GSoC/GCI Archive
GSoC/GCI Archive
Google Code-in 2010

The Battle For Wesnoth

Mailing List: wesnoth-dev@gna.org, https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev/

The Battle for Wesnoth is an established open source video game, with over four million downloads and approximately 50 developers. It is a turn-based tactical strategy game with a high fantasy theme. The core rules are meant to be easily learned[1] but provide interesting gameplay and rich tactical options. A major strength of the project is the Wesnoth Markup Language (WML) for writing scenarios. Programming skills are not required to compose with it, and a large WML-modding community has generated a great deal of user-maintained content. We polish the best of this content and lift it into our official release tree.The first stable release (1.0) was on October 2 2005, and the latest stable release (1.8) is anticipated in the next few weeks. 1.8 is intended to be a major stable checkpoint. We expect the following development cycle (1.9, leading to 1.10) to premier significant changes in gameplay, UI, and development tools, with many new concepts being introduced. That makes this year probably one of the best years for a SoC student to join, since the open-ended 1.9 will mean much more space to develop novel ideas Wesnoth is one of the most successful open-source game projects in existence, with an exceptionally large developer base and user community:

  • According to Ohloh, a site that collects activity statistics on open-source projects, the Wesnoth development effort is in the top 2% of largest and most active projects.
  • We support two multiplayer game servers (stable and development) with a usual minimum load of more than a hundred players
  • More than two thousands downloads a day
  • 3 million downloads via sourceforge.net, many more via various mirrors of Linux Distributions
  • Best rated game at the linux game tome[2]
  • Game of the year 2007, 2008 and 2009 at linuxquestions.org[3]
  • In general Wesnoth tends to show up in the #1 or #2 position whenever anyone compiles a list of top open-source games.

Wesnoth's most notable features include;

  • A mature project, but with continuing active development and frequent improvements
  • High quality artwork: both original graphics and original music
  • Very well­-balanced by a tireless team of playtesters
  • Fun, unique gameplay
  • Even after six years of development, and with a very solid, fun product already created there are still plenty of new developers, and the number of commits to SVN is still increasing
  • Strong support of internationalization with many supported languages and thus experience in working with non-native English speakers (more than half of our developers are not native English speakers)

[1] http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/WesnothPhilosophy

[2] http://www.happypenguin.org/list?sort=avg_rating

[3] http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-news-59/2009-linuxquestions.org-members-choice-award-winners-788028/

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