Re: [Freecol-developers] Mods and methods of boosting a slow start
Hi Jonas, Not sure myself, so if none of the devs have got back to you then I recommend you drop by the FreeCol channel on the Colonization discord as main dev Stian and a few modders are very active there and will be able to help as I think I've seen Stian discuss the possibility of stories, missions & achievements in the past. :)Join the Sid Meier's Colonization Games Discord Server! | | | | Join the Sid Meier's Colonization Games Discord Server! Check out the Sid Meier's Colonization Games community on Discord – hang out with 280 other members and enjoy fr... | | | Regards Blake On Monday, 8 July 2024 at 06:01:19 am ACST, Jonas Stumph Stevnsvig wrote: Greetings Freecol Devs, and congratulations on a very polished looking 1.2.0 release. I have had an opportunity to binge freecol on a couple of different PCs, since I found myself forced to rest. Audiobooks and Freecol is a good combination. I have a question regarding the mod system. I found myself thinking that some sort of helt to get a lead on your european counterparts sould be an interesting twist - e.g. a mission system where a mission could be :"1000g bonus for being first to discover 5 tribes" or "first to unearth 5 lost city rumours", or maybe an investment mod: seeking investors in your home country that demand (e.g. a minimum annual number of furs from year 15xx tp year 15yy in exchance for providing two pioneers and some tools early on...) My question is this: could this be achieved with the current mod system? or is it too extensive? I wouldn't want submit changes like these as PRs to the main code. Best regards Jonas Stevnsvig ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] Pull-Requests needing review
I very much like both of these. I'd suggested the Bartolome change in a ticket years ago so it's great to see someone agreeing and making it happen! :) On Saturday, 29 October 2022 at 06:42:15 am ACDT, David Lewis wrote: I've submitted a pair of pull requests that I'd love to get a review/feedback on. - The ability for FreeColonists to gain experience from indoor production: https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol/pull/129 - This PR changes how Native Converts are converted to Free Colonists after Bartolome is recruited: https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol/pull/130 - David ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] Discord Group for FreeCol Devs
David's invite expired after a few days so here's one that won't: https://discord.gg/4XP4S9yfJ8 If anyone from the dev team joins, let me know who you are and I'll give you the dev team title which gives you access to the private FreeCol chat channel. Hope to see more of the old guard (eg Mike & Winter) join as there's been lots of great dev chat going on there between Stian, David, Caleb and fans resulting in votes and decisions on various issues. Regards Blake On Saturday, 24 September 2022 at 07:54:28 am ACST, David Lewis wrote: Hey ya'll just a reminder that we have a Discord group for Freecol and Freecol devs: https://discord.gg/pZsGD5Bu Good place to go if you're interested in more frequent Freecol development discussions. David___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] FreeCol with Java
Oh wow! Thank you Stian. Works for me, although the real test will be the folks without the required java so I'll pass this on to the people who've reported problems! Regards Blake On Friday, 6 May 2022, 03:15:48 am ACST, Stian Grenborgen wrote: Hi, I have just added a new Windows installer for 0.12.0 that includes a JVM: https://sourceforge.net/projects/freecol/files/freecol/freecol-0.12.0/ If this works properly, I can look into building a new release package for macOs that includes a JVM as well -- and make automated build jobs on Github. (unfortunately the packages needs to be built on the target system) Best wishes, Stian Grenborgen ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] [freecol:wiki] mpope modified page 0.12.0 Release Notes
> No, we should distribute mods as normal folders when they are included in > FreeCol itself. > ZIP files should be used when distributing the mod in other places ... like > the forum. The advantage of having a ZIP file (instead of RAR or other > formats) is that you can just place the file in the mods directory without > unpacking (although there are some issues with that right now, as mentioned > in the bug report). No worries I'll see about adding Mazim's mod (as a folder) into the 3rd party mod area soon then. :) > JAVA 11 REQUIREMENT ISSUES:> The best solution for our users would be > offering separate installers where a minimized Java Runtime is included ... > and recommend those installers to people who don't know what Java is. I think > this would only be needed for Windows and macOs. > The simplest approach is most likely building separate packages for Windows > and macOs rather than having a multi-platform installer. We should probably > change to platform specific installers instead of the Java-based on we are > currently using. > This is definitely something we should fix before the 1.0 release of FreeCol. Thank you Stian! That should help a lot of people. Should I create a ticket for this issue? Not sure if it's really a bug so maybe in the 'improvement requests' ticket area? Blake ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] [freecol:wiki] mpope modified page 0.12.0 Release Notes
0.12.0 RELEASE ANNOUNCEMENT POSTS:>> 2. Make an announcement on the forum and Discord channel that we will be releasing 0.12.0 in a few days -- and that testing and bug reports (or even reports that everything works fine on a specific operating system) is especially appreciated. > No problems with that, and I definitely can see the point with #2, given > that I am still finding event-dispatch-thread related crashes. What would > be really good is an intense burst of testing. Where is our publicity > manager--- you there Blake? Opps, sorry Mike! All my FreeCol dev emails go into a sub folder otherwise my main inbox gets a bit crazy. I usually only check the subfolder on weekends and I think I checked on sun night right before you sent this last week. Was busy this weekend but have seen all this now!I also see that Stian made the 0.12.0 incoming announcement on the Col Discord and then Caleb posted the 12 release there and also on the Col Facebook group too. However there are other big communities I can still take care of... So I've just gone and done my Reddit Col group too (which I think I told you guys before has now exceeded the FB and Discord groups in member size) here:https://www.reddit.com/r/ColonizationGame/comments/ugkrlu/freecol_0120_stable_release_is_here/ I've then shared that with the 4x gaming reddit groups as there's thousands of fans there too.https://www.reddit.com/r/4Xgaming/comments/ugkwqk/freecol_0120_stable_release_is_here/ I've also updated our IndieDB page with the new 0.12.0 release. And since this is a big occasion then I think it's finally time to use the IndieDB article area which can be used for posting announcements, dev diaries and project milestones etc. These articles go onto the main IndieDB front page where thousands of visitors browse.https://www.indiedb.com/games/freecol/news/freecol-0120-stable-release-is-here Oh and BTW cheers for sticking my name in the 0.12.0 contributors list for that big map job a while back, much appreciated. :) FREECOL WEBSITE:I see you've already taken care of the freecol website announcement which is good as I never figured out how to add news articles, although I see you had some troubles yourself... > I have uploaded 0.12.0, but mucked up the files that needed changing on> the > website. Can someone remind me of what needs to be kicked before > uploading from our www.freecol.org directory? You can see the failure on > pages like: https://www.freecol.org/download.html > Sort of fixed. I found a post about the jekyll config in our mailing list > archives. I may have missed a file or two, as the upload script is out of > date, so I would appreciate it if the website wranglers would take a look > at the current state. Yup you got it working as I'm able to load that page and use the download links. I'm also able to see your new news post there too. I think those mailing list Jekyll instructions were the oldest ones. Winter posted new ones in the actual news area itself here if anyone needs them:https://www.freecol.org/news/first-steps-for-contributing-to-freecol-website.html Which I think was created from the discussion between him and me a while back when he attempted dumb the whole process down for me as I had no idea what was going on lol: https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/141200/thread/e78a6df83d/?limit=25#c3c3/ee20/6536/6977/bd1f/efac/7ba8/1b81/6c34/5677/af5b/8cc4/b0be ADDING A 3RD PARTY MOD TO NEXT RELEASE:Oh and regarding the 0.12.0 release, I notice Mazim's popular New Nations mod that not only adds more nations but also allows people to play 12 player Col games (which is a handy line when I'm marketing the game heh) didn't make it in so I guess I better get off my butt and do it myself to make sure it's there for the next release haha! As I did originally promise I'd do that however I wasn't sure if Stian was checking and approving mod additions himself these days so I held off, but I'll go ahead and get it sorted.https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/141200/thread/658935e76f/?page=1#0a18 However before I submit his work into github there's an issue I need Mike/Stian guidance on. Stian posted in Mazim's thread that the mod needs to be in zip format for the game to use it which was a bit of a surprise as all the existing 3rd party mods with freecol are not zipped and are just loaded from folders. So if I need to add Mazim's mod in a zip instead of a folder then should we be changing all the other existing 3rd party mods included with Freecol into zips as well? If so then FYI there's some sort of problem with the zip loader which I've posted about here:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/bugs/3249/ JAVA 11 REQUIREMENT ISSUES:The other thing is the whole recent requirement for Java 11. While most programmers have modern 11+ java dev kits most regular Jo's (ie your fan base who just want to play the game) do not and just have the regular Java 8 runtime edition that
Re: [Freecol-developers] GitHub Mirror and "Nightly" releases
> It's apparently even possible to automatically post messages to Discord and >Facebook -- although I have not tried that before. Yeah that's sounds good and I'm happy for it to automatically send to the Col social media groups I run as like I said in the past I pretty much set them up for promoting FreeCol to general Col fans anyway haha! Like Caleb I have no idea how to set something like that up either though sadly. Hopefully the discord github action supports giving it a specific subchannel within the discord (eg the freecol subchat we've been using) otherwise god knows where it'll end up in the channel. Stian's been doing some cool stuff in that chat lately which is awesome to see as there's a few programmers there who sound tempted to join the team! Also if you guys want a private developer only subchat setup on the Col discord too for the team to communicate without snail mail delays just let me know. :) Oh and does GitHub Actions support posting to Reddit too? As FYI I also set up a 3rd Col community there too which has surprisingly actually now grown bigger than the Facebook and Discord ones!https://www.reddit.com/r/ColonizationGame/ Regards Blake On Sunday, 24 April 2022, 09:03:56 am ACST, Caleb Williams wrote: I think that's an excellent idea. We should go for it. It's beyond my ability and knowledge (and perhaps access to SourceForge). Anything the developers can do to make FreeCol more accessible to the people that are playing the game, the better. Posting to Facebook and Discord would be really helpful too. Caleb R. Williams Photographer w: http://calebwilliamsphotography.com b: http://blog.calebwilliamsphotography.com e: cale...@gmail.com c: 612-275-7796 On Sat, Apr 23, 2022 at 12:06 PM Stian Grenborgen wrote: > [Caleb:] > The GitHub mirror was originally configured to be an automatic process. I > believe > it was a Travis CI hook, but at any rate when changes were made to the SF > repository, > the CI hook ran and pushed to GH. We can do this directly from SourceForge.net using a Git server hook. There is no need for Travis. > AFAIK, the nightly releases were also automated, probably through the same > hook to Travis > CI. At any rate, the CI was no longer free (due to plan changes) and quit > working. We can use GitHub Actions for making these builds. Github Actions is free for public repositories. > One issue with the process is it isn't consistently timed as I have to > physically perform each part > of the process. I also cannot generate the MacOS installer. The Mac bundle can be created using GitHub Actions. We can also automatically both build and publish nightly builds. Release notes can be automatically generated using commit messages (although such a commit log might not be user friendly). It's apparently even possible to automatically post messages to Discord and Facebook -- although I have not tried that before. Best wishes, Stian Grenborgen ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] FreeCol 1.0
Well if you guys don't call it the big 1.0 then it would be good to see the big 0.12.0 stable release finally out there. People are still downloading the ancient 0.11.6 stable release due to them thinking the nightly releases are scary mega unstable programs lol. However in their attempt to be 'safe' they end up with a super old version of the game that's missing a lot of the features the latest builds have. So whatever you call it I'll just be happy to see that old 0.11.6 build gone from all the download pages and replaced with a new stable one. As for whether it's ready to be called 1.0 that's up to you guys but I would agree that waiting until Misiulo has finished the rest of the graphics is best otherwise it looks like a bit of a unfinished jumble of 2D and 3D terrain. Also I find myself wondering whether preserving all the old 2D art stuff as a optional mod would be handy for those that don't like the new stuff when it's all done for 1.0. Speaking of mods, Mazim's finally completed his popular New Nations mod that not only adds more nations but also allows people to play 12 player Col games (which is a handy line when I'm marketing the game heh) so it would be good to finally add that into the included mods area before any such big release so people don't have to keep digging through his thread for it separately:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/141200/thread/658935e76f/?page=1#0a18 I already added all of Mazim's best maps from his collection into FreeCol's releases a while back so that's all good now. So yeah.. nothing else really comes to mind from me. :) Regards Blake On Friday, 22 April 2022, 01:55:52 pm ACST, Michael T. Pope wrote: On Thu, 21 Apr 2022 18:09:51 + Stian Grenborgen wrote: > We have made great progress on FreeCol since our last release, and should > make an official release rather soon. > > I think releasing the game as 1.0 will show the level of maturity our game > has reached ... and also signify the awesome new additions to the game: All this is true and great progress, but we have always said 1.0 will be fully Col1 compatible (at least in classic mode). I do not think we are there yet. A look at the WWC1D? wiki page will show that we do not even know how compatible we are:-). We *should* indeed do a release though, whatever the number it gets. It is overdue. I was not pushing hard there lately as (apart from the usual time crunches) the worst blocker bug was the total breakage (some self-inflicted:-P) of the TradeRouteInputPanel. Which just got fixed this week, bravo Stian. The next worst one I know is the queue of AI ships (BR#3228) which I hope to look at one the weekend (long weekend in .au, hooray), but letting AI fail block release is a bad idea. However I probably should do a quick review of the state of the bug list to see if we have other bad enough bugs to be considered release blockers. I will try to do the review this evening. Cheers, Mike Pope ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
[Freecol-developers] Nightly releases, group updates and invitations for Stian
Wow.. the recent work you guys have done with animating oceans and clouds sounds so cool. Just my luck that after a 3 year delay I finally release and go public with my big FreeCol tour video right before you guys make such a cool and massive change to the game's appearance haha *facepalm*, I guess I'll just have to do a bonus episode video at some point lol! This is super cool and it's already getting peoples attention so I've gotta ask again if there be a nightly release soon so 'regular Jos' like me can see it without all the compiling business? Sorry to pester you guys about that but because I'm the go between contact between you guys here and the fans in the Col groups people are pestering me about it haha! And of course I'm also copping the usual negative "there hasn't been a nightly release in nearly a year so freecol must be dead" garbage lately from people so it would be good to stop all that with a new pre-release build even if its a one off for another 6-12mths while you guys work on the next big stable release. Also this reminds me.. Stian, I'm not sure if you were reading all the dev messages over the last year or 2 but if not then I should let you know about some of the stuff I setup. As well as creating the welcome & information thread and updating the sourceforge front page pictures and info areas with Mike (by working with I mean I continuously pestered the poor guy for months about that haha) as well as helping Winter update the website front page and downloads area to ensure the project looked alive and well again (as nearly all the stuff in those areas was 10 years old giving fans the wrong impression), I also set about fixing a fan community issue in that Colonization had no social media presence and no forums were left either. So I created the Colonization Fans facebook, Discord and Reddit groups for fans to get together and talk about the classic game while I also created these groups to not so secretly promote FreeCol content bringing more fans and programmer talent here to support the project. The videos I've been releasing recently are the final stage in promoting FreeCol and these ColFan communities to build them up and ensure that we can have direct access to the fans for years to come whenever something important happens with FreeCol. I still haven't fully promoted these videos across all the retro gaming communities yet so there's still plenty of growth in the months to come. So if you or any other members reading this would like to join these groups you are more than welcome to as having one of FreeCol's original creators visit would be a huge honour! However it's perfectly fine if you don't as I remember Mike and Winter saying they're not big social media people and you may be the same. I'm happy to still be 'the face' of FreeCol in the groups to stop disinformation and share important news etc. :) At this stage the Col FB group is up to 197 members so is just about to hit a milestone!https://www.facebook.com/groups/ColonizationGame Despite being much newer the Col Reddit group as really taken off and is about to overtake the FB group as its at 193 members now!https://www.reddit.com/r/ColonizationGame/ And lastly the Col Discord group is newer than the others and has also been pretty slow in its growth so is only up to 53 member now, it would have been 56 but I had to boot 3 morons for spamming haha. I should also mention that this discord has a dedicated FreeCol subchat area. Obviously many fan projects use Discord for chatting so keep it in mind should anyone wish to switch to it in the future if sourceforge suddenly closes or something lol.https://discord.gg/CHcH75s And lastly a year or so ago I was able to gain control of the old abandoned FreeCol IndieDB page. We don't know who originally set it up many years ago, it may have been you Stian? However for whatever reason it became abandoned for 10 or so years and was under no users control anymore. So I contacted the site admins, discussed the situation and was able to get them to give me full control of the page. This then allowed me to update its pictures, information and downloads to get it all on par with the modern up to date information on the FreeCol sourceforge and website. To ensure it never becomes abandoned again if something happens to me I switched control of the game page from my account to a IndieDB FreeCol dev team group and brought in Mike and Winter into the team and gave them full control over the group and game page too. I've just sent you a invite to the group too so there should be an email in your inbox just before this one. If you would prefer the invite sent to a different email of yours let me know. If you're not interested in joining that's fine too. With Mike, Winter & myself there it should ensure the page stays under the dev teams control now and doesn't get lost again or claimed by an impostor. IndieDB is a great site for
Re: [Freecol-developers] (no subject)
Hey guys, As some of you know I'm not programmer so anything I say about this should be taken with a grain of salt lol. However today I noticed some panic in the fan game community regarding fan games made with Java due to a 'Java Log4j exploit' recently discovered and doing the media rounds. Thought I better mention it to you guys... https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/log4j-software-bug-cisa-issues-emergency-directive-to-federal-agencies/ https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2021-44228 Also is the Nightly pre-release building currently broken? Had a number of fans asking me about them. I've assured them FreeCol is not dead and that the behind the scenes dev emails are flowing bigtime lol. Regards Blake___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] Hello FreeCol Team!
