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Show HN: Wesnoth – Free, turn-based strategy game

146 points by freeslugs 12y ago

chrisfosterelli 12y ago
While I don't play anymore, I used to play this game quite often. It is an absolute blast to get a few friends together, hop on a Skype call, and spend the night playing. Glad to see the game is still under development!
- meric 12y ago
  I started playing Wesnoth in 2005. Practised 'programming' in WML to make custom maps. There was one I designed called 'DOTW' which was a rip off from DOTA. For a good few weeks it was the most played map in Wesnoth multiplayer. Good times.
  - electronvolt 12y ago
    I definitely played that map back sometime between '05 and '08. It's been a while. Being reminded that this game exists and seeing that the project is still going makes me super happy.
highCs 12y ago
The number of contributors is quite impressive: http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Credits http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Credits
phildini 12y ago
I am amazed how long this game has existed and been iterated on. I remember first playing this on linux almost a decade ago.
lkrubner 12y ago
I love this game. I have not played it in a few years (have not played any games in a few years) but this was my absolute favorite somewhere around 2007-2009. A great amount of careful thought went into this game, and you can tell when you play. Also the width of the community ensures a diversity of scenarios.
barbs 12y ago
I wanted to get into this game, but I seem to remember being turned off by the amount of luck in it. Maybe I should give it another go?
- ZirconCode 12y ago
  Definitely. The question of luck is always something which pops up in the forums now and again. The answer is always the same, it was a deliberate choice to have an element of luck, it keeps things interesting and forces your strategies to be more error-prone. Yes, among top-level players, luck may sometimes decide the fate of a game, but that is a price they decided to pay for the results =)
  - saraid216 12y ago
    That's the main reason I don't like it. I'm too consistently unlucky to play games that hinge on luck. I do agree that it would become a lot less interesting at high-level play without luck, though. That's pretty much the price you pay for having turns, as a game designer.
    - pedrosorio 12y ago
      "Consistently unlucky" =)
      - saraid216 12y ago
        Yeah. I took notes across half a dozen games for a while before I realized I was depressing myself with empirical proof that the universe noticed me.
        kybernetikos 12y ago
        Team up with a friend, go to a casino and bet red/green. Get them to bet the opposite way, but in larger denominations.
listic 12y ago
I wish they finished Wtactics, the card game. http://wtactics.org/ http://wtactics.org/
- Vaskivo 12y ago
  I didn't know about Wtactics. Is it from the same devs? While I see the value of Wesnoth, it's not my kind of game. Now a constructed card game, that I enjoy! Browsing that website, I think the game rules should be easier to find.
  - DDR0 12y ago
    I think it uses the art, or at least was heavily inspired... seems to be something there, but the original programmer moved on to do this ccg instead. https://github.com/davewx7/Citadel https://github.com/davewx7/Citadel (It's still a work in progress, though.)
ZirconCode 12y ago
This is an amazing game. If you are interested in it's structure, there is a good chapter on it here: http://aosabook.org/en/wesnoth.html http://aosabook.org/en/wesnoth.html
- jwdunne 12y ago
  This is really strange because I read that chapter before checking HN and to my surprise its here. The chapter is a great read and gives some ideas on how to architect a game, especially one that you want the players themselves to contribute too. A similar game hooked me on programming at an early age. It's called Graal and you had to pay to contribute. I wish I had found this game instead.
Morgawr 12y ago
This game will always hold a special place in my heart. Back when I was 17 I got hospitalized (nothing serious or life-threatening) for a couple of months and back then I didn't have internet everywhere or a smartphone to keep me company. My parents had brought my laptop to me but having no internet was really really boring. I had Linux installed but, alas, in 2006-2007 there weren't many Linux games to keep me company. Luckily after some time I remembered I had downloaded this "Wesnoth" game a few months before, so I started playing it. Boy, it was a blast, for weeks and weeks I played all the scenarios and campaigns and I got really good at it. Every now and then I go back to it even today, just to play a few scenarios. I met the main developers at Fosdem this year and they are great people, they are doing an amazing job with this game. Kudos to them.
- a-saleh 12y ago
  I met those guys at fosdem as well some years ago. It was a small game-dev room, they stayed through all the presentations having their miniature hack-session throughout the whole time :-) It was great. Remember that one of them had a great presentation about importance of designing their game in data and not in code, to allow non-developers to participate.
- SixSigma 12y ago
