Build 17 is out of the doors

That's it people! We've done it. Another release of Widelands is out to the public. I won't repeat release notes and Changelog here again -- read the rc1 news post for that.

We needed 2 release candidates this time, nevertheless I was very pleased with the whole process. Congratulations to all for another successful round in the live cycle of Widelands!

You can download build 17 here:
https://launchpad.net/widelands/+download

Finals Tonight!

Ladies and Gentlemen: The finals of the 2012 widelands tournament are tonight. ivh and ixprefect are battling it out - both will play Atlanteans. I suggest you hang around in our chat, maybe you get a chance to observe the game. Otherwise - I'll keep you posted and review the game as soon as I find a minute.

Update

The finals has been played and was quite nice: ixprefect got off to a good start while ivh had some trouble managing his wood economy at the beginning. ixprefect used this weakness and attacked very early backed by his stronger economy. ivh had no chance to come back. Congratulations to ixprefect for winning the second widelands tournament. As always, you can find the replays in the Wiki.

This concludes the tournament. Thanks goes out to Fopper for having the idea and organizing it. And thanks to all the players for the interesting games!

And another round

The first week of rc1 revealed a critical bug and some more in the seafaring. We fixed the critical and one of the bigger in seafaring - others are nuisances but non critical. However, the critical bug means that we need to go another round. So here it is: rc2

https://launchpad.net/widelands/build17/build17-rc2

Please give this another spin. We missed the Ubuntu deadline (again - this is a kind of tradition with widelands) therefore we are no longer under time pressure. Consequently, we will test this one for two full weeks and then release b17 out in the wild. Or rc3 if another critical issue shows up.

Tournament Update

All the light is taken by the ongoing work towards build 17. But stalking in the background we still have a tournament going on - and we have reached the finals. And what a finals it will be - programmer vs reigning champion. The winner of the last tournament ivh is fighting to keep his crown against ixprefect - who earned his place in the finals by defeating Kristin in a real nailbiter game with just a slightly better economy (a must see replay).

The date of the finals is not yet fixed - both players are a little time constraint right now. But we will keep you posted!

Build 17 rc1 is available

The first build candidate of build 17 is available. We feel fairly good about the current state of affairs, therefore this one will only get roughly one week to show critical bugs. If none show up we will release build 17 then!

Some of the highlights of this build are:

• Basic sea-faring functionality.
• Improvements to the Editor.
• Multiplayer scenarios (Fun maps).
• Support for dismantling buildings.
• Support to adjust the number of wares in a building.
• a new in-game help for many buildings. Work is ongoing.
• Improved in-game statistics.
• Improved rendering engine.
• new maps, sounds, music, graphics & animations.

It is imperative that this candidate is tested by as many people as possible! Please do so and provide feedback. You can find binaries for windows and mac and sources for all other OSes under the download page:

https://launchpad.net/widelands/build17/build17-rc1

Nearly one week late

Our self-imposed deadline for the first-snow feature freeze was last wednesday. And we did what creative people do with a deadline: let it pass by.

But now we are ready to announce the first-snow feature freeze of build 17. What does that mean? It means that we commit to not breaking anything that is currently working and not changing any strings anymore so that translaters can work their magic. Mainly, we will no longer

• add new features
• fix style bugs
• make functional changes to campaign maps and scenarios
• tag or change strings

Only minimal invasive bug fixes are allowed for pressing bugs. And the media guys can add an image here and there (though I know that they have no immediate plans to do so).

What happens now?

We will test drive this release for another week. Winter time feature freeze is in roughly one week (scheduled for 26th March) - if there are no new problems. We will then offer a release candidate which is open for public testing (scheduled for 2nd April). This one will be in the open for at least two weeks. Then we will push the final release build 17. Assuming there are no further problems of course.

So people: get on it! Translate and play, test and report problems. In the freeze time it is more important than ever!