Hey guys, Just wanted to say it's wonderful to see new programmers coming on board, our fearless leader Mike back (with all the covid troubles in Vic I was a bit worried about ya when you went quiet mate haha), and one of the original founders Stian back, wowzer! FreeCol is still alive baby! :) I'm guilty of being quiet here for ages too so here's some good news from me to add to the good news from you guys... FreeCol Marketing/Recruitment Update:I've been promising you guys for 3 friggin years that I'd release a FreeCol tour video as part of a huge Civ & Col video series I've been working on for years. Well I'm pleased to say it's finally done and online. My original 2018 recordings were starting to get a bit dated so I had to re-film the entire intro this year to talk about all the cool developments over the last few years such as more maps in the main game (the one part of the game development I've helped you guys in lol) and more nations and more natives via Mazims excellent 3rd party addons that I think will attract some attention. I've haven't gone fully public with it yet, but I will soon as it's definitely and finally finished haha. Hopefully it will bring new fans and helpers to the project in the years to come! If anyone wants to take an early peak here it is:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSfj_G4kA9g=PLZqnaGtTZxFbq3F5R6lqzyVvYzg9tRBPY Like I said above this FreeCol video is part of a huge series covering Civ and Col that will cover lots of fan games and Colonization mods for Civ games etc so naturally there's a big main episode about classic Colonization. Since more people would search for classic Col than FreeCol in youtube and google etc it was important to heavily promote FreeCol in the classic Col video too. In fact I've already been critisized by viewers for spending too much time in the video promoting fan projects before actually getting to Col game footage haha but I wanted to help FreeCol and other projects so this was the best chance! It's not perfect but after years of work I'm washing my hands of it and considering it finished. This main Col video is public but I've not fully promoted it out there yet:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoAYn5LGq60=PLZqnaGtTZxFbq3F5R6lqzyVvYzg9tRBPY Over the coming weeks these videos are going to be shared to a huge amount of places by me and will likely bring a lot of fresh faces to FreeCol. Maybe some of them will be more programming help too. Seeing a dead looking project might scare people off so its friggin awesome to see you guys talking about getting back on the horse and getting that 12 release out. Especially as people are still ignoring the nightly releases and downloading the ancient 11 stable release with security vulnerabilities and less features making it still a constant problem I keep having to talk people out of doing. I've actually modified the welcome thread to try and stop some of this problem until we get that 12 release out. FreeCol Website Update:And finally the complete and full release of these videos will then allow me to act on my other promise to you guys over the last few years. In that I would update the media section of your FreeCol website with new HD pictures and create a new video section where I can put my new stuff but also lots of other peoples FreeCol videos from over the years. Being able to watch videos on your website is a critical component for promoting the game as all that's on there atm is ancient low res 10-15 year old pictures. Winter kindly wrote me that guide for how to edit and work on your new version of the website (which I successfully followed & tested a while back) so I'll see about getting on with that job in 2022. Especially now that I know if I push the website updates to github there WILL still be someone around to approve them as I was a bit worried about putting the work in only for it to sit there forever lol! Anyway that's it from me, I'll let the programmers and real team get back to doing all the talking here. Peace out! :) Regards Blake On Sunday, 5 December 2021, 02:14:34 pm ACDT, Michael T. Pope wrote: On Sat, 4 Dec 2021 11:25:52 + Stian Grenborgen wrote: > > Activity has been weak this year... here is to a better 2022. > > I will definitely try to help make that dream come true ;-) > > Hoping you also have more time to spend in 2022, Mike! Well, its a low bar to jump:-) > > I doubt anyone is opposed to useful code refactorings, but we are *way* > > overdue to make a release, so the priority should be fix bugs/stabilize > > ATM. > > What are the bugs you consider to be blockers? The worst problem is that I am seeing severe slow down in large games. Or rather I was, I need to run my performance tests again following a computer upgrade. I suspect replacing an 8 year old machine including quadrupling the RAM may have helped, but there we already control the java memory allocation so in theory it should not. I
Re: [Freecol-developers] Nightly Builds broken
Sorry I've been quiet lately, I've been buried in my Civ modding work. Regarding point 2 I've gotta echo winters comments. I'm still getting people in my Colonization groups and on other retro gaming places saying that they're using the old 11 stable release because they're 'scared' of the nightly releases thinking they'll break their pc or ruin their game etc. I sound like a broken record trying to convince people out there to go the nightly release route. I notice things are pretty quiet these days so I worry that if we keep holding out for that perfect 12.0 release it'll never happen. Plus people respond to version numbers different in todays world compared to 20 years ago. These days a major version release with .0 on the end is almost expected to be a buggy mess leading to .1 and .2 etc minor updates lol! Eg with my opensource video editing and recording software I actively avoid .0 releases and wait for those .1 etc releases as they're always full of critical fixes to issues in the main release. Winter is right in that a major new release will generate renewed interest and traffic which could lead to more helpers. If there's a 12 release I can market the s*** out of it across heaps of retro sites groups and forums. I should also say that while I've been quiet on freecol lately I've actually gone back and redone my unreleased 2018 FreeCol video tour to contain lots more update to date information and cool stuff (eg the more maps and nations packs etc). The video is pretty much ready to go now. I'm just putting it's release on ice while I finish up my Civ1 and Civ2 scenario work but if you guys do a 12.0 release, then I'll get my baby uploaded and out there early so I can use it to help promote the game and the new release! Regards Blake On Friday, 27 August 2021, 11:09:10 pm ACST, win...@genial.ms wrote: Hi, I guess, everyone was having more important things to do? As I did not have any time either besides answering the few questions people still have, I was struggling with if/how I could ask again. 1. Is the CI problem fixable? There is no way to even trigger a nightly release for months. 2. Shouldn't there be a real release then? Have you seen on https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol/issues/54 people are asking for a release? I feel they have a point, but I can not make it happen. The last question was about getting the merge request with the backport of the security fix to be 0.11.7. If it is not possible to release 0.12.0 that may be a faster way to get at least the security fix out to them? Personally, I'd rather have a 0.12.0, even if the release notes have to warn about the known problems. It should still be an improvement of the current status. People seeing new releases would also renew interest in the project. Greetings, wintertime ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] Arawak cities
Hi Michael, The FreeCol dev chat is probably more meant for FreeCol dev discussions. ;) However since you bring up the topic of finding an advanced Awarak city in original Col you might find this thread at CivFinatics interesting:https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/is-it-possible-to-advance-natives.609461/ Regards Blake On Friday, 8 January 2021, 12:13:08 pm ACDT, D Blakeley wrote: Hi Michael, The FreeCol dev chat is probably more meant for FreeCol dev discussions. ;) However since you bring up the topic of finding an advanced Awarak city in original Col you might find this thread at CivFinatics interesting:https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/is-it-possible-to-advance-natives.609461/ Regards Blake On Friday, 8 January 2021, 06:50:34 am ACDT, Michael Vehrs wrote: I don't think I have ever seen Awarak cities before. Regards Michael ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] FreeCol: Contribute Programming and Content Writing
Sorry for being rather slow to reply on this Pavel & Winter.. had a rough month personally and haven't been on computer as much! Hmm interesting to hear the horse/weapon indian advisor stats has already been discussed in the past and it went that way Winter! However I think people need to tread carefully when dismissing features of the original Colonization game (cheating or not) as you instantly alienate potential fans looking for that feature's continuation. However if some FreeCol devs felt Col1 feature was a cheat not worthy of being in the main FreeCol game there there's nothing stopping Pavel from still making it and us just including it as a 3rd party mod right? He could call it the "Extended Indian Advisor mod" or "Indian weapon horse stats mod" or something else haha. I know I'll certainly use it in my games! Pavel, Mike got back to me on this a while back in a private convo and he reckons it shouldn't be too hard a job. So here's some useful info he gave if you still want to have a go at it:"OK, if it is at the advisor level we are not giving too much away. I hada quick look at the code, and it should be a straightforward extension to ReportIndianPanel after adding fields to NationSummary and filling them in NationSummaryMessage." If you do go ahead please keep us up to date in the forums! If you get it working and release your files there we can then include the files in the main FreeCol download in the 3rd party mods section. :) If you go into your FreeCol install folder, open the data folder you'll see a mods folder. In there is a whole bunch of existing third party mods people have made that usually involved something really cool but didn't quite fit in the main game so they stayed as a 3rd party mods that can be activated from the game's main menu. Have a look at some of them to get an idea of their structure (usually a mirror of something in the main game's resource folder but with some custom changes that the game will load instead of the original files if you activate the mod) and config files. Good luck! :) Regards Blake On Sunday, 9 August 2020, 02:17:27 am ACST, wrote: Hi, I remember this being asked a few years ago already.IIRC the discussion back then got to, that knowing such numbers is basically a cheat (same as knowing settlement defenders, which is also intentionally not possible, even though Col1 had it). Then there had been the suggestion to only have a yes/no icon in advisor for when you gave the horses/guns yourself or you saw a unit using them, but noone cared to implement that non-cheat-version, because it was not giving enough cheat-like information for the person to bother.As for 2: I guess, there had been a reason to have it like it is (maybe less menu clutter), but that is from before the time I was interested in FreeCol. I do not know, if it would help to have that and more people would like that?As said, 3 is already there. It might not be in Colopedia, as it would be a game spoiler? Greetings wintertime Gesendet: Samstag, 08. August 2020 um 10:42 Uhr Von: "D Blakeley via Freecol-developers" An: freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net, "Michael T. Pope" Betreff: Re: [Freecol-developers] FreeCol: Contribute Programming and Content Writing In Col1 the tribe weapon/horse stats were on the Indian Advisor screen. Here's a picture of what it looked like. https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Indians_(Col)?file=Indian_report_%28Col%29.png Was useful but far from perfect. Others can correct me on this as I'm going by memory here but I'm pretty sure figures were rounded down to groups of 50 so if a tribe had 178 muskets it would display 150. 127 horses would be "2 herds" of 50. Personally I'd rather just a flat out true number and nothing fancy like they did lol! Once again others can correct me on this but I was never quite sure if the Col1 Indian Advisor weapon/horse numbers updated properly when a tribe used/spent 50 of either to arm a unit. I remember it used to annoy me when the Indian advisor would tell me a tribe had bugger all horses & guns plus hardly any armed units on the map yet all their towns would refuse my trade carts with them saying they had more then enough lol. I remember being pleased in FreeCol that the tribes were more interested in buying weapons and horses off me than in Col1 even if I didn't see them using them in FreeCol as much as they do in Col1 sadly. In my big game a while back I saw quite a few mounted braves but armed braves were rare and armed mounted braves were super rare but yup they are definitely there and not missing Pavel. No native settlement population figures in Col1 that I can recall. The advisor just gave a general settlement count. Regards Blake On Saturday, 8 August 2020, 09:51:18 am ACST, Michael T. Pope wrote: On Wed, 5 Aug 2020 17:17:01 -0400 "Mr. Pavel Koterniak"
Re: [Freecol-developers] FreeCol: Contribute Programming and Content Writing
In Col1 the tribe weapon/horse stats were on the Indian Advisor screen. Here's a picture of what it looked like. https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Indians_(Col)?file=Indian_report_%28Col%29.png Was useful but far from perfect. Others can correct me on this as I'm going by memory here but I'm pretty sure figures were rounded down to groups of 50 so if a tribe had 178 muskets it would display 150. 127 horses would be "2 herds" of 50. Personally I'd rather just a flat out true number and nothing fancy like they did lol! Once again others can correct me on this but I was never quite sure if the Col1 Indian Advisor weapon/horse numbers updated properly when a tribe used/spent 50 of either to arm a unit. I remember it used to annoy me when the Indian advisor would tell me a tribe had bugger all horses & guns plus hardly any armed units on the map yet all their towns would refuse my trade carts with them saying they had more then enough lol. I remember being pleased in FreeCol that the tribes were more interested in buying weapons and horses off me than in Col1 even if I didn't see them using them in FreeCol as much as they do in Col1 sadly. In my big game a while back I saw quite a few mounted braves but armed braves were rare and armed mounted braves were super rare but yup they are definitely there and not missing Pavel. No native settlement population figures in Col1 that I can recall. The advisor just gave a general settlement count. Regards Blake On Saturday, 8 August 2020, 09:51:18 am ACST, Michael T. Pope wrote: On Wed, 5 Aug 2020 17:17:01 -0400 "Mr. Pavel Koterniak" wrote: > (In regards to Indians and Indian Report) > 1) Add the amount (number) of muskets and horse herds each tribe has. Where did this information appear in Col1? I have always been dubious about for example revealing that information on the native settlement popup, because unless you gave the natives the required horses and muskets or have a friendly missionary in the settlement, there is no obvious way you can tell the exact composition of their military. Currently you can not even tell the settlement population[1]. OTOH, if you want to add that information at the tribe level in the aggregated native relations report, that is more defensible. We have a lot of complaints, which I agree with, that the natives are too weak. > 3) I looked through the variety of units and didn't see Warriors (Braves > armed with muskets), Mounted Braves or Mounted Warriors. You are right that there are no such dedicated unit types. But there certainly are Mounted Braves et al. You need to understand Role.java. Cheers, Mike Pope [1] Did Col1 reveal native settlement population?___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] FreeCol: Contribute Programming and Content Writing
1) I missed this one big time in my super game a year or 2 ago. I'm big on trading weapons with all the tribes and turning them into mercenary forces to harass other European powers in all my Col games. Knowing the tribe weapon & horse supply levels like in Col1 would have been useful but I forgot to add it to the suggestions/wishlist area back back when I gave the guys feedback. So I like this idea! 3) They exist.. admittedly it took a lot longer for them to appear in FreeCol then they did in Col1 but after drenching the tribes in weapons and horses I had armed braves and armed mounted brave units hoping about the map just fine, but not many per tribe. Maybe their old basic brave units need to be killed off before they considering building armed and mounted versions. On Thursday, 6 August 2020, 07:40:53 am ACST, Mr. Pavel Koterniak wrote: Hi wintertime, Thank you for your response. I was thinking of adding the following functionalities to be closer to Colonization 1: (In regards to Indians and Indian Report)1) Add the amount (number) of muskets and horse herds each tribe has.2) Keeping all the tribes in the report even though they are extinct.3) I looked through the variety of units and didn't see Warriors (Braves armed with muskets), Mounted Braves or Mounted Warriors. I am wondering if these functionalities are possible with the current engine? Thank you,Pavel On Tue, Aug 4, 2020, 6:13 PM , wrote: Hi, sorry I did not answer earlier. It is because Mike knows better about current tasks, but since he got a long todo list he also seems to not having had time until now for this. As this is a volunteer preject, you are free to choose any task you would like. You could find some on the bugtrackers and on the feature tracker:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/bugs/https://github.com/freecol/freecol/issueshttps://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/pending-features-for-freecol/If it is a bug you'd like to fix, just comment in the ticket that you start working on it and then make a pull request.If it is a feature, some other change for any new idea you got or anything bigger, it would be a good idea for you to ask beforehand for advice. It is also safer to ask if it is a useful change beforehand, so as not to be surprised if there is some reason such a change could not be merged or if some other approach to it could be better. Welcome and hf wintertime Gesendet: Freitag, 24. Juli 2020 um 11:48 Uhr Von: "D Blakeley via Freecol-developers" An: freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net, "Mr. Paul" Betreff: Re: [Freecol-developers] FreeCol: Contribute Programming and Content Writing Welcome to the team Pavel! You are most welcome! I'm not part of the programming team (I help out more with 'customer service' and social media lol) but hopefully Michael or Winter can get back to you in the days to come with their thoughts on the best ways new programming talent can help out. If I had to guess though they'll probably give you some info on the programming and software they use and then tell you to take a look at the bug ticket area lol! Regards Blake On Friday, 24 July 2020, 06:55:53 pm ACST, Mr. Paul wrote: Hi FreeCol Developers’ Team, I am currently a Computer Science student with focus on Java programming. I am also a huge fan of original Colonization and FreeCol.I am excited to have a chance to contribute for the programming part (bug fixes, new functionality) and historical content writing (I am big gan of history!). Please let me know how would be the best to help. Thanks,Pavel ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] FreeCol with original Colonization's graphics?