  Isn't life strange. I had to wait over 15 years for my computer to be connected to the internet and somehow I managed.
  - Morgawr 12y ago
    Were you stuck in a hospital bed all that time without any chance to go out, see your friends, breathe fresh air or even eat food properly? I managed to read around 10 books in the first week I was hospitalized, my parents didn't know what to provide me anymore because I just tore through every piece of literature I could find.
JoachimSchipper 12y ago
If you haven't seen Wesnoth before, http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Description http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Description may be a gentler introduction than the source code.
Cheerios 12y ago
There's a great port of this on Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.androthsoft.battle https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.androthsof...
- ekianjo 12y ago
  There's a very nice port on Open Pandora as well for playing on the go: http://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=wesnoth-1.11 http://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=wesnoth-1.11
- bru 12y ago
  Is that legal? That version seems closed-source! And I couldn't even access the developer's website (www.androthsoft.com). If the money went to the authors/official website I'd buy it in a heartbeat, but in the current situation I'd rather circumvent the official download channels...
  - VLM 12y ago
    "That version seems closed-source!" https://github.com/cjhopman/Wesnoth-1.8-for-Android https://github.com/cjhopman/Wesnoth-1.8-for-Android The "Is that legal?" question is extremely complicated because you're looking for a positive answer in a marketplace full of a bazillion theoretical negative answers. They're not "selling GPL without releasing the source" as long as github doesn't go out of business. Is it legal, in the sense that there used to be a raging debate if your agreement to sell on the apple store was invalid thus illegal if you "sold" GPL'd software, which I stopped caring about once I got rid of my last iDevice and went all Android, so it may or may not be legal to "sell" GPL software on at least some app stores. Another app store example, for no reason I'm aware of, wesnoth used to be stuck in the incoming queue on fdroid, I donno why or if that was ever resolved or if it had anything to do at all with the license. "If the money went to the authors/official website I'd buy it in a heartbeat" Well, CJ is listed by name on http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Credits http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Credits Along with about 500 other people. I suppose paying one of the 500 is superior to paying none of them. Personally I think the work he did to port is worth a "tip" so I paid for it a long time ago.
kelmop 12y ago
is this the correct repository? http://sourceforge.net/projects/wesnoth/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/wesnoth/
acc00 12y ago
A link to github when the project has a well-made functional website? Did you want to show us the source code specifically?
- haliphax 12y ago
  I'm wondering the same thing. Also, this is not even close to new. My understanding is that it has been open source and freely available for quite some time.
bane 12y ago
This is a great game and runs fantastic on older systems. I've turned more than one old and "useless" laptop into a Wesnoth/ScummVM/mp3 player box in the past and they work fantastic. This is also about as close as you're going to get to a native Advance Wars game on PCs. If you've played any of the AW games (GBA and DS) you'll know how addictive they can be.
abus 12y ago
freeslugs did you make this? If not, why are you tagging it "Show HN"?
mathgeek 12y ago
I remember playing this back in high school many years ago. Kudos to continuing to improve it!
izietto 12y ago
I've just discovered that one of the biggest contributors [1] is Eric S. Raymond [2], who is the author of The art of UNIX programming [3] and one of the open source contributors of all time I admire most. [1] https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/graphs/contributors https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/graphs/contributors [2] http://www.catb.org/~esr/ http://www.catb.org/~esr/ [3] http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/ http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/
- BryantD 12y ago
  FWIW, this is mostly scenario design and writing contributions. Which are of course also important.
JoshTriplett 12y ago
I don't play the standard Wesnoth scenarios very often anymore, but because Wesnoth has a full scripting language in it to construct custom scenarios, people have invented whole new games for it. I personally enjoy the "SurvivalX" family of single-unit multiplayer RPG campaigns: you have a party of adventurers, one unit per player, that gain experience and gold through combat, and can develop skills, spells, abilities, new weapons, and otherwise become more powerful, leading up to large boss fights against the leaders of the opposing armies. And when you lose your one unit, you lose. RPG scenarios provide a very different feel from the standard game of Wesnoth, but personally I enjoy them far more.