Update: One critical bug was fixed this last week. Otherwise we feel we are good to go and instantiate the feature freeze today. So, one more week till the release candidate must be ready. This means one more week to translate some more!

As the heading already hints, I would like to share a pie chart with you

The last time I wrote about the development I gave you a bit of statistics concering bugs targeted to be fixed in build17. That last post is less than two weeks ago. So let's see how the statistics look like today. In brackets are the difference values relative to the values I posted 13 days ago:

There are currently 170 (+3) bugs targeted for our next release Build17 :

• 1 is marked as New (0)
• 6 are marked as Incomplete (+2)
• 24 are marked as Confirmed (-24)
• 2 are marked as Triaged (-3)
• 4 are marked as In Progress (0)
• 131 are marked as Fix Committed (+28)
• 2 are marked as Fix Released (0)

So where is the pie chart? ... here we go

So what happend lately, that we have such an incredibly positive change in the number of bugs to be fixed?

As I stated in my last post, we suddenly faced the fact, that we are in need of a new metaserver system, if we want to supply a nice internet gaming functionality to you, on all operating systems Widelands is available on. This further convinced us, that it's time for a soon release of Widelands Build17.

And so... it's all about motivation...

In the last 13 days, we have not only fixed an incredible amount of bugs, but as well added a lot of nice new features like:

• A new undo/redo feature was added to the editor
• The OpenGL renderer was improved a lot and a handful of bugs were fixed. The result: OpenGL is now our default renderer and the look of the world inside a game looks (from my point of view) even better than the old SDL render system.
• The barbarians got graphics for their ship
• We added a feature, that automatically releases the second carrier (oxen, horses, donkeys), if it is no more needed at a road
• The census and statistics strings shown above buildings were hardly readable on desert and winterland maps, this was improved, as well as some visuality issues with the mini map.
• System messages in multiplayer games are now translated on each client side, so everyone can read system messages in their prefared language.
• And we got a new metaserver system with a handful of new features like (1) metaserver sided check whether a game is connectable (2) showing the Widelands version in the game list (3) showing metaserver system messages in game (4) increasing the maximum number of clients that may be connected to a game (4) after ending a game you come back to the lobby instead of the main menu....

Well... we are in the middle of the work, so I better stop writing this post and check whether I can start work on one of the left bugs

so... expect Build17 around midth of April with at least one release candidate before.

And just in case this is unclear: Testers of development version are even more welcome than before !

The first round of the second Widelands tournament has been played last week, starting at the official play day. Game 1 between Kristin and despatch_ was won by Kristin as she was earlier with establishing a fully working military economy. Game 2 was unfortunately not played. Game 3 was won by ivh as he was much quicker in his expansion as g41. Game 4 was a marathon session. This game took more than 12 hours. With a strategic placement of a blockade PkK was able to first built up his strong Empire army and when the battle started after 10 hours it appeared to be stronger than the Barbarian army of hjd_.

This week the second round of games have been/will be played and we will have to say goodbye to two players.

Hi everyone,

it always takes me months to realize, that it's time to give you an update about the development process . So here it is.

What is happening lately?

Actually quite a lot.

• The seafaring implementation is making good progress. All three tribes are now able to build ports, shipyards and ships (although the ones of the barbarians and the empire look kind of strange as they only contain placeholder graphics ). However scouting and colonization is not yet possible.
• A multiplayer seafaring map was added to playtest that new feature.
• If you want to build your own seafaring maps, go for it, the editor got a new tool for port build spaces.
• The statistics windows was improved on many places, is now a lot more intuitive and has a nicer look.
• Finally all workers are running out of a burning warehouse or headquarters, if gets destroyed - before they just stayed inside and ... well...
• the message window was improved.
• Soldiers are finally healed in warehouses and the headquarters as well.
• The dedicated server model of Widelands was improved a lot (take a look at DedicatedServer if this is interesting for you)
• Graphic improvements at many places
• A new piece of music was added.

