Highly suggest connecting with one of the lead developers, Charles Dang/Vultraz, if you have any C++ jobs in the USA.
He's been a developer on Wesnoth since 2012 but only graduated university in 2024. Unfortunately, it's been an absolutely brutal market for new graduates. Even if you're a maintainer on one of the most popular OSS C++ projects on GitHub.
Even with 5 (albeit small) linux kernel patches, 2 Firefox patches.. employers weren’t interested. I’ve stopped contributing to open source completely. I’m considering switching fields. It was interesting but these days I need some ROI, personally.
Thanks,our company is in the DC area so I just reached out with an offer to chat. Wesnoth is an incredible project, I can't believe he doesn't have a programming job.
> Unfortunately, it's been an absolutely brutal market for new graduates.
Furthermore, more and more companies are looking for "professional" devs using AI tools such as Claude Code. By "professional" I mean proficient in using those AI tools, not actual knowledge. And they don't even specify this in the job offer and you learn this during the interview.
I don't understand why you're downvoted. Many of my 2025 graduate friends are seeing this problem.
Unlimited token-based usage of Claude Code is not in the budget for many students and employees.
At the same time, companies are demanding experience with these tools.
This is stratifying the industry. I have many talented classmates that can only use free GitHub Copilot. They're likely being screened out in favour of rich classmates with $200/month Claude subs.
As a result, they'll be more likely to get low-paying jobs that don't provide access to top-tier AI tools and the effect will compound.
I think this'll be even worse as Claude phases out subsidies.
If $2000/month subscription to Claude for 4 years of university is the minimum required for a Big Tech job, this field is going to become law/finance levels of cliquey.
Nobody is talking about that because it's bad for both AI booster and skeptic narratives but it's happening.
I am very surprised if he can't find a job, as an American, in DC, with 12 years of C++ experience. Sure companies aren't great at assessing open source experience, but there is one area its easy to find a job as a dev: work that requires a clearance.
St. John’s college is a great place that draws a special type of young person, but its graduates are not very STEM-legible. As far as I know they still offer no choice of major & no hands-on classes — just the great books.
Of course that makes this person’s skill all the more impressive.
Huh. I graduated from there and about a third of my class (including me) works in tech in some form. Though being a sysadmin seems to be more common than being a programmer. But I had no idea the Wesnoth dev went there too!
No, the email system was a Unix server you telneted to from the Mac SEs in the computer lab so I just kind of picked up Unix usage. Then once I graduated I got a job tending a BIND and sendmail cluster for a local ISP (the "training" was handing me the Cricket book and the Bat book on the first day). The jaw-dropping salary for that was $22K at the time (this was the 90s; about $46K in today's money). That led to learning Perl (via the Camel book) to automate some of the tasks, which led to some CGI work, but I've never really been a "programmer" per se, always a sysadmin.
>Also, acquiring said clearance is not always straightforward
This, had a friend whose clearance was held up because he knew a bunch of foreign people, people that he had met through a government job with a lower level of clearance.
I'd argue there's easily more folks lacking said "scruples" in tech's private sector than the typical on the ground government employee or contractor.
Half of what actually makes money in tech these days involves active spying on consumers or manipulation of base human desires at scale. Not exactly the paragon of morality.
even if you lack sufficient scruples to be willing to pursue it in the first place.
What an absurd thing to say. As a Canuck, I may even spend some days wondering if I'll have to defend my country from the US, but I can clearly see that there are many governmental and military jobs that are incredibly valuable, ethical, beneficial.
Wikipedia says there are ~2M US governmental employees, and ~2M in the military. The military doesn't use such clearances. When it comes to securing data systems for the government, a clearance is required, even if it's about any number of domestic things, some of which, yes, are valuable and helpful, and needed.
It should be noted that there are all types of security clearances, including very simple ones. In Canada, we have (for example) 'enhanced reliability' and 'secret level II' for governmental work, the first being a simple background, criminal record check, with 10 year's history.
Selling services, even say... cloud based wordprocessing software as a service would require most employees to have such clearances. But of course, what is effectively selling paper and pens, eg wordpro software, is a morally bankrupt thing in your context?!
Description: Provides supplemental, nutrient-rich foods; nutrition education and counseling; and breastfeeding promotion and support to low-income women, infants, and children.
But I guess, because this requires handling money, and therefore a security clearance, you'd be ethically challenged to seek clearance? Or to write software for this?
To paint every job which requires a clearance as morally bankrupt, to paint working for the government to be morally bankrupt, is frankly disgusting. You should literally be ashamed of yourself.
Get your head on straight. Please.
Don't let whatever weirdo US team politics-of-the-day exists, leave you making overreaching statements. The US, as a nation, needs GOOD people in such programs, not ones feeling shame.
I personally feel the US is on a terrible course currently, but it won't be fixed by tearing it down further. And if a time does come to change that course, the framework you have, needs to be filled with good people.