146 points by freeslugs 12y ago

While I don't play anymore, I used to play this game quite often. It is an absolute blast to get a few friends together, hop on a Skype call, and spend the night playing. Glad to see the game is still under development!

meric 12y ago
I started playing Wesnoth in 2005. Practised 'programming' in WML to make custom maps. There was one I designed called 'DOTW' which was a rip off from DOTA. For a good few weeks it was the most played map in Wesnoth multiplayer. Good times.
- electronvolt 12y ago
  I definitely played that map back sometime between '05 and '08. It's been a while. Being reminded that this game exists and seeing that the project is still going makes me super happy.

highCs 12y ago

The number of contributors is quite impressive: http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Credits http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Credits

phildini 12y ago

I am amazed how long this game has existed and been iterated on. I remember first playing this on linux almost a decade ago.

lkrubner 12y ago

I love this game. I have not played it in a few years (have not played any games in a few years) but this was my absolute favorite somewhere around 2007-2009. A great amount of careful thought went into this game, and you can tell when you play. Also the width of the community ensures a diversity of scenarios.

barbs 12y ago

I wanted to get into this game, but I seem to remember being turned off by the amount of luck in it. Maybe I should give it another go?

ZirconCode 12y ago
Definitely. The question of luck is always something which pops up in the forums now and again. The answer is always the same, it was a deliberate choice to have an element of luck, it keeps things interesting and forces your strategies to be more error-prone. Yes, among top-level players, luck may sometimes decide the fate of a game, but that is a price they decided to pay for the results =)
- saraid216 12y ago
  That's the main reason I don't like it. I'm too consistently unlucky to play games that hinge on luck. I do agree that it would become a lot less interesting at high-level play without luck, though. That's pretty much the price you pay for having turns, as a game designer.
  - pedrosorio 12y ago
    "Consistently unlucky" =)
    - saraid216 12y ago
      Yeah. I took notes across half a dozen games for a while before I realized I was depressing myself with empirical proof that the universe noticed me.
      - kybernetikos 12y ago
        Team up with a friend, go to a casino and bet red/green. Get them to bet the opposite way, but in larger denominations.

listic 12y ago

I wish they finished Wtactics, the card game. http://wtactics.org/ http://wtactics.org/

Vaskivo 12y ago
I didn't know about Wtactics. Is it from the same devs? While I see the value of Wesnoth, it's not my kind of game. Now a constructed card game, that I enjoy! Browsing that website, I think the game rules should be easier to find.
- DDR0 12y ago
  I think it uses the art, or at least was heavily inspired... seems to be something there, but the original programmer moved on to do this ccg instead. https://github.com/davewx7/Citadel https://github.com/davewx7/Citadel (It's still a work in progress, though.)

ZirconCode 12y ago

This is an amazing game. If you are interested in it's structure, there is a good chapter on it here: http://aosabook.org/en/wesnoth.html http://aosabook.org/en/wesnoth.html

jwdunne 12y ago
This is really strange because I read that chapter before checking HN and to my surprise its here. The chapter is a great read and gives some ideas on how to architect a game, especially one that you want the players themselves to contribute too. A similar game hooked me on programming at an early age. It's called Graal and you had to pay to contribute. I wish I had found this game instead.

Morgawr 12y ago

This game will always hold a special place in my heart. Back when I was 17 I got hospitalized (nothing serious or life-threatening) for a couple of months and back then I didn't have internet everywhere or a smartphone to keep me company. My parents had brought my laptop to me but having no internet was really really boring. I had Linux installed but, alas, in 2006-2007 there weren't many Linux games to keep me company. Luckily after some time I remembered I had downloaded this "Wesnoth" game a few months before, so I started playing it. Boy, it was a blast, for weeks and weeks I played all the scenarios and campaigns and I got really good at it. Every now and then I go back to it even today, just to play a few scenarios. I met the main developers at Fosdem this year and they are great people, they are doing an amazing job with this game. Kudos to them.

a-saleh 12y ago
I met those guys at fosdem as well some years ago. It was a small game-dev room, they stayed through all the presentations having their miniature hack-session throughout the whole time :-) It was great. Remember that one of them had a great presentation about importance of designing their game in data and not in code, to allow non-developers to participate.
SixSigma 12y ago
Isn't life strange. I had to wait over 15 years for my computer to be connected to the internet and somehow I managed.
- Morgawr 12y ago
  Were you stuck in a hospital bed all that time without any chance to go out, see your friends, breathe fresh air or even eat food properly? I managed to read around 10 books in the first week I was hospitalized, my parents didn't know what to provide me anymore because I just tore through every piece of literature I could find.

