Frequently Asked Questions

By pressing the quit key (Esc by default) without confirming to exit, or by pressing the pause key (P by default).

If mines are not mentioned, the mines explode after 3 seconds.

  1. Select Switch Hedgehog in your ammo menu (if you don't have it, you may find it in an utility crate)
  2. Press the Attack key (default: Space) once
  3. Press the “Switch hedgehog” key (default: Tab) to switch between different hedgehogs until you find the one you want

See the Switch Hedgehog page for details.

See Controls for a more complete list, here are the basics:

Move:
Press the [Left] and [Right] cursor keys to walk.
Press [Enter] to jump forward.
Press [Backspace] once to jump upwards.
Press [Backspace] twice to jump backwards.

Aim:
Press the [Up] and [Down] cursor keys.

Aim precisely:
Hold down the left shift key while aiming

Shoot:
Press [Space].

Switch weapon:
Press [F1]-[F10], or use the weapons menu, accessible via right mouse button click

Switch between hedgehogs:
See “How do I switch between hedgehogs?”.

Turn around without walking:
Hold down [left shift] and press the [left] or [right] cursor key.

Adjust sound volume:
[0] key is for volume up, and [9] key is for volume down

Set timer of e.g. grenade:
Press [1]-[5] keys

Set weapon bounciness:
Hold down left shift and press [1]-[5]

Control the direction of air attack:
Press [Left] or [Right] cursor keys

Construct different girders:
Press [Left] or [Right] cursor keys when using construction tool

Note that you can configure most key bindings in Hedgewars, but you cannot change the key combinations directly.

  • If you hover an ammo symbol in the in-game weapons menu (rightclick), you will see a decent explanation. If this tooltip does not appear, activate it in Preferences → Graphics → Show ammo menu tooltips
  • Also see the online Weapons Manual
Copy the .hwd file to: ~/.hedgewars/Demos/ in GNU/Linux, Android and Mac OS,
or %USERPROFILE%\Hedgewars\Demos\ in Windows. Restart Hedgewars, go to “Local Game”, then click on the camera button for a list of all your demos. Note: You can only watch demos which are compatible with your Hedgewars version. Incompatible demos won't be shown in the list.

By programming it with the Lua programming language by using Hedgewars' Lua API.
You first have to learn how to program in Lua. See https://www.lua.org to learn more about Lua. Lua is one of the easier programming languages to learn.
Continue by reading these articles:

Feel free to ask for specific help in the forums or in the Hedgewars chatroom.

You can also use HedgeEditor to create missions, but it is very experimental and rather unwieldy to use, and it can't be used to create more complex missions.

First, you should package your contribution in a HWP archive, if this is possible or needed. Using HWP archives makes installation super easy for everyone.

Then, upload it to a reliable server. See the following question for a list.

After uploading your your contribution, you might want create a post in the Content Contributions forum to announce it to the public and to invite discussion. Please also read: Submissions: Guide and threads. Don't forget to post a link to the hh.unit22.org page or wherever you uploaded your file.

Finally, talk about your contribution in our chatroom or in the in-game chat. Smile

Here:

  • Maps, themes, forts, scripts, missions, mission maps, voicepacks, hats, flags, graves, music (if packaged as a HWP archive): hh.unit22.org
  • Demos: Demos page
  • Game schemes, weapon sets: You can't upload these directly, but you can post them in text form in this thread: https://hedgewars.org/node/3857
  • Teams: You can't upload these directly, but you present your team here: https://hedgewars.org/node/1172
  • Hand-drawn maps, savegames and other files: There is no dedicated place for this yet. You're on your own. Sad Smiley

No matter where you upload the file, PLEASE make sure to upload your contributions on at least one reliable hoster (such as hh.unit22.org and hedgewars.org) so your contribution can be downloaded for years to come. Do not only upload it on crappy one-click hosters like Mediafire, RapidShare, Uploaded.to, Filedropper, etc. and then walk away because they regularily delete files. We don't want to discourage and particular hoster, but please be aware of the hoster's deletion policy.

We can't stress enough how important using a reliable hoster is; a large amount of past contributions have already been lost because of this. Sad Smiley

It's asking for a password because the nickname you chose in the game settings is registered on hedgewars.org. If you own this nickname on hedgewars.org, just enter the same password. If you do not, go to the settings menu and change your username to something else.

The official game server caches user logon data for performance reasons.
Therefore it can take a while until you can logon with your new password (until that the old password should still work).

However, if you ask then nicely, admins can clear the server cache for you, so that you can use your new password immediatly after.