Wow! Interesting! Well please feel free to keep us up to date in that thread i made (and linked to the previous msg below) or in one of your own. I wish you luck!! Breaks my heart every time I see someone post on a forum or chat somewhere that they don't wanna play the game because they don't like the graphics. They miss out on a great game and a lot of hard work from Michael and his predecessors. Alternative tileset support and a healthy 3rd party tileset modding scene like FreeCiv has would massively change that issue but seemed a nearly impossible dream. Good luck! Regards Blake On Friday, 24 July 2020, 07:20:10 pm ACST, Fenyo wrote: One small secret: I have already treated the issue with tiles. :) Oh god, I wish I would have a lot of time to finish it now... Regards, Fenyo | | Hi Michal, Yes you're not the first and you probably won't be the last haha as unfortunately it's not possible at this stage. I would love it too and made a thread discussion about this very thing a while back if you want to know more about this: https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/141200/thread/bfbeff67c3/ But basically the short version is that supporting alternative tilesets (like FreeCiv does) is still in the WAY TOO HARD basket for the FreeCol devs. The team is quite small these days so they'd rather focus on gameplay and getting things more finished, polished and stable than worrying about cosmetic stuff like graphics. Also even if support for alternative 2D tilesets happens one day the original Col graphics can not be used in the Freecol releases otherwise they'd be breaching copyrights of a game still being actively sold today. Best hope is support for alternative tilesets is added one day and then someone who's not part of the team makes a 3rd party tileset mod with original Col graphics. However obviously the devs would not be able to host or support the mod. If some programming genius or the talented people who originally developed the multiple tileset system for FreeCiv wanna show up here and offer their services I'm sure no one would say no lol! They'd just say good friggin luck, you're gonna have to overhaul half the darn game lol! Regards Blake On Friday, 24 July 2020, 06:55:53 pm ACST, Michał Kotowski wrote: Hi! I'm a FreeCol fan and I wanted to ask (you've probably been asked the same question hundreds of times...) if it is somehow possible to play FreeCol with the original game's graphics and data files (possibly with some tweaking)? As much as I like FreeCol in terms of improved gameplay, the original pixelated artwork is hard to beat when it comes to creating the atmosphere. Best, Michal Kotowski ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers | ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] Task Bar
Hi Robert, I was going to say yes you need to lodge a bug ticket but I can see you've already taken care of that at the link below so well done sir! https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/bugs/3200/ Hopefully one of the dev team can get back to you soon. Regards Blake On Friday, 24 July 2020, 06:55:55 pm ACST, Marmorstein, Robert wrote: Hi all, It's very exciting to see so much active development on FreeCol! However, in latest trunk, I can no longer see the "task bar" at the bottom of the screen that lets you "plow", "build colony", etc. You can still use keyboard shortcuts or the top menu to get to these actions, but it's much less convenient. Using git bisect, it looks like the change happened in commit fd210cb344bac18bbbe5d5f849002bc5649430a4, which changed how the map controls work. Should I open an issue request for this, or (since it's not released yet) is this a better place to work on it? Thanks! Robert ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] FreeCol: Contribute Programming and Content Writing
Welcome to the team Pavel! You are most welcome! I'm not part of the programming team (I help out more with 'customer service' and social media lol) but hopefully Michael or Winter can get back to you in the days to come with their thoughts on the best ways new programming talent can help out. If I had to guess though they'll probably give you some info on the programming and software they use and then tell you to take a look at the bug ticket area lol! Regards Blake On Friday, 24 July 2020, 06:55:53 pm ACST, Mr. Paul wrote: Hi FreeCol Developers’ Team, I am currently a Computer Science student with focus on Java programming. I am also a huge fan of original Colonization and FreeCol. I am excited to have a chance to contribute for the programming part (bug fixes, new functionality) and historical content writing (I am big gan of history!). Please let me know how would be the best to help. Thanks, Pavel ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] FreeCol with original Colonization's graphics?
Hi Michal, Yes you're not the first and you probably won't be the last haha as unfortunately it's not possible at this stage. I would love it too and made a thread discussion about this very thing a while back if you want to know more about this:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/141200/thread/bfbeff67c3/ But basically the short version is that supporting alternative tilesets (like FreeCiv does) is still in the WAY TOO HARD basket for the FreeCol devs. The team is quite small these days so they'd rather focus on gameplay and getting things more finished, polished and stable than worrying about cosmetic stuff like graphics. Also even if support for alternative 2D tilesets happens one day the original Col graphics can not be used in the Freecol releases otherwise they'd be breaching copyrights of a game still being actively sold today. Best hope is support for alternative tilesets is added one day and then someone who's not part of the team makes a 3rd party tileset mod with original Col graphics. However obviously the devs would not be able to host or support the mod. If some programming genius or the talented people who originally developed the multiple tileset system for FreeCiv wanna show up here and offer their services I'm sure no one would say no lol! They'd just say good friggin luck, you're gonna have to overhaul half the darn game lol! Regards Blake On Friday, 24 July 2020, 06:55:53 pm ACST, Michał Kotowski wrote: Hi! I'm a FreeCol fan and I wanted to ask (you've probably been asked the same question hundreds of times...) if it is somehow possible to play FreeCol with the original game's graphics and data files (possibly with some tweaking)? As much as I like FreeCol in terms of improved gameplay, the original pixelated artwork is hard to beat when it comes to creating the atmosphere. Best,Michal Kotowski ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] not dead yet
LOL! I did think to myself should I be nudging these people to using bug reports only. Think I got thrown off by people saying "what am i doing wrong" etc.. as sometimes its not a bug its just the user getting confused and I'm clueless on the multiplayer stuff. But yup no worries I'll endeavor to push people in the right direction when I do my own forum passes lol. I think Marcin was 'that guy' before as he was pretty full on with me when I first visited you guys and posted that giant bug list in the forum instead of on the tickets as I was pretty new to SF back then lol! I think he's taking a break or is busy testing stuff for you so I guess it's my turn to be 'that guy' but I'll be a little more gentle then he was with me haha! 50 commits is awesome! Regards Blake On Monday, 20 July 2020, 09:44:50 am ACST, Michael T. Pope wrote: On Sun, 19 Jul 2020 13:20:06 +0000 (UTC) D Blakeley via Freecol-developers wrote: > In regards to the SF forum activity could Mike, Winter or anyone else who has > good technical knowledge of the game do a quick pass on the recent threads? I have read everything. I always do. But I prioritize ruthlessly. Generally, unless I have a bit of time or a current interest in an area, I do not chase down random complaints on forums. They are just too hard to track, and so often are way short of reproducible. Right now I am deep into untangling the GUI and finally working out where the graphics slowdown[1] is (~50 commits last week, that was a good one:-). That said, there is a 100% infallible way to get my prompt attention. All it takes is a good bug report. OTOH, guess how much fun it is to be the guy on the forum who is always saying "make a bug report". Been there, still there from time to time, not thrilled with that. Also, what is said on the forums does influence what I look at next. Multiplayer is on the list to look at, but it is a tricky area that requires me to revive a bunch of sleeping neurons, and hard to test. I know it works for me on my LAN, and all I have heard to the contrary has not got above "it does not work". Now if only we had an enthusiastic contributor who was clearly a lot more into social media and could nudge some of the unfocused venting into detailed bug reports. Heh, notice a pattern with what I say whenever asked to do something?:-) Cheers, Mike Pope ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] Web update
No worries mate, that's what I'm here for haha! I've looked and wow, that looks really good. Now I can use that next time instead of digging up forum posts and emails! That "Please, tell if everything worked!" part should probably include a link to somewhere on the forum so people can respond. Not sure where.. but without comment functionality we gotta give interested people like Boby and others that drop by some sort of easy way to reply. The dev list email is another link alternative? (although spammers might grab it) Anyway I look forward to reading "The Hidden Story Of The Website Update!" hahaha. ;) Regards Blake On Monday, 6 July 2020, 05:46:34 am ACST, win...@genial.ms wrote: You are right, the news is up! Take a look, please!I decided to do the Jekyll guide first, then write about the website update later. I guess, it got myself into writing a whole series, as the directory structure, the file structure with the yaml header and maybe more could be explained. Thanks for motivating me Blake! wintertime Gesendet: Sonntag, 05. Juli 2020 um 18:58 Uhr Von: "D Blakeley" An: "win...@genial.ms" Cc: freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net, "Jamaica Boby" Betreff: Re: [Freecol-developers] Web update Well you 'control the news' mate so you can put whatever date you want on it haha. ;) Just backdate it a month or 2 so its still newer than that other news item about the freecol vulnerability and I doubt anyone will notice or complain. They'll just think their browser cache hadn't updated last time they visited or something lol. I'll get around to writing up those other news items sooner or later, but obviously your work on the site is the one thing I can't write up as only you know and understand everything you did so no one else can write it up better. Oh and when the time comes I'll no doubt have to ask for your help on making sure I correctly add the news items. I haven't really looked at it properly though so for I know it'll be easy and I won't need help thanks to your conversion of the news section. Regards Blake On Monday, 6 July 2020, 02:01:47 am ACST, win...@genial.ms wrote: Hi, you are right, I regret not putting up a news item on the website update. At first I had no time and then it seemed too late? From looking at the pictures, I did not see any examples of new content? It just seems to be changing the design while not updating any content? I apologize in advance, but I have to say the current version of the new design does look much less sophisticated than the old one and reminds me of every other page made in recent years, without anything unique that stands out. It also seems inconsistent in the background colors jumping from dark grey to white and back. Part of a word from the menu line on the index page being on the different background looks bad and lowers readability. On most of the other pages, half of a full HD screen is wasted with the header banner picture, making the viewers scroll down needlessly much, if they care to. Would you tell more about why you think you need Bootstrap, as I do not see anything in the mockup that requires introducing another framework? I know about bootstrap, it is mostly just for button and menu styling, but it comes with 2 Javascript frameworks. Also, I dislike that bootstrap moves the styling commands back into HTML, when the whole reason to have CSS is to have the styling done separately. I anticipate problems with this when using Markdown for new content, as naturally there is no HTML attributes to put bootstrap styles. As we have and need no Ajax, I see no need for JQuery, which IMHO is obsoleted by modern Javascript anyways. Then there is popper.js, but these overlays which move in the way of seeing the content when scrolling are mostly just distracting the viewer from the information they would like to see. I know the current website does not fit well on a mobile screen, but I'd hope someone with time for it could just tweek the CSS a bit. As FreeCol is played on desktop, I'd think, most people viewing it are on a computer and not on mobile, anyway. Speaking from a project management perspective: Doing a rewrite may seem like a more fun thing when starting it, but when thinking more thoroughly about it a rewrite on an already existing project is rarely the right thing to do. Incremental updates are much faster and in case something happens causing people to have less time, the project still got an improvement, not just something that is unusable/halfdone. Additionally, rewrites usually get less fun the more complete they are. Regards wintertime Gesendet: Sonntag, 05. Juli 2020 um 14:37 Uhr Von: "D Blakeley via Freecol-developers" An: freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net, "Jamaica Boby" Betreff: Re: [Freecol-developers] Web update When I saw your first email Bobby I thought to myself "Wint
Re: [Freecol-developers] Web update
Well you 'control the news' mate so you can put whatever date you want on it haha. ;) Just backdate it a month or 2 so its still newer than that other news item about the freecol vulnerability and I doubt anyone will notice or complain. They'll just think their browser cache hadn't updated last time they visited or something lol. I'll get around to writing up those other news items sooner or later, but obviously your work on the site is the one thing I can't write up as only you know and understand everything you did so no one else can write it up better. Oh and when the time comes I'll no doubt have to ask for your help on making sure I correctly add the news items. I haven't really looked at it properly though so for I know it'll be easy and I won't need help thanks to your conversion of the news section. Regards Blake On Monday, 6 July 2020, 02:01:47 am ACST, win...@genial.ms wrote: Hi, you are right, I regret not putting up a news item on the website update. At first I had no time and then it seemed too late? From looking at the pictures, I did not see any examples of new content? It just seems to be changing the design while not updating any content? I apologize in advance, but I have to say the current version of the new design does look much less sophisticated than the old one and reminds me of every other page made in recent years, without anything unique that stands out. It also seems inconsistent in the background colors jumping from dark grey to white and back. Part of a word from the menu line on the index page being on the different background looks bad and lowers readability. On most of the other pages, half of a full HD screen is wasted with the header banner picture, making the viewers scroll down needlessly much, if they care to. Would you tell more about why you think you need Bootstrap, as I do not see anything in the mockup that requires introducing another framework? I know about bootstrap, it is mostly just for button and menu styling, but it comes with 2 Javascript frameworks. Also, I dislike that bootstrap moves the styling commands back into HTML, when the whole reason to have CSS is to have the styling done separately. I anticipate problems with this when using Markdown for new content, as naturally there is no HTML attributes to put bootstrap styles. As we have and need no Ajax, I see no need for JQuery, which IMHO is obsoleted by modern Javascript anyways. Then there is popper.js, but these overlays which move in the way of seeing the content when scrolling are mostly just distracting the viewer from the information they would like to see. I know the current website does not fit well on a mobile screen, but I'd hope someone with time for it could just tweek the CSS a bit. As FreeCol is played on desktop, I'd think, most people viewing it are on a computer and not on mobile, anyway. Speaking from a project management perspective: Doing a rewrite may seem like a more fun thing when starting it, but when thinking more thoroughly about it a rewrite on an already existing project is rarely the right thing to do. Incremental updates are much faster and in case something happens causing people to have less time, the project still got an improvement, not just something that is unusable/halfdone. Additionally, rewrites usually get less fun the more complete they are. Regards wintertime Gesendet: Sonntag, 05. Juli 2020 um 14:37 Uhr Von: "D Blakeley via Freecol-developers" An: freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net, "Jamaica Boby" Betreff: Re: [Freecol-developers] Web update When I saw your first email Bobby I thought to myself "Winter is going to LVE this (sarcasm) as he only just finished overhauling and updating the entire site already hahaha". ;) I'm pretty sure I suggested this a whole back but Winter you probably should have made a news item about the website overhaul being released and talked a bit about what you did so the public actually KNOW about all the hard work you put into it in the backend since in the frontend people aren't really going to notice as things still look the same. Which also means the site still has that 'abandoned look' due to the lack of news items and new multimedia content. I was thinking of making up a news item about the recent big map pack addition as that's pretty cool news! Also a news items about us regaining control over the FreeCol moddb page might be another news item to chuck in! That news page needs some more content! Blakeley also said he would like to work on the website content a while ago, maybe you could try to coordinate. ==> How can I contact him? Slightly misunderstanding on this bit. My plans are to simply add new up to date screenshots to the screenshot section and make a new videos page similar to the screenshot one. Overhauling the whole site is not of interest to me, plus I don't have the skills for that as I'm not a
