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Rajko Horvat edited this page Feb 3, 2024 · 35 revisions

Welcome to the OpenCiv1 Wiki!

About OpenCiv1

This is a Open source rewrite of the original Civilization game designed by Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley in year 1991.

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

The news, discussions about this project and releases are published regularly on Civilization Fanatics Forum page

Copyright considerations

The available code is not a full working copy of the game. To run OpenCiv1 you are legally required to own your own copy of the Civilization DOS game. This is the reason that not a single file from the original game is included in this GitHub repository as they are copyrighted.

The part of the game assembly code is emulated with Virtual CPU, and the rest of the code has been rewritten from scratch until all of the code is replaced with new copyright free code. The other resources (like graphics, music and text) will also be completely replaced with copyright free resources before publishing the complete game.

Current status

The game is in working state, but you have to legally own the Original game (the .txt, .pic and .pal files have to be present).
The Debug mode can be toggled by pressing Alt + D Key.

Project milestones

The goal is to completely rewrite the code (first stage), fix the bugs and port the code to a modern platform (second stage).

Milestones for a first stage

  • Reaching the initial playability of the game (passed),
  • Rewrite of the game code, functionalities and features (in progress...),
  • Archive the game code.

Milestones for a second stage

What will change in the new version:

  • Porting to HTML5 platform (Web interface, online gaming),
  • Graphics (the new graphics will be as close as possible to the spirit of the original version),
  • Music/Sounds (the new music/sounds will be as close as possible to the spirit of the original version),
  • Some text where appropriate,
  • Design (Map zoom functionality, some small updates, also some dialogs will be slightly different),
  • Multilanguage capability,
  • Multiplayer capability,
  • Cheat capability,
  • Plugin capability (can override rules, graphics and music/sounds).

What will stay the same:

  • Original game rules and logic (except for established bugs),
  • Overall look and feel of the original game.

Help needed

All contributions are welcome.

For this stage of code rewrite, the programming skills needed are:

  • Moderate knowledge of assembly language,
  • Knowledge of C# language.

Introduction to the code rewriting for contributors