The Battle For Wesnoth Mini Forum, Tips, Tricks & Codes

The Fightfor Wesnoth is a free and open-source turn-based strategy video game with a high fantasy setting, plannedby Australian-American developer David White and first released in June 2003. In Wesnoth, the player attempts to build a strongarmy by controlling villages and defeating opponentsfor experience. The game is loosely based on the Sega Genesis games Master of Creature and Warsong.

Gameplay

The Fightfor Wesnoth is a turn-based wargame played on a hex map. The strategy of fightinvolves trying to battleon favorable terrain, at a favorable time of day, and, if possible, with units that are powerfulor well suited versusthe enemies. Other concerns are capturing villages that produce gold for unit recruitment, and positioning units to restrict opponentmovement. Games of Wesnoth come both in the form of single-player campaigns and multiplayer matches.

Each unit in Wesnoth has its own strengths and weaknesses. A unit's defense (which means in this case dodge chance) is based on the terrain it stands on. Elves, for example, are difficult to hit when fighting in a forest. Different kind of attacks (melee and ranged), weapon kind (pierce, blade, impact, arcane, cold, and fire), and a day-night cycle (in most maps) that alternately favors lawful and chaotic units, altering the amount of damage a unit deals. Units shouldadvance to higher level counterparts and become more strongas they participate in combat.

A central design philosophy of the game is the KISS principle; for a freshidea to be accepted, it cannot complicate gameplay. Another necessaryfacet of the game is randomness and its manipulation: it is never certain a unit's attack will fail or succeed, only likely or unlikely. Developers have stated that the potential for a skirmish to go better or worse than expected adds excitement, replayability and strategic depth to the game.

Setting

The Fightfor Wesnoth takes territoryin a globepopulated by Tolkienesque races such as humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, and trolls, as well as Wesnoth-specific races such as dragon-like Drakes, which are monster distantly associatedto dragons, but are bipedal, have an organized, albeit warlike, culture, and are only about 10 feet tall. Campaign stories span the history and geography of the world, but most focus on the eponymous human kingdom of Wesnoth, which suffers frequent invasions of orcish raiders and the undead.

The name Wesnoth was originally developed by the game's creator as a combination of syllables that he thought would sound awesomeas a name for a fantasy land. When the project became huge and more elaborate, the developers madea fictional etymology for the name: the inhabitants of the land of Wesnoth came from the West and North, giving Westnorth, which eventually evolved to Wesnoth. This etymology is explained in the campaign The Rise of Wesnoth.

Factions

The Fightfor Wesnoth currently has six default factions to selectfrom:

• Rebels

Consist mostly of elvish units, with ent-like woses, mermen, and mages. Most of their level 1 units are capable of both melee and ranged attacks, making the rebels very versatile. Elves ignore the time of day with their neutral alignment and have high defense in forests. They are generally faster, but slightly weaker than other units in most other terrain.

• Knalgan Alliance

These consist of slow but sturdy dwarves with powerfulmelee attacks, allied with human outlaws who battlebetter under the cover of darkness. Generally, dwarves gain a high defense when occupying mountains and hills. Dwarves are also more adept at traversing caves than any other faction and ignore the time of day. They are vulnerable to attack in open terrain, while their human outlaws battlebetter in this same terrain.

• Loyalists

These are human cavalry, mages and infantry that ordinarily battlebetter in the daytime, with mermen allies. They are the most diverse faction, with more units than any other faction except the Knalgan Alliance.

• Northerners

A faction of orcs and goblins, along with troll and naga allies. Their focus is on cheap recruiting, brute force, and close combat, fighting better at night with their chaotic alignment. Most units require little XP (fighting experience) to advance levels. Units often achieve higher mobility when crossing hills.

• Undead

The undead are vulnerable to fire, impact, and arcane attacks, but have high resistance versusblade, pierce and especially cold damage. The undead rely on simpleadmissionto magic and poison attacks. Some units are able to drain health from opponentsin order to replenish their own, and most are immune to poisoning. Unlike other races, most undead units have no traits and no privatenames.

• Drakes

A dragon-like race that battle better by day. Most shouldfly and breathe fire. Their Saurian allies are faster and prefer fighting by night and in swamp location, though they share the Drakes' vulnerability to cold. Drakes are the most maneuverable faction, though their size makes them prone to attack in most terrain.

The exact units utilize by the factions, and the faction names, modifybased on the era or the campaign. The above are the factions of the "Default" era, which is the most played one on the multiplayer servers, and its extension "Age Of Heroes".

