Category Archives: Client

We are called cheaters… for a turn

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Once our alliance in LT30 started winning the war, the balance has shifted so that now we are called cheaters by our enemies for mostly the same “tricks” that were being used against us a moment ago.

There is on the forum some videos of fighter trick I am using to (legally) secure my troops on enemy field: http://forum.longturn.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1215#p1215

I didn’t actually learn this trick here. I knew it from Freeciv 2.0 games we played years ago. I haven’t been using it much lately since there is a way to fix this with a server option — and we have been using it at freeciv.fi in our last games.

This unit used like this might be annoying but it isn’t actually a bug nor a cheat. I am using a stealth fighter here. It doesn’t show on the map unless you are in adjacent tile — just like submarines, stealth bombers, etc. When you have mechinf + fighter on the same tile, you cannot attack that tile with ground units, and attacking with air units will need to kill the ground unit first. Hence you need to loose good amount of shields to kill that.

Funny thing has been that most of our mistakes in the game — like cease fires running out when we were trying to unite all the world in one big alliance — has been taken as signs of cheating from our enemies. For example we lost great amounts of units just a few turns ago and left many cities undefended because of that, and still, they thought we had done something very frightening (leagal) cheating. Isn’t it sign that we are very skilled in mind games?

Creating shortcuts for Freeciv servers

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Here’s how you can setup a shortcut directly to Freeciv server.

I’m currently playing three different Freeciv worlds and one of them with two different accounts (until one player comes back from a holiday trip). I thought this might be worth mentioning.

Windows 7

Select Start menu, find Freeciv, and select from the right button drop down menu Send to -> Desktop (create shortcut).

Now your desktop should have an icon named Freeciv. Rename it to “Freeciv LT30” if you’re playing LT30. Select again the right dropdown menu and open Properties. From there add to end of the Target option following text: “ -a -n username -p 5030 -s lt30.longturn.org“. Of course you should change username to match your username. Properties dialog should look like in the example image.

Now you should have a shortcut named Freeciv LT30 on your desktop which you can click to instantly connect to LT30 server. No need to remember server settings.

Linux

Linux systems use different types of shortcut systems. Basically you just need to copy your current shortcut and change it to use arguments “ -a -n username -p 5030 -s lt30.longturn.org” just like in Windows 7.

Mastering communications

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Freeciv has an integrated chatline with some useful features to help communicate with your co-players. I’ll try to reveal here some of the key points to help to communicate with players.

Contacting through Longturn website

When playing Longturn.org’s games, sometimes the best way to contact is using Longturn’s website. You can send messages to users from their profile page. For example when a player is idling they might still read their emails. However, some players don’t provide their email addresses.

Private messages

You can send private messages to players by their player name from the Chat dialog.

For example, write “Jhh: Hello” to send a private message to me.

However if you intent that message to be public to everyone try for example to write “jhh, Hello“.

Messages to allies

The easiest way to write messages to allies is to check in the box in the GTK client for it (right bottom corner). However you can also write messages with a leading dot. For example, “. Hello allies!“.

Referencing to City or Map location

The most useful feature of the integrated chat might be the ability to reference locations and cities from the map.

If you go to the map and move your mouse over a specific tile, and then hit ctrl, alt and right mouse button, there will be a special reference tag in your chat input ready to be used in your conversations. (Sometimes you might need to start writing a message before it goes there.)

After you write a message with that tag there will be a link on the chat message and other users can easily find about where you linked by clicking it. Also, the map shows a special square over that tile.

You can clear links in the GTK client by using Clear link -button (right-bottom corner of chat dialog). Clicking those links again will mark them on the map again.

Referencing to units

You can link to units almost the same way by shortcut Shift-Control-Alt-MouseRightClick on a unit on the map.

More

See more from Freeciv’s Help -> Chatline.

Update:

You can change options from client so that chat messages are written also to Messages tab from (GTK client) Game -> Options -> Message and enable check box for Mes column for Chat messages. Remember to hit Game -> Options -> Save options now after you change settings.

Freeciv Tilesets

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I bet you noticed that I don’t use the default Amplio tileset in my screenshots.

I have never liked Freeciv’s isometric tilesets because I haven’t seen an isometric tileset that’s as clear as is the original 2D tileset. I always get headache when trying to interpret Freeciv’s isometric tilesets.

Freeciv offers four standard tilesets and you can install more or even make your own. Most of the time you can just switch the tileset without changes to the server.

The current tileset can be changed from the client’s settings: Game – Options – Local Client under the Tileset option.

Amplio2 is Freeciv’s newest tileset and the default. It’s isometric and much bigger in resolution than other tilesets shipped with Freeciv. I personally do think it’s much more clean — even almost usable — but I don’t like the small amount of tiles this tileset allows on the screen. I’m not going to use it before Freeciv offers a way to zoom the map.

Isotrident was Freeciv’s previous default tileset (some years ago). It was the first isometric tileset to replace the original trident tileset.

Trident is Freeciv’s original 2D tileset. In my opinion it’s still the best and most clear tileset available.

Isophex is the only hexagonal tileset shipped with Freeciv. Though it can be used with a “normal” 2D/isotrident server, it does not make much sense unless used with a hexagonal-type Freeciv server.

You can install more tilesets from Freeciv’s homepage.

Installing tilesets in Linux

For example in Linux tilesets can be installed simply by unpacking the package under ~/.freeciv/2.3:

wget http://download.gna.org/freeciv/contrib/tilesets/freeland/freeland-3.0-Beta2-normal--freeciv-2.3.x.tar.gz
cd .freeciv/2.3/
zcat ~/freeland-3.0-Beta2-normal--freeciv-2.3.x.tar.gz|tar xf -

Installing tilesets in Windows 7

On my Windows 7 the right place to unpack the tileset package was C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Freeciv-2.3.0-gtk2. However I’m not sure if this is the correct place always. After the unpack there should be a directory named freeland and a file named freeland.tilespec.