OpenCiv1 – open-source rewrite of Civ1

124 pointsposted 12 hours ago
by caminanteblanco
(github.com)

34 Comments

1313ed01

8 hours ago

> The game is still very popular and easy to play. But the obsoletness of DOS

Nothing obsolete about DOS when it comes to playing 2D games. Thanks to DOSBox and other emulators (FreeDOS is also not bad though) it is a fantastic OS (or virtual machine). DOS as a platform for (2D) games has never been better than it is today, on modern hardware running DOSBox.

AtlasBarfed

7 hours ago

There is a win 3.1 port for wider screens that do box will run

yitchelle

7 hours ago

While not exactly the same, there is also https://www.freeciv.org/

culi

an hour ago

- civ 1 --> OpenCiv1

- civ 2 --> FreeCiv

- civ 3 --> OpenCiv3

- civ 4 --> ???

- civ 5 --> UnCiv

ixv0

6 hours ago

Also worth mentioning is C-evo, even if it's not being developed further afaik

http://c-evo.org/

BirAdam

6 hours ago

This is a great idea. I do play Civ1 on my XT class machine (NEC V20 @ 10MHz, 1MB RAM, 64MB IDE, 256K Trident VGA, NE2000, Adlib) but the turn times are horrendous as this is a 1991 game being run on a 1982 CPU. Realistically, most people would have been playing on either a 286 or 386. Having the game available on modern hardware, I imagine it’d be far more enjoyable. I’ll give it a go.

mmastrac

8 hours ago

This is a cool project, but the author should note that they _are_ likely creating a derivative version of Civ1 here. It might look somewhat different, but that's clearly just 16-bit (?) intel opcodes in a slightly spicier form.

It's very unlikely this sort of approach will end up with a copyright-free codebase, though it might be useful as a source for a cleanroom approach. The author shouldn't be discouraged -- lots of other recompilation efforts work this was as well, but it's a muddy place to be.

lstodd

3 hours ago

It is very likely that no one cares if anyone cares about copyright.

If someone do in fact care, I'm sure someone else can organize an online donation for them tissues those who care can cry into.

Otherwise please accept that Civ I is effectively public domain.

tigerlily

9 hours ago

> The game logic is Based on original DOS Civilization 1 game version 475.05 disassembly.

Love more details on how this was done and the translation to human-readable code.

indy

9 hours ago

Since this requires some files from the original Civilization how do people obtain legal copies of the game? It's not available on Steam or GOG

(Or am I being hopelessly naïve by asking such a question?)

chocochunks

8 hours ago

You go on eBay or similar site and you pay for a used copy on floppy or CD-ROM. Then using the appropriate tool you back those files up and use them for OpenCiv 1. Cheap, no. Convenient, no. But legal.

If you're lucky you stumble across it in a thrift store that wasn't paying particular attention and assumed it was a puzzle or a board game.

hdgvhicv

8 hours ago

I still have the floppies and manual in a box in the attic. Bit of a hoarder in that way I’m afraid.

Question then is do I need to find a floppy drive to obtain the files or can I get them elsewhere.

Of course who knows if the floppy’s still work. I remember having problems with my Star Trek 25th anniversary floppies around 1996ish, and today it’s 30 years later.

caminanteblanco

7 hours ago

I mean from a legal perspective, original media is the only recourse. But if we expand the options we're willing to avail ourselves of, there's a lot of high quality backups online.

So far as I know, Take-Two Interactive is extremely lenient, especially since they don't offer any way to purchase Civ1 or 2

j16sdiz

5 hours ago

Owning the original game does not automatically grant you right to make or use in derivative works.

wtallis

2 hours ago

Not exactly, but under US copyright law there is a limitation of exclusive rights that grants the owner of a copy the right to make an adaptation provided "that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner". Unfortunately, the law doesn't specify what "adaptation" means, and I'm not sure the concept of an "essential step" stretches to cover modifying your program to run on a new OS decades after its original host platform has gone extinct.

Regardless, making such a modification for personal use only would be hard for a copyright owner to win a lawsuit over even if they could find out about it. But publicly distributing your derivative work like this is definitely violating the original's copyrights.

Tarks

6 hours ago

Is there anything similar for Civ IV? So many top tier mods break after a while due to the same memory issues.

danielparsons

7 hours ago

I love how obsessed HN is with civilization. I put over 1000 hours into Civ 5 alone and was proud to beat diety (and then consistently beat diety). It's funny how many founders are big on civ. Zuck and Elon both apparently spent a lot of time during college on the series.

haolez

7 hours ago

Can anyone give some hints on what made Civ 1 special compared to other classic entries in the franchise? Despite the nostalgia factor, of course.

caminanteblanco

7 hours ago

In my opinion, Civ1 was fundamentally simpler than any other Civ game. It is like the difference between playing DOOM and Halo. Civ 1 has very few units, very few civ types, very few anything really. That means that it is easy to keep the whole game in your head at once. For me, its a totally different experience.

Macha

7 hours ago

Honestly it feels to me that Civ1 - Civ2 is the most direct upgrade in the series. Civ 2 was mostly just a better civ 1. From civ4 onwards, the series was a lot more willing to shake things up in its gameplay.

vintermann

an hour ago

Civ 2 was without doubt a much uglier civ 1, though. Isometric graphics in win 3.11 wasn't a good bet.

Civ 1 had good pixel art (look at those mountains! Not to mention the intro), good colors (and more of them!) and clean iconography. For me the look was part of the magic, so I never got into Civ 2.

Narishma

6 hours ago

Civ 3 already started to shake things up.

ixv0

6 hours ago

"OpenCiv1 uses .NET 8 and Avalonia UI framework" So.... way bigger filesize than the original game + dosbox running on a html server?

Nice exercise though, but I'll stick to the original.

By the way CivNet (civ1 + networking for Win 3.11) runs perfectly in Wine

polski-g

6 hours ago

We got civ 2, civ 3, and civ 1.

But when will we get the greatest civ ever, civ 4?

dvh

8 hours ago

Time to pimp up my throne room

ixv0

6 hours ago

In Civ 1 you bring ameliorations to your palace, not throne room. Please hand in your geek card.