Do you not realise that by acting this way, you're working to ensure that only morally bankrupt people will apply for such jobs? If you make working for the government a badge of shame, it will become true in time? That even the most noblest of jobs, such as helping to feed poor children will only be filled by those with no scruples?
How is this attitude helping?
How is it any better than whatever other team the US has?
> To paint every job which requires a clearance as morally bankrupt, to paint working for the government to be morally bankrupt, is frankly disgusting.
Sometimes you don't know the exact nature of the task until after you've gone through the rigmarole of applying, getting clearance, etc. In that case if you consider some of the jobs to be morally bankrupt, you consider all of them to potentially be morally bankrupt. You could go through all the hassle then turn it down, or leave during a probationary period when you discover the details, but that is a significant wasted time risk to take.
> You should literally be ashamed of yourself.
Many people state-side are ashamed of their government, and don't want to feel their reputation is tarnished by working directly for it, and quite frankly I don't blame them right now nor would I have at all at numerous points over recent years. And that is before considering those who want “conscientious objector” status with regard to anything military related.
> If you make working for the government a badge of shame, it will become true in time?
For some, it has become true. That time is now or before.
As much as “join and fight the corruption from within” is a laudable goal, I entirely understand people not thinking that they've got the nerve for that. Especially given that the first thing a bad administration does to someone raising concerns is to sack and blacklist them in a way that will affect future employment opportunities.
> such as helping to feed poor children
The “but think of the children” argument cuts both ways: many governments have, directly or indirectly, done and continue to do, terrible things to children. It may not be possible in the short/medium term to do anything truly useful about that (you go try tell the current administration over there to refund the good works that have been gutted recently and see how seriously they take you!) and dealing with the crap until things stear back towards the good is too much for some.
Not everyone has the fortunate needed to fight a bad system from within, or the desire to, no matter how many heartstrings you pull to try shame them into reconsidering the good within the bad.
> To paint every job which requires a clearance as morally bankrupt, to paint working for the government to be morally bankrupt, is frankly disgusting.
Sometimes you don't know the exact nature of the task until after you've gone through the rigmarole of applying, getting clearance, etc.
I literally said "every job". You're saying "sometimes" they might be. What is your point? It certainly doesn't counter or answer the point I raise.
> You should literally be ashamed of yourself.
Many people state-side are ashamed of their government, and don't want to feel their reputation is tarnished by working directly for it, and quite frankly I don't blame them
Well I do blame them. And I specifically excluded the military. As I mentioned, the government is a vast and immense entity. Further, my response was to someone saying that to get a clearance would be morally bankrupt. I provided examples as to why that may not be the case. What you are doing, is painting all government as bad, because a specific team is in play right now.
This is literally what is wrong with the US currently. 90% of the issues are due to team politics on both sides. Politics before people. Politics before sensibility. Politics, instead of examining the moral and ethical considerations of each action one takes.
> If you make working for the government a badge of shame, it will become true in time?
As much as “join and fight the corruption from within” is a laudable goal,
You do not have to fight corruption to take a job feeding babies. Or the large amount of good that the government does. You can simply take and do that job. That's my point here. You're doing what the poster upstream did, painting the entire body of the US government as a single entity.
It's OK to say "I don't think this part of government is ethical, I won't work for that part of government", but to say that any government job is morally repugnant is disgusting.
> such as helping to feed poor children
The “but think of the children” argument
It's not a "think of the children" argument in any traditionally way. That argument is typically defined by taking rights away from someone, to "protect kids". This is simply feeding the poor, and babies. No comparison.
Not everyone has the fortunate needed to fight a bad system from within, or the desire to, no matter how many heartstrings you pull to try shame them into reconsidering the good within the bad.
The government is not bad. A tiny part (the current administration) is the problem.
To give context, you'd need a string of "one team" government for decades to turn the course of the entire government. Programs enacted by both US teams are currently in play. Some programs are decades old, and supported by both parties.
Anyone who thinks that a certain team gets into power, and then "all government bad" is not thinking clearly. What you need to do, is look at what each department and each program does. Determine if they are good. It absolutely does not matter which administration passed it, or when. All that matters is "is this thing good?".
The government should be viewed as series of literally tens of thousands of companies. Each has its own task, provides specific services, and so on. To paint them all bad is nutty.
> I literally said "every job". You're saying "sometimes" they might be. What is your point?
You are completely ignoring the “you don't always know the full nature of the task until after clearance” part. If you don't know it isn't one that will be a problem for you, it could be one that is. My point there is that bit.
> And I specifically excluded the military.
So did I. Hence I explicitly said afterwards “And that is before considering those who want “conscientious objector” status with regard to anything military related."
I stopped reading at this point because if you didn't bother properly reading my previous before blurting out a response, then explaining more, giving you more to not fully read, will likely achieve nothing beyond consuming my time.
First, referencing "Nazi" has an age old tradition of immediately meaning you lose the debate. That's back to old Usenet and mailing list ethics.
