8 ms·

Why does the game need to keep advancing? Most games in the industry are written, released, and finished. The best have a timeless nature, still excellent even

Why does the game need to keep advancing? Most games in the industry are written, released, and finished. The best have a timeless nature, still excellent even though they haven't been changed for decades. Battle for Wesnoth is an excellent game. But declining interest seems to indicate that maybe it is just finished?

Frenchgeek 11y ago
For the same reason my mechanic of a brother always has something to fix on his car : A labor of love never settle for anything less than perfection.
- kazagistar 11y ago
  What strikes me as strange is that you don't usually ask others to maintain your unmaintained labor of love for you, because you don't have the time and manpower. Plus, it sounded like they were complaining that they "weren't keeping up".
  - exDM69 11y ago
    They were specifically asking for Windows and OSX programmers for example. Labor of love or not, doing maintenance work and testing on an OS you don't use yourself is not something most of us want to do on our free time. These guys are volunteers after all.
  - MadcapJake 11y ago
    Because the car analogy doesn't perfectly fit. This kind of labor of love is a game that's enjoyed by many. So asking people to help is more like a barn raising than an "engine hoisting".
SwellJoe 11y ago
Counterpoint: Nethack. Sometimes the best games take a (long) while, and may never be finished.
- chongli 11y ago
  Funny you should mention NetHack as the latest version, 3.4.3[0], was released on the 8th of December, 2003. I'd say it's a pretty good call to consider it finished. [0] http://nethack.org/v343/release.html http://nethack.org/v343/release.html
  - riffraff 11y ago
    there are a ton of forks of nethack, and basically the dev team seems to have disappeared[0], so I wouldn't consider it finished as much as "AWOL". [0] ok, not really, the nethack4 faq mentions 'The development team who worked on versions 1 to 3 of NetHack (the DevTeam) are still working on it (although there was no real evidence of this until 2014), but they don't release their progress, meaning that the situation is effectively the same as if they'd been doing nothing.'
    - chongli 11y ago
      Yeah, I'm aware of the forks and of the empty promises from the devteam. Should a new official release appear, I'll happily retract my statement. What I don't see is very much momentum toward establishing a proper successor fork a la Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup.
      - ectoplasm 11y ago
        SporkHack was good for a while, harder than 3.4.3 at least. Sometimes updates actually make things worse. I like Brogue 1.7.2 a lot more than 1.7.3 for example. You should try that game if you haven't already, it does so many things well!
        chongli 11y ago
        I love Brogue; ascended it many times. I'm currently hooked on Tales of Maj'Eyal (along with 5 of my friends).
  - haakon 11y ago
LoSboccacc 11y ago
went here to say the same thing. it's ten years old, and while I was super excited at the beginning, playing it and discovering every aspect of the many campaigns, it has felt stale in a while. the game is basically equals of it's former self, with many more graphic enhancement and sophistication that push the battle system, the maps and the editors to their limits, but while being timeless it also has exhausted its replay value and lives in a market which is vastly different to the circumstances that brought it to life many years ago
Udo 11y ago
I regularly play Wesnoth over the internet with a friend. Though we sometimes explore other games, we always come back to Wesnoth because it's compelling. However, and I say this as a fan, this game has severe issues - it's not just a few bugs and maintenance: Wesnoth makes current hardware sweat to the point where my relatively new MBP sounds like it's taking off, as is my friend's ThinkPad. It's also the only game capable of slowing my current-generation iMac down to the brink of operating system usability and beyond. The game itself is slow, UI actions, moving units across the battlefield - pretty much anything happens only after a noticeable pause. There is no apparent reason why a largely static, 2D, tile-based, pixel game should be this slow. The network code and its underlying model are an unmitigated disaster, by design. If you experience any network glitch during play, including short wifi disruptions, the connection collapses. But it doesn't do so right away. It can take up to a few minutes for the game to notice that a player has disconnected. There is no automatic re-connect, all players have to save, exit, and rejoin. While playing Wesnoth it's advisable to stay in contact over email to coordinate. Sometimes, the game state gets out of sync between players and the server. When the game notices that, you get the option to cancel the game or ignore and continue. If you do the latter, in-game causality breaks down completely (with hilarious results). If you opt for the former, once again, everybody has to save, exit, and re-join, and hope anyone has a non-corrupt save game. The game state isn't large or complex by the way. These are not merely bugs; they are deep, architectural problems.
- em3rgent0rdr 11y ago
  I wanted to verify your comments about speed, and found this interview http://www.linuxexpres.cz/rozhovor/interview-david-white http://www.linuxexpres.cz/rozhovor/interview-david-white where the original developer says: "However, I wanted to be able to develop Wesnoth quickly, using the latest technology and latest C++ features. Because of this I didn't spend much time focusing on things like minimizing the memory Wesnoth takes up, or trying to make it ultra-fast. This does limit its portability a little in that it is difficult to get working on systems with limited memory"
  - joshstrange 11y ago
    Honestly I think it could be written in Javascript with better results than it currently has. I've never tried multiplayer as I found the single player laggy which is unacceptable for a game a "simple" as this. Just goes to show that language alone doesn't alway influence speed...
INTPenis 11y ago
This is a good point. Also as one who lived through the times when gaming on Linux was almost unheard of, or required a lot of imagination, I think Wesnoth is part of gaming history right now. The future is here and Valve helped bring it about, the quality and quantity of games on Linux has completely transformed in the last 5 years. So gamers looking for entertainment on Linux have so much more to look forward to right now than Wesnoth. It's time to move on.
jonnybgood 11y ago
I think it's somewhat the nature of open source games. It reminds me of the AoE clone 0 A.D.[0] which has been in development for over a decade and still considered in alpha. [1] http://play0ad.com http://play0ad.com

