Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game
wesnoth.org

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277 points

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akyuu

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3 hours ago

72 comments

jjmarr ・ 2 hours ago

Highly suggest connecting with one of the lead developers, Charles Dang/Vultraz, if you have any C++ jobs in the USA.

He's been a developer on Wesnoth since 2012 but only graduated university in 2024. Unfortunately, it's been an absolutely brutal market for new graduates. Even if you're a maintainer on one of the most popular OSS C++ projects on GitHub.

I can't recommend him enough.

edit: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-dang-10994b1b4

  • wwilson ・ an hour ago

    Thanks,our company is in the DC area so I just reached out with an offer to chat. Wesnoth is an incredible project, I can't believe he doesn't have a programming job.

  • ecshafer ・ an hour ago

    I am very surprised if he can't find a job, as an American, in DC, with 12 years of C++ experience. Sure companies aren't great at assessing open source experience, but there is one area its easy to find a job as a dev: work that requires a clearance.

    • setgree ・ 16 minutes ago

      St. John’s college is a great place that draws a special type of young person, but its graduates are not very STEM-legible. As far as I know they still offer no choice of major & no hands-on classes — just the great books.

      Of course that makes this person’s skill all the more impressive.

  • FrustratedMonky ・ 44 minutes ago

    That is sad. Maintaining something like this really takes almost all the skills also needed for enterprise, or a dozen places.

    That it doesn't get him instant hired is the sad part, what are we coming to.

  • szmarczak ・ an hour ago

    > Unfortunately, it's been an absolutely brutal market for new graduates.

    Furthermore, more and more companies are looking for "professional" devs using AI tools such as Claude Code. By "professional" I mean proficient in using those AI tools, not actual knowledge. And they don't even specify this in the job offer and you learn this during the interview.

rdevilla ・ 7 minutes ago

I loved this game playing on an Arch Thinkpad in university with budget graphics capability.

The best part is being able to pin locations on the map for your teammates, so we were able to plot the adventures and battlegrounds of a goated unit by naming the pins "Ronant's Triumph," "Ronant's Revenge," "Ronant's Folly," and ultimately "Ronant's Last Stand." Great times with a few beers and the lads.

RIP Ronant, Wesnoth will never see another hero of your like again.

rhdunn ・ 2 hours ago

My only gripe with the game is that healing doesn't give XP to the healing units. This means you need to place them in combat to level up instead of placing them behind the fighters like they are intended to be, and with them initially having low health they are very squishy. I know you can kinda cheese it by reducing a monster to 1-2 HP and then getting them to attack, but it feels like going against their role.

  • thih9 ・ an hour ago

    > Frequently Proposed Ideas (FPIs)

    > 7. Healing/leadership should give experience

    > It is felt that allowing units to gain experience without risk would make leveling-up of such units inevitable. Further, one of the motivating examples of this is so that units such as shaman can have a hope to level up in multiplayer. It is pointed out that if the experience gains were high enough to allow shaman to level up in a single multiplayer game, then it would be trivial to gain the best type of healing unit in a campaign very quickly.

    https://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=34904#w0fpi7 (2011)

    • a_t48 ・ 39 minutes ago

      There's various ways around this (like capping amount of experience per level by source), but ain't game design fun?

  • jjmarr ・ 2 hours ago

    I've enjoyed this, honestly. There's a whole short-term pain/long-term gain tradeoff to risking healers that adds more strategy to the campaign.

    > I know you can kinda cheese it by reducing a monster to 1-2 HP

    In practice, I've found it difficult to get monsters to 1-2 HP since it often means not using your most powerful attacks. On harder difficulties I usually can't afford the opportunity cost.

    • gwerbin ・ an hour ago

      Yeah I personally found this to be a big part of the tactical and strategic challenge. It reminded me a lot of Pokemon where you have a similar challenge, of slotting "exposure to fighting" into a limited action and HP budget.

      Edit: Now that I think about it, most turn-based games have this mechanic. It's almost an idiomatic balance/design decision in gaming.

      Compare to Dota where support heroes have acquired more and more opportunities for assist gold/XP, it does in some sense make the game "easier" for the support players, but then the game is harder in other ways because now the supports are all way more farmed and dangerous than in older versions. It's the difference between controlling an army of many units and having to manage them all, versus controlling one unit and needing to work together within a team.

      • vkou ・ 35 minutes ago

        Dota/League does this because each hero is controlled by a human, and humans don't like playing low-impact, low-wealth, low-exp supports.

  • marknutter ・ 2 hours ago

    It's OSS, no?

