Wesnoth Evolution: An interview with Dave

As I mentioned in my Wesnoth Evolution: 0.1 article, I contacted David White (a.k.a. Dave/Sirp) to ask him a few questions about Wesnoth's early history — more specifically, about codename “strategy” and Wesnoth 0.1.

This is not an all-inclusive interview. You can find more information on Wesnoth's history in Wesnoth.org if you know how and what to search. Wesnoth Philosophy on the wiki (which includes The History of, and Philosophy behind Wesnoth) may be a good starting point.

Me: Do you remember when Wesnoth 0.1 was finished? The tarball's contents have all the same timestamp (2003-06-18 08:37), so I assume their original timestamps and attributes were dropped, probably due to a copy operation.

Me: Interestingly, it seems to be just 3 months before the CVS repository was started (according to the SVN history).

Dave: I believe that that is the date when I released Wesnoth 0.1.

Me: In the 0.1 distribution there's a mysterious .tar archive that contains files with earlier timestamps than 0.1, and the tar is named “strategy-source.tar”. Since the MD5 sums differ (I've not taken a closer look yet), I assume this corresponds to a somewhat earlier version?

Me: The files in this subdistribution have timestamps of 2003-06-14 at different times of the day.

Dave: Yes, around 3 months before CVS was started. Version 0.1 was definitely released “around” 2003-06-18. It may have been 2003-06-17. One of those two dates. I believe I started coding it around 2003-06-07 and had it ready to release on 2003-06-18.

Dave: I'm not sure what strategy-source.tar is. I'd have to look at the contents. I only thought of the name Wesnoth immediately before releasing version 0.1, though, so it's likely that prior to that I just called it “strategy” since it's a strategy game.

Dave: A comment I made on 2003-06-22: “Basically this is a 0.1 release, and the entire game has been done by one person in two weekends.” 🙂

Me: I should point out it's an impressive work (even if the graphics are not exactly high-quality). 😛

Me: If I remember correctly your objective was to code a smart AI for a turn-based strategy game, not to produce the game (content, user interface, etc.) itself?

Dave: Well, I wanted to make a fun game. However, I felt that getting good graphics for the game was unlikely, so I thought I would focus on making a game with simple, fun rules, and which could be played well by an AI.
I was enjoying playing Civilization 3 at the time, and felt its AI could be better. I had considered making a Civ-like game, but then stopped and thought, “this is huge. Why don't I make a simpler strategy game first, to show that I can actually make a game. Then I can make a civ-like game next.”

Dave: And as part of that, I wanted my simple game to have a powerful AI, to show it could be done.

Me: What was Wesnoth 0.1's license? Had you already intended it to be free software? How did you spread the word about its existence?

Dave: It was under the GPL. I didn't expect to make money out of it, and I would feel flattered if anyone read or reused my code. I thought the GPL was a good choice. I submitted news about it to the Linux Game Tome and perhaps Freshmeat. Most of the traffic to Wesnoth early on came from happypenguin.

Me: Looking at Wesnoth 0.2, it seems that you got an artist to help you with the graphics during the mean time. Who was this and what was his motivation, if any in particular?

Me: I'm assumming that there were no further releases between 0.1 and 0.2.

Dave: Yes, a Spanish artist called Francisco Muñoz (fmunoz). He was a math student who enjoyed drawing and pixeling. He made art for a number of Open Source games that he liked. He became the main person I worked and collaborated with, until the opening of the Wesnoth forums.

Me: And I suppose the Wesnoth forums were not opened until maybe 0.2.1? That is the first version in the CVS/SVN trunk changelog and includes an entry about new graphics, contributed by Paco.

Dave: I believe that Paco is an alias that fmunoz used. The forums were opened on 2003-08-17. I think the first version posted on the forums was version 0.3.7 on 2003-08-20 — the post is here: http://forum.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16

Dave: So as you can see, we went through new versions very quickly. I think we were releasing around one version every week, or sometimes even more rapidly than that.

Dave: I was also on vacation in the US immediately after releasing 0.1, until around 2003-07-08... during which time fmunoz sent me a new set of art, and then on my return I released version 0.2 which included his new art and some improvements.

Dave: There is this interesting explanation I wrote about saving, along with version 0.2.1: “You can't save in the middle of a level though, this is because, it'd be harder to implement, some people would get into the habit of saving before an important battle, and reloading the game to change the outcome if they don't like it. I like removing the temptation :)”

Me: Wesnoth 0.1-0.3 had a very basic plot for the first couple of scenarios. They do not have any relation to Heir to the Throne whatsoever unless we consider that both Konrad and Usadar Q'kai (“map1” orcish leader) got recycled into the mainline campaign. Was the original plot in Wesnoth 0.1-0.3 ever considered for production, or was it just a placeholder story?

Me: Also, interestingly, Wesnoth 0.3 already includes an extra plot (not in-game) that is the first one to use the names of Garard II and Asheviere, although it still doesn't resemble HttT as seen in Wesnoth 1.0 and later. And it is cut off.

Dave: At the time of 0.1, there were no plans for going into “production”. I felt that a game should have a storyline, and so I made the engine support storyline features. The purpose of the very simple storyline was to show how the engine supported a storyline, to communicate the kind of game it was meant to be. I was working hard on the engine and game mechanics though, so I literally just thought up and typed up the actual storyline contents in a few minutes.

Dave: Later, while playing with my dog, I thought up a somewhat more interesting and complete storyline. Also, the storyline became jumbled at some junctures, because fmunoz added scenarios, continuing the storyline, though we didn't really discuss it. So you'd have some scenarios done by him, some by me, and we each took the story in our own directinos.

Dave: For instance, the entire presence of the undead was his addition. The Elves Besieged, Isle of Anduin, Bay of Pearls were my scenarios. Muff Malal's Peninsula was his. Siege of Elensefar was mine. The Princess of Wesnoth was his idea....the whole idea of having an antagonistic princess who later joins you was his. (though I changed her name to be that of my girlfriend at the time. 🙂

Me: That creative process can easily become a problem.

Dave: Sure...remember, at the time we both thought we were just working on a cute game, for fun, as a simple hobby. We didn't think it would become popular with a large community.

This interview was conducted on Monday, April 12th 2010 on IRC, and it is published with David White's permission.