Well... already 2 more month since my last development update... so let me give you a short look on the new stuff we implemented since than.

First of all: Chuck continued being creative and added a lot very great new animations. He is really doing a very good job there .

And on game feature site:

• We finally added a team play feature - teamed players can't attack each other and share the vision
• Defeated players will now become spectators in some game types - so they can go on spectating after being defeated.
• the basic opengl support was merged and improved at some places - if you feel like Widelands is too slow, you can now try the new opengl renderer
• Players on Windows are finally able to host games via our internet lobby
• The computer player was partly improved
• The forester got some more intelligence - finally he understands, that it is not a good idea, to rip out other small trees and as well cares about affinities of the trees (so will place a tree that best fits the place)
• A lot new translations were added.
• The map autogeneration feature is now able to place starting positions and was slightly improved to produce better playable maps.
• Players now get a message, if a new militarysite was occupied.
• In multiplayer games, the hosting player got some new commands to control the game (just type /help in the chat box)

And as alwasy - last but not least: we again fixed some nasty bugs

So although some of us disappeared in the "summer hole" , we still got a bit bigger list of new stuff for you in the last 2 months . Hope you like it !

For a list of all changes since build15, see the changelog. It should contain all major changes.

Let's look forward for a great Build16

A new elder of graphics

Development is rolling onwards, but the most advancements in the last few weeks were clearly on the graphics front: Chuckw finished all worker models for the atlanteans (after having finished all workers for the barbarians earlier) and is tackling the remaining tribe (the empire) charging forward in our struggle to remove concepts graphics from the game. I have seen Chuck learning all the gory concepts of blender, bzr, launchpad and widelands internals in a continuing strive to make things better in this last year and his persistence and dedication made me realize, that he is the one that can finally relieve Alexia Death from her elder duties.

So let it be heard: Alexia Death, our longest serving and historically most important elder (as she more or less got the graphics ball rolling for widelands) resigns. Actually she wanted to for a very, very long time as she is extremely busy and she only kept the job because no one was qualified to do it (oh yeah, and because I begged her to ). Alexia will stick around, but this is the definite time to say a huge thank you to her in the name of the team and the community for all she did so far for widelands! You so rock, Alexia.

Thanks go also to Chuck for taking over. As the new elder of graphics, he is the one you need to be talking to if you are unhappy with anything visually in widelands or want to contribute graphics in any kind of way. He will also monitor the graphics forum which is the one place to discuss graphic development. Also, he will be administrating the widelands-media project on launchpad. Chuck, welcome to the next level and thanks for taking over.

Here are his welcoming words to the community:

Graphics play a huge role in virtually every computer application nowadays, especially games, and Widelands is certainly no exception. A visually rich and entertaining environment has been under development for Widelands since its inception and there is much to show for the efforts made thus far, but as Widelands evolves there is still much that remains to be done.

I would like to add my personal thanks to Alexia, not only for all of the work she has done, but also for her tremendous help and encouragement in getting me on my feet with the project. (Believe me that was no small task. ) Alexia, you have made a great example to follow.

As your new Elder of Graphics, I'll be here to coordinate graphics development for Widelands and work with you. I'll serve as a contact point for requests and questions, and to receive any suggestions and finished works you may offer to contribute to the Widelands project.

I look forward to working (and playing) with you and want to see any samples or graphic contributions YOU may have to offer or point you to where we can use your help.

Together, let's make Widelands as graphically entertaining to the eye as it is to play.

Cheers!
Chuck Wilder (chuckw)

Okay, quite some time since the last news post - and that's definitely not because nothing happend - no! WIdelands development is actually quite active at the moment !

So where to start?

Well I think I will not describe all new features and changes that exact as I did the last time - simply because it's too much and I am too lazy

So let us start with some screenshots of new features:

Chuck is very actively working on the tribes's workers animations - so far the barbarians are already finished (yes you did not missunderstand - all workers do have their animations now! And the atlantean animations are already quite far as well .

Further some new features were implemented, like the "second view mode of stock" - you can now see all available materials in your economy as well as all material that is stored at the moment, if you select the "stock" from statistics menu.

Another feature allows you to set, whether a ware should be prefered for storage in a warehouse or whether storing of that ware should be stopped or even be outsourced - just click on the ware in a warehouse or headquarters to set it's preference.

And not to forget the new user interface in military sites ...

Ahh and while we are at it - the symbols for soldiers and their health bar were reworked, to have a more unique and understandable mark for soldier levels.

Some more things were added or changed, that are not that easy to show in an image:

• The existing campaigns were modified to use lua as engine, this leads to a much more smoother and more intelligent campaign behaviour
• A " I will show you how to play Widelands" tutorial was added.
• New music was added !
• It is now possible to set a condition for when a game is won.

Besides the new features in our current development trunk, some work was done in seperate branches, like opengl implementation, the first atlantean campaign map, work on metaserver client information transport and some more interesting construction sites.

I created a small preview to give you some visualisation how the campaign might look like . Take a look here for that video.

... and as always: a lot of bugfixes and code improvements ...

Well I surely forget the half or even more...