe 9y ago
  That's actually why I prefer to log in with Google; my passwords stay safely hidden away from whatever site I'm logging into, plus I can easily revoke that site's login if I choose to.
  - Fnoord 9y ago
    How about a password manager instead?

fartcannon 9y ago

Incredible work! Forgive me if I overlooked it in my excitement, but what technology handles the networking of this masterpiece and could something like socket.io handle it?

roschdal 9y ago
Thanks! The technologies in Freeciv-web are described here: https://github.com/freeciv/freeciv-web https://github.com/freeciv/freeciv-web Some techs used are Nginx, Tornado, the server is implemented in C and there is a proxy implemented in Python. The 3D engine is Three.js.

SwellJoe 9y ago

It looks great (and is playable on HiDPI, which FreeCIV native isn't, or wasn't last time I tried), but I still find the controls in the WebGL version entirely unusable. They're so fidgety, click-drag to move doesn't work (at least in Firefox on Linux), and I keep unintentionally interrupting my workers or just selecting the wrong unit to move. I want to like it; as I love FreeCiv and have played it off and on for years (when I get bored with Civ, I might fire up a FreeCiv game for different mechanics), but it's really tedious to explore and do things. Hotkeys work, and I might be able to get comfortable enough with them to be efficient with them if I play a little longer to get my muscle memory back (it's been a few years since I really had much time for long Civ games), but the mouse is almost worse than useless.

LoSboccacc 9y ago
I've been working on a browser game and they're hard and awkward to work with, eventually did the ux in DOM but on mobile it's still sluggish especially with images scrolling on top of the game canvas.
ChickeNES 9y ago
Yeah, I accidentally zoomed out and it's almost impossible to zoom in on Firefox on Mac

fsiefken 9y ago

Perhaps someone can come up with a WebVR / A-frame variant.

roschdal 9y ago
-Anaglyph support: http://play.freeciv.org/blog/2017/08/freeciv-webgl-now-has-anaglyph-3d-support/ http://play.freeciv.org/blog/2017/08/freeciv-webgl-now-has-a... -Google Cardboard support: http://play.freeciv.org/blog/2017/06/freeciv-webgl-with-3d-vr-cardboard-and-speech-recognition-beta-support/ http://play.freeciv.org/blog/2017/06/freeciv-webgl-with-3d-v...