This is an official Call for Help on the Hedgewars mobile ports.

First of all let me say that *all* the code is still fully available and compilable; in other words, it should be still working fine and dandy on any mobile phone. The Android version currently in the repository is *much* more advanced and feature complete than current alpha on the GooglePlay store, it even has networking play! iOS has received a unified input manager from the Android port and a lot of merging steps have already been done.

We just need someone to look after the code, apply latest library updates and unify the interface module.

Currently it takes a lot of effort to maintain three separate architecture targets and most of the devs are focusing more on the desktop version; in order to develop for mobile a lot of the interface has to be rewritten, as well as input method, and, at least until a few months ago, the supporting libraries were not as mature as today.

Although most of the engine is fairly portable, Hedgewars has a completely separate 'frontend' module which is based on Qt/C++ but is implemented in native Uikit/Objc and Android/Java. This is nice because native development offers a more consistent look'n'feel, but it is a maintenance nightmare, as you have to backport your changes three times. There were some attempt to unify this situation in the past and proposals to have a single codebase to be used everywhere but we could never find a complete replacement.

The binary builds used to be provided by me for iOS and by Xeli and then Medo42 for Android but all of us have found themselves too busy with IRL projects. So if you read this and are interested in mobile development, GUI and game design, jump in, we will really appreciate your effort and you will make countless people happy of playing our game!

Has life been giving you nothing but lemons?

Don't worry, there's a new theme to go bananas over: Fruit!

Cool New Weapons

Don't wait for hell to freeze over, freeze it yourself with the all-new, amazing Freezer! Freeze your enemies, make ice-bridges over water or just create a slippery path of death! (*The dev team will not be held responsible for any injury and/or death you may sustain while walking on ice)

We've improved your existing arsenal, too! The 'size' of cleaver has been reduced, so now it's more likely to cut into hogs instead of imbedding itself infuriatingly into the ground. The Flying Saucer has also seen some interesting changes...

Death comes from above below!

It's time to take your amphibious assault to the next level. While using the Flying Saucer, it's now possible to launch projectiles from underwater! Also, instead of just dropping bombs on your enemies you can aim them, too! Wow!

Improved AI

• Think you can hide in a hidey hog hole? The newly improved AI will use drill-rockets to dig you out!
• Don't worry, though, you can always sneak under the protection of your trusty steel girder, right? That's where you're wrong my friend!

        New Gameplay Challenges

• An frenetic, awesome new gameplay mode: Frenzy! In this mode each turn lasts only one second. Can you handle it?
• An extra mission: Nobody Laugh.
• More Achievements: 'Prestigious Pilot' and 'Naughty Ninja' have been added to the old missions. Have fun trying to unlock them.
• A new weaponset, One of Everything.

        New Maps

• Fight on a variety of new battlegrounds!
• New entries include Bones, Crystal, Grassy, Haunty, Oaks, Shrooms and Tentacles!

Special thanks to Tiy of Starbound for donating these Starbound backgrounds as Hedgewars maps.

        More customization!

• Over 30 new hats!
• New SteelTower fort!

        Ropers Rejoice

• Are you already bored with the hundred shoppa maps you downloaded? Don't worry, now you can play on an 'infinite' number of procedurally generated maps, thanks to the new Shoppa Map script.
• If the behavior of rope in 0.9.18 made you want to tear your hair out, you'll be glad to know that it's much improved.

And finally the projects have been announced!

This year we are working under the OpenSUSE umbrella organization and we received two slots. We're very grateful for the opportunity for us and our supporters and excited for the students that are going work with us!

We received about 10 applications, but even with a limited number of submitted project we really had a hard time in selecting the best ones.

Onto the announcement!

- jaree, aka Julia Struchenko, mentored by unc0rr will "make AI smarter":
- master_ex, aka Periklis Ntanasis, mentored by nemo will add a second campaign mission.

A big good luck goes to them (and their mentors) for the fun times ahead and a sincere thank you for all participants for their applications! We are sorry that we couldn't accept you all in our GSoC, but please understand that our rejection wasn't due to neglecting you or not liking your proposal, but only a matter of priorities and constraints.

So everyone hang around and we will keep on the fun!

We've just baked a new build for our beta release (BETA2). 9017:e9d54cd577e7

Windows: http://download.gna.org/hedgewars/Hedgewars-0.9.19-r9017.exe (fixed link)
OSX: http://download.gna.org/hedgewars/Hedgewars-0.9.19-r9017-OSX.zip
Linux: http://code.google.com/p/hedgewars/wiki/BuildingOnLinux ( hg up -r e9d54cd577e7 )

More details in the first beta post.

Bug reports are always accepted (patches too)!

Note that if you have any trouble w/ online play on the official server w/ 0.9.19 betas, please try specifying m8y.org as a LAN server instead.

Guess what?


We recently added the ability to aim and fire weapons from the Flying Saucer! Awesome, right? So, anyway, I'm still trying to put together a mission or two for the new release. This time I took the Flying Saucer out for a spin on the new map, SB_Shrooms!




Fireworks, hey? You gotta love 'em.