Frenchgeek 11y ago

For the same reason my mechanic of a brother always has something to fix on his car : A labor of love never settle for anything less than perfection.

kazagistar 11y ago
What strikes me as strange is that you don't usually ask others to maintain your unmaintained labor of love for you, because you don't have the time and manpower. Plus, it sounded like they were complaining that they "weren't keeping up".
- exDM69 11y ago
  They were specifically asking for Windows and OSX programmers for example. Labor of love or not, doing maintenance work and testing on an OS you don't use yourself is not something most of us want to do on our free time. These guys are volunteers after all.
- MadcapJake 11y ago
  Because the car analogy doesn't perfectly fit. This kind of labor of love is a game that's enjoyed by many. So asking people to help is more like a barn raising than an "engine hoisting".

SwellJoe 11y ago

Counterpoint: Nethack. Sometimes the best games take a (long) while, and may never be finished.

chongli 11y ago
Funny you should mention NetHack as the latest version, 3.4.3[0], was released on the 8th of December, 2003. I'd say it's a pretty good call to consider it finished. [0] http://nethack.org/v343/release.html http://nethack.org/v343/release.html
- riffraff 11y ago
  there are a ton of forks of nethack, and basically the dev team seems to have disappeared[0], so I wouldn't consider it finished as much as "AWOL". [0] ok, not really, the nethack4 faq mentions 'The development team who worked on versions 1 to 3 of NetHack (the DevTeam) are still working on it (although there was no real evidence of this until 2014), but they don't release their progress, meaning that the situation is effectively the same as if they'd been doing nothing.'
  - chongli 11y ago
    Yeah, I'm aware of the forks and of the empty promises from the devteam. Should a new official release appear, I'll happily retract my statement. What I don't see is very much momentum toward establishing a proper successor fork a la Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup.
    - ectoplasm 11y ago
      SporkHack was good for a while, harder than 3.4.3 at least. Sometimes updates actually make things worse. I like Brogue 1.7.2 a lot more than 1.7.3 for example. You should try that game if you haven't already, it does so many things well!
      - chongli 11y ago
        I love Brogue; ascended it many times. I'm currently hooked on Tales of Maj'Eyal (along with 5 of my friends).
- haakon 11y ago

LoSboccacc 11y ago

went here to say the same thing. it's ten years old, and while I was super excited at the beginning, playing it and discovering every aspect of the many campaigns, it has felt stale in a while. the game is basically equals of it's former self, with many more graphic enhancement and sophistication that push the battle system, the maps and the editors to their limits, but while being timeless it also has exhausted its replay value and lives in a market which is vastly different to the circumstances that brought it to life many years ago

Udo 11y ago

I regularly play Wesnoth over the internet with a friend. Though we sometimes explore other games, we always come back to Wesnoth because it's compelling. However, and I say this as a fan, this game has severe issues - it's not just a few bugs and maintenance: Wesnoth makes current hardware sweat to the point where my relatively new MBP sounds like it's taking off, as is my friend's ThinkPad. It's also the only game capable of slowing my current-generation iMac down to the brink of operating system usability and beyond. The game itself is slow, UI actions, moving units across the battlefield - pretty much anything happens only after a noticeable pause. There is no apparent reason why a largely static, 2D, tile-based, pixel game should be this slow. The network code and its underlying model are an unmitigated disaster, by design. If you experience any network glitch during play, including short wifi disruptions, the connection collapses. But it doesn't do so right away. It can take up to a few minutes for the game to notice that a player has disconnected. There is no automatic re-connect, all players have to save, exit, and rejoin. While playing Wesnoth it's advisable to stay in contact over email to coordinate. Sometimes, the game state gets out of sync between players and the server. When the game notices that, you get the option to cancel the game or ignore and continue. If you do the latter, in-game causality breaks down completely (with hilarious results). If you opt for the former, once again, everybody has to save, exit, and re-join, and hope anyone has a non-corrupt save game. The game state isn't large or complex by the way. These are not merely bugs; they are deep, architectural problems.

em3rgent0rdr 11y ago
I wanted to verify your comments about speed, and found this interview http://www.linuxexpres.cz/rozhovor/interview-david-white http://www.linuxexpres.cz/rozhovor/interview-david-white where the original developer says: "However, I wanted to be able to develop Wesnoth quickly, using the latest technology and latest C++ features. Because of this I didn't spend much time focusing on things like minimizing the memory Wesnoth takes up, or trying to make it ultra-fast. This does limit its portability a little in that it is difficult to get working on systems with limited memory"
- joshstrange 11y ago
  Honestly I think it could be written in Javascript with better results than it currently has. I've never tried multiplayer as I found the single player laggy which is unacceptable for a game a "simple" as this. Just goes to show that language alone doesn't alway influence speed...

INTPenis 11y ago

This is a good point. Also as one who lived through the times when gaming on Linux was almost unheard of, or required a lot of imagination, I think Wesnoth is part of gaming history right now. The future is here and Valve helped bring it about, the quality and quantity of games on Linux has completely transformed in the last 5 years. So gamers looking for entertainment on Linux have so much more to look forward to right now than Wesnoth. It's time to move on.

jonnybgood 11y ago

I think it's somewhat the nature of open source games. It reminds me of the AoE clone 0 A.D.[0] which has been in development for over a decade and still considered in alpha. [1] http://play0ad.com http://play0ad.com