Re: [Freecol-developers] Web update
When I saw your first email Bobby I thought to myself "Winter is going to LVE this (sarcasm) as he only just finished overhauling and updating the entire site already hahaha". ;) I'm pretty sure I suggested this a whole back but Winter you probably should have made a news item about the website overhaul being released and talked a bit about what you did so the public actually KNOW about all the hard work you put into it in the backend since in the frontend people aren't really going to notice as things still look the same. Which also means the site still has that 'abandoned look' due to the lack of news items and new multimedia content. I was thinking of making up a news item about the recent big map pack addition as that's pretty cool news! Also a news items about us regaining control over the FreeCol moddb page might be another news item to chuck in! That news page needs some more content! Blakeley also said he would like to work on the website content a while ago, maybe you could try to coordinate. ==> How can I contact him? Slightly misunderstanding on this bit. My plans are to simply add new up to date screenshots to the screenshot section and make a new videos page similar to the screenshot one. Overhauling the whole site is not of interest to me, plus I don't have the skills for that as I'm not a programmer like you guys are, I just know a bit of basic html. So I'm unfortunately I'm not much help to you Bobby, sorry mate. I should also say that the whole recent map saga massively delayed my plans to do that new screenshots and videos section stuff, and now I'm busy with other stuff but I'll get to it eventually lol! Regards Blake On Sunday, 5 July 2020, 09:33:11 pm ACST, Jamaica Boby wrote: Hi!! I have a little skill of english, sorry if i can't explain better :S I would guess, up until now you actually just did some mockup pictures using some tool, but did not do anything for the real website? I'd be happy to comment on them if you could show pictures big enough to be readable. Please use this other link, and use bottom navigation https://www.figma.com/proto/r1RUrbFES8HCTEjmgJDpCx/Desktop-Website?node-id=18%3A91=min-zoom Or you can use the "present" button on the right of login button on the original link (it's like a triangle icon) https://www.figma.com/file/r1RUrbFES8HCTEjmgJDpCx/Desktop-Website (original link) ==> we expect your comments! I would guess, up until now you actually just did some mockup pictures using some tool, but did not do anything for the real website? Exactly! We are working on the mockup. We haven't written any html or css yet We never used jekyll, but apparently this will not be a problem, but we really need to combine with bootstrap, in order to make it mobile friendly and facilitate workBootstrap is a library of css and javascript to facilitate the construction of web pages and their visualization in multiple browsers Bootstrap is widely used in the web worldI see that is possible to use bootstrap with Jekyllhttps://medium.com/better-programming/an-introduction-to-using-jekyll-with-bootstrap-4-6f2433afeda9 ==> Can we combine with jekyll? Somewhere on the forum is a posting where I explain how to work with Jekyll and locally compile and test the website, which I'd liked to add to the documentation I will take a look! Easiest might be if you take a look at how current pages are done and then start small and send pull requests I will take a look too! Blakeley also said he would like to work on the website content a while ago, maybe you could try to coordinate. ==> How can I contact him? Greetings ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] not dead yet
Thank you Mike! This is great news. Am looking forward to the next release! Then I'll spread the word! Regards Blake On Monday, 15 June 2020, 01:53:36 pm ACST, Michael T. Pope wrote: On Sun, 31 May 2020 16:10:47 + (UTC) D Blakeley wrote: > [lots of stuff about maps] The maps are in (git.5b617fe). Many thanks to Blake for a lot of wrangling. Cheers, Mike Pope___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] not dead yet
Thanks for accepting the invite winter, I've made you an admin with full access. That gave us a 'team' of sorts to present, so I sent our dev group info to feillyne and as promised he has transferred control to us! YES we have full control over the FreeCol IndieDB page now. This is awesome news as I really didn't think this could happen, but perseverance has prevailed haha! The old FreeCol IndieDB Page (I get started on updating its info and header image soon):https://www.indiedb.com/games/freecol Our Dev Team page (Mike & Dave I hope you guys still join as purely backup control if I go AWOL lol):https://www.indiedb.com/company/freecol-dev-team Also feillyne said something else interest that's beyond my skill set but some of you guys might find it interesting. However much like our SF frontpage I think the default design is fine enough, no need for any custom fancy stuff unless Winter's feeling bored or something haha. Infact custom ModDB/IndieDB front pages annoy me as I often get lost trying to find the things I can normally find in seconds with the default frontpages haha. feillyne - Staff - Subscriber54mins ago says:Nice. Oh, by the way, I completely forgot about it, but you can also fully customise the CSS code of your game/devteam profile by sending me a PM with e.g. a pastebin link, well, and before that, checking this tutorial: Moddb.com Just need to remember that ModDB and IndieDB use two different stylesheets, stylesheet changes can only be done manually by an admin, and to put style tags at the start and end of the custom CSS (not to mention the custom theme version number inside comments so the stylesheet is easier to keep track of and update).And yes, that can be done for your other game profile, Starflight, too. Regards! I notice he's a staff member there so maybe he wasn't part of the old FreeCol team and all the files and images simply defaulted to his account after the old team member deleted their accounts. I'll ask him and if he was an old team member then invite him to have look at the project now days and check out some of our cool features and 3rd party mods. Anyway I think I've said this before but posting articles/news/dev diaries on ModDB/IndieDB is REALLY good for bringing attention to fan projects. Whenever I post one for my other projects they go on the both ModDB & IndieDB's front homepages resulting in hundreds of people viewing and interacting. In the coming months I'll definitely look at creating some new cool news items for both IndieDB and the freecol website. Now that I have control I can see the history stats and its pretty dismal viewing due to the page being unloved for so long. Interestingly a few months ago when I uploaded new pictures and downloads (thankfully didn't need admin access for that part) 150 people dropped by to check them out smashing any previous record lol. They only started recording stats in 2020 though so who knows what sort of hits it got in the 2000s though. Either way once I start posting articles with info, pics and vids we'll get way bigger spikes! :)Screenshot:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/42b0844f/2ac2/attachment/Stats.png That's enough from me for a while. Just wanted to share the good news! Oh and Mike if you arrive to see a bunch of emails take note that the email before the email before this one in this conversation has a whole bunch of NEW replies to our big convo a few weeks back. :) Regards Blake On Monday, 1 June 2020, 01:40:47 am ACST, D Blakeley wrote: Hey quick update with some good news guys! I have managed to get in contact with one of the original people who controlled the FreeCol IndieDB page named Feillyne (is that name familiar to anyone here?). He's replied to me with this: "Hi, that dev group, Various Devs, was supposed to be generic and temporary and is a relic of the past that hasn't been properly cleaned up yet. If you create a Freecol dev team (so you can invite other members) using this link HERE ownership of that page will be transferred over to you. Regards!" Problem is I don't have a team there without at least one or 2 of you guys haha. I'll send Mike, Winter and David email invites to a indiedb Freecol dev team that I'll make up asap. Then I'll let Feillyne know that we've got a dev team and are ready for the page control handover! :) Don't guys you won't have to do anything I'll take care of the page myself, I just need you to join the team haha. And should I get hit by a bus and you wanna do stuff with the page being a member of this team will give you FULL control (as I'll set you as admins). Regards Blake On Sunday, 31 May 2020, 10:28:08 pm ACST, D Blakeley wrote: Hi Mike, Thanks for getting back to me on these things, sorry for the delay, been super busy myself too. 3. Thanks for your feedback on which maps to include and not include. Sadly no one else came forward so I've pushed ahead and
Re: [Freecol-developers] not dead yet
Hey quick update with some good news guys!
I have managed to get in contact with one of the original people who controlled
the FreeCol IndieDB page named Feillyne (is that name familiar to anyone
here?). He's replied to me with this:
"Hi, that dev group, Various Devs, was supposed to be generic and temporary and
is a relic of the past that hasn't been properly cleaned up yet. If you create
a Freecol dev team (so you can invite other members) using this link HERE
ownership of that page will be transferred over to you. Regards!"
Problem is I don't have a team there without at least one or 2 of you guys
haha. I'll send Mike, Winter and David email invites to a indiedb Freecol dev
team that I'll make up asap. Then I'll let Feillyne know that we've got a dev
team and are ready for the page control handover! :)
Don't guys you won't have to do anything I'll take care of the page myself, I
just need you to join the team haha. And should I get hit by a bus and you
wanna do stuff with the page being a member of this team will give you FULL
control (as I'll set you as admins).
Regards
Blake
On Sunday, 31 May 2020, 10:28:08 pm ACST, D Blakeley
wrote:
Hi Mike,
Thanks for getting back to me on these things, sorry for the delay, been super
busy myself too.
3. Thanks for your feedback on which maps to include and not include. Sadly no
one else came forward so I've pushed ahead and finalised the list (removing
duplicates, European maps & inappropriate ones like GTA). I had to come up with
another new size classification system due to all the crazy sizes in play! But
here's my forum post with all the details:
https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/141200/thread/9eb4fbdf/?page=2=25#b431
I've submitted the pull request and its ready for when you're next putting some
time into the project here: https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol/pull/65
I've made a number posts about the maps across forums and social media to
generate some interest and new visitors too!
4. "if I see messages here from at least two regulars saying that is
ready to go as a replacement for {SF front page, screenshot, whatever} I will
make time to work out what has to be done. Time is the issue, I never used to
do anything with SF admin, and it always takes me a while to work out what does
what."
Oh no, I didn't mean anything like that!! I've seen fancy custom SourceForge
front pages and they're cool but who has time to make one of those? No one lol!
What I'm talking about is simply pushing some buttons in the admin screen and
pasting some text into some boxes that's fast and dead easy, no programming
required (otherwise I wouldn't be able to do it haha), real basic stuff.
Unfortunately I doubt anyone else will come forward and say "yeah the front
page needs updating" as things are pretty quiet these days and I don't think
anyone else cares as the front page changes aren't for existing members,
they're for attracting new members! Oh well either way I've written up some
guides in the forum on how to do what I'm talking about so if you ever do have
a few spare mins for it then they'll be there ready and waiting to help make it
as quick and painless as possible lol.
Guide 1: Updating the Features
section:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/42b0844f/?page=1=25#4619
Guide 2: Updating the screenshots section: (I've selected 6 nice shots and
attached them to the post)
https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/42b0844f/?page=1=25#05c9
5. I'll look at making some of those freecol.org website updates in the coming
months adding screenshot updates there and some videos.
6. "No idea who originally created it. If it needs an "official" owner, you
are it Blake."Hahahaha no worries, I thought you might say that. Yup I'll take
care of the modDB page. :) Wish I had admin access to it though. It looks like
a number of people had control over it however I can't see who they are as
their 'company' dev group page was removed. Which possibly means even they have
lost control of it if they logged in. I dunno... I might try messaging some
site admins to see if I can take control over it, but god knows how much red
tape there is to prevent hijacking.
7. Social media. All good mate, most game devs I speak to don't go near fb so
I'm not surprised haha. I was just keeping you up to date on my efforts to grow
these groups into Col communities that we can promote your project to. Even
since my last email about them the groups have grown quite a bit more so things
are going really well! :)https://www.facebook.com/groups/ColonizationGame/ was
50 when I last msg'd you, it's now 75 meaning its increased by a full half
lol!https://www.reddit.com/r/ColonizationGame/ was 24 members in last msg, now
its 50 meaning its more than doubled!https://discord.gg/CHcH75s has gone from
11 to 18 but that's still in very early days haha..
Even without me promoting several others have posted
Re: [Freecol-developers] not dead yet
Hi Mike,
Thanks for getting back to me on these things, sorry for the delay, been super
busy myself too.
3. Thanks for your feedback on which maps to include and not include. Sadly no
one else came forward so I've pushed ahead and finalised the list (removing
duplicates, European maps & inappropriate ones like GTA). I had to come up with
another new size classification system due to all the crazy sizes in play! But
here's my forum post with all the details:
https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/141200/thread/9eb4fbdf/?page=2=25#b431
I've submitted the pull request and its ready for when you're next putting some
time into the project here: https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol/pull/65
I've made a number posts about the maps across forums and social media to
generate some interest and new visitors too!