Regardless, absolutely, yes, I would take a job in Nazi Germany which required clearance, if that job was to feed poor children. What the hell? I literally used feeding babies as an example, please provide some context in where innocent babies should be left to starve. Children are literally the absolute concept of innocence, and a baby is beyond culpability!
That is... unless you're advocating some form of weird let babies starve, because of the crimes of their parents?! Which is effectively along the lines of suggesting ethnic cleansing???
Any form of ideological stance which is this extreme, is realistically actually inline with fascism, for it puts politics before people.
> First, referencing "Nazi" has an age old tradition of immediately meaning you lose the debate.
True. Though to be frank, before typing my longer response I did consider just telling you the same about the “but forget everything else and think of the children” line of reasoning.
First, I purposefully avoided drawing direct comparisons to the Nazis, I only used the extreme end of the logic to illustrate my point, that it's a spectrum and value judgement, not an absolute.
Nobody said Trump is literally Hitler. But literal Hitler did exist, so it all becomes a question of where do you personally draw the line?. For you, it seems to be somewhere between Trump and Hitler. For me, it's somewhere before Trump. I'm not establishing equivalency, I'm establishing subjectivity.
Along those lines, who said anything about crimes of parents?
Let me be more concrete: Would you feed children on camera so the propaganda apparatus can film a movie about a concentration camp titled "The Führer gifts a City to the Jews"? [0]
Everything you do can and will be instrumentalized by the regime. The innocents, too, are just a medium for their machinations.
There is a treshold at which even nominally good acts become morally reprehensible because they serve to sustain a harmful system. The only question is which system do you consider harmful enough to pass that treshold?
You're presenting your moral line as if it's objectively correct. I’m pointing out it's a judgment call with no easy absolutes.
Nobody said Trump is literally Hitler. But literal Hitler did exist, so it all becomes a question of where do you personally draw the line?. For you, it seems to be somewhere between Trump and Hitler. For me, it's somewhere before Trump. I'm not establishing equivalency, I'm establishing subjectivity.
None of that is relevant. Why? My statements have been quite clear; the government is not the party in power. And further, that there may be portions of the government that may offend, that saying "all parts" is obscene and inane.
Recall the original conversation. It's not the mess you've made of it now. Recall my objection was to someone saying that any government job was bad.
I cited a government department with a specific outcome. Feeding children. The counter with the Nazis, therefore, is inline with that statement of mine. Yes, in Nazi Germany, I would work for the government to feed children.
The sensible inference is that my statement is akin to the same for the current US government feeding children. You've now changed that condition to, instead, being some sort of actor for films about feeding children.
This is not what we were discussing. For the record, no, I would not star in a propaganda film willingly.
In as this entire conversation has revolved around how the US government has a myriad of programs which are ethical and moral, and how it therefore would not be untoward to seek clearance and work in those jobs, yes I stand my ground.
I have also indicated that if one found the job questionable, then don't take it! And naturally one can quit if the job changes.
It's such an enormous stretch to try to claim that every single possible job the US government has is reprehensible. The notion is absurd, see my other post about how some of these departments have been unchanged for decades. Lived through both parties.
So yes, there is an easy absolute here. That currently (because, no one can claim to know the future), there are government jobs which are moral and ethical. Period. Hands down. Absolute certainty.
You wonder about the "crimes of the parent". Well, if you refuse to feed children because their parents are in Nazi Germany, then presumably part of that has to do with their parents. For example, would you feed the children of dissenters? If the answer is "yes", yet when asked "would you feed the hungry children of Nazi zealots" you say "no", then you are indeed punishing babies for the crimes of their parents.
A child is a child is a child, and to feed that child is noble. To feed the children of your enemy is noble. To feed the children of someone who murdered your children is noble. To feed the children of those who wish you harm is noble.
There is no ground where not feeding children is reasonable. None. Nada. Ziltch.
Children are not a political game. Children are not something you use to do battle. Children are not something cease helping, because you worry about it helping the enemy.
I would feed the children of both Nazis and Dissenters, but not under Nazi command.
To do so reinforces and legitimizes the power structure, and that is what I take issues with. Children are not enemies, I am fully with you on that.
The enemy is power structures and me not supporting a particularly harmful one might save more children than the concrete act of me feeding them personally.
And yet you have not even remotely addressed how this translates to every US government job being a morally / ethically bankrupt job.
You wave your hands about, and cite far flung examples of how it could be, then there is not here, but then is not now, the future is not now, and we are speaking of the current.
If your concern is that it "could be" at some point, well I hate to break it to you, but that also covers every type of job you might imagine. "Could be" covers a lot of change and time. "Could be" is a wide brush to paint with, especially considering the object isn't even before us, but a misty, intangible, not yet formed thing.
I work on the mapping team at Zoox (self driving) and we have c++ roles at the entry and mid levels. Requires onsite in the Bay Area though. Charles, if you're reading and would like to chat, I (Carl Chatfield) have sent you a linkedin request.
