Battle for Wesnoth 1.4 got released today, and it’s a substantial improvement over the default version currently available in the Ubuntu apt repositories. I went ahead and compiled the source so I could have my own up to date copy of the game (!) because it’s such a huge improvement.
I had been playing the 1.3.15 unstable release for a few weeks. When my friends from England visited, we played a few local games which got me playing again. The new 1.4 stable release builds on all the awesome new features and even had some more surprises in store. All this in a free game? It’s hard to believe.
The new animations and portraits of the characters are so much better and more professional. I haven’t played enough of the new game to know if the balance is better, but the classes and factions seemed very balanced to begin with. If anything has been tweaked, it’s almost certainly for the better in my experience.
I’m working through one of the new campaigns that are included in the 1.4 release. I’ve moved on to playing at “Intermediate” levels. Right now this is providing a good challenge, but is in some ways less challenging than “easy” levels. Larger enemy armies means more experience, which translates into more upgrades for my characters.
I hit a wall several times in some of my previous campaign attempts, but I’m having an easier time these days. This might be due to better balancing, or that I’m learning the game rules better.
(For those of you impatient enough to download the new version, but hate compiling for whatever reason, get the Windows version and run it in WINE. It runs flawlessly.)
I’ve also learned that the core team that’s made Wesnoth is moving on to “Silver Tree” that hopes to create a 3-D RPG game. Basically the game is “Wesnoth 3D”. This is both good news because modifying 3D models and creating new ones is much easier than doing good 2D art. That means more interesting things will be produced, easily, and open up people’s creativity. While I want the Wesnoth game to continue to flourish and grow, a new groundwork being laid out in 3D will allow for more things to be done (hopefully!).