4. "if I see messages here from at least two regulars saying that is
ready to go as a replacement for {SF front page, screenshot, whatever} I will
make time to work out what has to be done. Time is the issue, I never used to
do anything with SF admin, and it always takes me a while to work out what does
what."
Oh no, I didn't mean anything like that!! I've seen fancy custom SourceForge
front pages and they're cool but who has time to make one of those? No one lol!
What I'm talking about is simply pushing some buttons in the admin screen and
pasting some text into some boxes that's fast and dead easy, no programming
required (otherwise I wouldn't be able to do it haha), real basic stuff.
Unfortunately I doubt anyone else will come forward and say "yeah the front
page needs updating" as things are pretty quiet these days and I don't think
anyone else cares as the front page changes aren't for existing members,
they're for attracting new members! Oh well either way I've written up some
guides in the forum on how to do what I'm talking about so if you ever do have
a few spare mins for it then they'll be there ready and waiting to help make it
as quick and painless as possible lol.
Guide 1: Updating the Features
section:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/42b0844f/?page=1=25#4619
Guide 2: Updating the screenshots section: (I've selected 6 nice shots and
attached them to the post)
https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/42b0844f/?page=1=25#05c9
5. I'll look at making some of those freecol.org website updates in the coming
months adding screenshot updates there and some videos.
6. "No idea who originally created it. If it needs an "official" owner, you
are it Blake."Hahahaha no worries, I thought you might say that. Yup I'll take
care of the modDB page. :) Wish I had admin access to it though. It looks like
a number of people had control over it however I can't see who they are as
their 'company' dev group page was removed. Which possibly means even they have
lost control of it if they logged in. I dunno... I might try messaging some
site admins to see if I can take control over it, but god knows how much red
tape there is to prevent hijacking.
7. Social media. All good mate, most game devs I speak to don't go near fb so
I'm not surprised haha. I was just keeping you up to date on my efforts to grow
these groups into Col communities that we can promote your project to. Even
since my last email about them the groups have grown quite a bit more so things
are going really well! :)https://www.facebook.com/groups/ColonizationGame/ was
50 when I last msg'd you, it's now 75 meaning its increased by a full half
lol!https://www.reddit.com/r/ColonizationGame/ was 24 members in last msg, now
its 50 meaning its more than doubled!https://discord.gg/CHcH75s has gone from
11 to 18 but that's still in very early days haha..
Even without me promoting several others have posted about their Freecol games
in them which is a great sign for the future. Anyway I'll keep at it with them.
Whenever something cool happens I post it in the groups and then share that
group post with various retro gaming groups which A advertises FreeCol and B
advertises the groups to capture people for future project announcements.
Regards
Blake
On Tuesday, 28 April 2020, 08:08:58 pm ACST, Michael T. Pope
wrote:
OK, bit more time to go through the mail.
> 2. As for Rafael's changes and storing Author and description in the map
> file...
The issue here is that we can not store the description in the map
iteself because it needs to be translated. The author is fine.
Currently we effectively do neither. Rafaels patch does both. If we
can get the author into the map, a bunch of the stuff you have been
wrangling in the strings file can go from:
map.Africa=Large Africa by J.Bloggs
to
map.Africa=Large Africa by %author%
which does not help your work much now, but is more maintainable.
There would have to be code support of course to pull in the %author%,
but that is straightforward.
I have a note on the todo list to think more about the whole
Re: [Freecol-developers] not dead yet
Hi Mike, That's funny you should ask as I was about an hour away from writing a dev list email about a whole bunch of things haha. Here's a big update! :) 1. Yeah I noticed you smashing bugs this weekend, awesome stuff! There's one ticket issue I 'resurrected' (but maybe should have created a new ticket sorry?) that I'm not sure if you looked at while smashing bugs (as I noticed that the SF notification system works differently on ticket convos and also ticket threads are not bumped by comments). There are 2 maps in Mazim's map pack that refuse to fully load in the map editor.. they get the old hanging black screen error where the map doesn't load up properly but still kinda loads as when you click on menus suddenly you can see a bit of the map behind where the menu was lol. I got the same results with all recent versions and I see someone else has commented on the ticket about having problems too, all since the original issue was fixed so presumably there's still some sort of issue there. The original fix definitely made things way better than they were in 2018 as I couldn't load any large maps back then whereas I can load most maps just fine now. To help you guys replicate the problem I've zipped and attached the 2 maps that cause the bug to this post here:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/bugs/3147/#dff3 2. As for Rafael's changes and storing Author and description in the map file.. Now that I understand the map loading system I know the game wouldn't use these fields however purely for 'record keeping' sake it would be good if map authors could enter their name and a description into 2 text fields (in a loadable window in the map editor) that then get stored in the map file (somewhere out of the way that doesn't mess up any of your map loading stuff of course lol). That way third party maps that don't make it into the main game still have identifiable author & about info in them if they get passed around peoples machines. 3. Speaking of Mazim's maps and 3rd party map collections lol, 2 or 3 weeks ago I was all set to put in a pull request with the new re-organised maps (& the river bug corrected Aus & Africa maps) with the nice loading screen text corrections (thanks to your help Mike) and then Marcin said "are you planning on including Mazim's other maps?" and to my horror I realised I'd missed his original map pack which contains 41 friggin maps!!! So last weekend I one by one loaded all of his maps into the map editor to try and decide which ones I should add to the main game. Not easy as I certainly don't claim to be an expert on what makes a good Col map lol! However I posted a preliminary results list in the forums for people to give feedback on. Now I don't expect anyone to sit there loading the 41 maps like I did but I could really use everyone's opinion on a few general things. Eg should European maps be included in the main game? and should weather/climate variants be included (eg hot America, ice age america etc)? You guys can see my post with the list of my YES/NO/UNDECIDED verdict on each map here: https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/141200/thread/9eb4fbdf/?page=1=25#9e90 4. Regarding Sourceforge improvements I've added that feature list I worked on last year to the welcome thread here:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/2d0063a3bc/Which should once again better sell the product and help turn lurkers into players! As always I'm open to corrections/additions etc from people.As previously discussed I would LOVE to add this feature list to the sourceforge FreeCol project front page (so that lurkers see it the second they first arrive). However I know you don't wanna be bothered about that stuff Mike so I was hoping Dave could help me. However he reported problems with editing the front page in the comments just below my original features list post here:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/42b0844f/#a702/9e85 There was a theory that maybe it related to him trying on a phone instead of a PC however I don't know if he ever tried on a PC or not. I've been waiting for him to 'return from the ether' lol so I can try and sort this out with him without bothering you. It's only a 2min job max as it just requires copying and pasting each of my features into the feature boxes on the admin page as demonstrated in the BOTTOM of this picture here: https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/42b0844f/a702/9e85/attachment/Guide.png I would also LOVE to update your SF front page screenshots here:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/admin/screenshotsAs the ones you guys have are so old (version 0.9.0 so that's gotta be at least 10-15 years old) and I've got some really nice HD screenshots from a year or so ago that I can replace them with. However I haven't really pushed this one since that's a bigger job for an admin than the feature list one. SF front page supports up to 6
Re: [Freecol-developers] New pull requests
1. I'm guessing the issue David is talking about below is why there hasn't been a release since Feb? FYI Marcin is asking again for a new release to test Mikes latest changes presumably. 2. Mike I've followed your instructions (thanks again) and fixed all the map names (shorter and no spaces) and I've edited the properties file in the strings area with all the new maps and names etc and it's correctly displaying in the game! :) However before I submit a new github PR I figured I'd get some final feedback from you, Winter and others first as I had some queries that only you guys would know the answer to. Here's a direct link to the post on page 2 of Mazim's maps thread:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/141200/thread/9eb4fbdf/?page=1=25#dbec 3. Also FYI I'm not sure if this is related to the stuff David was talking about but the website https://freecol.org/ is not loading at all. This site can’t be reached freecol.org refused to connect. Try: - Checking the connection - Checking the proxy and the firewall ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED Regards blake On Monday, 16 March 2020, 09:23:18 am ACDT, David Lewis wrote: Hi Mike, I haven't had a chance to look to determine why yet, but the master branch CI builds are failing.This could have been due to a bad change that I merged in last week or so. If you have a chance to take a look at it, that'd be great. Otherwise, I'll try and get to that later this week.Bringing this up because we might need to roll back a merge/commit before merging any of these other PRs. David On Sun, Mar 15, 2020 at 2:21 PM Michael T. Pope wrote: On Sun, 15 Mar 2020 11:47:42 + (UTC) D Blakeley wrote: > I've gotta say with all due respect it seems strange that the whole map usage > system requires manual entry into some translation list instead of storing > the required extra info in the map files themselves and simply having a map > reader that pulls the info out of the map files. As then all this special > work and list management isn't required when regular users want to add maps > to the game. You could think that... but you would be wrong:-). FreeColMessages.properties is the master file containing all the strings that will be displayed to the player[1]. Or more precisely, the player in English(US) locales. Look around the strings directory, it is full of similar files with locale suffixes for numerous different languages and dialects. Heck there is even English(GB). This does not happen by magic, but thanks to the volunteers at translatewiki who take the master strings file and make localized versions of it with the same keys but translated values, which they then commit back to our sf repo (although this is equivalent to magic in terms of the effort required from the FreeCol project). This means that if I like, I can play FreeCol in Finnish or Catalan or ... which is really cool. There is a cost to this of course. Throughout FreeCol we have to be careful to display only strings that have been looked up in the correct strings file. There is some pretty clever code that does this, written by smart people that understand i18n/l10n (i.e. not me). But as long as we keep every displayed string in one place for the translators (who know *nothing* about the structure of FreeCol), they can easily do their magic and we get a better game. So now Blake, you want to put a displayable string in some other random file? I hope you can now appreciate that... that is a big ask. > so that's presumably a few different new programmers wanting to help you > which is really good (maybe the new welcome thread attracted their help & > sent them in the right direction, or a least that's what I'm going to tell > myself haha). We will never know for sure, but I hope you are right. Cheers, Mike Pope [1] Except... we have a problem with mods. Fixing this is on the list but after new-release. ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] New pull requests
Hi Mike, Right! This I can follow lol! Thank you yes I can proceed further now lol. When you originally talked about "FreeColMessages.properties" I thought you were talking about some line value within some master translation file that I had no idea where to find lol. But now I see you meant FreeColMessages.properties IS the file name lol. Alright well I'll go cancel my Pull Request and redo the job correctly when I have time again (prob next weekend). I've gotta say with all due respect it seems strange that the whole map usage system requires manual entry into some translation list instead of storing the required extra info in the map files themselves and simply having a map reader that pulls the info out of the map files. As then all this special work and list management isn't required when regular users want to add maps to the game. In fact interestingly someone else has put in a pull request that has the map editor ask and store such extra info (eg author) in the map file itself. I know this will have no effect on the map reader but maybe I should hold off my PR until this PR is either accepted or denied by you guys since if its approved then I'll probably wanna refresh all the maps through the editor again and use the new description & author fields he's added.https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol/pull/58 Anyway sorry, I know you don't wanna be bothered about this stuff but it doesn't seem like there's anyone else left to talk about pull requests with anymore now. I did start a whole convo on the forums in Mazim's map thread about file names and what they should be and a number of people gave their thoughts but no one seemed to know about all this special naming and translation list stuff so I wasn't warned. What impresses me about all these new 2020 pull requests is that there are 5 different users behind them and I don't see their names in the old closed requests.. so that's presumably a few different new programmers wanting to help you which is really good (maybe the new welcome thread attracted their help & sent them in the right direction, or a least that's what I'm going to tell myself haha). Hopefully it leads to future team expansion and once again taking away some of the load from you. :) Regards Blake On Sunday, 15 March 2020, 09:15:17 pm ACDT, Michael T. Pope wrote: > Just letting you know the good news that a number of different people are > making contributions to FreeCol on github... Quite so. Pity they are a bit down the list. I was away last week, and am now stuck at github issue#32 which is proving to be a PITA, and there is a new sourceforge bug to look at... after that I plan to deal with the more problematic pull requests... > Mine PR has been sitting there for weeks too... ...like yours:-). Your map reworking has problems... Lets try again. 1. The name of the map file is *not* what is supposed to be displayed on the map selection panel. Yes, we want to credit the authors, but crufting them into the file name is not how to do it. Worse yet, renaming the existing map files is breaking the test suite, which is why the github page for your PR is showing failed checks. 2. File names with spaces tend to cause breakage in the build scripts, please avoid them. 3. The string we display under the map thumbnail comes from the strings database. This is a file called "FreeColMessages.properties" which is in the strings directory, right next to the maps directory you have been hacking around in. It is a plain old text file, and contains lines like "freecol.map.Australia=Australia". To credit someone, you would change that, for example, to "freecol.map.Australia=Australia by Drongo Bruce" 4. For every file in the maps directory, you need a line in the properties file. The left hand side *must* have the freecol.map. prefix, after which is the *file name* without the .fsm extension. Once again, no spaces in the file name as that can stuff up the routines that read the properties file. 5. If you do *not* do this, freecol goes through the map directory, finds a file called foo.fsm, tries to look in the strings database for a key of freecol.map.foo, fails to find it, and defaults to just displaying the key freecol.map.foo. Which is what you were complaining about in https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/bugs/3182/ 6. Yes I read your "but hunting down master translation stuff somewhere in something.. umm yeah.. I got no idea sorry." response in that bug. Humour me, eh? I am stretched pretty thin here, and really appreciate it when people work stuff out from what I admit is a terse explanation on my part. Hopefully this was a bit clearer and/or enough detail to get things moving again? Cheers, Mike Pope ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
[Freecol-developers] New pull requests
Hi guys, Just letting you know the good news that a number of different people are making contributions to FreeCol on github. There are a whole bunch of new pull requests there. Mine PR has been sitting there for weeks too (with a mystery problem no one has helped on) but it would suck even more if these new PRs from other people just sit around for weeks too as it may result in these people and their talents losing interest and leaving. Any chance someone can step up to the plate and have a look at them all? Regards Blake___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
[Freecol-developers] FreeCol Maps Overhaul Done!
