
FreeCol: Turn-based strategy game based on the old game Colonization - galfarragem
https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol
======
parsley27
I added a whole bunch of features a year or two ago, including a wide range of
new goods (cochineal, indigo, etc.) and the repugnant feature of slavery
(repugnant, but I would think it would be very tempting to a player
economically), but I foolishly forgot to push it off my old computer.

I always wonder if such content (and no functional improvements) would even be
welcome in a pull request, not to mention how controversial adding slavery to
a game might be.

~~~
renewiltord
How interesting! Always curious to hear about the "modding" (really forking)
culture in open source games. It's so attractive to edit games to be like you
want. One of the first ones I ever modified was the game XEvil and I suspect
the dopamine hit from being able to edit and recompile to see a difference has
kept me going a few decades into this field.

I like the idea of morally ugly things in games, but often they minmax away or
are forced on you by great difficulty. For instance, in Bioshock it's optimal
to be nice to the little girls. The bad option is minmaxed away. And in
Frostpunk it's kind of forced on you since the tech tree is all
authoritarianism.

I wonder what it would be like if in the same game I could end up either the
North or the South and still put up a good fight.

~~~
mrighele
> And in Frostpunk it's kind of forced on you since the tech tree is all
> authoritarianism.

If you're talking about the Book of Laws, you get different endings depending
on what laws you enable like "we didn't cross the line" or "we went too far",
or something like that.

I think also that depending on the scenario you can avoid most of the "ugly
laws", with the notable exception of child labour, because it gives a boost in
manpower at the beginning of the game, and that makes really a difference.

If you prefer, choosing a single ugly law lets me avoid all the others.

~~~
hutzlibu
I think the different endings come only if you choose the last authorian
option, which are also marked in a special way.

But allmost everything is authorian in the book of laws. Even if you play soft
- you play a soft dictator. But this is the game mechanic, and to play as a
anarchistic syndicate would be hard to implement, or rather impossible, as you
are indeed the only human.

------
simonebrunozzi
I played the original colonization, a few years after it came out (I used to
play a lot of strategy videogames). It was a really nice game to play.

I tried FreeCol a few years ago, when I had a free afternoon. It was kind of
ok, but not particularly attractive. Most likely, I got older :)

I still praise the efforts of developers that, mostly for free, try to
replicate great games from the past.

I even gave a look at FreeOrion, because Master of Orion 2 was my favorite
game ever. Not as great. I think there's an easy option to play MoO2 if you
buy if for a few bucks online, e.g. on Steam [0]

There's also the great Master of Magic. A developer from Japan created a
complete overhaul of the game, and published it for free as a patch. I
remember reading that someone bought the rights of the game from... Atari? ...
And they're now developing a new version of it, and the Japanese guy is
involved. Nice way to end the story :)

Strategy games are a ton of fun. A pity that I mostly played them alone, when
I was a kid. Today I guess it's all about social, like Fortnite?

[0]:
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/410980/Master_of_Orion_2/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/410980/Master_of_Orion_2/)

~~~
kvn_95
Regarding Master of Magic, there's a Java reimplementation that looks pretty
good and I think worth checking out called MoM-IME [1]

For all other things about Master of Magic, Blake's website [2] has a good
curated list. Warning: Blake took 90's website design & styling very seriously
:)

[1]:
[https://sourceforge.net/projects/momime/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/momime/)

[2]:
[http://blakessanctum.x10.mx/Games/MoM/](http://blakessanctum.x10.mx/Games/MoM/)

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Thanks! This is the website created by the Japanese developer I was
mentioning. His mod is called Caster of Magic. [0]

[0]: [http://seravy.x10.mx/Wordpress/](http://seravy.x10.mx/Wordpress/)

Edit: from Blake's sanctum, I had no idea this existed!!

> I recently and excitedly discovered that Simtex and Micropose did indeed do
> a followup MoM game called Civizard - Majutsu no Keifu, a PlayStation remake
> of Master of Magic with totally new graphics and a remastered soundtrack.
> Sadly the game was only released in Japan hence why most of the western
> world have no idea this even exists.

------
BallyBrain
I only just finished playing the original Colonization last month (I play it
about once a year). I love the civilisation series but for some reason I
probably enjoy Colonization better, I guess it is the town management and
production/trade aspect.

Anyway, I hadn't heard about FreeCol before and it looks to be a very good
effort. I'll definitely take a look at it, but, I find nostalgia usually gets
the best of me and none of these remakes ever seem to scratch the itch like
the originals.

~~~
StanislavPetrov
I'm with you on the series. I've got Colonization up there with the original
Alpha Centauri.

~~~
kyuudou
Colonization and SMAC are in my best-of as well. Incidentally, I've found that
Stellaris really scratches the SMAC itch.

------
pjmlp
Nice effort.

Screenshots are here, [http://www.freecol.org/more-
screenshots.html](http://www.freecol.org/more-screenshots.html)

------
kensai
I love such projects. I admire the care put into them. Is there a list of all
similar clones somewhere?

~~~
totetsu
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engine_recreation...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engine_recreations)

[https://osgameclones.com/](https://osgameclones.com/)

------
Andrew_nenakhov
I played original Colonizayiom a lot, and do play it once in a while. The game
has some very old school charm (and very annoying units limit, once you get
close to 256 colonists, it becomes almost unplayable, and wagon train routes
are a mess - for some reason they just refuse to unload cargo sometimes).

I have tried freecol a few times and never could muster myself to do more than
a few moves. It's something about the graphical style, I guess.

------
warpspin
How playable is it? Can you actually play from beginning to end? The version
number is bit off-putting.

~~~
justinlink
It was playable to the end the last time I played 6 or 7 years ago.

It has been in development since 2002.

------
ComodoHacker
Nice remake, I'm playing it right now.

Some tips for those unfamiliar with it or the original:

* Stable release is rather dated, content-wise. Nightly includes good maps and mods. OTOH, nightly build has bugs and annoyances (like randomly changing some preferences and UI layout)

* The community is almost dead, you're on your own mostly.

* It's a really, really long game, prepare for months (which spans 200 years in game time). The first 10% is exploration, the last 10% is action, the rest are resource management, planning and logistics.

* If you're trying to play optimally on hard difficulty (which is kind of the point of the game), each turn in mid-game and later could easily take 20-30 min. Also you might want to have Excel around. :)

------
stevage
Is it just me or is there something really buggy about the keyboard
directions, on MacOS at least. Super confusing the isometric perspective.

The four main arrow directions work consistently (although it's weird that
they're each diagonal on the map). But Fn+arrow seems to behave inconsistently
- I have a lot of trouble moving my units where I expect them to go.

Just me?

~~~
ComodoHacker
Alternatively, you can use press G and click on destination tile.

------
modmans2nd
Ahhhhh a game where you can play colonizer....

~~~
Taniwha
I'm sure they'll let you play as a native American and win right?

------
est
Off topic, are there any open source 3D strategy game with good terrain
system?

~~~
renewiltord
In the RTS genre, there were the ones on the Spring RTS Engine. I have to warn
you that the last time I played (many years ago), the publicly available AIs
would cheese you with micro that's not reasonable.

------
kainer
Guess the important question is if ALT + W,I,N works!

------
kyuudou
Serendipitously, this is the only game I've been playing for the last month.
_suddenly paranoid_

