More detail on WML enhancements. To-do bullets list is now emptied.

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Eric S. Raymond 2008-02-29 12:49:44 +00:00
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@ -48,10 +48,12 @@ various GNU/Linux distributions.</p>
<h3 id='game'>What's New in Wesnoth 1.4</h3>
<p>The 1.4 version brings you no fewer than seven new mainline campaigns, a
redesigned user interface, an amazing variety of high-quality new game
music, and a refresh of the game artwork including improved portrait
images for many unit types.</p>
<p>For players, the 1.4 version brings you no fewer than seven new
mainline campaigns, a redesigned user interface, an amazing variety of
high-quality new game music, and a refresh of the game artwork
including improved portrait images for many unit types. For designers,
the map editor and WML have been enhanced to significantly increase
your creative options in writing scenarios.</p>
<p>Just as importantly, it is probably our most solid release yet. We
retired over 300 individual bugs during the 1.3 development period,
@ -62,7 +64,7 @@ by sanity-checking Wesnoth's data files before they ship to you.</p>
<div><img src='images/start-1.jpg' alt='Wesnoth Screenshot'/></div>
</div>
<p>Here are some of 1.4's new features:</p>
<p>Here are 1.4's new features in more detail:</p>
<dl>
<dt><b>Six well-known user-contributed campaigns now ship with the game</b></dt>
@ -141,7 +143,7 @@ Sulla's Ruins,
Waterloo Sunset,
Wesbowl.</p></dd>
<dt><b>Changed units</b>
<dt><b>Changed and rebalanced units</b>
</dt>
<dd><p>The Footpad and Thug units can advance all the way to level
3. Many units have been tuned and rebalanced, including
@ -165,54 +167,74 @@ White Mage,
Wraith,
and all the Saurians and Bats.</p></dd>
<dt><b>The map editor is much more capable.</b>
<dt><b>Many portraits have been revised or added</b>
</dt>
<dd><p>Maps can now be opened directly from a scenario file and saved
back to it. Starting positions no longer need to be on keeps. The
terrain palette is divided into groups of like terrains, so you'll
scroll it less often. And there are many new terrains; farmland,
Elvish castle, and windmill have been added to the basic set, and
there are bridges for crossing swamp, deep water, or chasms. </p></dd>
<dd><p>Many unit and hero portraits have been improved or added. We
have a particularly beautiful set of new portraits in a uniform style for
the Elvish units.</p></dd>
<dt><b>New uses of animation</b>
</dt>
<dd><p>Many more units have full combat animation. Some units and
items now have standing animations; bats flap their wings and
campfires flicker. Units can now have special death animations --
some Drakes burst into flame when killed.</p></dd>
campfires flicker. Units can now have special death animations &mdash;
some Drakes burst into flame when killed. There are improved base
frames for many units, including Mages and Ghosts, on more varied
uses of halo animations.</p></dd>
<dt><b>New weapons and weapon types</b>
</dt>
<dd><p>Undead axe, undead crossbow, pickaxe, glaive, elven staff,
chainmace.</p></dd>
<dt><b>Multiplayer lobby improvements</b></dt>
<dd><p>You can set a list of user nicks to be ignored (you won't see
chat from them). You can also set a list of friends for whom you'll
get presence notifications when you are in game.</p></dd>
<dt><b>New sound effects and music</b>
<dt><b>Miscellaneous other improvements</b>
</dt>
<dd><p>Effects for morning star, arcane magic, hatchet, slowdown. Five
new symphonic music tracks.</dd>
<dd><p>You can now select a female leader in multiplayer. The in-game
help has been revised, reorganized and expanded. There are new
weapons and weapon types: undead axe, undead crossbow, pickaxe,
glaive, elven staff, chainmace. "Holy" damage has become "arcane" and
is a general anti-magic attack applying to more than just
undead. There are five new all-original symphonic music tracks,
and new sound effects for morningstar, arcane magic, hatchet, and
slowdown. Savegames are automatically compressed to save you disk
space.</p></dd>
<dt><b></b>
</dt>
<dt><b></b></dt>
<dd><p></p></dd>
<p>And for campaign developers...</p>
<dl>
<dt><b>The map editor is much more capable.</b></dt>
<dd><p>Maps can now be opened directly from a scenario file and saved
back to it. Starting positions no longer need to be on keeps. The
terrain palette is divided into groups of like terrains, so you'll
scroll it less often. And there are many new terrains; farmland,
Elvish castle, and windmill have been added to the basic set, and
there are bridges for crossing swamp, deep water, or chasms. Treatment
of map edges has been changed to eliminate some terrain distortions at
map edges and make small maps look better on a large display (and
these changes apply to the game display too).</p></dd>
<dt><b>WML is considerably more powerful</b>
</dt>
<dd><p>Animation WML has been completely redesigned in a much more
flexible and general way. Complex variable substitution is now used
in all action WML. There is safe random-number generation in
multiplayer. A <tt>[set_menu_item]</tt> tag allows scenario designers
to create custom right-click context menu items which perform
arbitrary WML actions. The Standard Unit Filter and Standard Location
Filter elements have new capabilities (including completed boolean
expressions) that make them much more powerful and can replace most of
what used to be done with special-purpose filters.</p></dd>
<dt><b>Multiplayer campaigns</b>
</dt>
<dd><p>The game engine will now support multiplayer campaigns, though
we don't ship any yet. This is an opportunity for designers to explore
a new frontier in Wesnoth play.</p></dd>
</dl>
<!-- TODO: Convert this list into something more readable -->
<ul>
<li>UI redsign/tweaks/...</li>
<li>Comprossed savegames</li>
<li>New art/music</li>
<li>Multiplayer lobby improvements</li>
<li>Animations</li>
<li>Arcane</li>
<li>WML stuff</li>
<li>Usable Multiplayer campaigns</li>
<li>Linger mode</li>
<li>...</li>
</ul>
<div class='thumb tright'>
<div><img src='images/start-2.jpg' alt='Wesnoth Screenshot'/></div>
</div>
@ -228,7 +250,8 @@ href='http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html'>GNU General Public License</a>
href='http://www.wesnoth.org'>wesnoth.org</a> where you will also find
instructions for <a href='http://wesnoth.org/wiki/CompilingWesnoth'>building
from source</a> on a range of different operating systems. Ready-to-go
packages are also available for most popular operating systems.</p>
packages are also available for most popular operating systems,
including Linux and Windows and Mac OS X.</p>
<ul>
<li>