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Battle For Wesnoth Version 1.6 Released
bomanbot writes "The team for the great turn-based, open-source strategy game Battle for Wesnoth has just released the new stable version 1.6 of their popular title. Some of the new version's highlights include a new campaign, new multiplayer scenarios, improved graphics and user interface, and new background music. The full release notes have been posted, and the source code and binary downloads for many different platforms including Linux, Windows and Mac OS X are available as well."
We don't need new music. Get rid of these!
volume controls are available in the prefernces menu (ctrl + p)
i just downloaded the source code and compile it in my ubuntu box, seems good and shiny and the option to download addons in the gui is great
Slashdot ya no es que lo era!
I just love the icon for 'PC Games'. That lead-heavy slab of joystick that is the Microsoft Force Feedback Sidewinder has no equal. :)
Let me be the first to say that I for one welcome our weak, slow or dim goblin overlords.
It's interesting that you can log in to the official multiplayer server with your forum credentials. A future possibility might be a ranking system, and approximately even matches; that's one feature of Warcraft III that I like quite a bit.
We always say that the one thing holding back Open Source games is the lack of man-hours devoted to all the artwork. Let me quote http://www.wesnoth.org/start/1.6/ a little:
How impressive that really is... well, I guess the proof is in the pudding. But wesnoth has people working on things other than code.
I'm looking forward to playing this when I have the time :)
Their server is extremely slow right now that Slashdot's linking it. Here's some binaries:
Win: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/wesnoth/wesnoth-1.6a-win32.exe?download
OSX: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/wesnoth/Wesnoth_1.6a.dmg?download
and the source code:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/wesnoth/wesnoth-1.6a.tar.bz2?download
The Linux binaries page doesn't load right now to get more links, sorry.
I was actually celebrating addition of new music. I also liked old stuff. That's what i get for trying to be funny.
Let it go. Geez louise!
Battle for Wesnoth is a great game, not least of all because it actually has fairly original gameplay (it's not a clone of some other game), but one thing I'd like to take the time tpo mention in particular is that it compliles not only across different operating systems, but also different architectures. PowerPC, for example - not many games still under development on that platform (console aside). It's even available for the Nokia N800/810 (ARM) and probably other PDA/SMartPhone devices - and being turn-based with a very simple interface (mildly more complex than chess) it's quite playable on them too.
It's one of the great advantages of open-source development: anybody can port it to whatever they want!
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
An attention from Slashdot probably means more traffic they needed.
Actually, as such things go, Wesnoth is probably the only open-source game I would pay real money (i.e. more than about $5) for, even if it were proprietary. It's fun, challenging, addicting, and much easier for me to play casually than chess (which fills roughly the same niche, though one advantage of Wesnoth is that I can play a team game with friends against another team online). It is certainly not what some people would call a great video game - it doesn't have Crysis-level shiny graphics, World of Warcraft-like immersive gameplay, Halo-like adrenaline-driven twitch thrills, or the superb mix of strategic/tactical skill demand of StarCraft (to name a few games that are well-known for their respective areas of superiority). However, it is fun to play, has a nice set of campaigns (which sound like they've gotten even better), and you can connect to the multiplayer server, find a game, play it and have a good time, and be done in half an hour (easily, if the map isn't huge) which is one of the traditional scourges of turn-based games; many take too damn long.
Give it a shot. It's free, after all - you can even tweak it if you think you can make it better.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
It isn't just art, but basically non-programming related assets that OSS games tend to lack in. Not a surprise since they are usually done by coders. So not only does the artwork tend to be lacking, but sound, music, level design and so on. It seems that most of the people who are interested in working on that sort of thing, do it for a commercial engine. You'll find some pretty amazing community developed stuff for things like UT3.
Part of the reason is probably that the tools are better for those games. Take a look at the Unreal Editor or the Elder Scrolls Construction Kit some time. They are extremely solid tools, and have some good assets to start working with. Compare that to many OSS games which have NO tools. The designers would have to do everything on their own. Also it is easier to reach an audience that way. If you are a level designer and make a level for a popular game, you just release it and people can play. If you sign on with an OSS game, well first it has to actually reach a state people want to play, and then people have to discover it and try it.
I do think one thing that would help is for OSS games to have much better tools. Make it easy for people to add assets, build levels and so on. Maybe more people would be willing to do so.
It's 5:30 AM Eastern Time.