Thank you for your work on Wesnoth, I spent many hours playing back in the day. There's also a good android port.
Thank you for your work DDR, seeing Frogatto evolve over the years has been so fun. I remember finding it on the Linux Mint software store around a decade ago, and how one of you guys gave me a Steam code in 2023 when I revisited the game so I wouldn't have to compile it on my old Macbook. I'm not an employer or anything but I wish you the best.
My only gripe with the game is that healing doesn't give XP to the healing units. This means you need to place them in combat to level up instead of placing them behind the fighters like they are intended to be, and with them initially having low health they are very squishy. I know you can kinda cheese it by reducing a monster to 1-2 HP and then getting them to attack, but it feels like going against their role.
> It is felt that allowing units to gain experience without risk would make leveling-up of such units inevitable. Further, one of the motivating examples of this is so that units such as shaman can have a hope to level up in multiplayer. It is pointed out that if the experience gains were high enough to allow shaman to level up in a single multiplayer game, then it would be trivial to gain the best type of healing unit in a campaign very quickly.
It depends. Personally I think they should make alternatives more easy. For instance, under Options, for people to pick other ways to level up. Does not have to be 1000000 ways, just, say 3-5 ways in total, first one being the main default and only the main default is kept balanced, the rest can be unbalanced, just allowed per option as-is.
I've enjoyed this, honestly. There's a whole short-term pain/long-term gain tradeoff to risking healers that adds more strategy to the campaign.
> I know you can kinda cheese it by reducing a monster to 1-2 HP
In practice, I've found it difficult to get monsters to 1-2 HP since it often means not using your most powerful attacks. On harder difficulties I usually can't afford the opportunity cost.
Yeah I personally found this to be a big part of the tactical and strategic challenge. It reminded me a lot of Pokemon where you have a similar challenge, of slotting "exposure to fighting" into a limited action and HP budget.
Edit: Now that I think about it, most turn-based games have this mechanic. It's almost an idiomatic balance/design decision in gaming.
Compare to Dota where support heroes have acquired more and more opportunities for assist gold/XP, it does in some sense make the game "easier" for the support players, but then the game is harder in other ways because now the supports are all way more farmed and dangerous than in older versions. It's the difference between controlling an army of many units and having to manage them all, versus controlling one unit and needing to work together within a team.
gloomhaven has a reasonable solution to this - some heals give experience, others dont, and often times gaining experience comes with giving up other resources
There's actually an add-on for this (and a bunch of other things too): Advance Wesnoth Wars. It adds options for XP-for-healing but also for making terrain affect damage taken rather than chance to hit (which is fun when you get tired of the randomness).
This fork[0] of a fork of the original allegedly works with 1.18. I haven't tested it, because these days I play with the built-in predictable RNG and it suffices for me.
Essentially it makes it so that if your attack is 4 swings attacking a unit on 50% defense territory, it will hit twice and miss twice every time. Any remainders are dealt with randomly, but the seed is based on the save, so it removes save-scumming (which has always tempted me, and I don't like).
Isn't the strategy then to keep them behind the fighter units, wait until an enemy is 1 HP away from death, make the healer advance and make a kill, then put a fighter in front of them again?
At the more difficult levels it is really easy to get to a point where your strategy relies on a high probability event (a healer landing just one hit on a low HP unit) and then losing because it went against you. Which is frustrating, even if completely expected.
An indirect compensation is that these units require less XP to advance, but I understand your concern too.
> I know you can kinda cheese it by reducing a monster to 1-2 HP and then getting them to attack, but it feels like going against their role.
This is a problem with the XP-per-kill system. Wesnoth could use a variant instead. I use the above strategy all the time to level the healers up.
Note that elven units have slow (their healers), which is very powerful in its own right for getting a kill on a unit. First slow, then deal damage with other units.
If that's your jam then there's also a (non-open-source) "Hero's Hour" which tickles the old Heroes of Might and Magic stylings, works reasonably well on Xbox, where I've been doing most of my gaming lately.
As far as Open Source gaming success stories, I'd put this up there in the Top 5 for "Original IP and Concept" (if that makes sense). Just a stellar labor of love, worth giving it a shot to play!
- Supertux2, it got recently revamped, the quality skyrocketed. Much better controls and artwork.
- Supetux Advance, this is really great too.
- Retux (More Wariolike than Mario)
- Nethack/Slashem. A Roguelike more bound to interaction/exploration/mechanics than combat, but Slashem makes combat crazy with the Doppleganger Monk, which is basically a Shonen Manga, the role. (Dragon Ball/Naruto depending on your age).
- DCSS. Basically, not Nethack/Slashem, much more combat oriented
than the Slashem combinatorics playing with the Monk a la Jackie Chan, this is more like an ARPG made a Rogue.
- Frotz/Lectrote/Winfrotz/whatver Z Machine interpreter and "All Things Devour". Spiritwrak, too. Great libre text adventures and still enganing because of weird mechanics.
