Re: Freeciv vs. Xconq

[Stan Shebs <shebs at shebs dot cnchost dot com>]

Erik Sigra wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> A while ago, I announced on freeciv-dev that I was going to do a
> feature-by-feature comparrission between Freeciv and Xconq. Here is what
> I have written.

A very interesting list!

>     > Xconq:
>       - Awkward name that doesn't sound good. Two unusual letters. Two
>         different letters that are supposed to be pronounced in the
>         same way (I still have problems spelling Xqonc :-|

A remnant of another era I suppose - once upon a time it was very
cool to have programs that were "Xsomething", and the program
was originally called "conquest".  Sort of like "awk" or "grep";
unlovely names, but can't change them now!

>        - Unneccessary intermediate page on the way to the bugtracking
>          page.

I put this in as a placeholder while figuring out gnats issues,
it may or may not stay.  In any case this seems like a trivial
issue compared to the other topics.

>    * Terminology
>      Freeciv:   Xconq:
>      user       player
>      player     side
>      AI player  mechanical player

Xconq's generic term is "AI player" too, "mplayer" is a particular
type of AI.  Xconq allows multiple AI types, although only two
are implemented so far ("iplayer" being the other one).

>       - There are no 6 keys placed like this
>                     *                       *    *
>                  *     *
>                            or like this   *        *
>                  *     *
>                     *                       *    *
>         which makes keyboard movement somewhat difficult.
>       - Movement keys are placed in the middle of the alpabetic part
>         of the keyboard. Across the void on ergonomic keyboards!

Sigh, time passes - hjklyubn was once the universal standard for
keyboard movement, such as for nethack ("what's nethack?" :-) ).

>     > Freeciv:
>       + Beautiful default tileset (Trident). The variant called
>         NeoTrident is good too.
>     > Xconq:
>       - Not so beautiful tileset. Mountains look brown instead of
>         grey. (Only one of the zoomlevels seem to have isometric
>         overlap.)

Heh, a matter of taste.  *I* think trident's terrain tiles are
uglier than Xconq's terrain tiles!

>     > Xconq:
>       - Grayscale units.

???  The standard game's infantry and armor are mostly shades of
green, and towns/cities are multicolored.  Ships and aircraft are
mostly gray, but that's generally true of corresponding trident
images also.  The civ2 module uses trident imagery of course, so
no difference there.  It *is* the case that many of Xconq's games
still only have b/w unit icons though.

> * Sound
>   > Both:
>     - No sound at all.

Actually, the Mac interface does have sound, and GDL has
machinery to specify which sounds to play.  I'll probably
add it to the Linux version when I get sound to work on my
machine at all...

>     > Xconq:
>       + Units can be on different altitudes.

Although right now it's pointless, there are no effects in any game.

A few more things you should mention:
the support for multiple AI types
ability to have different sets of images for different zoom levels
separate low-level and high-level AI planning
seasons, climate, and weather

Stan