

Review my HTML5 game Freeciv.net again one year later - roschdal
http://www.freeciv.net/

======
roschdal
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>), 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
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
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documentation on github is a little out of date, so if you are interested I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
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
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
making a note here for potentially lucrative game idea: _Sid Meier's
Startupization_

~~~
andrewheins
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
Was it Journalizm?

<http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/540913>

------
ohadpr
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.

------
Hyphen-ated
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
Same here, and if you try that first and then go into a tutorial, it seems to
have the same result.

------
etherealG
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.

------
jefe78
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
It's there:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ojdnkfmlponpahkgad...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ojdnkfmlponpahkgadcaodiaeieadcbl)
:)

------
coryl
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
This, like the old "freeciv"

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeciv>

...is targeted to people who already know civilization ii.

------
bdr
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.

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chipsy
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.

------
xiaoma
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
Sure. The tileset can be found here: [https://github.com/freecivnet/freeciv-
web/tree/master/freeci...](https://github.com/freecivnet/freeciv-
web/tree/master/freeciv-web/src/main/webapp/tileset)

The isometric map is basically rendered using the HTML5 canvas element, by
image clipping tiles from the tileset.

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thatusertwo
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.

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taken11
> 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.

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gacek
it does not work in opera 11.01.

stops at lobby, start game does not do anything.

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

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

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

~~~
roschdal
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.

