Battle for Wesnoth
From Libregamewiki
| Battle for Wesnoth | |
|---|---|
 Battle for Wesnoth | |
| Genres | TBS, Online |
| Developer | Wesnoth team |
| Code license | GPL |
| Media license | GPL |
| Latest release | 1.4.5(Stable), 1.5.5(unstable) |
| Release date | October 6th, 2008(stable), September 10th, 2008(unstable) |
| Languages | C++, Python, WML |
| Library | SDL |
Battle for Wesnoth, or simply Wesnoth, is a fantasy themed 2D turn-based strategy game started by David White in June 2003. The game is coded in C++ and licensed, including the media, under the GPL.[1]
The newest stable release of the game is version 1.4.5 released on September 8th, 2008.[2]The release of 1.4 marked the end of the 1.3 unstable development branch. The latest unstable release is version 1.5.5 released on October 6th, 2008. [3]
Contents |
[edit] Gameplay
The game features different races: Dwarves, Elves, Undead, Humans, Orcs and Dragons (Drakes). Each race has their own unique characteristics along with their own weaknesses and strengths.
The game maps are structured as hex grids. The defensive strength of a unit is affected by its race and the terrain it stands on. For example, Elves have a very strong defense value in the forest while they are extremely vulnerable in water.
It also has some RPG elements. Individual units can gain experience in battles. When they reach a certain amount, they level up and become stronger. With the recall option(Only available in campaigns), it becomes possible to call back veteran units from earlier levels if they didn't die in combat.
The night and day cycle also affects the races' power. For example, Orcs are best at night, Humans at day. This is known as the alignement of a unit.
There are single-player campaigns as well as various multiplayer game modes.
[edit] Factions and Eras
A faction is a group of unit types a player can recruit. Players select their faction before starting the game. There is also the possibility to select a "Random" faction, which means that a random faction will be selected for this player. The advantage of playing with a random faction is that with fog of war, the opponent does not know the player's faction until their armies first meet.
An era is a group of factions balanced against each other. An Era is selected before starting the game, and players can choose only factions from this era. The game contains three eras with the download: Default, Age of Heroes, and Great War. The first two eras contain six factions: Loyalists, Rebels, Northerners, Undead, Knalgans, and Drakes; the difference is that Default era allows recruiting only low-level units, where as Age of Heroes allows also recruiting higher-level units. The Great War era contains only two factions: Alliance of Light, and Alliance of Darkness.
[edit] Age of Heroes
- Loyalists: They are mostly the Humans of the Wesnoth kingdom; plus some Mermen, and (in Age of Heroes) Ogres.
- Rebels: They are mostly the forest Elves; plus Human mages, Woses, and some Mermen.
- Northerners: Trolls, Orcs, Goblins, and Nagas.
- Undead: Skeletons and other undead, as well as Human dark adepts.
- Knalgans: Dwarves, Human outlaws, and Gryphon riders.
- Drakes: Drakes and Saurians.
[edit] Great War
- Alliance of Light: Loyalists + Rebels + some Knalgans. (Available only in Great War era.)
- Alliance of Darkness: Undead + Northerners + some Knalgans. (Available only in Great War era.)
Players sometimes refer to factions as "races", which is incorrect, because there are units of multiple races in one faction (such as Elves, Humans, and Woses in Rebels faction), and the units of Human race appear in many factions.
In single-player mode, each campaign can specify a different set of recruitable units. This set can change during campaign, reflecting the campaign plot. Although these sets can be similar to multiplayer factions, they do not depend on them.
It is possible to create user-defined factions and eras, or download them as "Add-ons" from the campaign server.
[edit] Mods
Wesnoth has extensive support for mods. All contents for the game are stored as .cfg files, which are written in WML, or WesnothMarkupLanguage. This allows any user to edit units, campaigns, races, attributes, savefiles, user interface layout or maps.[4] It also allows a user to create new content, which could eventually change every aspect of the game. Also, there is a Wesnoth editor that allows users to create new maps.
[edit] Campaigns
There are six campaigns that are included with the official distribution of the game. These are:
- A Tale of Two Brothers: A beginner campaign about a knight who attempts to rescue his brother from an evil mage.
- The South Guard:
- Heir to the Throne: The first and earliest campaign as well as the most developed and popular in Battle for Wesnoth. It is about a supposed heir to the throne of Wesnoth, Konrad, against the evil queen of Wesnoth, Asheviere.
- The Rise of Wesnoth: This campaign features Prince Haldric, the first king and founder of Wesnoth.
- The Eastern Invasion: A knight of the Wesnoth kingdom, Gweddry, attempts to save Wesnoth from the undead invasion.
- Under the Burning Suns: This campaign is set in the far distant future of Wesnoth when there are two stars in the sky. The Elves in the campaign adapted to the deserts. They are different from other Elves normally found in the game.
Additional campaigns can be downloaded using the game menu.
In the development release (1.3.x), then they also have:
- Son of a Black Eye: The son of a famous orcish chief is attacked by Elves, Dwarves, Undead, and Humans. He must unite all the orcish tribes ot defeat them.
