Welcome to Widelands.org

Already 10 months have past since our last release - Widelands Build 17.

Time for a new release?

Well, not yet. Anyways our current development version holds quite a lot of improvements and new features. So what has been changed since the release of Build 17? Here comes the list:

• We added a mouse hover text for the costs of the buildings. The same feature was added for the resources that can be gained through dismantling a building.
• We added a button to productionsites, which finally gives the ability to evict workers - want to kick a master miner out of one of your mines? Here you go!
• We improved the start up time of Widelands games through "on demand" loading of graphics - in Build17 starting a game might take some minutes under some circumstances. The same circumstances will lead to just a few seconds of loading time in our current develpment version.
• We improved Widelands' rich text rendering engine (the part of the program that takes care about text formating) a lot and improved all kind of text in different places of the game to look more appealing. E.g. the productivity of buildings is now coloured to ease the analysis of the economy's state.
• We improved the OpenGL rendering which leads to a huge speed up of Widelands.
• We added a new win condition "Territorial time". It is similar to the "Territorial lord" win condition, but is limited to an in game time of 4 hours - if no one is able to gain half of the maps teritory in 4 hours, the player with the biggest terrain after 4 hours will win.
• We improved the old stock charts in the statistics menu and added some new ones.
• We improved many existing graphics and animations everywhere around the game.
• We improved the graphics used in the road building mode to indicate the steepness of the terrain.
• We improved the multiplayer scenario "Smugglers".
• As decided in the community poll, we changed the Empire Inn to be backward compatible.
• We added some new game tips to introduce some "nice to know" features to our players.
• We added support for a "message of the day" to Widelands and the Widelands' dedicated server - if you logged into the lobby in the last months, you most likely have already read the motd.
• We improved Widelands' translations and added some new ones.
• We fixed quite a bunch of memory leaks - which basically means, that Widelands uses less RAM now.
• And we fixed many more or less nasty bugs.

For a more detailed list of changes, take a look at our Changelog

Has your "favourite" bug already been fixed? What about the feature you wish the most to be implemented? Let us know and of course feel cordially welcome to join our team .

Hello Community,

did you use the dedicated server "FreeForAll" in the last months? Or did you at least notice it?

No? Well okay, in that case never mind and ignore this post, if you like.

Anyways, FreeForAll was my dedicated server running on a small local server over here in my (old) home. It was supposed to ease playing multiplayer games over the internet for those players that don't want or don't know how to set up their network connection for opening their own servers.

And indeed the server was used quite regulary. In average about two games were played each day and during these games the server helped to track down some nasty bugs in Widelands and it's network code. Most of those bugs were unknown before and as noone of the participating players reported them, they would still be unknown without the dedicated server...

Anyways as I move some hundred kilometers to a new flat in a new town with a new job, the dedicated server will be offline for a yet unknown time period. If you used FreeForAll as solution to play online, I hope you find a good way to continue playing online (maybe the InternetGaming Wiki page can help you). If not, stay tuned, I hope to get the server online again as soon as possible.

For all the other brave ones out there: If you want to do some gamers a favor: Maybe you are willing to open your dedicated server for them? If yes, take a look at the DedicatedServer page in the wiki. And if you've got problems, I would be glad to even provide some personal e-Mail Support .

Btw.: Widelands development is a bit slow at the moment, but I hope to increase it's speed in the near future again.

Stay tuned...

Widelands on Tomdotios Channel

Tomdotio is a well known Let's-player on YouTube. That is, he showcases and plays games, comments on them and gives his impressions and opinions. He is very good at what he does and has therefore gained himself a loyal community watching his work.

Very recently, he invited me to sit down for a game of Widelands. We shared a kingdom and chatted about the game, the Widelands community and the development process. The final video was very skillful edited by him and turned out to be quite entertaining. But do not take my word for it, see for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RicOFDrV-0s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqfS9wOE3bA

Disclaimer: Tomdotio is producing in German only - the videos are German as well. If some English speaking YouTuber is interested in doing the same in English, I am all for it!