With the addition of any new feature comes the challenge of learning to use it effectively. And so, I thought I'd write a post detailing some nifty tips and tricks you may or may not know about our recent release's new features.

HATS

Oh no! You went into the game and half of your team was missing their awesome hats. But don't worry, we didn't delete them. The hats have just been reorganized so that they show up better in groups during team creation. To fix this problem, simply edit your existing team and re-assign their hats. Be sure to check out some of the new 0.9.16 hats, too!

HORRIBLE KEYS ON SOME MODES

Most of you have already figured this out, but those are just the default key-bindings. Space Invasion and Tumbler utilize the existing key hooks in Hedgewars (i.e Precise Aim, Long Jump and High Jump). Thus, to play these these two modes effectively I would recommend creating a new team changing the bindings so your keys are closer to one another. You can do this by clicking the "Advanced" tab in the team creation screen.

SPACE INVASION

The object of this mode is to win the game by accumulating as many points as you can by destroying space invaders. While you may think this is as simple as just trying to destroy as many invaders as you can in the time limit, you'd be wrong! In fact, most points come from achievements. You can read more about the achievement system and how to earn them on our (relatively accurate) wiki article, Space Invasion.

Tip: Change the Mine Timer in your scheme settings to alter how many rounds the game lasts. You don't need to play a 3-round game, this is just the default value. A game can actually last anywhere between 1-5 rounds.

TUMBLER

In this mode you play a very powerful flying hedgehog.

Soo I obviously wasn't around when 0.9.16 was released :D
Buut I come with good news!

For Mac users, Hedgewars binary for 0.9.16 is now available and it is downloadable from the Download page. This bundle is compatible with any PowerPc or Intel Mac running Tiger or greater cats.

A 64bits build, optimized for Snow Leopard and above will be available from the MacAppstore shortly, as soon as they bless the update.

But that's not all! Also the iOS version has received an update and it has already been approved! This one fixes the glitch reported on retina display devices.

Finally, we are celebrating 1 year on the AppStore by making it free for a week! Good times...

Ok. Emergency rerelease. Anyone who downloaded prior to Sat Sep 17 18:30 UTC 2011, please grab it again from the download page.

Hi! Remember these? It's been a while right?
Well. It's that time again. A new release of Hedgewars.
As usual, you can get it on the Download page.

There's quite a lot of stuff in 0.9.16, so it is hard to know what to focus on. Let's pick some highlights.

* Downloadable content! Simply click to install any content. New voices, hats, maps, themes, translations, music, scripts... Hedgewars is now more customisable than ever before! As time goes by we will be soliciting community content to feature on this page, so remember to check it from time to time. If you decide you want to go back to standard Hedgewars, just remove the Data directory from your Hedgewars config directory.

* 3-D rendering! Diorama-like rendering of the game in a variety of 3D modes. Let us know which ones work best for you, we didn't really have the equipment to test them all.

* Resizable game window. Also full screen has been re-enabled under Windows.

* New utilities! The Time Box will remove one of your hedgehogs from the game for a while, protecting from attack until it returns, somewhere else on the map. Land spray will allow you to build bridges, seal up holes, or just make life unpleasant for your enemies.

* New single player: Bamboo Thicket, That Sinking Feeling, Newton and the Tree
and multi-player: The Specialists, Space Invaders, Racer - scripts! And a ton more script hooks for scripters

* New twists on old weapons. Drill strike, seduction and fire have been adjusted. Defective mines have been added, rope can attach to hogs/crates/barrels again, grenades now have variable bounce (use precise key + 1-5). Portal gun is now more usable in flight and all game actions are a lot faster.

* New theme - Golf, dozens of new community hats and a new localised Default voice, Ukranian.

What an exciting summer!
This was our first participation in the Google Summer of Code initiative and we manage to survive to the end!

The fun began when we were accepted and had to provide the ideas list to be discussed with the students: as a silly statistic, I do remember that people joining our IRC channel increased by 20% during that time.

We indeed didn't expect so much interest, and my best guess is that it was because it's always fun to code for a game and Hedgewars in particular offered a lot uncommon initiatives, like programming with FreePascal or experimenting with SDL-1.3.

The only silver lining of our experience lies in the fact that of the limited slots we were given (2), one wasn't carried out at all and the AI implementation had to be called off. Perhaps a more experienced organization might have noticed subtle hints from the student and avoided this situation, but what counts is that we learned our lesson and will be able to scrutinize our students better in the future.

On the other hand, we've had an outstanding success in our second project, Hedgewars on Android: the student was able to fulfill the task requirements and implement a few optional features in the time allocated. Also he documented his code (rarity!) and interacted with developers of our dependencies. What I particularly liked was the fact that also all our active developers helped in this project with testing and suggestions.

So I feel like we've all had our share of fun, gathering ideas from the community, sorting out students' proposals, managing students' work and achieving results.

Hey everybody!
While we're almost finished with baking 0.9.16 we thought it would be good to update our iOS branch!
Today Hedgewars-iOS 1.3 has been released on the appstore! Several sections of the app have been completely rewritten, so even though the UI didn't change, it should feel like an entirely new game to you!

The most prominent update is automatic game restoration, so that if you are not able to complete the match for any reason (like *cough* a crash) you'll be prompted to resume it from where you left it!

Plus there is new content, weapons and stuff! Consider this update a sneak peek of 0.9.16

Check it out: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hedgewars/id391234866?l=it&ls=1&mt=8