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<h1>Battle for Wesnoth 1.8 Release Notes</h1>
<p><em>April 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, five 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 five new full-orchestral music tracks: <cite>Casualties of
War</cite>, <cite>Into the Shadows</cite>, <cite>Journey's End</cite>,
<cite>Over the Northern Mountains</cite>, and <cite>Weight of
Revenge</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
1.7.13.</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 and 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>
<!--
TODO: add the correct links once the files are available
-->
<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/1.8.0/changelog'>Full
Changelog</a> (English, very long)
</li>
<li><a
href='http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/*checkout*/wesnoth/tags/1.8.0/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...
-->
<!-- <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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