And of course more than just a whole bunch of bug fixes. Take a look at the ChangeLog for a complete list as I surely forgot a lot of changes in the list above .

A bit of statistics

There are currently 167 bugs targeted for our next release Build17 :

• 1 is marked as New
• 4 are marked as Incomplete
• 48 are marked as Confirmed
• 5 are marked as Triaged
• 4 are marked as In Progress
• 103 are marked as Fix Committed
• 2 are marked as Fix Released

Which reminds me of the "in Progress" bugs...

The metaserver rewrite

A few days (or may it be weeks) back, we got a mail, that debian is removing ggz libraries from their repositories and thus are unable to build Widelands with internet gaming support. This forced us, to finally get rid of ggz and take the chance to write our own little system - much easier and still with more features than ggz provided to us.

I won't reveal too much in this post, but the current progress is already quite far and I hope we can present some very nice features to you in the next time.

That's it, over and out.

Have Fun playing!

-- Nasenbaer

First Community Poll discussion

The first community poll has concluded. You can find the results here. Frankly, I am very unhappy with how everything turned out in the end and I am unsure where to go from here. But let me start from the beginning.

How we got here

The initial problem was the following: The Barbarian inn and big inn is backwards compatible to the tavern while the empire inn is not because it can no longer produce rations but only meals. There were different opinions if this a good solution or not and I finally started the first community poll with the following three options:

1. Keep the empire inn as is. (30 votes, 42.25%)
2. Make the empire inn backwards compatible. (9 votes, 12.67%)
3. Make all buildings backwards compatible. (32 votes, 45.07%)

We had some trouble with people voicing their opinion multiple times so I changed the system to one vote per account. The final result is listed in braces in the list above. As you can see most people want that all buildings are backwards compatible. I will now explain why this won't happen and why this is my mistake alone.

What we won't do

Widelands is a game of three tribes. All tribes are different - the differences might seem arbitrary or even confusing for new players but they really make that a game between empire and atlanteans plays out completely differently to a game between empire and barbarians for example. If you do not believe this, take some time to study the replays of the ongoing tournament.

For example, having the axefactory only produce axes for soldiers is a great advantage for the barbarians: they can stockpile axes and be aggressive much earlier in the game than the other tribes. If the axefactory would also spend its time making tools it would not be able to produce axes so quickly and this would destroy this advantage - and unique trait - of the barbarians.

How I screwed up

This was my error totally: I offered an unspecific option (number 3) which I would veto anyways because it would destroy relations which increase the variety in the game. Also, option 3 includes option 2 so it is hard to get a clear picture of the intentions of the voters. Vote options should be disjunct, clearly voiced and real options for the game. This is obvious in retrospection - but I clearly didn't think this through beforehand.

What we will do now

There is some guesswork involved here now and not everybody will be happy with the decision.

Most voters were pro changing every non backwards compatible building in the game. This seems so far fetched for me that I cannot believe most players would really enjoy this when implemented. Its like turning all pieces in chess except for the pawn into queens - it makes the game easier but eats up its essence. We will not follow through with this - the axe factory and the brewery are knight and bishop for the barbarians. Instead, we will redo the vote, one building at a time. I restarted the poll which will run now for exactly 6 weeks. There are three options now:

1. Change the Empire inn to be backwards compatible.
2. Keep the Empire inn as is.
3. Either way is fine for me.

Option three will show how many people spent some thoughts on this topic and might give an idea of the priority this has to the community as a whole. Please vote again for your favorite option.

What we will change to work around such problems

I still think the community polls are a good idea and I am really sorry that it was so messed up the first time around. For the next community poll, I plan to write a news post introducing the problem and positions (just like for this one). We will then take some time to read and collect suggestions for a solution and I will compile the vote options for the poll from them.

Links:
Forum topic - http://wl.widelands.org/forum/topic/911/
Original News Post introducing the first vote - http://wl.widelands.org/news/2011/11/18/community-poll-backwards-compatibility-buildings/