Frequently Asked Questions

About FAQ

What is Globulation?

Globulation 2 is a Real-Time Strategy [RTS] game, which minimizes micro-management by automatically assigning tasks to units. The player chooses the number of units he wants to assign to various tasks, and the units will do their best to satisfy the requests. This allows the user to manage more units and focus on strategies rather than individual units' jobs.

It can be played by a single player, through your Local Area Network [LAN], or through the Internet thanks to Ysagoon Online Game [YOG], a meta-server. It also features Artificial Intelligence [AI] for playing with computer teams, a scripting language for versatile gameplay or tutorials and an integrated map editor.

What are the objectives of a game in Globulation?

The objective is to wipe out your opponent's population. This can be done by attacking and killing the enemy units, by converting them to your team if you can offer a greater comfort, or by starving them to death if you destroy their resources. To be stronger than your opponent you must first create a lot of new globules while taking care about them to survive. Then you must make the good strategic choices about what to upgrade and how to attack your opponent. Have a look at the PlayGuide for more details about how to play the game.

Is there a minimum age to play?

The game may not be playable by some because of its complexity, but no specific age is targeted. Despite of the war oriented objectives, the game is not meant to be violent and compared to other real-time strategy games, it is much more funny. In fact the units are abstract X-shaped globules and there are no violent images, sounds or texts - even when units get attacked or when they disappear.

Why play this game? Is it of any use if I play it?

• First of all playing a game is relaxing and a very good way to think about something else than your daily problems. Stop working and play Globulation, this reduces drastically your stress and make you live longer! :)
• Like most games, especially strategy games, playing enhances your ability to think strategically and to organize yourself.
• But of course since games are so cool, they are also addictive. Don't play more than a few hours a day, and take a break from time to time.
• TODO* Email subscription for Globulation news!

Install FAQ

Is Globulation free or restricted software?

Globulation 2 is Open Source and Free Software, licensed and distributed under the GNU GPL. You can also download it "for no money" from Ysagoon.

This is not just open source software and to redistribute, modify or sell any part of it or any derivative work, you must agree to the GNU GPL. Have a look at this page to understand why software should be free.

What version should I choose to play?

If you only play alone against the computer, you can choose the version you want. Usually the latest release is the most stable. If you want to play online on YOG, please check the download page for the latest official release, otherwise there might be unsuspected bugs. If you can't wait for an official release to see the latest changes, you can get the CVS version from the daily generated CVS snapshot. But keep in mind that the CVS version might be much less stable and is not meant to be used for online play.

How to get informed about new releases?

The game has not yet released a stable version, but the current alpha releases have already reached a quite stable state and actually work fine (the most bugs happen with multiplayer games). The latest releases can be found on the download page.

What are the minimum system requirements?

• 500mhz processor
• About 40MB of free disk space
• 32MB of RAM
• graphics card with openGL hardware acceleration activated

glob2 will still work without openGL by using SDL support, but any more than two players makes the game unplayable

On what platforms does Globulation run?

Globulation's source code is made to be cross-platform and work on Microsoft Windows [95, 98, ME, NT, 2K, XP], GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris and other Unixes. The main system used by most of the developers is GNU/Linux, thus new builds will always be released for this platform first. Then there needs to be contributors that successfully compiled it for the other platforms. So if Globulation's latest build isn't yet available for your system, wait some time or do the build yourself and send us a link to it (if you don't have a place to upload it, put it to ftp://ftp.ysagoon.com/build/).

For more details about how to install Globulation on the different platforms, have a look at the InstallGuide.

OK, I installed the game. It will not run at all. What can I do?

Now you can try to launch it typing "glob2" in the terminal in linux or unix. Or by typing "src/glob2" if you did not installed it (only compiled it)

Anyway, it will not always work, so it is suggested that you type "glob2 --help" and read about command lines arguments. Under Linux, try to use -G option if you have problems with dri and glx (OpenGL). You can also specify a resolution and a color depth.

What additional software libraries do I need?

This game only needs open source software to run. It can use openGL, but you can use MESA which is an open source implementation of openGL. You only need your operating system basic libraries. Here's a list of some software you need to install from your GNU/Linux distribution (if you recompile from the source code you may additionally need the development packages of these libraries):

• SDL: libsdl
• SDL_net: libsdl_net
• SDL_image: libsdl_image
• Freetype: libfreetype6
• Vorbis: libogg and libvorbis
• Speex: libspeex

If you run Microsoft Windows and downloaded one of the official release, then you will probably not need to worry about this (the required packages are included with the build).

Where do I get more maps and other stuff about Globulation?

