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<h1>Battle for Wesnoth 1.4 Release Notes</h1>
<p><em>March 8, 2008</em>. The Battle for Wesnoth team is proud to release
version 1.4 of <em>The Battle for Wesnoth</em>, a <a
href='http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html'>Free</a>, turn-based
strategy game with a fantasy theme and roleplaying elements. The game is <a
href='#download'>available for download</a> now for Windows, Mac OS X, and
various GNU/Linux distributions.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<a href='#game'>What's New in Wesnoth 1.4</a>
<ul>
<li><a href='#players'>For Players</a></li>
<li><a href='#campdev'>For Campaign Developers</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href='#download'>Download</a></li>
<li><a href='#more'>More Info</a></li>
</ul>
<br/>
<h2 id='game'>What's New in Wesnoth 1.4</h2>
<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,
and introduced several new tools that prevent entire classes of bugs
by sanity-checking Wesnoth's data files before they ship to you.</p>
<div class='thumb tright'>
<div><img src='images/start-2.jpg' alt='Wesnoth Screenshot'/></div>
</div>
<p>Here are 1.4's new features in more detail:</p>
<h3 id='players'>For Players</h3>
<dl>
<dt>Seven new campaigns now ship with the game</dt>
<dd><p>We have more than doubled the number of campaigns we ship. In addition to
one brand new campaign, <em>The Hammer of Thursagan</em>, we now also ship
polished, upgraded and improved versions of the following well-known
user-written campaigns: <em>Descent into Darkness, Liberty, Northern Rebirth,
Sceptre of Fire, An Orcish Incursion, and Son of the Black-Eye.</em></p></dd>
<dt>Parts of the user interface of the game have been redesigned</dt>
<dd><p>The 1.4 Wesnoth user interface has a cleaner look and feel,
with lightweight semi-transparent transient windows replacing many of
the old-fashioned opaque modal dialogues with buttons. Subtle new
graphics effects when you select a unit and target an enemy help you
keep track of what is going on without getting between you and the
gameplay. The game now displays owned and total villages in the
status bar. Interface actions and day/night changes now have
unobtrusive cue sounds. You can use drag'n'drop to move units.
Mousewheels are supported.</p></dd>
<dt>You can now review scenarios, chat, and set options after victory</dt>
<dd><p>You'll no longer get two modal dialogues full of checkbox
options immediately after victory in a scenario and then be instantly
returned to the lobby (or, in campaigns, jumped to the next scenario).
Instead, there's just one summary popup, after which you'll be in a
'linger mode' that allows you to chat with friends and foes, use
normal commands, change your options, and in general do anything
except more battle actions.</p></dd>
<dt>The multiplayer collection has been revised and extended</dt>
<dd><p>New maps and multiplayer scenarios: <cite>
Auction-X,
Dark Forecast,
Hamlets,
Mokena Prairie,
The Manzivan Traps,
Xanthe Chaos</cite>.</p>
<p>Revised maps:
<cite>Alirok Marsh</cite> (formerly <cite>Triple Blitz</cite>),<cite>
Amohsad Caldera,
Blue Water Province,
Castle Hopping Isle,
Caves of the Basilisk,
Crusaders Fields,
Cynsaun Battlefield,
Den of Onis,
Fallenstar Lake</cite> (formerly <cite>Meteor Lake</cite>),<cite>
Forest of Fear,
Freelands</cite> (formerly <cite>Charge</cite>),<cite>
Hexcake,
Hornshark Island,
Island of the Horatii,
King of the Hill,
Lagoon,
Loris River,
Merkwuerdigliebe,
Morituri,
Paths of Daggers,
Sablestone Delta,
Siege Castles,
Silverhead Crossing,
Sulla's Ruins,
Waterloo Sunset,
Weldyn Channel</cite> (formerly <cite>Blitz</cite>),<cite>
Wesbowl</cite>.</p></dd>
<div class='thumb tright'>
<div><img src='images/start-3.jpg' alt='Wesnoth Screenshot'/></div>
</div>
<dt>Changed and rebalanced units</dt>
<dd><p>The Footpad, Poacher and Thug units can advance all the way to level 3.