The story has drawn a humongous 20 posts - and their server is Slashdotted?
What does that tell you about open-source gaming?
Turn-based strategy really isn't my cup of tea, and Wesnoth is one of the two games I ever liked in the genre (the other being Civ 4). But what's really impressive is that it is the only open-source game I've ever played that actually looks like a finished product.
I wish I had some mod points so I could -1 offtopic this
Do you really want to this thread to go on ad infinitum?
the graphics are just lol!
I guess you never played Dwarf Fortress... I wish DF's graphics were anywhere close to Wesnoth. (Doesn't stop me from playing it though.)
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
Actually, they're fine. I'm 25 and think they are high quality, moody and a bit nostalgic. But I guess I'm getting old.
Ah, the age-old stupidity. Good graphics != good game. If you think so, you were probably brought up on XBoxes and Playstations, which means that dedicating an evening to one game is probably a struggle and that thinking or enjoying the game is second to "completing" it or showing it to your mates.
I still play Nethack, ffs, and the graphics on that were far too primitive when I started playing that years ago. Give me an emulator and crap graphics any day of the week - there's not many games that you can replay over and over again and still feel you got your moneys-worth every time you replay it.
Huh?
Shining Force for one is a terribly old Sega Genesis game and it's still very playable and interesting.
The quality of the graphics isn't all to some people. Gameplay comes to mind more to some gamers than graphics.
Those can get this game, and others can play Crysis or whatever game that demands a lot of processing power just to display some "shining" effects ;)
[insert lame sig here]
Is that a trick question?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Do you want it to be?
I tried playing your game but couldn't find it.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I love this game. :)
I've played it for a while now, and yesterday my Ubuntu decided (by itself, merely asking me for a password) that it was time to upgrade Wesnoth :)
*clicks, waits, doubleclicks, smiles, plays all night*
I really enjoy the campaigns... and I have yet to try online gaming.
I only got over my Wesnoth addiction a few weeks ago, and now I've been thrown right back. ;)
Does open source also mean that they'll continue to improve it? Because my social life really doesn't need that
This game is well loved by strategy enthusiasts, but could be equally fun for strategy wimps if it was more accessible. The game is unabashedly designed to be a struggle, and is so even on Easy if you haven't mastered all the strategy elements, while if you have, Medium is probably wehere you should be playing.
Essentially it needs a better scale-down in difficulty level. The best way to achieve this will probably be via AI tweaking.
-josh
I still play Nethack, ffs, and the graphics on that were far too primitive when I started playing that years ago.
"While NetHack's graphics may seem primitive by today's standards, today's gameplay seems primitive by NetHack standards."
(source)
This is true. The thing that came to my mind when I read your post was Dwarf Fortress. The whole thing is a coding project. People play it for the game itself but the graphics are ASCII and there is no sound.
You can add some packages to get graphics like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Graphic.jpg but it's really old school.
If there were artists ready to work long hours on the project, the game could get this http://spriteattack.cator.de//df/show/. A bit childish but still much better than ASCII.
Given the huge number of Free/Open-Source games out there, it's natural that many of them suck. (And that's not counting the ones that were never finished.) It's also natural that commercial games win on immersive 3D graphics and other things that require big development teams. But there are some FOSS games that are absolutely terrific, and Wesnoth is one of them.
Many of the good things about Wesnoth are fairly obvious: quality music, good graphics, good in-game tutorials etc. Others are not so obvious: extensive playtesting, carefully tweaked scenarios. And one design choice that may look strange to modern console gamers turns out to be extremely clever: the hexagonal map and the lack of long-range attacks makes it relatively easy to write a superb AI.
Wesnoth has another unusual accomplishment: narrativist elements and hex maps in the same game.
Do polar bears shit in igloos?
which is totally what she said
Does the pope shit in the woods?
Yes.
After digesting the chewy center.
And Shining Force is still selling today on the Wiiware channel. That's the exact same version as the Genesis game, same graphics, same everything. I expect it's made more money in the last two years than an average 'new' pc game.
There was too much micromanaging tactics right off the bat to hold my interest. If I had three spears attacking one guy I'd end up getting slaughtered in two rounds after two of his buddies showed up because I didn't keep my archer in exactly the right hex.
elvis sylph
Um, I cut my teeth on Infocom games and loved them. I then moved to Sierra and was marveled by the immersive graphical worlds they created. Kings Quest 1 (the original) still has better graphics than a lot of Linux games.