    • tmtvl ・ 2 hours ago

      It is, but making a change that doesn't mess up the balance of the game can be tricky.

everdrive ・ 2 hours ago

I played the heck out of this about a decade ago. It's an amazing game, and I'd love to return to it and see what has changed.

  • myky22 ・ an hour ago

    Same, i think It was on my first Linux OS. The good old days hehe

  • thatoneengineer ・ 2 hours ago

    Same!

    • drob518 ・ 2 hours ago

      Same! Just downloaded the latest version for nostalgia’s sake.

rpmisms ・ 3 hours ago

Grew up playing Wesnoth, still adore the game. There is a TON of third party content and a serious extended universe, too!

  • hyperionultra ・ 2 hours ago

    Could you name a few places to find 3rd party content?

    • tmtvl ・ 2 hours ago

      Last time I checked there was an option on the main menu to download user-made campaigns.

    • rpmisms ・ an hour ago

      It's under the "add-ons" menu in game. I would recommend playing the top-ranked campaigns. Some amazing stuff in there. I adore Legend of the Invincibles. Fun story, tons of new gameplay mechanics.

    • IsTom ・ 2 hours ago

      There's a "addons" browser in the game.

ramses0 ・ 2 hours ago

A+! They even had an iOS version a while back: `https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-battle-for-wesnoth/id14507...` (this may be the "Mac" version, see: `https://www.reddit.com/r/wesnoth/comments/1pjkwbw/i_had_wesn...`).

If that's your jam then there's also a (non-open-source) "Hero's Hour" which tickles the old Heroes of Might and Magic stylings, works reasonably well on Xbox, where I've been doing most of my gaming lately.

As far as Open Source gaming success stories, I'd put this up there in the Top 5 for "Original IP and Concept" (if that makes sense). Just a stellar labor of love, worth giving it a shot to play!

wiradikusuma ・ an hour ago

Sweet! Does anyone have a list of high-quality open source games like this?

(Subjective interpretation, but something like, "I couldn't believe it's free, I would have paid for it anyway.")

  • fwipsy ・ 33 minutes ago

    Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead: Like Dwarf Fortress but post-apocalyptic survival horror. Endless Sky: top-down space shooter inspired by Escape Velocity SuperTux: inspired by Super Mario SuperTuxKart: inspired by Mario Kart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_video_game... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_video_games...

    • anthk ・ 13 minutes ago

      Well:

      - Supertux2, it got recently revamped, the quality skyrocketed. Much better controls and artwork.

      - Supetux Advance, this is really great too.

      - Retux (More Wariolike than Mario)

      - Nethack/Slashem. A Roguelike more bound to interaction/exploration/mechanics than combat, but Slashem makes combat crazy with the Doppleganger Monk, which is basically a Shonen Manga, the role. (Dragon Ball/Naruto depending on your age).

      - DCSS. Basically, not Nethack/Slashem, much more combat oriented than the Slashem combinatorics playing with the Monk a la Jackie Chan, this is more like an ARPG made a Rogue.

      - Frotz/Lectrote/Winfrotz/whatver Z Machine interpreter and "All Things Devour". Spiritwrak, too. Great libre text adventures and still enganing because of weird mechanics.

      - Frozen Bubble

      - OpenArena.

      - FreeDoom, better compiled with Deutex on daily builds.

      - FreeCiv.

      - OpenTTD today can be standalone enough.

      - Frozen Bubble

      - Minetest+tons of subgames such as Glitch, Nodecore...

      - OOlite

      - Speed Dreams. If the controls are hard, try the arcade mode. If the controls are still hard, get SupertuxKart, pick some real life car from the addons and get all the SD tracks from the inline downloader, they are several.

  • ecshafer ・ an hour ago

    The Free Civ and Free Colonization games are good. Brogue, Nethack, DCSS are good if you like roguelikes. OpenMW is a totally open source reimplementation of Morrowind, so that might fit the bill.

  • reddalo ・ an hour ago

    OpenRCT2 is a reimplementation of RollerCoaster Tycoon 2.

    Just like its cousing OpenTTD which is a reimplementation of Chris Sawyer's Transport Tycoon.

  • throw_await ・ 21 minutes ago

    Luanti aka minetest

    Widelands as a settler clone

dhbradshaw ・ an hour ago

My kids and I have been playing this for about 20 years. It's worked on Linux, Mac and Windows and has never stopped working.

In the meantime so many other favorite games have disappeared or become obsolete.

