7 ms·

Review my HTML5 game Freeciv.net again one year later

75 points by roschdal 16y ago

roschdal 16y ago
Hi again HN, It's now been over a year since the first time I asked HN to review my webapp (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1005299 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1005299), so now I would really like to ask the HN community to review my HTML5 online strategy game again. I have fixed all of the issues that were reported the first time, so now I would really appreciate some advice and ideas about what to do with this project from now on. I would be happy to answer any questions you might have also. Thanks a lot in advance! - Andreas
- tvon 16y ago
  Is there any way to mess around with the UI without setting up the whole environment? I see a few bits I'd like to clean up but man that's a lot of bootstrapping :)
  - roschdal 16y ago
    You will have to setup the entire environment. It will take a few hours to set everything up. I'll be happy to give you any help in setting it up. The documentation on github is a little out of date, so if you are interested I can update it for you. As a start, perhaps you could open a new issue on the project's github page and we'll discuss the changes that you propose. Bugreports are just as valuable as patches at the moment. Good luck!
TimothyFitz 16y ago
Wow. It's dramatically better! Within about 20 seconds I was filled with that rush of curiosity / grandiose ambition that Civ creates so wonderfully. I immediately closed the window. Fuck. I don't have time for Civ. Must ship more code, startup crunch time, no time for playing I tell myself. I know I'll be back. Fuck.
- cellis 16y ago
  I purchased Civ 5 like a week ago. I haven't played it besides checking out the tutorial, because I know my startup success is inversely correlated with my Civilization's success.
  - mkramlich 16y ago
    making a note here for potentially lucrative game idea: Sid Meier's Startupization
    - andrewheins 16y ago
      There was a flash game a while back that someone drew up a concept for that, to me, looked really compelling. It included buying coffee machines, source control, hiring developers, etc. Anyone know if that game was ever actually made?
      - benologist 16y ago
        Was it Journalizm? http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/540913 http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/540913
      - gacek 16y ago
        Game Dev Story for iPhone ?
coryl 16y ago
It certainly looks interesting and very powerful, but horribly complicated. I haven't played any Civ type games before, so I really don't know how to get started. I don't know what the tutorial was suppose to do, I loaded it and it didn't show me how to play.
- mynameishere 16y ago
  This, like the old "freeciv" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeciv http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeciv ...is targeted to people who already know civilization ii.
etherealG 16y ago
Thanks for your efforts, overall it looks awesome. A small quick request: please can we have a loading bar on the load screens. It loaded relatively quickly, but it's still painful to be waiting for 10s and not knowing how long to wait for.
chipsy 16y ago
I think the main thing it could use now is general UX polish. The Freeciv server messages are "noisy" and many of them could be hidden or represented in more graphical ways. Actually playing the game is pretty good if you already know how to play Civ, but I felt some unclarity about how many starting units I actually had, and it's the kind of game that demands plenty of tutorials for new players.
bdr 16y ago
The tutorial needs work. How would I know what's a good place to build a city? Bigger problem: I explored a little bit, and then suddenly I couldn't do anything anymore with no explanation.
ohadpr 16y ago
Once you get to the graphics/interaction they are great. I recommend: * Try to embed a live-game into your main page, it took me 2 minutes to navigate the options until I could get some graphics on the screen. * While you're at it make sure you embed a fully mature/active game so that we can see how awesome it looks when the screen is full of stuff. * The UI flow is very non-intuitive, perhaps you've invested most of the dev in the game itself but its hidden behind a dozen screens that are hard to navigate.
geuis 16y ago
Make it touch compatible. I want to play it on my ipad.
- roschdal 16y ago
  Yes, a lot of people have asked for iPad support. Unfortunately, the Javascript performance in the iPad1 is too slow, so the game is unplayable there. I have high hopes for a version running on the iPad2 though.
Hyphen-ated 16y ago
When I click the "Start single-player game" button, it puts me into a multiplayer game. I had to leave and re-start several times before I got into a game with only AI opponents.
- smhinsey 16y ago
  Same here, and if you try that first and then go into a tutorial, it seems to have the same result.
jefe78 16y ago
An idea: add it to the Chrome app store? I'd love to see a quick-link when I open a new tab...who wants to be productive anyways?!
- paulirish 16y ago
  It's there: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ojdnkfmlponpahkgadcaodiaeieadcbl https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ojdnkfmlponpahkgad... :)
gacek 16y ago
it does not work in opera 11.01. stops at lobby, start game does not do anything.
- mapleoin 16y ago
  Firefox 3.6.13 is also very slow and hard to respond, but I guess that's not your problem.
thatusertwo 16y ago
This looks pretty cool and I'm impressed that anyone could build something like it in HTML5, but as a non-gamer and someone who hasn't played a game like this before I wasn't really sure what I was doing or how I was suppose to play.
xiaoma 16y ago
It looks much better than before. As a novice flash programmer myself, I'd love to know how you go about creating tile sets. I've never done a 4x game, but I used to love them and there don't seem to be many out there in recent years.
- roschdal 16y ago
  Sure. The tileset can be found here: https://github.com/freecivnet/freeciv-web/tree/master/freeciv-web/src/main/webapp/tileset https://github.com/freecivnet/freeciv-web/tree/master/freeci... The isometric map is basically rendered using the HTML5 canvas element, by image clipping tiles from the tileset.
taken11 16y ago
> Invalid username, it is too long or short. Please go back, and try again. could you tell me what is wrong with it, giving error messages where users have to figure out if its a or be is not nice.
knowledgesale 16y ago
Great job! Could you please recommend references you used to learn HTML5?

