FORKSERF DEVELOPMENT IS ON HOLD UNTIL FALL/WINTER 2023

Feb15 2023 - New Stable Minor Release 0.6.2

in mine popup, mine efficiency percentage replaced with histogram showing actual mining results over time

'i' key cycles through player's mines

UI fixes related to zooming, notifications, new-game popups

restored ability to re-target current building popup, was broken in v0.6.x

Older News / Changelog

Download Links

Pre-compiled binaries here

Overview

Forkserf is an open-source improved-clone of the original Settlers (EU) / Serf City (US) game by Blue Byte software. Forkserf was forked in 2020 from FreeSerf by JonLS and wicked_digger. It is written in C/C++ and published under GPL3+ license.

Why play Forkserf?

Forkserf was created to improve the "single-player versus AI in random games" aspect of the original game. This is done by completely rewriting a new AI from scratch, fixing bugs, and addition of optional features to make the game more balanced and interesting.

Why not play Forkserf?

If you are looking for an authentic reproduction of the original game AI, single-player Missions, and multiplayer(!), I suggest you try nicymike's Serflings. Or, find the original game and run it in DosBox, it works perfectly - though Serflings is smoother. I don't know how to run the orginal Amiga version, though. Or, try one of the official (UbiSoft?) remakes though I have read they are worse than the original game because they introduce bugs, limit features, change some game logic? not sure

Forkserf Requires the Original Game Content Files

For copyright reasons, the original DOS and Amiga game data cannot be included in this distribution and so you must provide your own copy. These can be found in the original game install directories, and on various abandonware sites.

Improvements over FreeSerf & original Serf City / Settlers game

advanced AI for enemy players (FreeSerf has no AI at all! and the original game AI was awful)
fixes for numerous bugs, including game-breaking bugs
custom map generator, allowing highly varied maps
missing ambient sounds added (bird sounds, water, wind)
can adjust game speed up to 40x (inherited from FreeSerf)
uses both Amiga and DOS sounds & music if available
debugging tools, including overlays for highlighting AI logic and serf status

Optional Internal Game Changes to Improve Playability

Optional New Features

Known Limitations

Update - missions disabled until fixed ~~single player Missions from original game are included but not playtested~~, I only play random games
MacOS builds will eventually be provided but not playtested, I don't have a Mac
Windows8/10/11+ builds provided but not playtested, I only have Windows7
No multiplayer, and no immediate plans for multiplayer
the original game Character personalities are not yet implemented, all AI players use same improved AI. Personalities will be added soon
combat playtesting and AI combat logic is primitive. It works fine but I haven't paid as much attention to it as the economy part
occasional crash bugs, but it is quite stable for me. Crash bugs are top priority to fix. I suggest using AutoSave feature just in case
the AI does not use the Geologist Estimates for castle placement, this has always felt like cheating to me and I do not use it myself. At some point I may add this as a selectable feature
I believe the Amiga terrain graphics are messed up. I assumed this is how they always looked as I had never played the Amiga original. This isn't something I can fix, it is untouched from Freeserf

Future Plans and Possibilities

implement AI Character personalities, so they behave uniquely. At the very least have aggressive, defensive, preferences for food types

OPTIONAL overhauled pig farming, with pannage (i.e. pig foraging) where pigs eat acorns from nearby oak trees in autumn instead of being fed grain

OPTIONAL snow and rain effects. It is easy to make snow on the ground by switching the tiles to Tundra, but buildings need snow and falling snow weather effects would be nice, same with rain

OPTIONAL knight promotion and combat overhaul,. Intent is to make rank matter more and gold stored matter less, and maybe tie knight promotion to gold/meat availability

OPTIONAL random events & special encounters, like Fallout, CrusaderKings

OPTIONAL overhauled serf reproduction logic, possibly including female serfs, babies, etc.

OPTIONAL churches, and serf happiness/morale

in-game advisors, like old civ games had

Contributing

If you would like to participate in the project, contact me on discord (as tlongstretch), or on github (as tlongstretch), or email tlongstretch5151@gmail.com. Also, I can usually be found squatting in the Serflings discord channel, I don't have a Forkserf channel because as far as I know I'm the only one playing it

Help with Build Issues?

I am not really much of a developer, I am a linux sysadmin by trade. I have only limited knowledge of CMake, Visual Studio, vcpkg, SDL2, etc. I will help if I can but don't expect much

What about FreeSerf?

I am hoping that jonls and wdigger will resume work on their project one day. I still hear from wdigger occasionally but jonls seems to be long gone. I have been submitting all fixes for proven bugs I find in FreeSerf to their project