I got to help on the actual game itself for a bit haha! New Mazim maps added, damaged rivers in old maps manually repaired, authors of old maps identified in SF history, all thumbnails regenerated, all maps renamed to include size and author info. Full details can be found in this post:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/141200/thread/9eb4fbdf/?page=1=25#4608 Also some weird error has occurred with the pull request containing the new maps & replacements. Will only make sense to you guys as its jibberish to me:https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol/pull/56 Regards Blake ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] Updates and Issues I need help with please
Thank you David. Regarding Item 3 - SourceForge:Mike has updated the SF front page summary for me but obviously he'd much rather other people in his team help me out with these issues in the future so he can keep working on the most important thing, the game! However the features list on the SF front page still needs to be done so if you could help with that, that would be great! :) If if you scroll down to the bottom of this big comment here: https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/42b0844f/#a702/9e85You'll find the 7 features that need copying and pasting into the boxes. If you look at the screenshot attachments you'll see they show where to go in the admin controls to do this. Unfortunately no one came forward with suggestions for the feature list but I've worked on them myself over the past 2 months trying to get the wording right so hopefully they're pretty good now and I'm not forgetting anything. Feel free to make an changes or additions you feel are necessary. Also I'd also really really like to replace those ancient screenshots on the SF front page with some nice new HD ones that look WAY better. If you're willing to help me with this too I can then supply you with 6 sexy HD screenshots (SF only allows up to 6) and their caption text to use. :) Regarding Item 3 - Website: The conversion on teaching others (starting with me) to be able to edit the new website has spilled over to here if you feel you can help with it:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/141200/thread/e78a6df83d/#c3c3/ee20/6536/6977/bd1f/efac/7ba8/1b81/6c34 Regards Blake On Tuesday, 4 February 2020, 04:12:57 am ACDT, David Lewis wrote: Hi Blake, I got your message from a couple days ago, just had a crazy weekend. Thanks for sending this, let's work on some of these this week. David On Mon, Feb 3, 2020, 07:42 D Blakeley via Freecol-developers wrote: Hi guys, Judging by Mike's comment on my post today (suggesting I send a dev mail msg) I'm starting to think no one saw my dev mail msg from 2 days ago (& maybe even some of my previous ones). Possibly because I replied to old convo. So here's a fresh new one with a new title. Please note items 3 & 4 are the ones I need help on before I can do anything more! Original message below: --- Hi guys, It's been a while, I've been buried in my own mod projects (retro Heroes of Might & Magic Civ2, C Civ2 , and Red Alert 2 Civ2 mods). However I haven't forgotten about my promises to help you guys on a few things (within my limited abilities haha) so I just thought I'd give an update on a few things and ask for some help on a few others. 1 - IndieDB Work (Update):https://www.indiedb.com/games/freecol If you guys check out the old FreeCol IndieDB page you'll see I've made a number of updates to it recently. I've cloned the last stable release and some of the recent nightly releases over there so that new visitors see the new versions at the top instead of those bloody ancient 2010 files (which we can't get rid of). I have also uploaded those 19 HD FreeCol shots I took a while back (which I've told you guys about before) effectively burring all the old not so pretty screenshots that were on the page (which we also can't get rid of). Interestingly it's already attracted some attention as someone posted a comment on the main page saying it looks good and they'd love to see a video! Guess that means it's already working haha! I have NOT posted an article there yet though as that's the one that really attracts attention (as it goes into the main IndieDB & ModDB new pages) as I'm thinking I'll hold off until I've got the HD video finished and on Youtube. Then do a big "FreeCol is alive and well!" news post with the critical links, pics and vid. There's nothing I can do about the ancient banner across the top using old graphics as only an admin can change that and presumably the admin of this page was one of the long gone old FreeCol team members. But nevertheless FreeCol is getting a much nicer & modern representation on arguably the largest mods & indie game website out there now! :) 2 - Facebook Group (Update):https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/b73f378418/ Some of you may have already noticed the thread I made on the SF forum about this but I've created a new (and world's only it would seem) Colonization Fans Facebook group. This is a long term project (as it takes ages for them to get going and get lots of sign ups) where I plan to market FreeCol by posting cool info and news about the project as well as talking about other cool Colonization games of course, but FreeCol will be getting the most attention from me. I don't think there's a dedicated Colonization fans group on reddit either so I might look into that too. I've just posted those same 19 sexy HD FreeCol shots into an album there too:https://www.facebook.com/media/
[Freecol-developers] Updates and Issues I need help with please
Hi guys, Judging by Mike's comment on my post today (suggesting I send a dev mail msg) I'm starting to think no one saw my dev mail msg from 2 days ago (& maybe even some of my previous ones). Possibly because I replied to old convo. So here's a fresh new one with a new title. Please note items 3 & 4 are the ones I need help on before I can do anything more! Original message below: --- Hi guys, It's been a while, I've been buried in my own mod projects (retro Heroes of Might & Magic Civ2, C Civ2 , and Red Alert 2 Civ2 mods). However I haven't forgotten about my promises to help you guys on a few things (within my limited abilities haha) so I just thought I'd give an update on a few things and ask for some help on a few others. 1 - IndieDB Work (Update):https://www.indiedb.com/games/freecol If you guys check out the old FreeCol IndieDB page you'll see I've made a number of updates to it recently. I've cloned the last stable release and some of the recent nightly releases over there so that new visitors see the new versions at the top instead of those bloody ancient 2010 files (which we can't get rid of). I have also uploaded those 19 HD FreeCol shots I took a while back (which I've told you guys about before) effectively burring all the old not so pretty screenshots that were on the page (which we also can't get rid of). Interestingly it's already attracted some attention as someone posted a comment on the main page saying it looks good and they'd love to see a video! Guess that means it's already working haha! I have NOT posted an article there yet though as that's the one that really attracts attention (as it goes into the main IndieDB & ModDB new pages) as I'm thinking I'll hold off until I've got the HD video finished and on Youtube. Then do a big "FreeCol is alive and well!" news post with the critical links, pics and vid. There's nothing I can do about the ancient banner across the top using old graphics as only an admin can change that and presumably the admin of this page was one of the long gone old FreeCol team members. But nevertheless FreeCol is getting a much nicer & modern representation on arguably the largest mods & indie game website out there now! :) 2 - Facebook Group (Update):https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/b73f378418/ Some of you may have already noticed the thread I made on the SF forum about this but I've created a new (and world's only it would seem) Colonization Fans Facebook group. This is a long term project (as it takes ages for them to get going and get lots of sign ups) where I plan to market FreeCol by posting cool info and news about the project as well as talking about other cool Colonization games of course, but FreeCol will be getting the most attention from me. I don't think there's a dedicated Colonization fans group on reddit either so I might look into that too. I've just posted those same 19 sexy HD FreeCol shots into an album there too:https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.2507871526102866=3 3 - Sourceforge (NEED HELP!):Can someone with admin access to the sourceforge page please please please please please please please please please help me do those front page updates posted here:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/42b0844f/#a702/9e85 Believe me I'd love to do it myself and not be bothering you guys about it but I can't, only admins can. It only needs about 2 minutes from one of you as I've already written everything up. There's no modifying required (even for the links) as I've tested the changes on my B5 mod page. Just a matter of copy paste copy paste copy paste copy paste copy paste of the summary and the features into the boxes on the Admin/Metadata/Full Description page. 4 - Website Work (NEED HELP!):I see Winter has finished the big overhaul of the website and it looks amazing!! Keeps the old theme but is so clean and efficient in the frontend and backend. I love it! So now that his work is done I can look at adding some of those new ideas I've probably mentioned before such as adding some of my HD pictures to the Screenshots Section, adding a new Videos Section that's similar in layout to the screenshots section (which has FreeCol version and date info on each item) but has youtube videos in there instead (I've found a whole bunch on there and of course I've got my own cool HD one coming too), and later down the track I was thinking about a dedicated Modding Section that gives some general information maybe with a screenshot or 2 about how FreeCol is super mod friendly and links where to go on the forums (eg a dedicated modding info sticky thread I've also been thinking about putting together for you guys) to see guides, info & wishlists on modding etc. I believe that marketing FreeCol's modability more is one of the best ways to attract new programming and graphic talent to your team. Plus every time someone complains about
Re: [Freecol-developers] Website fixes
Opps forgot no pics allowed in mailing lists sorry. Re-sending. On Saturday, 1 February 2020, 06:38:50 pm ACDT, D Blakeley wrote: Hi guys, It's been a while, I've been buried in my own mod projects (retro Heroes of Might & Magic Civ2, C Civ2 , and Red Alert 2 Civ2 mods). However I haven't forgotten about my promises to help you guys on a few things (within my limited abilities haha) so I just thought I'd give an update on a few things and ask for some help on a few others. 1 - IndieDB Work:https://www.indiedb.com/games/freecol If you guys check out the old FreeCol IndieDB page you'll see I've made a number of updates to it recently. I've cloned the last stable release and some of the recent nightly releases over there so that new visitors see the new versions at the top instead of those bloody ancient 2010 files (which we can't get rid of). I have also uploaded those 19 HD FreeCol shots I took a while back (which I've told you guys about before) effectively burring all the old not so pretty screenshots that were on the page (which we also can't get rid of). Interestingly it's already attracted some attention as someone posted a comment on the main page saying it looks good and they'd love to see a video! Guess that means it's already working haha! I have NOT posted an article there yet though as that's the one that really attracts attention (as it goes into the main IndieDB & ModDB new pages) as I'm thinking I'll hold off until I've got the HD video finished and on Youtube. Then do a big "FreeCol is alive and well!" news post with the critical links, pics and vid. There's nothing I can do about the ancient banner across the top using old graphics as only an admin can change that and presumably the admin of this page was one of the long gone old FreeCol team members. But nevertheless FreeCol is getting a much nicer & modern representation on arguably the largest mods & indie game website out there now! :) 2 - Facebook Group:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/b73f378418/ Some of you may have already noticed the thread I made on the SF forum about this but I've created a new (and world's only it would seem) Colonization Fans Facebook group. This is a long term project (as it takes ages for them to get going and get lots of sign ups) where I plan to market FreeCol by posting cool info and news about the project as well as talking about other cool Colonization games of course, but FreeCol will be getting the most attention from me. I don't think there's a dedicated Colonization fans group on reddit either so I might look into that too. I've just posted those same 19 sexy HD FreeCol shots into an album there too:https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.2507871526102866=3 3 - Sourceforge:Can someone with admin access to the sourceforge page please please please please please please please please please help me do those front page updates posted here:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/42b0844f/#a702/9e85 Believe me I'd love to do it myself and not be bothering you guys about it but I can't, only admins can. It only needs about 2 minutes from one of you as I've already written everything up. There's no modifying required (even for the links) as I've tested the changes on my B5 mod page. Just a matter of copy paste copy paste copy paste copy paste copy paste of the summary and the features into the boxes on the Admin/Metadata/Full Description page. 4 - Website Work:I see Winter has finished the big overhaul of the website and it looks amazing!! Keeps the old theme but is so clean and efficient in the frontend and backend. I love it! So now that his work is done I can look at adding some of those new ideas I've probably mentioned before such as adding some of my HD pictures to the Screenshots Section, adding a new Videos Section that's similar in layout to the screenshots section (which has FreeCol version and date info on each item) but has youtube videos in there instead (I've found a whole bunch on there and of course I've got my own cool HD one coming too), and later down the track I was thinking about a dedicated Modding Section that gives some general information maybe with a screenshot or 2 about how FreeCol is super mod friendly and links where to go on the forums (eg a dedicated modding info sticky thread I've also been thinking about putting together for you guys) to see guides, info & wishlists on modding etc. I believe that marketing FreeCol's modability more is one of the best ways to attract new programming and graphic talent to your team. Plus every time someone complains about something in Freecol they don't like on forums and social media then everyone can just say "no problem mate, here's a link to our modding info and guide section where you can learn to make a mod doing exactly what you want and if others like it too then we'll stick in the release mods". Just shove that line
Re: [Freecol-developers] Website fixes
Jon, I think we both lost the Wordpress debate buddy, time to capitulate haha. Hmm well if Stian's not to be contacted unless there's an emergency I'd say that's a no haha! I think Mike came later after other dudes worked on it for years and burned out. BTW Don't worry Mike I got your latest msg via dev list and your previously missing message decided to arrive (from dev list) today a day late too.. and into my spam folder lmao. Well played yahoo well played.. I'm thinking about switching to Internode.. iinet are driving me nuts.. If you guys are doing all this website work on SF I guess I better figure out how to edit webpages on SF lol.. took me long enough to figure out how to do the website changes on the github copy but if that's missing out on the latest stuff then I better figure out SF lol. Do I need any special programs installed on my comp? Or does SF have a built in HTML/text file editor like github has? Regards Blake On Friday, 3 January 2020, 07:21:59 pm ACDT, Jonathan Aquilina wrote: My concern is this. Is said person holding the domain still interested in the project and being involved. If not its best to easily have the domain transferred to someone who is more active like Michael for example. @Michael is freecol your baby that you have developed from the ground up? Jonathan Aquilina On Fri, Jan 3, 2020 at 9:40 AM wrote: This was all before I joined the project. My assumption had always been he is only to be contacted in case of emergency.We should only disturb them after everything is decided, and then it would fall on Mike, as he is the one who knows them. Gesendet: Freitag, 03. Januar 2020 um 09:30 Uhr Von: "Jonathan Aquilina" An: win...@genial.ms Cc: "FreeCol Developers" Betreff: Re: [Freecol-developers] Website fixesHas anyone tried to contact him? Jonathan Aquilina On Fri, Jan 3, 2020 at 9:29 AM wrote: As I tried to say, Stian or another inactive project member is controlling the domain records, which means it is not that easy. Gesendet: Freitag, 03. Januar 2020 um 09:20 Uhr Von: "Jonathan Aquilina" An: win...@genial.ms Cc: "David Lewis" , "FreeCol Developers" Betreff: Re: [Freecol-developers] Website fixesHi Winter, You are worried about breaking the domain, there is an easy solution to that you would need to add a CNAME (Alias) record on DNS which will point to the .io site so if i go to the .org it would redirect me to the alias .io Jonathan Aquilina On Fri, Jan 3, 2020 at 9:18 AM wrote: Hi, a few days ago when reading SF webserver documentation, I saw that you could switch over from PHP5 to PHP7.It's just that we are completely HTML only without a single .php file remaining -- that's why I saw no use in doing it.If you switch over the domain would change from .net to .io, possibly breaking our .org domain, depending on how it is configured. This might also break some direct links to the .net subdomain somewhere.We would get https on the .io domain, but certificates are bound to the domain not ip, thats why I doubt it would work correctly on our .org domain.There is still some old files on the ftp for the webserver in the directory above the htdocs directory for the website -- these will need a backup before a switchover!I would not click the switch over button, without Stian and/or whoever controls the .org domain giving his ok. Greetings wintertime Gesendet: Freitag, 03. Januar 2020 um 06:31 Uhr Von: "David Lewis" An: "Michael T. Pope" Cc: "FreeCol Developers" Betreff: Re: [Freecol-developers] Website fixesLol, bizarre. Yay for Yahoo filtering. I don't know that the forums would be moved. I think we may just leave those as is on SF. overall I really don't see a need to transition absolutely everything over to github from source forge, just primarily the code base and the website. And also probably the ticket tracker to GitHub issues. I don't really see a need to abandon SF entirely. David On Thu, Jan 2, 2020, 9:26 PM Michael T. Pope wrote: On Thu, 2 Jan 2020 23:19:14 +0100 win...@genial.ms wrote: > I was anticipating of moving the website over to GitHub someday, but it's > kinda surprising you'd like to move over the domain so fast when the other > stuff is still on SF? Quite so. I wish people who want to move stuff around would at the very least come up with a plan that includes the hard problems, like how to move the forums. The website is easy. > Would it be easier to get https support for the freecol.org domain on GitHub? That is a timely remark. Yesterday while I was trying to work out who has permission to update the SF website I came across something new[1]: Your website is currently hosted at http://freecol.sourceforge.net with PHP 5.4 To update to https://freecol.sourceforge.io and PHP 7.x, click the button below. There will be a small delay for it to take effect. You may switch back if needed. I propose to click the button.