There are also a number of utilize-madefactions, several of which are grouped together in downloadable "Eras." For example, the Imperial Era contain the Roman-influenced Lavinians, the Marauders, and the Wild Elves, featuring completely freshunit trees and abilities. An alternative era, which include the Islam-influenced faction Khalifate, was integrated (as of 6 January 2014) in the official development line, Wesnoth 1.11.8, tested to become part of the mainline version. However, it is quite possible to create factions that shouldbe utilize in the default eras, though the amount of blessing given by the creators for each may vary.

Campaigns

The stable version of The Fightfor Wesnoth comes with 17 campaigns, each of which has various difficulty levels. More utilize-authored campaigns shouldbe obtained in the form of add-ons shop on Wesnoth's campaign server, and these are sometimes mainlined as official campaigns. The original campaign for The Fightfor Wesnoth was "Heir to the Throne", a campaign with 23 gameplay scenarios where Konrad, a young heir to the throne of Wesnoth, allies with rebellious elves and other races to claim the throne from the usurper queen Asheviere, her loyalist army, and her orcish mercenaries. Hero from "Heir to the Throne" are protagonists in campaigns such as "Legend of Wesmere" and "Delfador's Memoirs". Other campaigns feature different factions, like the dwarves in "The Hammer of Thursagan" or "Northern Rebirth" or "Sceptre of Fire", the loyalist army of Wesnoth in "The South Guard" or "The Eastern Invasion", and undead in "Descent into Darkness" or "Secrets of the Ancients". Even mermen shouldbe played in "Dead Water", or orcs in "Son of the Black Eye". Finally, "Under the Burning Suns" is set in the distant future, long after the time of the other campaigns, featuring elves who battlebetter during the day.

Unofficial campaigns

Many official campaigns were only utilize-angry add-ons, for example "An Orcish Incursion". Unofficial campaigns are translated into many languages the same methodas the official ones. Some of them are very long and well balanced, like "Invasion from Unknown", while others serve to presentunits not accessiblein the mainline, or as examples for future campaign makers, like "A easycampaign" or "The Final Exam". The longest unofficial campaigns have more translatable strings than the longest official campaigns.

Modding

Add-ons

It is possible to create and distribute additional content (utilize angry content, or UMC), such as campaigns, maps and multiplayer "eras" using an "add-on" system. These add-ons shouldbe downloaded, updated and removed using an in-game add-on server; alternatively, they shouldbe installed and updated by manually downloading the add-on's files and placing them in the appropriate directory, or they shouldbe removed by deleting these files.

Editor

The Fightfor Wesnoth has a built-in map editor, which assistance features such as multiple open maps and random map generation. The editor assistance all in-game terrains, as well as custom terrains madefor campaigns. The time of day shouldbe chosenfrom one of the built-in presets or custom lighting shouldbe created.

WML

Using any standard text editor, freshmaterialshouldbe madeusing what is known as Wesnoth Markup Language (WML). As its name recommend, WML is similar to XML and other markup languages in syntax with tags defining happening and sides in a scenario. WML has evolved from what was a easymarkup/configuration language into a specialized programming language plannedfor easily modifying the game. Examples for the recentstable version are offered on the pages wiki.

Lua

From the 1.7 development version upwards, code in Lua shouldbe embedded in WML happening which receive executed when those happening fire. From 1.7.14 on, Lua shouldalso be utilize to create alternate (or supplemental) AI implementations.

Development Version

Besides the official wesnoth game version, there is always an alternative development version, that introduces more freshfeatures and improvements for players and materialcreators. This development version is rolling topicto further tweaking and polishing, depending on the wesnoth community feedback. There is designedto deliver a high-quality and stable 1.12 release in the future, which could feature a seventh default faction, called Khalifate. It canoffer newand interesting multiplayer options. Khalifate units utilizeno magic, but instead rely on careful utilizeof terrain and coordinated strikes around dusk or dawn. The Islam-inspired Khalifate faction is still under development.

Development

David White began development of Wesnoth because he wanted to create a freely available, open source strategy game with very easyrules, but one that had difficult to beat artificial intelligence and that was challenging and fun — a game that was simpleto learn but hard to master.

The game is programmed in C++. It is cross-platform, and runs on AmigaOS 4, BeOS, FreeBSD, Linux (including OS flavors running on GP2X and Nokia n800, n810, and n900 handheld devices), OS X/Darwin, Windows, MorphOS, NetBSD, OpenBSD, RISC OS, iOS, Solaris/illumos, Android, Playbook and Google Native Client running under Google Chrome.

