wesnoth/website/start/1.8/template.html
2010-02-15 21:15:44 +00:00

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<h1>Battle for Wesnoth 1.8 Release Notes</h1>
<p><em>March 2010</em>. It is once again time for that thrill
you've all been waiting for, a Wesnoth stable release. The Battle for
Wesnoth team is proud to release version 1.8 of <em>The Battle for
Wesnoth</em>, a <a
href='http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html'>free</a> <a
href='http://www.opensource.org/'>open-source</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 1.8</a>
<ul>
<li>
<a href='#players'>For Players</a>
<ul>
<li><a href='#campaigns'>Campaigns</a></li>
<li><a href='#multiplayer'>Multiplayer</a></li>
<li><a href='#general'>General</a></li>
</ul>
</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 1.8</h2>
<div class='thumb tright'>
<div><a href='images/start-2-full.jpg'><img src='images/start-2.jpg' alt='Wesnoth Screenshot'/></a></div>
</div>
<p>The improvements this time around include one entire new
full-length campaign, hundreds of new and revised unit portraits, four
new music tracks, some UI redesign, and substantial improvements in the
game's AI.</p>
<h3 id='players'>For Players</h3>
<p>To help the player keep those who are loyal to him alive, these units
are now marked with an overlay symbol that looks like a bronze ring.</p>
<p>The names on maps and other images can now be localized to the
player's language; several languages already use this new feature. For more information and tutorials, look at the wiki article
on <a href="http://wiki.wesnoth.org/ImageLocalization">Image
Localization</a>.</p>
<h4 id='campaigns'>Campaigns</h4>
<p>A new campaign, <cite>Delfador's Memoirs</cite>, tells the tale of
how a mage-apprentice rose to become Delfador the Great. This campaign
was imported from the <a
href="http://wesnoth-umc-dev.sourceforge.net">Wesnoth-UMC-Dev
project</a>, where it spent almost a year being adapted for
mainline.</p>
<p>We've continued to polish and improve the mainline campaigns.
The hero Kaleh's custom advancements in <cite>Under the Burning
Suns</cite>, long a source of problems, have been redesigned in a more robust
and streamlined fashion. Significant continuity problems in <cite>Heir to the
Throne's</cite> "Cliffs of Thoria" scenario have been fixed.
Some scenarios in <cite>Legend of Wesmere</cite> have been rewritten
and significantly enhanced. An early version of its multiplayer port
is available to test Wesnoth's multiplayer campaign feature.</p>
<div class='thumb tright'>
<div><a href='images/start-3-full.jpg'><img src='images/start-3.jpg' alt='Wesnoth Screenshot'/></a></div>
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<p>There are four new full-orchestral music tracks: <cite>Casualties
of War</cite>, <cite>Into the Shadows</cite>, <cite>Over the Northern
Mountains</cite>, and <cite>Journey's End</cite>.</p>
<p>The game AI has been significantly debugged and improved; it
chooses recruits/recalls better, and does smarter target selection.</p>
<h4 id='multiplayer'>Multiplayer</h4>
<p>The operating system's GUI can be told to notify the player that it's his
turn to play.</p>
<p>The multiplayer lobby has been completely redesigned for improved
ease of play and better appearance.</p>
<p>Random numbers are generated on the Wesnoth multiplayer server during MP
combats. This makes certain kinds of cheats and out-of-sync conditions
impossible, at the cost of breaking compatibility with versions before
1.7.3.</p>
<h4 id='general'>General</h4>
<p>The right sidebar on the main game display has been tuned for
usability. It now gives more prominence to the selected unit's
terrain defence percentage and time-of-day modifier.</p>
<p>There is a new monster unit: the Water Serpent. Additionally, the
Dwarvish Scout from Under the Burning Suns is now part of normal
Dwarvish sides in campaigns. Several other unit lines &mdash; most notably
the Drakes &mdash; have been completely redone with improved art and
animations.
A remake of the merfolk units out of our Art Director's
virtual pencil has been completed in this release cycle.
(But most animations are still missing for them.)