Re: [Freecol-developers] Website fixes
That's weird. I never got Mike's response to me (direct or via dev mail list), not even in my spam folder. Glad you left his reply to me in your reply Dave otherwise I would never have seen it! Didn't know what Markdown was so I googled it and it sounds like the 'text box' you get on a forum (or on wordpress) that has a few word doc like controls (font stuff, paragraph stuff, insert table/image/video etc) and the option to switch view to the html code behind it. If that's the case (forgive me its hard to imagine without some pictures haha) then yeah, no probs I'll be fine haha! And if the backend stuff is still full of html then I should be able to even tinker with that a bit every now and then when needed (if the frontend isn't giving me the level of customization I need). Oh well I guess I'll wait until Winter's a bit further along with development and he's ready for me to try tinkering with stuff and I'll try and make some cool stuff for the site then. I'm buried in a few other projects at the moment anyway. > I'll try my access when I get to a computer, I haven't tried yet. Yeah that's what I thought was weird when you had those troubles Dave, if you have admin access to the sf project source files etc then surely editing some simple text boxes on the sf project front page shouldn't be locked out to you. If you were trying on phone maybe that was why it was being weird. Since you're copying and pasting clumps of text & links I've put together in the forum it's prob easier for you to do on comp anyway mate. Regards Blake On Thursday, 2 January 2020, 09:53:09 pm ACDT, David Lewis wrote: I would echo your sentiments about WordPress. I used to be a Drupal / WP Dev for Disney some years ago and I would steer very far away from the WordPress platform, it'll give way more problems than it's worth. Especially security wise. Jekyll is probably the easiest method to come up with. It'll have the lowest bar for coding and maintenance. You'll find it super easy, Blake. It's more of a markdown formatter, so you write pages in Markdown instead of HTML. Templates are in HTML CSS, but most of the time you don't need to touch these unless you want a special customization or new feature added, but the content itself is just all markdown docs. I'll try my access when I get to a computer, I haven't tried yet. David On Thu, Jan 2, 2020, 1:07 AM Michael T. Pope wrote: >>[Jonathan] >> thing is the community will need someone versed in website coding and >>styling if that person leaves there is a bit of an issue there. This has always been the case. >[D Blakeley] > That's exactly what worries me. This Jekyll thing sounds like its not going > to be something the average guy (eg me) can use... AFAICT if you want to write content, then use of Jekyll means you have to write in Markdown. You are going to have to be pretty average to find Markdown a high bar:-). If you want to build the site you will need a working Jekyll install, which might be trickier. The actual upload to SF is straightforward, but you need permission. I have looked at the SF permissions, and remain confused. However if winterime is able to upload (which is good) David should have the same permissions. David, have you tried: sftp $USERNAME,free...@web.sf.net with your SF username and credentials? Anyway... generally with respect to the website I really do not have a many strong opinion about how or what it looks like. I am delighted people are working on it again, and I am trying to help but mostly keep out of the way. What I do care about is that it be low maintenance because as Jonathan rightly reminds us above, people leave. However I do not share Jonathan's enthusiasm for Wordpress... one CMS debacle was enough. Cheers, Mike Pope ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] Website fixes
Hi guys, A few things to reply to! Mike:I think Winter is after your thoughts/approval on his new site ideas. Also I have just posted at this link below, if you could spare a moment to help out a fellow Aussie I'd appreciate it thanks haha. Should be the last time I have to pester you about a big sourceforge change as this really is the last thing it needs to help your fans navigate to the right places! After this in the future it just might be a thread sticky or 2 which I can pester David about. https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/42b0844f/#a702/9e85/07a6/d983/f301 Winter:> No, I do not want the website to gain even more warnings. I was hoping we could> decide on which pages with warnings are still useful, which could be deleted. Opps sorry I misread that part as I thought winter was referring to heavily outdated sections of the site not labeled as such. Everyone ignore what I said on that bit lol. Jonathan: > I would be willing to sponsor some webhosting on my shared cpanel server. > I was thinking of setting up wordpress for the site? Your later point was certainly what I was thinking as Wordpress is so darn low maintenance and easy to use and controls the annoying sorting & navigation of all the news items for you. Creating pages and posts is dead easy too as its pretty much like a word doc editing but if you want full control then you can access the html code behind the page editor too. It's also pretty good for setting up separate non-news page sections too. Eg all those project info and history pages etc could easily be copy & pasted to wordpress section pages accessed through a wordpress main menu similar to the existing sites menu options. Wordpress menu buttons also support drop down options meaning all sub sections from the old site could be easily brought across too. I use a wordpress blog for all my website news now (separate from my main website thats store elsewhere), I don't use drop down menus but if you click on either my 'Fav Fan Game Projects' or my 'What's Blake Playing Right NOW' buttons you'll be taken to wordpress hosted sections that are NOT part of the news blog. https://blakessanctum.wordpress.com/ Winter: > IIRC, one problem with this was the goal to keep all parts of the project > on a single provider (like SF or GitHub). But yeah as winter points out I don't think they want offsite hosting, as fully accessible public hosting is better for everyone to help out on. I'm not sure if a wordpress built site can be put into a SF/Github hosted area but if it can then I'd be all for that as I can EASILY help in all areas of moving content across and adding new news items etc. > Yes, I always found it the right decision to stop using a CMS, especially > when nobody can commit to updating it regularly. I only have about a month > before starting in my new job, not sure how much time I have then. That's > why my main concern is to get the website into a fixed, sustainable state > without need of much maintenance soon. > For that, I'd just like to have it in a way to not need every news 3 times > and having links updated automatically. > Maybe the way to get that could be static page generation for news articles > before uploading? We would not need anything fancy, if it could just find > a few magic tags in slightly modified current pages and add articles from > text files and generate links to the articles, it would be sufficient. Well good thing I've got the next month off work because that means I can help you try and sort this mess out into something low maintenance before we both get busy again! :) And yeah if some sort of news making page can be constructed that does all the inserting and news list management stuff for you on the existing site that'd be fine too. As presumably then even someone like me could use it to create news if needed lol! > as mentioned below, I'd like to add static page generation. > I think, Jekyll would be nice for that: > - https://jekyllrb.com/ > - It would make it easier to add new content/news. > - It allows for removing redundancies in pages. > - We could slowly transition page by page (maybe just > the news at first). > - It supports markdown (could, for example, translate the > cv3-discoverer-english/log.md into html after a tiny change). > - It is also used in GitHub Pages, so it'd be compatible > in case of a move there. > - It only needs a Ruby installation with the gem installed, > then one more line in console/script for uploading and > a slightly changed directory to upload from. > I installed it here and it looks like it works for me. > I'd just need to know beforehand, if you would approve of > using it? I've never heard of these guys but if they have a nice easy to use frontend that allows even noobs like me to create website content (eg menus, pages, inserting text & pictures) much like the wordpress and wix webpage builders but obviously also has that lovely well organised
Re: [Freecol-developers] Website fixes
Thanks Winter I'm looking forward to see all these changes you've been busy on. As discussed in the forums something has gone wrong between sf & github as when mike did the update some changes went on to the live site but some didn't. > - www.freecol.org/bugtracker contains broken remains not inside git, > maybe same for www.freecol.org/featuretracker or other directories. > Needs checking with ftp access? > - Some older news items (I think 0.9.4 and older) contain broken > bugtracker and featuretracker links, I do not have a replacement for. > Are these still accessible somewhere in bugtracker or as changelogs? > - Maybe fix the stuff in cv3-discoverer-english to be an actual, > accessible html page?> - Maybe look through docs, templates, images and >create-new-article > directories for things to update or delete?> - [Maybe convert the xhtml1.0 >transitional to html5?] Unfortunately I'm no help to you with these ones as they are beyond my skill sets and/or they require intimate knowledge of the sites workings and history. But I'm guessing you were more after feedback from Mike and the others on these anyway. > - [Maybe clean up the div-soup and table-soup everywhere?] > - [Maybe make the website prettier somehow?] These ones I may be able to help you with, but with help and guidance. Eg you guys overhaul one section, show it to me and then I attempt to replicate the improvements across other sections.And yes even with notepadd++ I struggled in that endless sea of broken divs and tables. It's a such a mess you just get lost in it all! > - Maybe update some pages with warnings about the being outdated or > move or delete? There's already a couple of outdated content warnings in yellow boxes on some old pages of the site so just tell me which pages need the out of date disclaimer and I'll just copy and paste a similar yellow box msg into them all if you guys don't wish to delete. Easy! :) > - Maybe add some new content? > - When all is done, add news about website update. Now these I can be a BIG help to you guys on and I've got a few ideas I've probably already mentioned before. Best of all I can pretty much do some of them myself without bothering you guys every 5 minutes. The current screenshots section is DISMAL.. the newest pics are from version 7.0 for christ sake lol, it really undersells your game as you've made numerous engine and terrain improvements since those pics. So I'm thinking I can update more-screenshots.html with some of those HD pictures I made and showed you guys before at imgur.com/a/lBEsMJB (I'm thinking I might take a new HD screenshot with the classic wooden mod interface turned on just for people who like the old one too) and put them above the old 7.0 pics in a new 12.0 pre-release test images section. Then update the main screenshots.html file to use some of these new pics too. I'm guessing you'd rather onsite hosting instead of offsite so I can upload my pngs to your github website images folder for usage. I also want to add a new videos.html page that its laid out similar to the screenshots page and lists all found videos and mentions the version number used for the recording. There's a whole bunch of videos on youtube from people made over the years can can be used to show off your game and of course I've got my much newer HD freecol tour video currently sitting on ice on my computer ready to be uploaded to youtube once I've made some final changes and fixes to it. I was originally thinking that we rename screenshots in the main menu to 'media' but realised that your main menu code is duplicates across every single page on the site which would be not so much fun to change lol. So I'm thinking I simply add the new videos page as a subsection of the current screenshots section and then all I have to do is change the menu in all the screenshot subsection html pages (more-screenshots, ar-units, art-icons, art-colonies) to include the videos page. Then I can also change the main screenshots.html page to talk about the videos section so that the moment anyone anywhere on the site clicks on screenshots they'll be taken to that page and see very quickly that there is a videos subsection just like there is currently a more screenshots subsection. "new HD videos and screenshots added to site" can even be a separate news item to winters suggested website update news post as the more news we can think of (to make the place look more active) the better lol! Winter I'm guessing you're going with the onsite simplified news plan? Despite the recent live site updating issues I can see you've changed a number of news items have "read more" button which is cool. Although I'd strongly recommend we change the title of the article to be a link as as well since that's how the vast majority of blog & news sites work. You can either hit a read more button or click on the main heading itself to load the full article. eg "Nightly Releases Now
Re: [Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation issues
Hi guys, Quick updates... As promised I've located all the damaged news items Winter talked about and completed the fixes to them. I've also fixed the oversized pages he mentioned too. Pull request is submitted and ready for you guys here:https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol/pull/50 Have also put together new text (using the better project description from your website) similar to the welcome thread for your sourceforge front page summary area with critical links included. I tested them on a sourceforge project front page I have admin rights on and it worked great. Obviously I need David, Mike or one of the other admins to implement these changes so I've put the text and demonstration images in a post here:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/42b0844f/#a702/9e85 Also in that post I discuss how these days Sourceforge has a nice features list section (you can see it in example pictures attached to post) on project front pages where you can list all the cool stuff about the game. Listing what's great about FreeCol increases interest and convert lurkers to downloaders. Here's some I can think of off the bat but there's definitely more 'sexy features' we can all think of as you guys know your project better than anyone! Improvements to my wording could use some suggestions too (not sure what the character limit is in those little fields but hopefully the map one will fit). - Play classic Colonization games- Play huge extended Colonization games- 8 player games (12 with mods)- Multiplayer Support - Huge maps of America, Africa, Australia, and more! - Map Editor- Mod Support Once finalised this simple but 'sexy' feature list would probably work well in other places such as the welcome thread and on the freecol.org website front page too. That way everyone who visits the project on either site will quickly know (without ANY clicks) what its about, what makes it cool, why they should try it, where to go to try it, and how they can help make it better. Regards Blake On Monday, 9 December 2019, 07:15:33 pm ACDT, D Blakeley via Freecol-developers wrote: David:> This means that we should have our nightly builds available: https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol/releases Thank you so much David this is great news. Now that we're changing all these places to tell people to about the nightly releases it's good that they'll see a nice new one there. I've downloaded it and look forward to mucking around with it. Thank you again so much for applying the sticky and announcement flags to the welcome thread. Mike you're off the hook for that job lol! (BTW I'm Australian too :) )https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/2d0063a3bc/I've put in a nice HD picture there and in the future will likely add some more multimedia there to show off the game when people are passing through. I've really gotta get off my butt and finish editing that FreeCol HD tour video I made a year ago. I've got some holidays coming over January so my plan is to get it sorted then and use it to market the living s*** out of your project across all the Col & Civ forums and social media groups I'm at. Anyway I'll keep looking at making improvements to the Welcome/Info text to make sure people are going to the right places. Let me know if you you guys want anything changed. Although presumably admins can edit other peoples posts so you can change anything you want in it anyway. Winter: > As for the website itself, every time I look at it I find more broken >things.> There are many old news items with missing text, but luckily there >are overview pages> containing the missing content.> The way to fix this is to >search files for pages below news/ containing:> "You are not authorised to >view this resource. > You need to login. "> Then search all other pages for the page title, >especially any named> "news/page-*.html" or "news/*/page-*.html" and >copy-paste the missing> html+text from each item into each broken single >page.> Blake, could you help with this? I would be grateful, if you did. Yeah sure mate I'm happy to help with that although I'll need some more hand holding from you on getting started with this to make sure I'm looking in the right places and do it the right way (I'll email you separately about this). Also I'll be busy the next few days at work but can be back on deck to help on friday.Also David's asked for my help on "spitting out the website code from the main freecol git repo into the dedicated Github repo so that we can make faster website updates" here:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/42b0844f/#f215 However I'm pretty sure this one is beyond my limited talents being that I'm not a programmer and I only just started learning how Github works haha. So maybe if I can take most of this annoying broken
Re: [Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation issues
