I've been holding off on reporting the status of 0.9.13 for a while so I could announce a few of the bigger new features to you. A large portion of them are now done, so here goes!

King Mode



King mode is a game modifier that takes the first Hog on your team and crowns him as your commander, as King this hog becomes stronger, heavier, harder to kill and more damaging, a force to be reckoned with!  The downside? If your king dies, you lose. So do you hide him? Protect him? Or use his extra powerful attacks to quickly eliminate your opponent?


Place Hedgehogs


Here's something you've all been waiting for! This game modifier gives you the ability to place your Hedgehogs at the start of the round, no more losing matches because of bad spawn positions, no more useless hogs in artillery mode. This has been a long time coming and will be of great use in tournament games.


Randomise Turns

Another game modifier, this one simply randomises the order in which the teams take their turns after each game, rather than the one person at the top of the player list always going first and having an advantage.


Flags and revamped health bars


The flag feature is finally finished and the health bars have been upgraded to match it. There are a HUGE number of flags available to choose from, covering most of the world, as well as some custom and fun additional flags, as pictured above. Health bars now flash when it's your turn for clarity. Hedgehog labels can now not only be toggled on and off, but made transparent.


Terrain Depth


Terrain damage now creates a darkened border around impact points to give the terrain a sense of depth, this "inner terrain" is just one of the many new theme options that increase the level of customization in Hedgewars.


New Sounds, Graphics, Themes and Tweaks



We've worked hard to make this the most polished version of Hedgewars yet, not only does this mean the addition of two new themes (so far), new sounds and new maps. But the addition of lots of small touches, fire now smokes as it burns in addition to the existing steam when it hits water, hogs comment when a grenade lands nearby, themes have brand new map objects, the list is long here and it creates a great overall improvement to the quality of the visuals.


And there's more...

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the features included so far, we've got a lot more to show you..  currently we're working on the implementation of lua scripting. This will allow the easy creation of missions and training scenarios. We're looking to make this a cooperative experience, so you can go online with a friend and attempt to complete a mission together. The release of 0.9.13 isn't far off now and we hope you're looking forwards to it :)


P.S. Donate ye blighters!

As many of you may have noticed, we now have a chip-in donation box on the right panel of the site. I wanted to explain the box to you, tell you what we're doing and why we're doing it.

First off the donations will be used to fund the development of the iPad and iPhone versions of Hedgewars. We need to purchase these devices in order to develop for them. So the money will fund two iPads at the cheapest price we can find.

The iPhone version of Hedgewars is coming along nicely, the game now runs well on the iPhone, we're currently modifying the controls and adding an iPhone specific frontend/features. We will be basing the iPad version on the iPhone version and hope to have the iPad version ready close to the launch of the new device.

As a thank you to anyone who decides to donate, we're going to take (appropriate) hat requests from anyone who donates over $15, these hats will be implemented in 0.9.13.  
On top of this, anyone who donates will get a small bonus trophy when stats/XP are implemented.
Anyone who decides to be extremely generous and donate $50 or more will get their money back if/when the iPad version breaks even on sales.

Koda and Myself will donate up to £400 towards this fund ourselves.

The sales model hasn't been decided for sure yet, but we're most likely to put the game in the appstore for free, then sell a small amount of premium content. I.e. hats/flags/voicepacks. The PC versions will always be free, including all content.

I've been dressing things up a little.

Preview here
Click to Enlarge

Hello folks,

As you know we're very community focused here at Hedgewars towers. So rather than a news post, I'm writing to ask your valued opinion on a feature we've mentioned briefly in the past but never really discussed in detail..  XP!

At the moment, playing Hedgewars in a casual way doesn't really have an incentive (beyond the amazing amounts of fun you'll have obviously), we'd like to change that, and we're wondering how you guys would like to see this implemented.

There is one rule however, any rewards or levels gained by XP/Tokens/etc will be purely cosmetic, there will by no means be a game changing advantage for those who decide they want to stat grind.

My current intention is to give players XP per kill, allowing players to "level up" or raise their personal rank. Certain ranks will come with rewards, i.e. icons in the multiplayer lobby and the ability to use special emotes that set off impressive fireworks that become only more impressive as your rank increases.

What do you guys think?

Here is a preview of the main menu being implemented for Hedgewars Mobile :)
Enjoy the music