JoachimSchipper 12y ago

If you haven't seen Wesnoth before, http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Description http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Description may be a gentler introduction than the source code.

Cheerios 12y ago

There's a great port of this on Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.androthsoft.battle https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.androthsof...

ekianjo 12y ago
There's a very nice port on Open Pandora as well for playing on the go: http://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=wesnoth-1.11 http://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=wesnoth-1.11
bru 12y ago
Is that legal? That version seems closed-source! And I couldn't even access the developer's website (www.androthsoft.com). If the money went to the authors/official website I'd buy it in a heartbeat, but in the current situation I'd rather circumvent the official download channels...
- VLM 12y ago
  "That version seems closed-source!" https://github.com/cjhopman/Wesnoth-1.8-for-Android https://github.com/cjhopman/Wesnoth-1.8-for-Android The "Is that legal?" question is extremely complicated because you're looking for a positive answer in a marketplace full of a bazillion theoretical negative answers. They're not "selling GPL without releasing the source" as long as github doesn't go out of business. Is it legal, in the sense that there used to be a raging debate if your agreement to sell on the apple store was invalid thus illegal if you "sold" GPL'd software, which I stopped caring about once I got rid of my last iDevice and went all Android, so it may or may not be legal to "sell" GPL software on at least some app stores. Another app store example, for no reason I'm aware of, wesnoth used to be stuck in the incoming queue on fdroid, I donno why or if that was ever resolved or if it had anything to do at all with the license. "If the money went to the authors/official website I'd buy it in a heartbeat" Well, CJ is listed by name on http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Credits http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Credits Along with about 500 other people. I suppose paying one of the 500 is superior to paying none of them. Personally I think the work he did to port is worth a "tip" so I paid for it a long time ago.

kelmop 12y ago

is this the correct repository? http://sourceforge.net/projects/wesnoth/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/wesnoth/

acc00 12y ago

A link to github when the project has a well-made functional website? Did you want to show us the source code specifically?

haliphax 12y ago
I'm wondering the same thing. Also, this is not even close to new. My understanding is that it has been open source and freely available for quite some time.

bane 12y ago

This is a great game and runs fantastic on older systems. I've turned more than one old and "useless" laptop into a Wesnoth/ScummVM/mp3 player box in the past and they work fantastic. This is also about as close as you're going to get to a native Advance Wars game on PCs. If you've played any of the AW games (GBA and DS) you'll know how addictive they can be.

abus 12y ago

freeslugs did you make this? If not, why are you tagging it "Show HN"?

mathgeek 12y ago

I remember playing this back in high school many years ago. Kudos to continuing to improve it!

izietto 12y ago

I've just discovered that one of the biggest contributors [1] is Eric S. Raymond [2], who is the author of The art of UNIX programming [3] and one of the open source contributors of all time I admire most. [1] https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/graphs/contributors https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/graphs/contributors [2] http://www.catb.org/~esr/ http://www.catb.org/~esr/ [3] http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/ http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/

BryantD 12y ago
FWIW, this is mostly scenario design and writing contributions. Which are of course also important.

JoshTriplett 12y ago

I don't play the standard Wesnoth scenarios very often anymore, but because Wesnoth has a full scripting language in it to construct custom scenarios, people have invented whole new games for it. I personally enjoy the "SurvivalX" family of single-unit multiplayer RPG campaigns: you have a party of adventurers, one unit per player, that gain experience and gold through combat, and can develop skills, spells, abilities, new weapons, and otherwise become more powerful, leading up to large boss fights against the leaders of the opposing armies. And when you lose your one unit, you lose. RPG scenarios provide a very different feel from the standard game of Wesnoth, but personally I enjoy them far more.