- Frozen Bubble
- OpenArena.
- FreeDoom, better compiled with Deutex on daily builds.
- FreeCiv.
- OpenTTD today can be standalone enough.
- Frozen Bubble
- Minetest+tons of subgames such as Glitch, Nodecore...
- OOlite
- Speed Dreams. If the controls are hard, try the arcade mode. If the controls are still hard, get SupertuxKart, pick some real life car from the addons and get all the SD tracks from the inline downloader, they are several.
Heads up: they recently changed name to Luanti to get away from the "it's Minecraft but worse" perception. They also un-bundled the built-in game and are trying to be a game engine these days.
I recommend looking into Age of Mending. It's still in alpha, but if it's ever finished it'll give Minecraft a good run for its money, especially among the builder-minded players.
Luanti had an annoying habit of regenerating terrain while I was still walking on it. In my book it is very much still "minecraft but worse." I was on a very weak ARM device though.
Regenerating? Luanti doesn't ever regenerate terrain. Do you mean generating the first time? Or loading? I've had it happen that I run into the edge of the mapblock and can't walk into the next one because it's loading or still generating. Maybe give it another chance, because I can't picture the behavior you're describing.
OpenArena even has a browser version these days but sadly it doesn't seem to have any active servers anymore. I had progressed to the point where I could strafe jump and rocket jump all day.
The amount of care they put into the little quality of life ui stuff is impressive. Something about how you can tell when the developers enjoy playing their game.
Also Brad Smith is a heavyweight in the NES ROM/Emulation scene, once you know his name you’ll start to notice it pop up all over the place. (e.g. nsfplay)
The Free Civ and Free Colonization games are good. Brogue, Nethack, DCSS are good if you like roguelikes. OpenMW is a totally open source reimplementation of Morrowind, so that might fit the bill.
Oh, yeah! And I believe there are not many games which have Linux, Windows and MacOS versions allowing interplay. Several years ago we had one or two LAN parties with hardware running all three operating systems.
https://www.beyondallreason.info/ is high quality and in active, open development. And fun. For some weird reason 8v8 is the default experience but there are several other modes: PVE, 1v1, etc.
- Starcraft Brood War - though I have not tested it via the battlenet.exe, played it when it still was payware.
- Gemcraft Labyrinth - played it when flash was a thing, but now it is again, e.g. on Armorgames
And, I got games like Portal 1 & 2, Outer Wilds, Osmos, Manifold Garden, Planet Crafter and many more for under ten, some for under five Euros each when they were on special offer on Steam. I once got Just Cause 3 for three Euros.
Stardew Valley isn't open source, but it has been decompiled (.Net) and has a an open-source modding API inclding Harmony integration for patching the base game code and and a huge open-source modding community.
It's under the "add-ons" menu in game. I would recommend playing the top-ranked campaigns. Some amazing stuff in there. I adore Legend of the Invincibles. Fun story, tons of new gameplay mechanics.
Nethack/Slashem too in case of Roguelikes. Nethack adds tons of Terry Pratchett references as and homage and it's cool but Slashem has tons of weapons, classes, objects, environments...
And supertux2 has both the main campaingn add tons of downloadable ones too.
Ditto with Oolite, tons of community content.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon it's a fork and still has tons of contents and it might be the most playable FLOSS game in Android among Unciv. Oh, and it can be run on potatos.
I loved this game playing on an Arch Thinkpad in university with budget graphics capability.
The best part is being able to pin locations on the map for your teammates, so we were able to plot the adventures and battlegrounds of a goated unit by naming the pins "Ronant's Triumph," "Ronant's Revenge," "Ronant's Folly," and ultimately "Ronant's Last Stand." Great times with a few beers and the lads.
RIP Ronant, Wesnoth will never see another hero of your like again.
An absolute gem I came across randomly many years ago. Picked up Mewgenics and it left me wishing it had some mechanics from Wesnoth like faster animations (Mewgenics caps at 4x), undo action (at least if the action doesn't trigger any rng/damage behavior), skip enemy turns.
I only wish they added more campaigns into the official lore.
Because of the level-up mechanics of Wesnoth, I don't think its really possible to balance a long-running campaign. The tier3 or tier4 units are just so much more powerful than the earlier tiers... and yet a "recall" costs only 20G.
I'm not sure how I'd balance the game. You want the feeling of progression, but its too "slippery", the game gets easier if the player feeds their units and lets them grow. But it feels like the player could get "trapped" if they had unfortunate or unlucky losses at the incorrect time.
On the other hand, I always thought the "single map" or "scenario maps" of Wesnoth were excellent. I mean, I like the campaigns its just... tough to figure out the proper design scope there.
What kept Wesnoth alive for twenty years is the same thing that kept BBS door games alive in the 80s: the content was community-created. Trade Wars 2002 was different on every board because the sysop configured it differently and the players made it their own. Wesnoth's WML scripting language lets anyone build campaigns, factions, entire rulesets. Most open-source games die because the core team burns out and nobody picks it up. Wesnoth survived because thousands of people have a stake in their own content inside it. The game is a platform, not a product.