Many units have been tuned and rebalanced, including
Ancient Lich,
Elvish Sorceress,
Fugitive,
Ghost,
Hurricane Drake,
Lich,
Mage of Light,
Mermaid Diviner,
Mermaid Priestess,
Merman Warrior,
Naga Myrmidon,
Necromancer,
Orcish Assassin,
Ranger,
Royal Guard,
Sky Drake,
White Mage,
Wraith,
and all the Saurians and Bats.</p>
<p>Also, the "holy" damage type has been changed to "arcane" and is now a
general anti-magic attack useful against more than just undead: elves, drakes
and trolls are among the units now vulnerable against it.</p></dd>
<dt>Many portraits have been revised or added</dt>
<dd><p>Many unit and hero portraits have been improved or added. We
now have a particularly beautiful set of new portraits in a uniform style for
the Elvish units.</p></dd>
<dt>New uses of animation</dt>
<dd><p>Many more units have full combat animation. Many unit also
have idle animations which fire periodically when they are not doing
anything specific. Some units and items also have standing animations
that a constantly active; bats flap their wings and campfires
flicker. There are improved base frames for many units, including Mages and
Ghosts, and many special effects such as magic attacks have been improved as
well.</p></dd>
<dt>Multiplayer lobby improvements</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; their nicks will
be highlighted and shown at the top of your user list. <!-- You'll get
a notification when you are in game and a friend joins the
server. --></p></dd>
<dt>Miscellaneous other improvements</dt>
<dd><p>You can now select a female leader in multiplayer. The in-game
help has been revised, reorganized and expanded. There are five new
all-original symphonic music tracks, and many new or improved sound effects.
Savegames are automatically compressed to save you disk space.</p></dd>
</dl>
<h3 id='campdev'>For Campaign Developers</h3>
<div class='thumb tright'>
<div><img src='images/start-1.jpg' alt='Wesnoth Screenshot'/></div>
</div>
<dl>
<dt>The map editor is much more capable</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>WML is considerably more powerful</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 <code>[set_menu_item]</code> 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>Multiplayer campaigns</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>
<div class='visualClear'></div>
<h2 id='download'>Download</h2>
<p>Battle for Wesnoth is made available under the <a
href='http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html'>GNU General Public License</a>
(GPL). Source code is available from <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,
including Linux and Windows and Mac OS X.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<strong>
<a href='http://downloads.sourceforge.net/wesnoth/wesnoth-1.4.tar.gz?download'>Source code</a>
</strong>
</li>
<li>
<strong>
<a href='http://downloads.sourceforge.net/wesnoth/wesnoth-1.4-windows.exe?download'>Wesnoth for MS Windows</a>
</strong>
</li>
<li>
<strong>
<a href='http://downloads.sourceforge.net/wesnoth/Wesnoth_MacOSX_1.4.dmg?download'>Wesnoth for Mac OS X</a>
</strong>
</li>
</ul>
<p>You can get up to date information about downloads at the <a
href='http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/Download'>downloads page</a>.</p>
<p>If you downloaded previous versions of the game, you might be interested in
downloading the <a
href='http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/Download_Xdeltas'>xdelta</a> files only.</p>
<h2 id='more'>More Info</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<a href='http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/*checkout*/wesnoth/tags/1.4/changelog'>Full Changelog</a>
(English, very long)
</li>
<li><a href='http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/*checkout*/wesnoth/tags/1.4/doc/manual/manual.en.html'>User's Manual</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.wesnoth.org'>Wesnoth Official Website</a> (English)</li>
<li><a href='http://www.wesnoth.org/start/1.0'>Wesnoth 1.0 Release Notes</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.wesnoth.org/start/1.2'>Wesnoth 1.2 Release Notes</a></li>
</ul>
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