There's no absolute reason great games can't be as immortal as chess. Maybe Wesnoth can be.

bedroom_jabroni ・ 3 hours ago

An absolute gem I came across randomly many years ago. Picked up Mewgenics and it left me wishing it had some mechanics from Wesnoth like faster animations (Mewgenics caps at 4x), undo action (at least if the action doesn't trigger any rng/damage behavior), skip enemy turns.

I only wish they added more campaigns into the official lore.

philip-b ・ an hour ago

I heard about this game many many times due to software developers showcasing it as an example of a good libre videogame. However, I don't know a single person who played it and I have never seen anyone recommending it for its gameplay.

  • bitwank ・ 3 minutes ago

    That’s absurd. It is the only game I’ve ever played other than chess. Maybe it’s not popular with FPS gamers, but a lot of people don’t like FPS.

  • azrazalea ・ an hour ago

    It is a relatively simple formula that is very combat heavy with extremely simple economy. The campaigns are excellent though and as long as the true randomness of attacks/defense doesn't drive you crazy it is a lot of fun. Very challenging and has real strategic and tactical depth as well as pretty well balanced.

    I personally never did multiplayer but last I checked the multiplayer community was pretty healthy.

  • Quarrelsome ・ an hour ago

    i played it, its fine, its a solid game. Easily can lose several hours in a session and probably played over 40 in total. Its enjoyable to play through due to the upgrading mechanics and wanting to see all the potential evolutions. That said, I'm not always a huge fan of the level design as you're often encouraged to play into negative fights (e.g. the timing for meeting the enemy aligns with their daytime bonuses) which forces you to play a bit more defensively than I'd like.

mattlondon ・ 2 hours ago

Blocked by Anubis? Just says "invalid response" with no explanation or instructions for how to fix it. Chrome on Android - not exactly niche.

Thanks for that.

  • tetromino_ ・ an hour ago

    Same happened for me when I clicked on the link, I had to delete the cookies for wesnoth.org and then load the site again. I think their Anubis setup might be broken a bit

steviedotboston ・ 34 minutes ago

I remember playing this a lot back in the Ubuntu 6 days.

coolgoose ・ an hour ago

I've been playing this for 10+ years :) it's one awesome game and the details for sprites and art direction is sweet.

uberman ・ 3 hours ago

I love this game. It is also fairly easy to tinker with the units if you are like me, that is a big win.

plutokras ・ 2 hours ago

In high school I kept a USB drive full of portable apps. This was one of them. I can still recommend it.

helle253 ・ an hour ago

Fond memories, playing this throughout my youth :')

orangesilk ・ 2 hours ago

What would need to happen that more players are available for online games?

steveharing1 ・ an hour ago

Open Source Games are really underrated Gems

macleginn ・ 2 hours ago

So it's like HMM but the whole map is in battle mode?

MinimalAction ・ 2 hours ago

Interesting! Is this similar to Age of Empires?

  • garretraziel ・ an hour ago

    Not at all. That would be a game called 0ad.

  • butlike ・ 44 minutes ago

    More like Final Fantasy Tactics

  • Quarrelsome ・ an hour ago

    think more hexbased, turnbased, terrain and dice roll mechanics with unit upgrades being extremely important.

  • phamilton ・ an hour ago

    More like Fire Emblem

  • brendoelfrendo ・ an hour ago

    More like Heroes of Might and Magic. It's a turn-based strategy game where battles take place on a hex grid map. It's got full campaigns, lots of factions and units, resources to gather... it's one of my favorite OSS projects. Wesnoth has been in active development forever and is a real labor of love, as well as a showcase of collaborative game development.

  • CivBase ・ an hour ago

    Not really. This game uses a turn-based combat system with a hex grid. It's more like Sid Meier's Civilization, but with a drastically simplified economy and a strong focus on battles. It also has a Tolkein-esque fantasy theme instead of a real-life history theme.

    If that sounds at all interesting, I suggest giving it a shot.

jcmontx ・ 2 hours ago

Never heard of this game. Is it similar to Warcraft III?

  • markatto ・ 2 hours ago

    It's turn based, the most similar game I've played is probably Fantasy General. Closer to Advance Wars or Fire Emblem than Warcraft.

  • orangesilk ・ 2 hours ago

    No. Warcraft 3 ist real time strategy, Wesnoth is turn based strategy.

  • the_af ・ 2 hours ago

    No. This is turn based, it doesn't play like any RTS game.

  • aetherson ・ 2 hours ago

    Not really. It's turn-based and hex-based.

anilkuscu ・ 2 hours ago

only missing point about this game is some of the real word parameters like moral,flanking etc. Maybe a real history mod would be amazing like ancient era or medieval ages.