After the Storm 0.6.1

A little more than two weeks after the release of version 0.6.0, After the Storm 0.6.1 is out! And just in time for Christmas Eve in Chile, too.

The last couple of weeks have been particularly productive, as I’ve continued to work on AtS Episode II with the help of my loyal assistants vultraz and Espreon, who have been a valuable help providing early feedback, play-testing, and proofreading. In order to keep people busy for a while, this release includes scenarios 4 through 7, and one cutscene-only scenario, adding up to five new scenarios in this version.

Version 0.6.1 was scheduled for this date immediately after 0.6.0’s release, but it was only intended to contain the finished scenario 4, which landed on SVN trunk on December 15th. Since I was left with plenty of time before the original deadline, I decided to continue working on as many scenarios as possible. E2S7 landed on the 22nd, 22:01 UTC. I would have continued working on E2S8 immediately, but since it requires one new unit baseframe, I decided to postpone it and aim for introducing all the final four scenarios in version 0.7.0 when it’s done (most likely by early to mid-January 2012).

For this version, I decided to increase the Wesnoth version requirement from 1.9.7 to 1.9.10, which was already recommended in the campaign description. While there’s no WML code or maps enforcing the version requirement yet, I’ll simply ignore bug reports against AtS 0.6.1 on 1.9.9 and earlier versions since the engine behavior changed a lot between 1.9.8 and 1.9.10 in some areas — it’s simply impossible to keep supporting old development versions now that mainline is releasing 1.9.10 and later as betas for the upcoming stable 1.10. Besides, as a mainline developer I must also encourage people to test the game and report bugs before 1.10!

Should this inconvenience you, I may be able to provide support on a case-by-case basis given a good reason to do so. My general recommendation if your Internet service isn’t good enough to download the bi-weekly Wesnoth 1.10 betas is to just download the latest one and keep it around until 1.10 final is released. By the looks of things, odds are this won’t happen until January.

The changelog for this version of the campaign is unusually long, even though I deliberately omitted some specific additions in the art department — six new baseframes, all made by myself and awaiting revisions in the near future — and unit WML. Since those are tied to the new scenarios, I decided to not spoil it in the changelog.

Version 0.6.1:
--------------
* Increased minimum Wesnoth version requirement from 1.9.7 to 1.9.10.

* Graphics:
  * New or updated unit graphics: Sylvan Warden (chained).

* Scenarios:
  * Various prose grammar fixes.
  * E1S3 - Civil War in the North:
    * Removed deprecated flower terrain.
  * E1S5 - Bay of Tirigaz:
    * Removed deprecated flower terrain.
  * E1S6.2 - Elves of a Different Land:
    * Fixed a dialog line wrapped in double parentheses.
  * E1S9.1 - The Triad (part 1):
    * Don't set Elynia's initial status to slowed.
    * Fixed animation glitches.
  * E1S9.3 - The Triad (part 3):
    * Fixed animation glitches.
  * E2S2 - The Heart Forest:
    * Increased turn limit.
    * Reduced initial gold amounts for enemy sides.
    * Set initial gold amount for the player.
  * E2S3.2 - Revelations:
    * Corrected unit facings.
  * E2S4 - Shifting Allegiances:
    * New scenario.
  * E2S5 - The Eastern Front:
    * New scenario.
  * E2S5 C - The Eastern Front cutscene:
    * New scenario.
  * E2S6 - The Voyage Home:
    * New scenario.
  * E2S7 - Proximus:
    * New scenario.

* Units:
  * Increased Dryad's HP from 43 to 46.
  * Increased Forest Spirit's HP from 37 to 40.
  * Simplified Sylvan Warden's animations WML, making her less of a resource
    hog.
  * Removed Kri'tan.

Have fun, and happy holidays!