Check your firewall configuration before reporting a bug. Hedgewars needs 46631 TCP port opened at the server side. LAN must also provide UDP datagrams broadcasting for automatic server discovery

X.org supports something called "MetaModes" which lets you define different resolutions in X that you can instantly switch to without having to restart the X server or log out.
This example is only tested on a computer with an integrated nvidia chip, but should work with different graphic devices as well.

Find the resolution of your two monitors.
If you're using nvidia, run nvidia-settings, then click the X Server Display Configuration item in the tree view to the right.
Your screens will show the correct resolutions in the left part of the configuration window.

Note down the resolutions.

Open your xorg.conf file (usually located in /etc/X11/xorg.conf), and scroll down to the "Screen" section.
Comment out any "Option MetaModes ..." lines you may have there already, by putting a # in front of the line (should look something like "#Option MetaModes ..." after commenting it out).
Now, paste the following line in, under the line you commented out:

Option "MetaModes" "1680x1050,1600x1200;NULL,1600x1200;1680x1050,NULL"

The "MetaModes" setting is a semicolon-separated list of resolution combinations, defined like this:
"screen1,screen2". The first resolution should be whatever your currently running.
The second one in this example says that "screen1" should be off (NULL), and screen2 should run with 1600x1200 resolution. Use whatever you had in your nvidia-settings for your screen2.
The third one is similar, just the other way around, with the second monitor (screen2) turned off, and the first monitor running with maximum resolution.

The fourth one in my example has the first monitor running with max resolution (because it is the one that provides the *tallest* resolution (1050)), and the second one running the highest resolution that gives me the same height (1050).

Now, save this file, log out and log back in. (You may have to restart your X server - if so, just log out, press CTRL+ALT+Backspace, and then log in).
In hedgewars, in the screen section, you should now have several resolutions to choose from!

As an added bonus, you can also change the resolution on the fly in your Desktop Environment (GNOME or KDE), by running the screen resolution configuration tool (krandrtray in KDE, "Screen Resolution" in GNOME), and switch to any of the metamodes you defined earlier.

See Building Hedgewars from source code in the Hedgewars Knowledge Base.

tell cmake a path to Qt manually:

$ export QTDIR=<qt dir>

or

$ cmake -DQT_QMAKE_EXECUTABLE=<path to qmake>

Hedgewars development follows a strict development/testing/release circle.
Please have a look at our Release Schedule

See comment below.

Xorlathor wrote:

I don't know if this has been on ongoing discussion, but is hedgewars ever going to have a physics engine added? (...).

nemo wrote:

A real physics engine has significant disadvantages too, I suspect sheepluva would love to expound on that if he's around.

Gladly I was not.

Kidding aside: using a physics engine would not only be an overkill-solution, it would also generate way more problems than it would solve.

fredb, a Wormux dev, tried a physics-engine approach with Wormux.
Talk to him or play the "bullet"-branch of wormux if you want to find out more about the problems I'm referring to :P
(e.g. I enjoy killing half the enemy team by just jumping against them till they fall off a cliff :P)

The hedgewars bounce physics improvements that were done for .13 are only applied to objects that actually need them - and the same will happen with future physics improvements -- rather than using a complete physics engine affecting all objects in game in ways they weren't supposed to react like, requiring a ton of work-arounds in order to fix that -- e.g. ever thought how many hogs would be killed by mines BEFORE the game begins, just because of physics making them slide down slopes and bounce around? Wink Smiley

Xorlathor wrote:

when boxes or supplies drop down and they bounce perfectly upright when on a slope

Yes, that might seem strange to some, but it's still better than having boxes bounce across the map (+gathering in holes), against hedgehogs or into the water.
Maybe they should have a parachute that opens right before they hit the ground + their angle adjusted to fit the ground below them though (but that would could still lead to "unrealistic" results)

Xorlathor wrote:

I know this would take a massive ammount of coding, but I think it'd be 100% worth it.

It could be worth improving collision detection so that moving barrels/objects can't make hogs stuck and so that shots and fire can't miss moving hogs, I agree on that and I thought about that before.
But a full physics engine?
I think coding that approach and making it playable and not look bugged all over the place would require more time than the hedgewars engine needed itself.
And the chances are good it would end like "hmm, now the physics are 10% better, but the code is now 3 times as big, full of workarounds and is executed a lot slower making the game unplayable on weaker machines, we should revert to doing it without physics engine"

If you still think it would be totally worth it and if you have a lot of spare time and some coding skills or interest to aquire them - feel free to try to include a physics engine.

Hint: This could be step #1 - creating collision polygons from landscape pixels:
[EDIT: remove dead link to polygongenwormux.png]

 

Because we need a portable and easy to maintain GUI widgets for game and options setup. It would be unreasonable to maintain self written GUI. Currently we have no time and manpower for it. We are interested in developing a game and game features, not to implement our own crossplatform GUI library/framework.

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