Review: Battle for Wesnoth 1.6

After more than a year of constant development, The Battle for Wesnoth 1.6 was put out on March 22. This release comes with new graphics and unit portraits, a new campaign, called 'Legend of Wesmere', the possibility to log into the multiplayer with the forum account, and many, many other improvements.

Battle for Wesnoth 1.6 - main menu

For those who don't know, Battle for Wesnoth is a wonderful, completely free (licensed under the GPL) turn-based strategy game, with a huge community, developed continuously and at a fast rate.

Before proceeding with the review of 1.6, I'd like to point out that the 1.4.x series (the now old stable release) was also a very good and polished release, so what more can Wesnoth provide with this release?

First of all, one of the features which was always subject of debate on the forums was now implemented: the ability to own a nickname in the multiplayer game. You can now join the multiplayer lobby using your own username and password from the Wesnoth forums, so you won't have problems with someone else 'stealing' your nickname or identifying friends. This feature was awaited for a long time and now it's available.

Regarding the game interface, it didn't change much. The main menu has a background which resembles the one in 1.4, which looks very good anyway.

Major changes were done at the graphics, unit portraits, terrain, and the way in-game messages are displayed. Although there are still default faction units which don't have a portrait, most of them have refined portraits which now look awesome compared to the older ones used in 1.4.x. There are also new graphics for terrain like forest and villages, but all in all the way the terrain looks did not change much.

Playing vs. AI on Isar's Cross - notice the changes in the map

Most of the maps were re-done, for example the popular Isar's Cross is now larger and Fallenstar Lake (former Meteor Lake in versions pre-1.4) will need a different approach to play it in the middle of the map.

Comparing Fallenstar Lake in 1.4 vs 1.6

Regarding campaigns, 1.6 includes no less than 14 official ones, and most of them were available before only as add-ons. Also, the new campaign 'Legend of Wesmere' tells the story of Kalenz, an Elvish hero probably best known from the campaign Heir to the Throne. In one scenario, this campaign allows the AI to control one of your allied sides too.

The new Legend of Wesmere campaign

The WML (Wesnoth Markup Language) also received many improvements and the map editor can be started now from within the game's main menu. The background music hasn't changed much but that's OK since 1.4 had pretty appealing music. However, there are five new original background tracks.

Like all the default features are not enough, there are plenty of add-ons available, which definitely turn Wesnoth into an even more appealing TBS game.

This is how the new in-game dialogues look like now

All in all, this release is one step ahead for Wesnoth regarding both graphics and gameplay, and although in my opinion the difference from 1.4 to 1.6 does not seem to be as big as the changes from 1.2 to 1.4, it is definitely a good and long-awaited improvement.

Update: Here is a video of Wesnoth 1.6 on the Colosseum map:

First-Person Shooter Games for Linux III: Urban Terror

This article is part of the first-person shooter games reviews I'm putting up. Until now I talked about Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, ioQuake3, UT2004, Nexuiz and OpenArena. For those who want to read my previous articles, here are the links:

3 Classic First-Person Shooter Games for Linux
First-Person Shooter Games for Linux II: Nexuiz and OpenArena

I will dedicate this edition entirely to Urban Terror, a great first-person shooter game which was initially developed as a Quake 3 mod and evolved into a powerful and fast standalone game. Most of the people who played both Counter-Strike on Windows (or through Wine) and Urban Terror usually have the same opinion when describing it: it's like Counter-Strike, only better. That was my impression too. I think Urban Terror is the best alternative for those who like CS and eventually made the switch from Windows. It is natively supported on Linux, it is maintained constantly and it has a solid community. In fact, when I first played it about a year ago, I was stunned to see that I was playing it very good just because I was used with Counter-Strike.

Developed by Frozen Sand, the team behind it, Urban Terror was initially developed as a Quake 3 mod, but the game offers now a complete package and can be run without the need of Quake 3 binaries. The last version, UrT 4.1, comes with a ZIP package for Linux, of about 700 MB, and you only need to uncompress it, make the ioUrbanTerror.i386 binary executable and run it.

A multiplayer game on Abbey

The game features modes like TDM (team deathmatch), FFA (free for all) or CTF (capture the flag) and provides a large number of weapons to choose from, like the popular Kalashnikov, the M4A1 or the Remington SR-8. Usually each weapon should be used in a different way (for example you can use to Remington to snipe your opponents and the powerful Kalashnikov for medium-range combats). Notice that the rebound is pretty high, so firing constantly will do anything else but hitting your opponent. It's best to use burst firing when you have an automatic weapon.

