Codex Gamicus
Explore
Main Page
Discuss
All Pages
Interactive Maps
navigation
Main page
Community portal
Recent changes
Random page
Admin noticeboard
Forums
Company Index
Character Index
Hardware Index
In-Game Index
Ratings Index
Video Game Index
Fandom
Gamepedia support
Report a bad ad
Help Wiki
Contact us
FANDOM
Fan Central
BETA
Games
Anime
Movies
TV
Video
Wikis
Explore Wikis
Community Central
Start a Wiki
Don't have an account?
Register
Sign In
Sign In
Register
Fandom's centric source of video game knowledge
42,423
pages
Explore
Main Page
Discuss
All Pages
Interactive Maps
navigation
Main page
Community portal
Recent changes
Random page
Admin noticeboard
Forums
Company Index
Character Index
Hardware Index
In-Game Index
Ratings Index
Video Game Index
Fandom
Gamepedia support
Report a bad ad
Help Wiki
Contact us
Editing
Freeciv
(section)
Back to page
Edit
VisualEditor
View history
Talk (0)
Edit Page
Freeciv
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
==History== At DAIMI, the computer science department at Aarhus University, three students, whom were avid players of [[XPilot]] and of ''[[Sid Meier's Civilization]]'', decided to find out whether the two could be fused into an [[X Window System|X]]-based multiplayer Civilization-like strategy game.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://freeciv.gamepedia.com/In_The_Beginning |title=Freeciv:In the Beginning |publisher=Freeciv.gamepedia.com |date=2007-01-19 |accessdate=2009-04-14}}</ref> The students—Peter Unold, Claus Leth Gregersen and Allan Ove Kjeldbjerg—started development in November 1995; the first playable version was released in January, 1996, with bugfixing and small enhancements available in a new version shipped in April of that year.<ref>[http://download.gna.org/freeciv/stable/OLD/freeciv-1.0a.tar.gz Freeciv 1.0a source code (1996)]; see DESIGN</ref><ref>[http://download.gna.org/freeciv/stable/OLD/freeciv-1.0k.tar.gz Freeciv 1.0k source code (1996)]; see CHANGES</ref> The rules of the game were close to Civilization, while the client/server architecture was was inspired by that of [[XPilot]]. For the developers, Freeciv 1.0 was a successful proof of concept, but a rather boring game, so they went back to XPilot. But, Freeciv was already playable and addictive enough for other students to play it, bugfix it, extend its features.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2001/11/21/freeciv.html |title=''Building Freeciv: An Open Source Strategy Game'', by Howard Wen, on linuxdevcenter.com, Nov 21, 2001 |publisher=Linuxdevcenter.com |date= |accessdate=2009-04-14}}</ref> It was useful enough to be picked up by popular Linux distributions, e.g. Debian.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://changelogs.debian.net/freeciv |title=the Debian change log for Freeciv |date= |accessdate=2009-04-14}}</ref> Designed to be portable, it was later ported to many platforms, which helped its survival. Freeciv playing and development continues to the present day, although the spells with little development activity have grown longer and more frequent over time. The development history is strictly incremental: while there have been many serious improvements, the basic design and architecture has not changed since the early versions. From 1998, the game grew in popularity: public servers often hosted several competitive games every day, archiving them and showing an animated GIF replay of each game on its website. In the years before the release of version 2.0 in 2005, the game remained largely unchanged. As many regular players became better players, diplomacy became essential, so team games slowly started to replace free-for-all games from around 2002. The release of version 2.0 in 2005 changed the game significantly; both new and tweaked rules favoured large cities with full trade routes, as well as wars with more advanced technologies, necessitating a distinct phase of "rapturing" which required relatively peaceful conditions. Games were thus almost always played in teams, and typically took longer to finish compared to pre-2.0 games.
Summary:
Please note that all contributions to the Codex Gamicus are considered to be released under the CC BY-SA 3.0
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)
Follow on IG
TikTok
Join Fan Lab