There have been quite a lot of contributions posted on the anonymous FTP?. You can have an overview of the FTP content on the contribution page?.

The FTP that is installed on our server is quite buggy, but you will experience better results using ftp.ysagoon.com and NOT ftp://ysagoon.com

A better system will be set up soon. *TODO* Replace the FTP with a file upload manager!

I have downloaded other maps, how do I install them?

Unzip the downloaded maps and place them into the maps folder of your Globulation folder (~/.glob2/maps in Unix/Linux and glob2_install_folder/maps on Microsoft Windows).

Gaming & Online FAQ

I don't know how to play, where can I learn more about the game?

Since Globulation is a rather complex game and things sometimes work differently than on other games, is recommended that you read first the Players guide. Then to train yourself you can play a few games with/against computer controlled teams (Artificial Intelligence [AI]). Or if you prefer you can go directly on Ysagoon Online Gaming [YOG] to play with/against other human players, they might also be able to give you some advice if they play better than you.

What are all those Artificial Intelligence? Why are there so many of them?

We think that designing Artificial Intelligence [AI] is one of the funniest things in the world, so we made it easy (for anyone with good C++ background). Actually, there are two working AI in Globulation:

• AINumbi: simplest AI, but useful for testing and relaxing games. Phase-based, not very adaptative, not resource friendly.
• AICastor: good basic AI, useful for standard games. Funny vs 3 AINumbis?. Context-based, adaptative, resource friendly.

There are two AI that do nothing:

• AINull: designed not to do anything, for scripted maps.
• AIToubib: AI that jdm works on, doesn't do anything yet.

You might also use the AI players for online games, you can make fun games by playing all human players against the AI (if human players ally together, the AI players will automatically do the same). This is especially useful if a good player and a beginner want to play together but not against each other. This is also a good way to learn the game by having fun if you are a beginner.

How do I play online?

You must connect to a server, right now there is only one: the Ysagoon Online Gaming [YOG] server. If you want to add your own server, contact the Ysagoon team to see if the game is ready for multiple servers. And if you are several players on your Local Area Network [LAN], you can always play against them. It is advised that you use the same version of the game as those you will play with.

What if I don't have Internet access?

You can still play with/against computer controlled teams (Artificial Intelligence [AI]). Or if you are several players on your Local Area Network [LAN], you can play against them.

Are there any rules when playing online?

Play fair, do not cheat. And be nice with the other players, no insults or such.

People always convert my units but I never convert theirs, why?

Unit conversion works like this: When they are hungry, the units goes to the inn it sees (not under fog of war) that has the largest set of fruits (bigger diversity), then between all the inns with the same diversity of fruits it chooses the nearest and ignores full ones. This rule is true whether the concerned inn belongs to you or to your opponent, so if the chosen inn is enemy your unit is converted. You must understand that this is all about the diversity of available fruits in an inn and the visibility of that inn.

So first of all, if you want to avoid that your units get converted, you need a lot of fruits of different kind in each of your inns. But workers only bring fruits to the inns they work for if the fruit trees are in active vision, not under fog of war (a unit or a building must be just beside it). The best way to achieve this is to build a defense tower next to the trees and to do this for several different trees.

Then, if you want to convert enemy units in addition of having more different fruits in your inns than your opponent, you need to make sure that his units see your inns. The best (and the only realistic) way to make this happen is to go to the alliance screen, and click on the boxes titled 'fV' next to your opponents' names. That will show all your inns to the selected enemies. Note that once you have done that, you will start converting the hungry enemy units, (if you have enough different fruits), but your enemies will also be able to see your inns.

I see voices when connected to YOG, who are they?

Don't be afraid, your computer isn't haunted yet! These voices come from the IRC #glob2 channel on irc.freenode.net, you see everything that is said in that channel. You can talk to them by simply typing something and hitting enter.

There's nobody online, how do I find players for a multiplayer game?

There are not yet so many players in this game yet and when connecting to the Ysagoon Online Gaming [YOG] server there's most of the time nobody. But there's a trick: when connecting to the YOG server, the game also connects you to the IRC #glob2 channel on irc.freenode.net where always several people are connected. You can chat with them just as you would chat with another person inside of YOG. This is very useful when there is nobody connected to YOG, so you can ask the people on the IRC if they are interested to play with you. And vice versa, you can join the #glob2 IRC channel if you want to wait for people to connect to YOG but don't want to keep the game running all the time.

Please be patient with the people on the IRC, because most of them are connected on it the whole day and just keep running IRC in background while doing other stuff. They check from time to time the IRC's activity, but it may take something like 10 minutes before someone answers your "hello".

I'm behind a NAT and I can't join or start games, what can I do?