75 points by roschdal 16y ago

Hi again HN, It's now been over a year since the first time I asked HN to review my webapp (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1005299 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1005299), so now I would really like to ask the HN community to review my HTML5 online strategy game again. I have fixed all of the issues that were reported the first time, so now I would really appreciate some advice and ideas about what to do with this project from now on. I would be happy to answer any questions you might have also. Thanks a lot in advance! - Andreas

tvon 16y ago
Is there any way to mess around with the UI without setting up the whole environment? I see a few bits I'd like to clean up but man that's a lot of bootstrapping :)
- roschdal 16y ago
  You will have to setup the entire environment. It will take a few hours to set everything up. I'll be happy to give you any help in setting it up. The documentation on github is a little out of date, so if you are interested I can update it for you. As a start, perhaps you could open a new issue on the project's github page and we'll discuss the changes that you propose. Bugreports are just as valuable as patches at the moment. Good luck!

TimothyFitz 16y ago

Wow. It's dramatically better! Within about 20 seconds I was filled with that rush of curiosity / grandiose ambition that Civ creates so wonderfully. I immediately closed the window. Fuck. I don't have time for Civ. Must ship more code, startup crunch time, no time for playing I tell myself. I know I'll be back. Fuck.

cellis 16y ago
I purchased Civ 5 like a week ago. I haven't played it besides checking out the tutorial, because I know my startup success is inversely correlated with my Civilization's success.
- mkramlich 16y ago
  making a note here for potentially lucrative game idea: Sid Meier's Startupization
  - andrewheins 16y ago
    There was a flash game a while back that someone drew up a concept for that, to me, looked really compelling. It included buying coffee machines, source control, hiring developers, etc. Anyone know if that game was ever actually made?
    - benologist 16y ago
      Was it Journalizm? http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/540913 http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/540913
    - gacek 16y ago
      Game Dev Story for iPhone ?

coryl 16y ago

It certainly looks interesting and very powerful, but horribly complicated. I haven't played any Civ type games before, so I really don't know how to get started. I don't know what the tutorial was suppose to do, I loaded it and it didn't show me how to play.

mynameishere 16y ago
This, like the old "freeciv" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeciv http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeciv ...is targeted to people who already know civilization ii.

etherealG 16y ago

Thanks for your efforts, overall it looks awesome. A small quick request: please can we have a loading bar on the load screens. It loaded relatively quickly, but it's still painful to be waiting for 10s and not knowing how long to wait for.

chipsy 16y ago

I think the main thing it could use now is general UX polish. The Freeciv server messages are "noisy" and many of them could be hidden or represented in more graphical ways. Actually playing the game is pretty good if you already know how to play Civ, but I felt some unclarity about how many starting units I actually had, and it's the kind of game that demands plenty of tutorials for new players.

bdr 16y ago

The tutorial needs work. How would I know what's a good place to build a city? Bigger problem: I explored a little bit, and then suddenly I couldn't do anything anymore with no explanation.

ohadpr 16y ago

Once you get to the graphics/interaction they are great. I recommend: * Try to embed a live-game into your main page, it took me 2 minutes to navigate the options until I could get some graphics on the screen. * While you're at it make sure you embed a fully mature/active game so that we can see how awesome it looks when the screen is full of stuff. * The UI flow is very non-intuitive, perhaps you've invested most of the dev in the game itself but its hidden behind a dozen screens that are hard to navigate.

geuis 16y ago

Make it touch compatible. I want to play it on my ipad.

roschdal 16y ago
Yes, a lot of people have asked for iPad support. Unfortunately, the Javascript performance in the iPad1 is too slow, so the game is unplayable there. I have high hopes for a version running on the iPad2 though.

Hyphen-ated 16y ago

When I click the "Start single-player game" button, it puts me into a multiplayer game. I had to leave and re-start several times before I got into a game with only AI opponents.

smhinsey 16y ago
Same here, and if you try that first and then go into a tutorial, it seems to have the same result.

jefe78 16y ago

An idea: add it to the Chrome app store? I'd love to see a quick-link when I open a new tab...who wants to be productive anyways?!

paulirish 16y ago
It's there: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ojdnkfmlponpahkgadcaodiaeieadcbl https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ojdnkfmlponpahkgad... :)

gacek 16y ago

it does not work in opera 11.01. stops at lobby, start game does not do anything.

mapleoin 16y ago
Firefox 3.6.13 is also very slow and hard to respond, but I guess that's not your problem.

thatusertwo 16y ago

This looks pretty cool and I'm impressed that anyone could build something like it in HTML5, but as a non-gamer and someone who hasn't played a game like this before I wasn't really sure what I was doing or how I was suppose to play.

xiaoma 16y ago

It looks much better than before. As a novice flash programmer myself, I'd love to know how you go about creating tile sets. I've never done a 4x game, but I used to love them and there don't seem to be many out there in recent years.

roschdal 16y ago
Sure. The tileset can be found here: https://github.com/freecivnet/freeciv-web/tree/master/freeciv-web/src/main/webapp/tileset https://github.com/freecivnet/freeciv-web/tree/master/freeci... The isometric map is basically rendered using the HTML5 canvas element, by image clipping tiles from the tileset.

taken11 16y ago

> Invalid username, it is too long or short. Please go back, and try again. could you tell me what is wrong with it, giving error messages where users have to figure out if its a or be is not nice.

knowledgesale 16y ago

Great job! Could you please recommend references you used to learn HTML5?