It's been probably 20 years since I played this game. But I still think it's the best Open Source game I've ever played. I had lots of fun, and more than a few late nights, running through some of the campaigns.
I would love to see a Nintendo Switch port of this game, if anyone is interested in making one!
> I would love to see a Nintendo Switch port of this game, if anyone is interested in making one!
I think many would be, but AIUI it's illegal. It would require modifying the source to use Nintendo's SDK which is under NDA. The GPL would require releasing the modified source, which would be prohibited by the NDA. So it's legally impossible without special permission from every single Wesnoth contributor ever.
Unless you mean a homebrew port, in which case it's doable.
I heard about this game many many times due to software developers showcasing it as an example of a good libre videogame. However, I don't know a single person who played it and I have never seen anyone recommending it for its gameplay.
It is a relatively simple formula that is very combat heavy with extremely simple economy. The campaigns are excellent though and as long as the true randomness of attacks/defense doesn't drive you crazy it is a lot of fun. Very challenging and has real strategic and tactical depth as well as pretty well balanced.
I personally never did multiplayer but last I checked the multiplayer community was pretty healthy.
i played it, its fine, its a solid game. Easily can lose several hours in a session and probably played over 40 in total. Its enjoyable to play through due to the upgrading mechanics and wanting to see all the potential evolutions. That said, I'm not always a huge fan of the level design as you're often encouraged to play into negative fights (e.g. the timing for meeting the enemy aligns with their daytime bonuses) which forces you to play a bit more defensively than I'd like.
What is pretty cool is how long-living the project has been. I have seen many open source games die over the last 2 decades; some were quite cool. So wesnoth staying alive is pretty epic in itself.
Just downloaded Wesnoth due to this post. I'll try it out this weekend maybe. I was wrong in my other post -- I believe I played it around 20 years ago.
Same happened for me when I clicked on the link, I had to delete the cookies for wesnoth.org and then load the site again. I think their Anubis setup might be broken a bit
It's been a long time ago since I last played and I was one of those rng haters (that's why i never got hooked... i want to have fun, not some pseudo random roll the bones simulator). I just took a look and I see three different "rng modes"... i have to laugh and give credit to the devs for sticking to their guns.
Great game. I only wish there were more "one off" or even random scenarios - I like playing against the computer but I find campaigns become a bit of a grind with the whole "OK we need to level these units for the scenario coming up..."
I tried it on my tablet last month, and it's pretty unplayable. The touchscreen input needs a lot of work, half the time it does something completely wrong and random, like selecting a tile halfway across the screen from where you touched.
I think this was featured on the Ubuntu software manager at some point and that’s how I discovered it. It was one of the few games on Linux that’s was genuinely fun to play
More like Heroes of Might and Magic. It's a turn-based strategy game where battles take place on a hex grid map. It's got full campaigns, lots of factions and units, resources to gather... it's one of my favorite OSS projects. Wesnoth has been in active development forever and is a real labor of love, as well as a showcase of collaborative game development.
Not really. This game uses a turn-based combat system with a hex grid. It's more like Sid Meier's Civilization, but with a drastically simplified economy and a strong focus on battles. It also has a Tolkein-esque fantasy theme instead of a real-life history theme.
If that sounds at all interesting, I suggest giving it a shot.
Yeah, except that troops in Wesnoth don't require fuel or ammo. And you have to explicitly recall veterans. And leveling up makes units grow into different, stronger units.
only missing point about this game is some of the real word parameters like moral,flanking etc. Maybe a real history mod would be amazing like ancient era or medieval ages.
Modern strategy games for leisure can be traced back to actual militaries or hardcore history buffs—systems that would try to model morale etc., often to a degree which, er, doesn't have mass-market appeal. :p
The Zone of Control mechanic kind of simulates this. If you're not careful about unit placement, you may find your units ganged up on by more enemies then they can handle. On the other hand, if you keep a good formation, you can pretty much hold a solid line with a fairly modest number of troops. Unless of course the enemy soldiers have "skirmisher", in which case they'll waltz right past your ZoC.
Actually, Wesnoth's ZoC is the reason I never could get into Fire Emblem. I couldn't get used to not being able to protect my injured units without completely surrounding them.
Highly suggest connecting with one of the lead developers, Charles Dang/Vultraz, if you have any C++ jobs in the USA.
He's been a developer on Wesnoth since 2012 but only graduated university in 2024. Unfortunately, it's been an absolutely brutal market for new graduates. Even if you're a maintainer on one of the most popular OSS C++ projects on GitHub.
I can't recommend him enough.
edit: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-dang-10994b1b4
Even with 5 (albeit small) linux kernel patches, 2 Firefox patches.. employers weren’t interested. I’ve stopped contributing to open source completely. I’m considering switching fields. It was interesting but these days I need some ROI, personally.