Although glob2 has a unique NAT'o'matic technology to transparently reconfigure NAT, some are paranoid and still do not redirect ports. Try to manually redirect UDP ports 7007 to 7017 to your internal IP. UDP port 7486 is needed to connect to YOG meta server, and TCP port 6667 to connect to the irc chat.

I'm downloading my latest beloved movie using my favorite p2p, but when I play glob2, it is very slow. Can you fix this? I don't want to stop downloading the movie!

Sorry, but you will have to stop your p2p. Glob2 is based on synchronous UDP packet transmission. Each time a packet gets lost or is corrupted, it has to be re-transfered and all players are stalled. p2p software tend to transmit a lot of data which prevent exchange of glob2's packets. Alternatively, you can buy a second Internet connection if you really don't want to stop your p2p ;-)

Technical FAQ

What is the maximal size for maps?

In Globulation, the maximum map is 512x512, this is quite big. Maybe still not enough for 32 players, but like the number of players, this can be improved easily. However until now there were no games yet played with so many players, the community still has to grow.

How many players does Globulation support?

Most proprietary games impose a limit of 6 or 8 players in a game; Well, this game has a higher limit of 32. But 16 players can be configured right now in the offline game. This limit can easily be modified if needed in the future.

Why does Globulation use it's own translation system and not gettext?

Even if gettext is "standard" in the free world and has good editors, we don't use it for the following reasons:

• gettext is one more external lib, and is not default on other platforms then free Unixes.
• gettext works by modifying the source code, which is bad.
• gettext makes that one more tool is required on any computer where one wants to develop Globulation.

The design philosophy of Globulation is to use only mandatory external libs, and try to have simple, clean and easily maintainable tools to do the job. It is a similar question, why we created libgag and didn't use GTK/QT/[add your own toolkit there]. Furthermore, not everyone is using unixes, with the actual system, everyone can update a translation with a simple text editor and without recompilation. Even the Windows end-user can update the translations, which is good.

Development FAQ

What is Globulation's development stage?

The game is still in alpha development. This means that it may still change a lot and that newer versions may not be compatible with older ones, so please check the download page for the latest official release if you play online. Version 1.0 is coming closer now, so there should be fewer (if any) gameplay changes and more bug fixes.

The right way to submit bug reports.

If you want to submit bug reports, you nead to visit the bug-tracking system on savannah. Now you have two choices:

• Upload all the log files to savannah
• If your files are very big, upload them to the ftp, and only post a link to them in your bug report. See Links about how to use the ftp.

We sugest that you include the folowing files:

• If you executed glob2 from the console, please include the last lines that were printed on the screen. (as many as you can)
• Then, (in linux/unix, in windows go to your glob2 directory) go to your home directory into =~/.glob2/src=, and delete all =*.log~= files; Now you have files named =your_login=*.log Please keep only files that are dated from "today" with the login you used today, when the crash occurred . You can now compress your log folder and sent it into the rapport
• IT IS RECOMMENDED that if there is a network crash, all players submit the logs and the messages in the console, if not, the debugging is A LOT more difficult.

How can I help the development team or start a new game based on this one?

• The CommunityDocumentationEn? has links to many useful guides explaining how to help. And take a look at the links related to Globulation2 in order to see how you can access the whole project and interact with the community.
• If you do little improvements or contributions, just connect to the anonymous FTP, where you have write access to upload anything you did, then anounce it on the forum or on the developer mailing list.
• If you want to dramatically change the game, you can speak about this on IRC or on the developer mailing list.
• You are, of course, free to start a new project based on Globulation2, but try to get involved to the community first. It is bad to start too many projects based on the same alpha-stage code, because there might be a lot of work that is done twice. And it is also evident that all derivate work must also be released as free and open source software, under the GNU GPL.

Where are the developers located?

   * The initial members are all located in Lausanne, Switzerland: nct(programming), nuage (programming), slann (gfx), rama (gfx), barock (additional programming), marvelous (additional programming), diz (web).
   * A pool was done on July 2004. At that time a few people from USA, Canada and France were involved too.
   * But now, we hope people from all around the world will join as the project gets bigger. 

Miscellaneous FAQ

Why is everything in English?

Globulation's official language is English because everyone understands English better than any other language. Despite this, the game is translated in 12 languages or more - you can translate it to your own language easily too (have a look at the TranslationGuide). Translating the documentation is not considered as a priority for now, not even a good thing since the documentation is not finished yet and may still change a lot.

I still have a lot of questions, where can I find answers to them?

   * The project has: a forum, two IRC rooms, a development mailing list, and many other resources. See Links for more details.