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Comment by roschdal | Hacker News Reader

Hi everyone! I'm the developer of the Freeciv-web WebGL version. I'm very interested in hearing your feedback on this version, so I can improve it. I'm always interested in hearing what you think is the most important thing to improve in the game. (I'm so happy my side-project has reached the frontpage of HN again :)

It is using the Three.js 3D engine. Currently it works nicely on modern computers and laptops with decent 3D hardware, and there could be some issues on some mobile devices. For example, old iPhone devices have very poor 3D hardware.

This is an open source project, so we're always looking for developers to help improve the game: https://github.com/freeciv/freeciv-web/

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I just fired it up on my VR machine, frame was good for short period I played it. Awesome work in converting it to 3D! Loved the water.

I did find the movement to be abrupt. So much so that I found it disconcerting to play. I would suggest a quick transition from one location to another for the units (maybe optional).

Does the 3D have animations on the models?

I don't know if this is a WebGL issue, a Mac issue, a Firefox issue (I use NoScript, but I've allowed scripts for the site and the rest of the game seems to work fine), or what, but I'm having absolutely no success in getting a middle click to do anything in the WebGL version of the game (like, say, show tile info). My mouse's middle click works fine in the 2D web version, but doesn't work here (nor does clicking right and left together). (Meanwhile, I have no idea what I'd do to get middle click info if I were just using the touchpad. Combining with cmd, ctrl, option, shift, etc. doesn't seem to do anything, apart from ctrl-click emulating a right click.) Am I the only one with this issue? Any thoughts on what might be going wrong?

If you have a recent enough mac you can make a two finger click he right click and then, with better touch tool, make a three finger click he middle click.

I tried this on a "netbook-like" HP laptop with 11" 1360x768 screen that I bought for $499 last year. The keyboard is compact so it doesn't have a numeric pad, not even with some sort of "Fn" shift. The number key directions didn't work. Arrow keys work but that fact is not in the manual, and there is no diagonal keys if you don't have 1,3,7,9.

On the other hand, the graphics worked fine. The blue line for the feedback part of the "Go" command was ugly. The laptop has no discre(et|te) graphics, just what comes in the mobile Pentium it runs on. So the warning about compatibility might be overly strong.

The vertical aspect of the mountains is tricky. It adds an unnecessary challenge to lining up a worker with a mine or what have you.

There are clearly some aspects that apply to both the WebGL and HTML5 versions, so I have tried to focus on the WebGL side in these remarks.

Awesome! Thanks for the hard work :)

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