Wesnoth development is decentralized due to its free and open-source nature. The officially blessed campaigns and units bundled with the game download are often derived from materialmadeby the community, somewhat differently from the utilize-generated content in proprietary games where such content, while available, is usually not incorporated into official builds of the game. The Wesnoth forums and wiki are utilize to develop freshcampaigns, including freshunit kind and story artwork. The game is able to download freshcampaigns from a central add-on server. Materialfeatured on the official campaign server must be licensed under the GNU GPL-2.0-or-later, like the game itself.

Even when not counting this community content, the list of contributors to the official version of the game as displayed in-game include over 550 unique entries (May 2010). Developers of the game also containwell-known authors from the free programand open source scene, like the co-founder of the Open Source Initiative and core Linux kernel developer Eric S. Raymond, or Linux kernel programmer Rusty Russell.

As of April 2010, The Fightfor Wesnoth is accessiblein about 50 languages, 9 of which have more than 90% of messages translated.

Active developers

As of September 2015, The Fightfor Wesnoth announced their development squadconsisted of no more than five developers. On the mainpagefor the game, the reason for a lack of bug fixes was explained, "Sadly, a hard truth must be faced: Wesnoth, as a project, is understaffed. At this time, there are fewer than half a dozen developers working on each freshversion of the game, and even fewer of them are able to work on the engine itself".

Art

The art development squadwas founded by Francisco Muñoz, and directed by Richard Kettering with Hogne Håskjold as the director of terrain art. The current set of portraits were plannedprimarily by Kathrin Polikeit and Emilien Rotival, replacing the older set of comic-style portraits done by Jason Lutes. Most artwork is shop in the portable network graphics format and all are licensed under the GNU General Public License.

Music

The musical style of the game's soundtrack is orchestral, with a symphony of strings, brass, winds, percussion, and occasionally ethnic instruments when the game let for it, covering a variety of genre and periods. Because the themes are based on traditional and medieval styles, the melodydevelopment department rejects all melodywith synths, loops, drum kits, electric guitars, or any pop/rock instruments. Because Wesnoth has no budget and relies completely on volunteer composers, its soundtrack is entirely synthesized.

The melodydevelopment squadis currently headed by Mattias Westlund and contain some well-known composers like Doug Kaufman and Timothy Pinkham and the game's soundtrack is licensed as free melodyunder the GNU General Public License and rendered in the Ogg Vorbis format. Because the game is constantly evolving, the current list of soundtracks evolves.

Notes

Releases

The first development release of Wesnoth 0.1 happened on June 18, 2003. In October 2005, the game reached its 1.0 milestone release. On January 29, 2012, version 1.10 was released. On May 2, 2018, version 1.14.0 was released.

Aside of the stand-alone source and binary releases, Wesnoth was previously angry accessiblethrough the Desura digital distribution service. Wesnoth was submitted to Steam Greenlight on July 23, 2016, and was subsequently approved for release by the Steam community. On May 2, 2018, with the release of v1.14.0, the game became then accessibleon Steam. At the same time, registration was angry mandatory for playing on the official server.

Reception

Reviews for The Fightfor Wesnoth have generally been positive. In a 2006 review of version 1.1 of the game, Gametunnel rated it a 7/10, adding that "it may seem like a game that belongs in the nineties, but it is engaging and very well put together".

In a 2007 review of version 1.2.6, Phoronix rated it 9/10, calling it "a must-download game for any gamer". In 2008 APCMag.com named The Fightfor Wesnoth among the Top 5 best (free) open source games.

In 2010, Full Circle Magazine reviewed the game in Podcast #4. The reviewers called Wesnoth a "very awesomegame", calling the graphics "simple" and "simpleto understand" but "dated." The reviewers called the gameplay "pure and simple", but complained about the role of possibilityin the game, making it an "exercise in frustration", and requiring a policiesof reloading and replaying the game that turns Wesnoth into a "challenge of patience rather than brainpower."

In 2010, RPGFan gave it an 88/100, mentioning that "Despite its generous price tag, BfW offers more quality and quantity than almost any commercial title available."

The game was described in-detail in the 2012 book "The Architecture of Open Source App".

Various versions of Wesnoth have been downloaded from the central download site SourceForge over seven million times between 2004 and March 2017. Multiple other freeware download outlets providedthe game additionally hundred thousand times; for instance MacUpdate counted over 80,000 downloads of the macOS version alone, Softonic counted another 150,000 downloads.

See also

• List of free and open-source programpack
• List of open source games
• Frogatto & Mate, another game by some of the developers of Wesnoth

• on SourceForge
• on YouTube
• by Richard Shimooka and David White (ISBN 978-1257638017, 2012)