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Thanks,our company is in the DC area so I just reached out with an offer to chat. Wesnoth is an incredible project, I can't believe he doesn't have a programming job.
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> Unfortunately, it's been an absolutely brutal market for new graduates.
Furthermore, more and more companies are looking for "professional" devs using AI tools such as Claude Code. By "professional" I mean proficient in using those AI tools, not actual knowledge. And they don't even specify this in the job offer and you learn this during the interview.
I don't understand why you're downvoted. Many of my 2025 graduate friends are seeing this problem.
Unlimited token-based usage of Claude Code is not in the budget for many students and employees.
At the same time, companies are demanding experience with these tools.
This is stratifying the industry. I have many talented classmates that can only use free GitHub Copilot. They're likely being screened out in favour of rich classmates with $200/month Claude subs.
As a result, they'll be more likely to get low-paying jobs that don't provide access to top-tier AI tools and the effect will compound.
I think this'll be even worse as Claude phases out subsidies.
If $2000/month subscription to Claude for 4 years of university is the minimum required for a Big Tech job, this field is going to become law/finance levels of cliquey.
Nobody is talking about that because it's bad for both AI booster and skeptic narratives but it's happening.
i expect students have or will get claude access via their university, pr at a discount if they register with their university email?
students generally get specific subsidized/free tiers for all kinds of tech
Claude has partnerships with specific universities but not the one I attended.
I don't believe there's a general student discount for Claude.
$2000/month is cheaper than university tuition. Why attend the university?
This field really is doomed. We are entering a dark age of software. Github reaching zero 9s of availability is only the beginning.
I am very surprised if he can't find a job, as an American, in DC, with 12 years of C++ experience. Sure companies aren't great at assessing open source experience, but there is one area its easy to find a job as a dev: work that requires a clearance.
St. John’s college is a great place that draws a special type of young person, but its graduates are not very STEM-legible. As far as I know they still offer no choice of major & no hands-on classes — just the great books.
Of course that makes this person’s skill all the more impressive.
For software development, degree is irrelevant. Employer-managed competency exams and public experience dominate.
You aren't getting to the exam stage without that degree though
Huh. I graduated from there and about a third of my class (including me) works in tech in some form. Though being a sysadmin seems to be more common than being a programmer. But I had no idea the Wesnoth dev went there too!
Did you do a coding bootcamp or such?
No, the email system was a Unix server you telneted to from the Mac SEs in the computer lab so I just kind of picked up Unix usage. Then once I graduated I got a job tending a BIND and sendmail cluster for a local ISP (the "training" was handing me the Cricket book and the Bat book on the first day). The jaw-dropping salary for that was $22K at the time (this was the 90s; about $46K in today's money). That led to learning Perl (via the Camel book) to automate some of the tasks, which led to some CGI work, but I've never really been a "programmer" per se, always a sysadmin.
Not everyone will take a job that requires clearance because they are usually "defense" related.
Also, acquiring said clearance is not always straightforward, even if you lack sufficient scruples to be willing to pursue it in the first place.
>Also, acquiring said clearance is not always straightforward
This, had a friend whose clearance was held up because he knew a bunch of foreign people, people that he had met through a government job with a lower level of clearance.
I'd argue there's easily more folks lacking said "scruples" in tech's private sector than the typical on the ground government employee or contractor.
Half of what actually makes money in tech these days involves active spying on consumers or manipulation of base human desires at scale. Not exactly the paragon of morality.
even if you lack sufficient scruples to be willing to pursue it in the first place.
What an absurd thing to say. As a Canuck, I may even spend some days wondering if I'll have to defend my country from the US, but I can clearly see that there are many governmental and military jobs that are incredibly valuable, ethical, beneficial.
Wikipedia says there are ~2M US governmental employees, and ~2M in the military. The military doesn't use such clearances. When it comes to securing data systems for the government, a clearance is required, even if it's about any number of domestic things, some of which, yes, are valuable and helpful, and needed.
It should be noted that there are all types of security clearances, including very simple ones. In Canada, we have (for example) 'enhanced reliability' and 'secret level II' for governmental work, the first being a simple background, criminal record check, with 10 year's history.
Selling services, even say... cloud based wordprocessing software as a service would require most employees to have such clearances. But of course, what is effectively selling paper and pens, eg wordpro software, is a morally bankrupt thing in your context?!
This is a governmental program: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R42353#_Ref471832706
Description: Provides supplemental, nutrient-rich foods; nutrition education and counseling; and breastfeeding promotion and support to low-income women, infants, and children.
But I guess, because this requires handling money, and therefore a security clearance, you'd be ethically challenged to seek clearance? Or to write software for this?
To paint every job which requires a clearance as morally bankrupt, to paint working for the government to be morally bankrupt, is frankly disgusting. You should literally be ashamed of yourself.
Get your head on straight. Please.
