Wesnoth Evolution: 0.2
With the intention of documenting the oldest Battle for Wesnoth development releases from the 0.x line, I started the Wesnoth Evolution series, which so far comprises the following articles, in chronological order:
- Wesnoth Evolution: 0.1
- An interview with Dave, where I ask David White a.k.a. Sirp about Wesnoth 0.1 and the mysterious project codenamed “strategy”.
It’s been a long time, but I have decided to stop procrastinating and fire the time machine again to take a look at Wesnoth 0.1’s immediate successor, version 0.2. This is just the beginning of an amazing journey which, with luck, time and patience, will lead us back to Wesnoth 1.8 from the perspective of a long-time player, UMC author and mainline developer.
As in the last installment, I’ll use a cross-compiled (Mingw32) version of Wesnoth 0.2 for Windows on Linux/Wine. The distribution's contents timestamp is 2003-07-13 09:31 UTC. Both this distribution and 0.1's include many hidden .swp files (vi/vim temporary working files) so it’d seem Dave packaged 0.2 in middle of coding work.
1. Enter Francisco Muñoz
One does not need to be an expert to notice the major changes in the art department here compared to version 0.1. For one, Konrad is not an ugly blurry sprite anymore, and forest tiles actually look like masses of trees rather than plain-looking green hexagons. Notice that our protagonist starts to look like an actual Wesnothian Irdyan elf — don't forget that at some point during the 0.x development cycle, HttT was rewritten, turning Konrad into the human character we are now used to see.
This new sprite deserves a special mention since those who played Wesnoth 1.0 may be reminded of the Elvish High Lord (L3 Kalenz) unit seen at the right. There are also a few other changes that are not readily apparent in this screenshot, unless you compare with 0.1 side by side. But what happened here? Let's take a look at this fragment of my interview with Dave:
Dave: [...] 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.
This fellow’s artwork replaces all of the hideous blurry sprites from 0.1, and introduces proper textures for the Mountain and Forest terrain tiles. This is an important step in Wesnoth's development which would later define the direction that other mainline artists would take.
- Sprites are still 70x70 px Windows bitmap (BMP) images using pure black as a transparency key at rendering time. They look much better at 1:1 scale than they do in the game, which is zoomed-in by default.
- The movement-left icons on the top of the units’ HP bars have become shiny-looking diamond things, superseding the ugly plain circles seen in 0.1.
- Time of day schedule pictures are implemented, and fmunoz already provides artwork for the 4 ToD schedules present prior to version 0.4.3. As a result, the ToD text label in the sidebar disappeared.
2. Gameplay
As seen above, the sidebar displays the units’ level in this version unlike in 0.1. The lack of such an indication in 0.1 doesn’t make it trivial to notice that Konrad's (Elvish Commander) initial level has increased in this release from 1 to 2. His other stats didn’t change, except that he gained the leadership ability, which the Elvish Captain (L2 Fighter) already sported in 0.1.
- For some reason, there’s a L2 Elvish Hero unit in 0.2 which has Konrad's head and advances to Elvish Champion. This unit line is orphaned, however, and doesn't advance from any other type. The L2 Elvish Commander, on the other hand, advances to L3 Elvish Swordmaster, which does not have art or WML in this version. Hm.
- “Ocean” and “Coast” tiles are referred to as “Deep water” and “Shallow water” respectively, just like in modern versions of Wesnoth. This contradicts my earlier statement (based on a changelog entry) mentioning that this renaming occurred in 0.4.
- As mentioned during the review of 0.1, this version has the third map assigned to the first scenario for some reason. This allows for faster gameplay, which surely was intended to aid testing of the artificial intelligence or other aspect of the game.
This is the first version in which Magi exist using what looks like a placeholder sprite, and can be recruited by the human player. Being the only addition to the recruit list since 0.1, we can now recruit the two main elvish unit types present in later versions (Fighter and Archer), Horsemen, and Magi, who are highly expensive (42 gold) in this opportunity.
Magi in 0.2 are not only expensive, but also neutral and thus unaffected by ToD changes. Their melee attack has the same damage and strike count as L1 magi in Wesnoth 1.8, except it’s labeled as “dagger” and deals blade damage accordingly, rather than impact damage. Their ranged magic attack is much weaker than the lawful incarnation of this unit type, being 4-3 instead of the current 7-3. This doesn’t really make these squishy guys worth their cost in gold... Still, if you manage to advance one to their next level, you are given the choice to upgrade him to a neutral Red Mage, or a lawful White Mage.
Units can be recalled only if they advance a level during the scenario, as with version 0.1. Nonetheless, here’s a screenshot to the right displaying a couple of veteran Captains, a Ranger, a Horseman and our silent hero.
3. Summarizing
There don’t seem to be many user-visible changes in this version, since development appears to have been centered around the (newly founded) artwork department. This is not to say that it’s not a significant change — as I mentioned before, this is a first milestone for the art direction Wesnoth would take later.
I may eventually get to make a complete unit comparison chart between these ancient versions and modern release series — still, you can get excited now awaiting for the review of Wesnoth 0.3, in which we’ll try to unveil the mysteries of its development!