Hello,

today a new version of Hedgewars for Android hit the Market!

https://market.android.com/details?id=org.hedgewars.hedgeroid

For users who are updating: please download the additional package again. (Hit download and click on Full data Package)

The last version had a lot of crashes while in the game, the reason for this was because we used 22khz sounds, and sdl didn't go well with that, I'm still trying to find out exactly why. To prevent the game from crashing that ofter I've gone back and used 44khz.

I've also changed the way you can download new content, right now only two packages are on there but there might be more soon enough

Plus there were some tweaks in the UI mostly hardly noticable.

Xeli

Edit: there were some issues with Android versions 2.1(Eclair) and 2.2 (Froyo) they should be fixed now

Also some people has tried to install hedgewars on a phone without an sdcard, this is currently not supported. The SDCard can be an external sdcard or one that has been build-in

Time for 0.9.17, or the belated anniversary release!

Well, initially this was supposed to be a quick release to fix a few bugs in 0.9.16 and throw in a feature or two.

But, things took a couple of weeks longer than planned, and along the way, some other fun stuff got added!

Let's see... New theme, Cave. Fight amongst translucent crystals in a cave underground, endless dripping builds up stalactites and stalagmites, and the light from outside illuminates the cold gray world.

New voicepack, Hillbilly. 'Nuff said? Yeehaw!

AI is now smarter. Now with the ability to switch hogs, you may find it is not quite as easy to defeat a horde of AI as it used to be. More improvements planned in future.

Frontend revamp. More attractive missions screen, timestamping and links in chat, DLC page refreshes on access, chat styling, and a fix for a frontend crasher.

Ice. This is for a future ice gun, but for now you can try it out on the bridges and girders of the Snow/Christmas theme, or on any static map with a mask that uses blue.

A number of small graphical tweaks. 3D modes should look more 3D now (clouds/flakes), girders don't leave windows when placed in blowtorch tunnels, static maps can now have background land.

Aaaand of course, the bugfixes...

See the ChangeLog as usual for a bit more detail.

Things are gonna chaaaannnge around here! Heya Hedgewars fanatics! Lately I've seen a ton of you playing the Highlander DLC. With a bit of luck, we'll be releasing 0.9.17 soon. Thus, due to the growing popularity of the mode, we've decided to include it officially as part of the new release. That said, I've also tried to balance a few things where they felt lacking. Below, I've listed some of the changes I've made to the mode, along with my motivation for doing so. Feel free to leave a comment below or suggest other alterations. If you make good points (and can validate them) I'll consider it!

All hogs start with kamikaze: This allows you the option to get rid of "weaker hogs" who are stuck in some hole and otherwise incapable of killing themselves. Even your weaker hogs are now dangerous in that they might knock a stronger hog into the drink.

Extra Time removed: As I see it, this utility wasn't doing anything for the fun of the mode. Generally, you either get stuck with a hog who doesn't find the Extra Time particularly helpful (You'd rather have something to help make you more mobile), or it allows for stronger hogs to keep rampaging much longer--further upsetting game balance.

Vampirism removed: Players have complained that Vampirism generally allows for stronger hogs to live forever. Once a strong hog gets going it becomes almost impossible to stop them and the game soon becomes boring.

Mudball, Hammer removed: These two weapons are very situation dependent. While it's true not all hogs are born equal, I felt players would rather have something slightly more useful than be stuck with a hog that only has a highly limited selection.

Landgun is now considered a utility: This was a bug, of sorts. Now it's fixed.

Woooo :D

You read it right! I've just got news that we've been selected for GCI 2011, the Google sponsored compotetion for young students (13-17).

What makes it different from Google Summer of Code is that we don't have a few students working on a single long term coding project, but we are going to have A LOT of students carrying out A LOT of tasks about A LOT of topics!

What tasks do you ask? You can check them out here: http://www.hedgewars.org/gci2011.html (also available from the new top link that replaced the GSoC one). Note that only half will be available from the start.

As you can see everyone can join in! With more than 80 tasks of varying difficulty we've got projects for future PRs, translators, documentation writers as well as for coders!

So GCI for students officially will start on November 21st, you can start reading up some of the task proposal and, why not, even suggest a few more as we still have some time before submitting our tasks!

Exciting times leads ahead of us and I hope everyone will have his share of fun in this next amazing adventure!

Koda

So, Halloween was Hedgewars' 7th birthday according to unC0Rr.
Yes, he was working on it for almost a year locally before pushing it to a public
source server on:
changeset: 0:475c0f2f9d17
user: root
date: Sun Aug 21 20:58:04 2005 +0000
summary: "default layout"

I was hoping we could do a small birthday release, but at this point it will have to be a belated one.

So, after 7 years, what's next for Hedgewars? Well, there's always more to do, and being open source, everyone has their own opinions.
Here are the things going on that I know of.

* Campaign - Hedgewars still needs a campaign. In order to do it properly, a few new Lua functions need to be added to allow keeping track of progress through the campaign. This will also require people to design a campaign story, levels, missions, bosses...

* Android port! Xeli is still working on improving it, but it needs more love and more developers. Do you use Android? Are you a programmer? Help out! This could also probably use help on UI and graphics side, if that's more your thing.

* And of course... always new weapons, modes and features. People keep coming up with endless things they'd like the game to do. Personally I want to try an ice gun next.

* And someday? Web port (still a long ways to go). This one is one that excites me. I think we are finally at the point where Hedgewars could be run in your browser at a decent FPS and with relatively little content to download. Cross-compiled to the web using emscripten, and with supporting tech such as CORS, WebGL, IndexedDB, WebSockets and async AudioAPI. This is a major task since it will require reimplementing the I/O layers, as well as managing a cross-compile in the first place.

Anyway. Happy belated birthday, Hedgewars!