Prague, one of the most popular maps

One of the features I find great in Urban Terror is the ability to run for a short distance, then keep the crouch key pressed: this way you will be able to move very fast, and it's useful especially to make quick and unexpected attacks and to go quickly from one part of the map to another. Of course, there is an energy bar which will start to decrease when running or jumping, so you will have to walk from time to time too in order to save strength for when you will need it.

Another feature is the ability to 'bandage' yourself and other wounded teammates. After a successful attack against you, your character will not be able to run or walk at full speed unless you bandage yourself (or another teammate bandages you). Also, depending on how much health you have left, you will not be able to run at maximum speed or make long jumps.

The game comes bundled with around 30 wonderful maps, which vary from cities to jungle areas or desert. Maps like Kingdom, Abbey, Prague or Uptown are very popular on the Internet servers.

The game was designed for multiplayer only, and bots are not supported officially, but still there is the possibility to play against bots (read how in this forum thread). Instead, the game offers a great and dynamic online playing experience. The servers are usually crowded, and the multitude of mods will certainly fit any fan of fast-paced shooter games.

Uptown, probably the most played map

The graphics are not very impressing, but at least this allows the game to run on older computers too. I tested on my Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz and GeForce 7600 GS and it runs at a steady 76 fps using the resolution 1280x1024. I usually encounter frame drops only on several maps with water and many players, otherwise there are no problems running it.

Another aspect worth mentioning are the trickjumps and the ability to jump off walls, which, in combination with the run/crouch ability will let you go in places inaccessible otherwise.

Many competitions are often organised, and details regarding those are available on the official website and the forums.

In conclusion, Urban Terror is awesome in every aspect (maybe except the graphics which are not exactly the newest) and it offers a great pleasure playing it. It's fast-paced, it has plenty of mods and maps, and it allows you to configure everything just the way you want it.

How-To: Compile and Install Wesnoth 1.6 from Source in Debian Lenny and Ubuntu 8.10

The Battle for Wesnoth is a free turn-based strategy game licensed under the GPL. After over one year of constant development, a new stable version, 1.6, was released on March 22, 2009, featuring many graphics and gameplay improvements. To count just a few, you can now log into the multiplayer server using the username and password from the Wesnoth forums; the game includes new graphics for terrain and units (including several new portraits); a new campaign, called 'The Legend of Wesmere' is also available, and it allows the AI to control an allied side.


To compile this release of Wesnoth on Debian Lenny or Ubuntu Intrepid, you only need to follow the steps below.

Note: Ubuntu users, just prefix the commands which need root privileges with sudo.

1. Install the tools needed for compilation
Issue the following command as root:

apt-get install build-essential

2. Install the development packages needed to compile Wesnoth
First of all, make sure you have the sources repositories enabled. To do this, edit as root your /etc/apt/sources.list file and make sure you have a line which starts with deb-src, e.g.:

deb-src ftp://ftp.ro.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free

Next, update your packages list as root:

apt-get update

Proceed with the installation of the needed development packages:

apt-get build-dep wesnoth
apt-get install libsdl-ttf2.0-dev libsdl-pango-dev

3. Download the Wesnoth source tarball
Download the source code for 1.6 from the official website, here. Next, make sure the current working directory is the one where the source was saved and uncompress it:

tar -xjf wesnoth-1.6a.tar.bz2

4. Compile and install Wesnoth 1.6
Compiling and installing is simple once you followed all the steps above. Change the working directory to wesnoth-1.6a and issue the following commands:

./configure
make
make install

The last one as root. Notice that you can specify another prefix and install it in your home folder as user instead of root (in this case make sure you include it in your $PATH)

./configure --prefix=/home/YOUR_USER/usr
make
make install

That should be all. You can now run Wesnoth by pressing ALT+F2 and typing wesnoth in the run dialogue box that appears.


Related articles
Review: Battle for Wesnoth 1.6
The Battle for Wesnoth 1.6 Released
Battle for Wesnoth 1.4 Review - Awesome Turn-Based Strategy Game

Updated: March 29, 2009

The Battle for Wesnoth 1.6 Released

The Battle for Wesnoth team released the new stable version of this wonderful turn-based strategy game, Battle for Wesnoth 1.6. This release was in development stage for over an year, since the (now) old stable, 1.4 was put out. You can read the full announcement on the official website, here.

Some of the new features included in this release are:
- a new campaign, called The Legend of Wesmere, which allows you to use the AI as your commander for an allied side
- one of the great features is the ability to log into the multiplayer using the username and password which you have on the forums, so there will be no more nickname stealing problems any more
- many graphics improvements and new unit portraits for several units
- the map editor can be started from the game now

Of course, these are just a few. I'll make a full review of Wesnoth 1.6 as soon as I have the time. In the meantime, you can download this release from the official website and try it for yourself.