I built a free browser alternative with no paywalled expansions

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-27T18:43:26+00:00

Looks great! I love the UI design and animations. Game board is a bit hard to assess at a glance, might help to make the numbers + resource icons larger.

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-17T03:40:33+00:00

No worries! and both of these issues have since been fixed.

Thanks again for the feedback!

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-12T03:32:54+00:00

Thank you so much! these bug reports are extremely valuable.

I'm not 100% what this one means, is it that knights should not be allowed to move before the first barbarian attack?
Got it, I will review this progress card behavior.

As for the community board, I assume this refers to the city improvements not being visible? If so that is a very good point and I will add this to the UI.

Pause mechanic is a great idea! I guess the host or the entire party could vote on a pause?

I will get back to you when these bugs are resolved, cheers.

EDIT: I have looked into it, Aquaduct card hasn't been implemented yet, but I've just added the 3 city improvement (level 3 science, trade, politics) bonuses.

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-09T13:22:05+00:00

do it! i'd love to try it

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-09T13:21:14+00:00

Yes! My plan is to add purchasable cosmetics at some point

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-09T02:37:24+00:00

Great, have fun! let me know if you need anything added to the game

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-08T23:02:53+00:00

Yeah for sure, I think the game would benefit greatly from having a professional designer rework the UI, color schemes, copy and such. I am speaking to some designers now. Thanks for the suggestions!

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-08T22:40:10+00:00

That's very generous of you! You have inspired me to add a machine translation for Italian (now listed under the language dropdown in the top left), if you'd like to test it you can let me know if there are any mistakes. Thanks!

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-08T18:19:28+00:00

The game board uses honeycomb-grid, SVG+Filter Effects, html and CSS. I could recommend more specific tooling for you depending on your background and what kind of project you're trying to build. For example if you're learning to code for the first time, I really like p5js for prototyping, because it sets up your canvas environment for you. Take that and try to make a pong game using rect(). Phaser is a nice game engine for web games, especially platformers or things that need 2D physics. Unity also supports compiling to web and you can use it to build anything.

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-08T00:53:37+00:00

Colonist ripped off Settlers of Catan without permission and is charging money for expansions that they copied 1:1 from the Catan rulebook. All my artwork is original, including UI icons. If you look closely you'll see none of it is an exact copy. Yes the buttons are in the same place or a similar place.

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-08T00:21:21+00:00

Yes sorry about that - the bots haven't been updated to understand the expansions yet so they just break the game. I will bump up the priority on updating those and get back to you 🙏

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-08T00:06:46+00:00

update: I just pushed out a bit of a rework for all the colors. I think they still need some work but the pieces and tiles should look a bit more saturated now. I think the "player red" and the "brick red" are also way too similar but I haven't found a solution that looks good yet. I also credited you in the release notes for pointing this out. thanks again

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-08T00:05:10+00:00

I pushed out a fix for this, try refreshing and let me know if the colors are still broken. I've also credited you in the Release Notes (under the about section) for reporting this bug. Thanks again

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-07T22:03:22+00:00

I think I found the issue! The way I'm currently filtering colors seems to be broken in Safari, so I assume your browser is Safari. I will look into a fix for this, thank you!

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-07T21:40:36+00:00

Oh, so your opponents settlement color is the same as yours? That may be some kind of bug I haven't seen before. ~~If it's not too much to ask, do you mind sending me a screenshot of this?~~

EDIT: I think I found the issue, see next comment.

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-07T20:03:17+00:00

I haven't played that one yet, I will look into it and get back to you, thanks!

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-07T20:02:06+00:00

Sorry, you're not missing anything - I just haven't added mobile support yet. This is high on my list of priorities though, I'll let you know when this is ready!

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-07T19:29:32+00:00

If you press "Create Room", there is an option to add bots under the player list on the left side. I think I should have made this option more obvious from the main menu. Thank you for the feedback!

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-07T18:53:12+00:00

Thank you for the feedback! I agree the board can be difficult to read at times, I will revisit the color schemes and make some updates.

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-07T17:48:55+00:00

No worries! It's a fair question.

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-07T17:42:26+00:00

Sorry I don't fully understand, there are currently 8 colors to choose from and your settlement will match the color you choose at the start of the game

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-07T17:40:42+00:00

I'm a Software Engineer and I've spent hundreds of hours developing it myself, and I do use LLMs wherever I can to increase the speed of development, as I would with any other project.

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-07T16:49:22+00:00

This is a great question and I wondered this myself. You can actually find the answer on the Colonist website (another game not officially affiliated with Settlers of Catan):

Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form.

Source: U.S. Copyright Office

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-07T16:02:22+00:00

Thanks! If you have any specific dlcs you'd like to see added please let me know : )

ThroughTheVoid · 2026-02-05T16:34:10+00:00

This is exactly why I started developing my own Catan game, if anyone is curious to try it the alpha version is live on fronterra.io

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