- An Orcish Incursion:
- The Hammer of Thursagan:
[edit] Development and design
The game design follows the principle of KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid).[5]
The design is influenced by two Sega Genesis games, Master of Monsters and Warsong. David White took some of their ideas and added his own. After the game design was formulated, he then started writing Wesnoth.[6]
The developer community of Wesnoth also attracts a few famous developers from the general Free software and Open Source community such as Open Source Initiative co-founder Eric S. Raymond.[7]
The project was also fortunate enough to be a mentor organization in Google’s Summer of code program. It seems that the new additions to the Wesnoth codebase include an API for programming smarter and pluggable AIs and a revamped map editor.[8]
Wesnoth has two versions out at any time: development and stable. Development is a branch that boasts the latest features and graphical updates while stable is the maintenance release, thus getting only bug fixes and other minor enhancements. Currently, 1.5.x is the development series and 1.4.x is the stable series.
Wesnoth also has one of the most active and largest development teams in the Free gaming community. Ohloh recorded the Wesnoth team as one of the largest in the world, in the top 2% of all teams on Ohloh.[9] CIA.vc recorded 8098 commits and a commit every hour on average since it started recording 1.24 years ago as of September 9, 2007.[10]
[edit] Release history
The Wesnoth team only releases a new version of the game when it is done. As a result, the frequency of releases tends to vary over the years. 2004 is noted as the most productive year in term of how many releases.
The earliest version we documented so far is version 2.1, but the earliest date we know is version 0.3.4 which was released on August 15, 2003. This version was announced on the former homepage of Wesnoth at whitewine.net.[11]
See Battle for Wesnoth release history.
[edit] Contributors
Other than David White himself, others also play significant role in the development of the game. However, the number of contributors to the project are too large to name all of them.
Such as:
- Jetryl, also known as Richard Kettering is the current lead artist of the Battle for Wesnoth project.
- Aleksi Aubry-Carlson is responsible for many of the musics in Battle for Wesnoth.
- Isaac Clerencia is the release manager of the project.
For more, see Battle for Wesnoth contributors.
[edit] Funding
At one time or another, members of the Wesnoth team sought to raise funds to help the project. One such effort is selling Battle for Wesnoth merchandise via Cafepress. It is unclear how effective this effort is or how many items they sold. The merchandise appears to have outdated graphics for the current generation of Battle for Wesnoth. It appears that Francisco Muñoz (fmunoz), is involved with this effort in some way.[12][13]
The Wesnoth project also started taking donations as early as March 31, 2004.[14][15]
Another effort to raise funds was to put up advertisement. David White solicited the Wesnoth community's opinions about advertising on June 28, 2007. The majority of the community seem to give approval on certain conditions that the advertising are not obnoxious. At one time, google ads appeared on the Wesnoth site. However, the ads eventually disappeared.[16]
[edit] Receptions
Wesnoth is one of the most famous video games of the Free gaming scene. Over 1.5 million downloads occurred between mid 2004 and mid 2007, including a trailer and various versions of Wesnoth.[17]
Critics from Inside Mac Games, Game Tunnel, PCBurn, and OS Review overall regard the game in a positive light. To some extent, they note the game as having good graphics, despite its retro look. Inside Mac Games rated the game an 8 while Game Tunnel gave them a 7.[18][19][20][21]
It is also one of the highest rated game on happypenguin.org, with 185 ratings with the average of 5 out of 5.[22]
[edit] Criticism
Many players have criticized the game as being too random, which often makes the luckier player win instead of the more skilled one. However, the current system has been one of the most defining game-play decisions in the game, and has the bonus of being the simplest basis for deciding whether attack abilities such as slowing or poison have effect on the victim, as well as general simplicity for the player in calculating the chance to kill. The general consensus among developers is that it is extremely unlikely to ever be changed. [reference required]
[edit] Community
Wesnoth has a large active community at the Wesnoth forum with about 7,000 members and over 200,000 posts in their forums as of September 9, 2007.[23]
It also has a community newspaper called the Wesnoth Observer which was created on the offtopic section of the Wesnoth forum and then moved to the wiki of Wesnoth.[24][25]
[edit] References
- ↑ Wesnoth copyright file at Debian packages
- ↑ Wesnoth official release thread on 1.4.5
- ↑ Wesnoth release thread on 1.5.5
- ↑ The WML reference page
- ↑ The History of, and Philosophy behind Wesnoth which explains Wesnoth's success in reaching release version 1.0
- ↑ Interview with David White at PCTechTalk
- ↑ Wesnoth credits page - A very comprehensive list of all the contributors to Wesnoth
- ↑ downloadable Google Summer of Code projects for Wesnoth
- ↑ Factoids at Ohloh about Wesnoth
- ↑ Wesnoth stats at CIA.vc
- ↑ Former homepage of Battle for Wesnoth
- ↑ Wesnoth's cafepress store
- ↑ Announcement of merchandise availability on August 31, 2003
- ↑ Donation thread
- ↑ Wesnoth's page for donation
- ↑ Discussion about ads
- ↑ Battle for Wesnoth download statistics at SourceForge.net
- ↑ Review of Wesnoth at Inside Mac Games
- ↑ Review of Wesnoth at PCBurn
- ↑ Review of Wesnoth at Game Tunnel
- ↑ Review of Wesnoth at OS Reviews
- ↑ The Game Tomb's list of games sorted by rating
- ↑ bottom of Wesnoth forum show forum statistics.
- ↑ Wesnoth Observer
- ↑ Wesnoth thread about The Observer