</p>
<div class='thumb tright'>
<div><a href='images/start-1-full.jpg'><img src='images/start-1.jpg' alt='Wesnoth Screenshot'/></a></div>
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<p>Add-on descriptions are now accessible from the add-on download dialog via a
button.</p>
<p>Most translations have been updated. In addition, Vietnamese has returned, and we have a new transliteration, English in the Shavian alphabet.</p>
<h3 id='campdev'>For Content Developers</h3>
<p>This year Wesnoth was once again a Google "Summer of Code" program;
one of its major results was a complete rework of Wesnoth's support
for multiplayer campaigns. Sides in multiplayer games are now
persistent and can be carried over from one multiplayer scenario to
the next. The leaders of AI sides are now able to recall from their
side's list. As a side effect it is now possible to have more than
one leader with the ability to recruit per side.
</p>
<p>Another Summer of Code result is a new framework for Wesnoth's
artificial intelligence. The AI can now be scripted to significantly
change its behavior in different story settings and in response to
campaign events, give enemy sides more distinct tactical
personalities. It is possible, though not easy, to use scripting
languages (formula_ai, lua) to create alternate AIs that are also scriptable.</p>
<p>A new tool called the <a
href="http://wiki.wesnoth.org/CommandMode#Extra_Debugging_Commands">"gamestate
inspector"</a> allows a content developer to view the values of
the WML variables, ai configuration, and the recall list while a game is in progress.</p>
<div class='thumb tright'>
<div><a href='images/start-4-full.jpg'><img src='images/start-4.jpg' alt='Wesnoth Screenshot'/></a></div>
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<p>New Orcish Village and Orcish Keep terrain graphics improve the
options available to map designers.</p>
<p>We've also achieved excellent results with our inaugural 'Summer Art
Scholarship' program. This has led to dozens of new portraits, as well as a
complete rework of the Drake sprites. We hope to continue this program in
coming years.</p>
<p>We paid a lot of attention to world continuity, from small details
like replacing earth-human names for characters up through larger ones
like putting many new placenames on the main map. The main Wesnoth
history timeline has been tweaked to eliminate various minor
inconsistencies.</p>
<p>We kept the promise we made in 1.6 when we had to remove Python for
technical reasons; WML events an AI components can now be written in lua. The
integration of lua in the wesnoth game engine is advanced enough to
even allow the coding of WML action tags with lua definitions that can
read and modify game state variables in the C++ core.</p>
<div class='visualClear'></div>
<h2 id='download'>Download</h2>
<p>Battle for Wesnoth is made available under the <a
href='http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.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://wiki.wesnoth.org/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>
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TODO: add the correct links once the files are available
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<ul>
<li>
<strong>
<a href='http://sourceforge.net/projects/wesnoth/files/wesnoth/wesnoth-1.8.tar.bz2/download'>Source code</a>
</strong>
</li>
<li>
<strong>
<a href='http://sourceforge.net/projects/wesnoth/files/wesnoth/wesnoth-1.8-win32.exe/download'>Wesnoth for MS Windows</a>
</strong>
</li>
<li>
<strong>
<a href='http://sourceforge.net/projects/wesnoth/files/wesnoth/Wesnoth_1.8.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://wiki.wesnoth.org/Download'>downloads page</a>. There you can also
find packages and instructions for other platforms once they are available.</p>
<p>If you downloaded previous versions of the game, you might be interested in
downloading the <a
href='http://wiki.wesnoth.org/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/1.8/changelog'>Full Changelog</a>
(English, very long)
</li>
<li><a href='http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/*checkout*/wesnoth/tags/1.8/doc/manual/manual.en.html'>User's Manual</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.wesnoth.org'>Wesnoth Official Website</a> (English)</li>
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The announcements from 1.0 and 1.2 were lost in a server crash, commenting it out from the release notes...
They have been restored, but won't add them in anymore...
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<!-- <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> -->
<li><a href='http://www.wesnoth.org/start/1.4'>Wesnoth 1.4 Release Notes</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.wesnoth.org/start/1.6'>Wesnoth 1.6 Release Notes</a></li>
</ul>
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