David:> This means that we should have our nightly builds available: https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol/releases Thank you so much David this is great news. Now that we're changing all these places to tell people to about the nightly releases it's good that they'll see a nice new one there. I've downloaded it and look forward to mucking around with it. Thank you again so much for applying the sticky and announcement flags to the welcome thread. Mike you're off the hook for that job lol! (BTW I'm Australian too :) )https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/2d0063a3bc/I've put in a nice HD picture there and in the future will likely add some more multimedia there to show off the game when people are passing through. I've really gotta get off my butt and finish editing that FreeCol HD tour video I made a year ago. I've got some holidays coming over January so my plan is to get it sorted then and use it to market the living s*** out of your project across all the Col & Civ forums and social media groups I'm at. Anyway I'll keep looking at making improvements to the Welcome/Info text to make sure people are going to the right places. Let me know if you you guys want anything changed. Although presumably admins can edit other peoples posts so you can change anything you want in it anyway. Winter: > As for the website itself, every time I look at it I find more broken >things.> There are many old news items with missing text, but luckily there >are overview pages> containing the missing content.> The way to fix this is to >search files for pages below news/ containing:> "You are not authorised to >view this resource. > You need to login. "> Then search all other pages for the page title, >especially any named> "news/page-*.html" or "news/*/page-*.html" and >copy-paste the missing> html+text from each item into each broken single >page.> Blake, could you help with this? I would be grateful, if you did. Yeah sure mate I'm happy to help with that although I'll need some more hand holding from you on getting started with this to make sure I'm looking in the right places and do it the right way (I'll email you separately about this). Also I'll be busy the next few days at work but can be back on deck to help on friday.Also David's asked for my help on "spitting out the website code from the main freecol git repo into the dedicated Github repo so that we can make faster website updates" here:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/42b0844f/#f215 However I'm pretty sure this one is beyond my limited talents being that I'm not a programmer and I only just started learning how Github works haha. So maybe if I can take most of this annoying broken links job away from you that'll free you up to help him with that problem? > The page navigation partially remaining from the former CMS is giving me >headaches. > I also found more broken and missing content and navigation links.> I'd love >to get rid of it and just have link lists to single news items with a >backlink,> but I don't have the time and it depends on the fix mentioned above >being done.> It might also be slightly worse from a user perspective to always >click an additional link? Yeah I haven't really complained about this as I'm >guessing one of you guys put this news system together but OMG are you making >life hard for yourselves. Or at least it looks that way. Eg when you add a new >news item do you have to then manually move other older news items across the >1-10 pages of news? Or is there some clever code setup that moves things >around for you? If not then OH MAN do we need to change things. Two ways to solve this.. 1 Adding a blog to your website using an existing 'pre-made' blog/news service (eg Wordpress) which then takes away all the news page list content, news categories, who posted the news (usernames), and link updating issues in the future as it does all that for you.https://www.shoutmeloud.com/how-to-install-wordpress-manually-web-hosting.htmlSo the only nasty time consuming job would be moving all of the old news content over to new blog service. However anyone can do that so I could do this for you guys. I've been using wordpress for years and I've just discovered they do allow backdating of new posts to previous months and years (which we'd need for all the old news). https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-back-date-your-wordpress-posts/It would just need one of you guys to set it up on your site and then 'let me at it' lol (I'd still need access to the old replaced news pages and I'd obviously be updating links in every news post while porting them over). OR 2 as Winter suggested we switch to simple 1 page with a list of news items with nothing but the titles and you click on them to see the news item (I'm sure they'll survive the horror of having an extra click step haha).Eg your counterparts in the opensource C/Red Alert remake
Re: [Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation issues
Winter:> thank you, Blake, for helping. > As written on GitHub, I used most of your changes for the website, > with a few tweaks: https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol/pull/49 Thanks Winter! I'm glad my efforts weren't a waste haha! I see you found a nice icon for the nightly release download too. Looks good! People will now being going to the right places to download and contribute. Just need to sort out the sourceforge info areas, however I'm guessing you're not an admin there meaning I need help from one of the other guys. > Double-checking and a few more suggestions are welcome. ;) Well I think I said this before but a videos section on your website would be really good. Whether its a separate section on the main menu or you rename screenshots to "Media" and have a new videos page as a subsection to it I don't know. I can gather all the videos out there and embed them, I just need a working page to put them into. Not game to try creating it myself as I have no idea how to mass implement a menu change to every page of a website on github lol. I don't normally have to worry about stuff like that as my website is still in the dark ages and uses frames so I only have to update one place when I make a main menu change lol. > What I still want to do is add the forgotten news item > https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/news/ > and some new news-item announcing the website update. > I kept these for last, cause of the many internal links, > which as you noticed need updating when adding more news. Would you believe that all these years I've been visiting the sourceforge page I hadn't noticed it had its own news section lol. However yes, fixing up the news situation on the main freecol.org website is important. Copying David's 2017 post over there would be a good start, then maybe my draft pre-12.0 post after it or some things you have in mind. BTW I forgot to mention this before but when you're updating the website news with the new stuff you're planning you might also want to do something about that download link on the current latest news post as it says 11.5 when its actually meant to be 11.6. Typo has sat that for over 4 years haha. Not much point in me doing it if you're about to update that whole area but personally I'd remove it or make it generic without a version number. Like I've said before there's just too many references to 11.6 all over the site which just adds so much extra work when you're updating the place. You guys must look at it and think "uuurrrggghhh" every time there's a release version update lol. > Fyi., text-only is still preferred for the mailing list, I think. Yup I know, that's why I sent url's to the images in my message instead of embedding them. Surely urls are fine though? as I see you're using them and its the only way to get people to places they need to see lol. Mike:> ATM there is a dodgy script (bin/website.sh) but I am not sure what > the permission required is. I know it works for me. > bin/website.sh does not handle a multiple commit backlog very well, > but I think I have worked around it, so the website should be updated. Thanks Mike, definitely worked as I can see my modified download page on the live site. :) > You might be surprised how low the bar is there. Currently anyone with > time is better qualified than I. Thanks, well since I can't help with the game dev I at least want to help with other stuff. :) Unfortunately I can't fix some of the sourceforge visitor info without you or one of the other admins help though sorry. Regards Blake ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation issues
Hi all, *FreeCol Website* As promised I spent a day figuring out the joys of Github (with some help from Winter) to try & help out and have made changes to a number of pages on the website. I removed version numbers from current status and main index home page to reduce places that 'age' the site and make the project look abandoned and also reduce website update work when new versions are released. But more importantly I've done a major update to downloads section that features the nightly releases plus critical links and removed some duplication issues. You can see it all here: https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol/pull/49 Before image:https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/26017445/70330473-8e97f480-188d-11ea-9c9b-931f07fd1c99.png After image:https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/26017445/70330526-abccc300-188d-11ea-9811-3af5ebc38815.png No doubt you guys will want to further alter and improve my suggestions and Winter mentioned something about pushing out his own changes this weekend (he's putting a nightly release link on the index home page which I hadn't got around to doing yet) but hopefully I've helped get the ball rolling. I believe Winter is also hoping to get more feedback on making changes to the website from you guys before he does anything more. I didn't mess with the website news area as that's a bit beyond me as I noticed its built out of lots of broken up html files I'm too scared to mess with lol. I think Winter asked in a earlier message for some text to make a news post out of so here's something below that I made up using some of the good stuff in the github info area. I've already sent him a copy but realised I prob should have to sent it to the whole team sorry, as no doubt you guys will want to modify this into something better! I saw in some of the old non-release posts news items were just called "Project Status Update" so I just went with that. - Project Status Update 06/12/2019 Apologies for the lack of recent news. Do not worry, the FreeCol project is still alive and well! If you would like to contribute to the up and coming FreeCol 0.12.0 release you can: - Download the latest nightly release and play the game. - Report any bugs you find to our Bug Tracker. - Suggest features or improvements in our Improvement Requests Tracker. - Discuss FreeCol on our Forums. - Contribute to our code base by Forking and submitting a Pull Request. See Creating a pull request from a fork. See our developer document for more details on contributing to the FreeCol project. - *FreeCol SourceForge Page* I have also created that welcome / information & links thread I've been talking about on the sourceforge forum here: https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/2d0063a3bc/ I used the project intro/description from the website and the contribute info from the github again. Presumably you guys will want to modify it to your liking, and possibly copy & paste it into your own post so its from an admin account. I STRONGLY recommend setting it to announcement to ensure any lurkers in any forum there see this critical info when they sign in. I also recommend the same text & links is put over on the FreeCol sourceforge main page as the description text there is not as good as the website one I used above. The critical links should really be there too just to be safe (although there may be a restriction on urls in that box, can't remember lol). Oh and if no one's played with admin forum sticky/announce controls there before then I attached a guide image in the thread here:https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/2d0063a3bc/2036/attachment/Admin.png *FreeCol IndieDB Page*I'm going to leave this for now and see what you guys wanna do with the above stuff and other updates etc. Once all that's sorted out I'm happy to port over as much as I can (without admin control) to that old abandoned IndieDB page. Hope all this helps. :) Regards Blake On Friday, 6 December 2019, 09:19:06 pm ACDT, D Blakeley wrote: > Hey all, > Yes, just been super busy with work stuff... I have a merge that broke the >nightly builds because I have separated the website from the game code into >different repos. The update to the website has some merge > conflicts that I >just have not had time to go through and fix to get the nightly merges back on >track. > I would like to add all of the FreeCol contributors to the project space on >Github and tried to do that so we could move our codebase over there. We can >also get the nightly builds back on track and put in a build to do > >auto-merges if we're still wanting to publish to SourceForge. > Let me know what you think, > David I think that sounds bloody wonderful David, but I'm not a member of the team haha! I do want to try and help you guys more though instead of just barking suggestions lol. I'm not a programmer nor do I have a
Re: [Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation issues
> Hey all, > Yes, just been super busy with work stuff... I have a merge that broke the >nightly builds because I have separated the website from the game code into >different repos. The update to the website has some merge > conflicts that I >just have not had time to go through and fix to get the nightly merges back on >track. > I would like to add all of the FreeCol contributors to the project space on >Github and tried to do that so we could move our codebase over there. We can >also get the nightly builds back on track and put in a build to do > >auto-merges if we're still wanting to publish to SourceForge. > Let me know what you think, > David I think that sounds bloody wonderful David, but I'm not a member of the team haha! I do want to try and help you guys more though instead of just barking suggestions lol. I'm not a programmer nor do I have a great understanding of github however I'm not to bad at html and now that I know your website is on github I can try and fork some of your website pages, make some of the changes I'm suggesting and then presumably I then hit a button to submit and then you guys choose whether to implement it or not? That would save Winter some work and time on the website. I could also make the 'announcement level' info/links thread for the sourceforge forums and then one of you can decide if you want to keep/change/remove stuff and then make it announcement thread for all to see. Once again that saves you guys work. Regards Blake ___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
Re: [Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation issues
> If Mike+David are ok with it being added THAT MUCH too late, I could add it > to the website > code in git soon? I'd also add the link to the front page. I didn't realise the website was on your github accessible to the current team, that's good. > I looked at the github repo and it seems he did a merge to the slim branch > there > on 2019-11-08, which should be the manual trigger for another nightly release, > according to the news item he wrote. > It just seems there were no files/release produced, which I would guess means > David would be needed to debug the travis stuff. I had wondered why it had been so long since the last nightly release (when I can see you guys have been still actively working on the project over the year), hope you guys can get it working again. > Still the january nightly is much more up to date than 0.11.6 and gets about >as many > weekly downloads. With a website update more people might find it. > Greetings, > wintertime Yup that's a big part of the main point I was pushing in my 'novel' lol. There's needs to be a link to the nightly releases in all high traffic areas such as website homepage, website news, website about/current status, website downloads, sourceforge homepage, and sourceforge forums (via pinned announcement thread). More prominent links to discussion forum and where to report bugs in all high traffic areas is also HIGHLY recommended too. No ones mentioned the Indiedb so I'm guessing the left over team don't know who was running it? the files in the downloads section don't have versions numbers but they are dated 2010 so you can bet they are super old! Anyone can add files to it thankfully so I could copy 0.11.6 there and then the latest nightly release too. But it would be better if the current team can regain full control of it. https://www.indiedb.com/games/freecol/downloads Regards Blake___ Freecol-developers mailing list Freecol-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freecol-developers
[Freecol-developers] Project looks abandoned due to presentation issues
Hi guys, Apologies if this this is a bit long winded but it’s a 1/3plea for change, 1/3 offer of help, and 1/3 resume/portfolio to justify saidhelp offer lol. The word count merely shows how much I care about your projecthaha! Lone Wolf suggested I post here instead of in the forums. Imade a thread a while back here... https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/42b0844f/ ... that discussed the presentation issues of your projectleading to misinformation and confusion. I like so many others thought yourproject was dead due to the freecol.org website not being touched in nearly 5years. The sourceforge page did little to change that view as it offers thesame old version for download and there is no mention of the nightly releasesanywhere. After checking for years I eventually got lucky and saw a threadwhere someone was asking if the project was dead and one of you replied with alink to the nightly releases. I keep seeing others having the same problems andin other communities I’ve seen people say FreeCol has been abandoned for years.Your indiedb page hasn’t been touched in 9 years while your main website and sourceforgefront page lack the crucial information on where to get latest dev builds and helpthe project. This means countless people (eg sourceforge says 500 just this week alone)are downloading an ancient version of your project, not knowing how to help,and thinking your project is abandoned & dead! Last year (when I finally did find the latest releases) Iplayed a huge game of Freecol, had so much fun and fell in love with your project.I also posted number of bugs and feature requests that Mike and others kindlylooked at. I made a nice HD video and took a whole number of sexy HDscreenshots showing off your game that I’ll be posting on the net soon as partof a huge Civ & Col tribute website and youtube series I’m working on. I’d love to help you guys however I’m not a programmer andmy art abilities are limited to simple pixel art stuff (eg I’m the creator ofStar Trek Doom, Quest for Glory IV 3D Hexen, Star Wars Civ2, Heroes of Might& Magic 2 Civ2, C Civ2, Red Alert Civ2, & more retro mods) so it wouldseem I’m not much help to you other than testing and maybe the occasional picturealteration. However there is another area I can properly help you with. Thereason I’ve barely finished any of my own mods is because I devote HUGE amountsof time to promoting other people’s fan game & mod projects relating to myfavourite games. I do this on my retro gaming website and youtube channelshere: http://blakessanctum.x10.mx/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeUnV5Eh4pPQUjeodp7ZZiA In some cases with projects I’m super passionate about I goa step further and directly help out with development feedback and doing theirpromotional work and community admin work (freeing the Devs up to concentrate on the developing instead of wasting time on marketing and customer service). For example I run the indiedb page,twitter, forum and facebook pages for the Starflight Remake project where Icreated detailed dev diaries of the devs work that are posted on the indiedbhomepage brining a lot of attention to the project: https://www.indiedb.com/games/starflight-the-remaking-of-a-legend I created all the promotional media (pics & vids),install guide and run the moddb page, sourceforge page and sourceforge forum forthe Babylon 5 Civ4 mod project (which sadly the dev has gone inactive on): https://sourceforge.net/projects/babylon5mod-for-civ4/ I’ve also helped out and created all the promotional media(pics & vids) for the Starflight Lost Colony and Starflight Heroes of Arthproject moddb/indiedb pages too. I am a moderator of several forums and facebook groups. Ialso created and run a number of facebook groups for gaming communities who’sforums are mostly long gone and needed a new home such as Starflight, Master ofMagic, and Freelancer which now have member bases expanding into the hundreds(& hopefully one day thousands haha). Realising that Colonization is in thesame boat I recently created a new Colonization facebook group too that I planto use as a platform to heavily promote FreeCol and other Colonization relatedgames and fan projects: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ColonizationGame/ If you’re willing to let me I would love to help yourproject similar to how I helped others and fix up your public image a bit. Ifyou make me an admin for the sourceforge page I can do some of this stuffmyself. Either way here are my suggestions below: *1 Sourceforge fixes* - Edit the front page to have similar critical links to what’s on your github page here: https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol#contributing As the first thing people should see are links tohomepage/last stable release/github test releases/forum/bug reporting/featurerequests/source files - Update the pictures and add a youtube video as the currentstuff is ancient. I can supply both