Don't let whatever weirdo US team politics-of-the-day exists, leave you making overreaching statements. The US, as a nation, needs GOOD people in such programs, not ones feeling shame.
I personally feel the US is on a terrible course currently, but it won't be fixed by tearing it down further. And if a time does come to change that course, the framework you have, needs to be filled with good people.
Do you not realise that by acting this way, you're working to ensure that only morally bankrupt people will apply for such jobs? If you make working for the government a badge of shame, it will become true in time? That even the most noblest of jobs, such as helping to feed poor children will only be filled by those with no scruples?
How is this attitude helping?
How is it any better than whatever other team the US has?
> To paint every job which requires a clearance as morally bankrupt, to paint working for the government to be morally bankrupt, is frankly disgusting.
Sometimes you don't know the exact nature of the task until after you've gone through the rigmarole of applying, getting clearance, etc. In that case if you consider some of the jobs to be morally bankrupt, you consider all of them to potentially be morally bankrupt. You could go through all the hassle then turn it down, or leave during a probationary period when you discover the details, but that is a significant wasted time risk to take.
> You should literally be ashamed of yourself.
Many people state-side are ashamed of their government, and don't want to feel their reputation is tarnished by working directly for it, and quite frankly I don't blame them right now nor would I have at all at numerous points over recent years. And that is before considering those who want “conscientious objector” status with regard to anything military related.
> If you make working for the government a badge of shame, it will become true in time?
For some, it has become true. That time is now or before.
As much as “join and fight the corruption from within” is a laudable goal, I entirely understand people not thinking that they've got the nerve for that. Especially given that the first thing a bad administration does to someone raising concerns is to sack and blacklist them in a way that will affect future employment opportunities.
> such as helping to feed poor children
The “but think of the children” argument cuts both ways: many governments have, directly or indirectly, done and continue to do, terrible things to children. It may not be possible in the short/medium term to do anything truly useful about that (you go try tell the current administration over there to refund the good works that have been gutted recently and see how seriously they take you!) and dealing with the crap until things stear back towards the good is too much for some.
Not everyone has the fortunate needed to fight a bad system from within, or the desire to, no matter how many heartstrings you pull to try shame them into reconsidering the good within the bad.
> To paint every job which requires a clearance as morally bankrupt, to paint working for the government to be morally bankrupt, is frankly disgusting.
Sometimes you don't know the exact nature of the task until after you've gone through the rigmarole of applying, getting clearance, etc.
I literally said "every job". You're saying "sometimes" they might be. What is your point? It certainly doesn't counter or answer the point I raise.
> You should literally be ashamed of yourself.
Many people state-side are ashamed of their government, and don't want to feel their reputation is tarnished by working directly for it, and quite frankly I don't blame them
Well I do blame them. And I specifically excluded the military. As I mentioned, the government is a vast and immense entity. Further, my response was to someone saying that to get a clearance would be morally bankrupt. I provided examples as to why that may not be the case. What you are doing, is painting all government as bad, because a specific team is in play right now.
This is literally what is wrong with the US currently. 90% of the issues are due to team politics on both sides. Politics before people. Politics before sensibility. Politics, instead of examining the moral and ethical considerations of each action one takes.
> If you make working for the government a badge of shame, it will become true in time?
As much as “join and fight the corruption from within” is a laudable goal,
You do not have to fight corruption to take a job feeding babies. Or the large amount of good that the government does. You can simply take and do that job. That's my point here. You're doing what the poster upstream did, painting the entire body of the US government as a single entity.
It's OK to say "I don't think this part of government is ethical, I won't work for that part of government", but to say that any government job is morally repugnant is disgusting.
> such as helping to feed poor children
The “but think of the children” argument
It's not a "think of the children" argument in any traditionally way. That argument is typically defined by taking rights away from someone, to "protect kids". This is simply feeding the poor, and babies. No comparison.
Not everyone has the fortunate needed to fight a bad system from within, or the desire to, no matter how many heartstrings you pull to try shame them into reconsidering the good within the bad.
The government is not bad. A tiny part (the current administration) is the problem.
To give context, you'd need a string of "one team" government for decades to turn the course of the entire government. Programs enacted by both US teams are currently in play. Some programs are decades old, and supported by both parties.
Anyone who thinks that a certain team gets into power, and then "all government bad" is not thinking clearly. What you need to do, is look at what each department and each program does. Determine if they are good. It absolutely does not matter which administration passed it, or when. All that matters is "is this thing good?".
The government should be viewed as series of literally tens of thousands of companies. Each has its own task, provides specific services, and so on. To paint them all bad is nutty.
> I literally said "every job". You're saying "sometimes" they might be. What is your point?
You are completely ignoring the “you don't always know the full nature of the task until after clearance” part. If you don't know it isn't one that will be a problem for you, it could be one that is. My point there is that bit.
> And I specifically excluded the military.
So did I. Hence I explicitly said afterwards “And that is before considering those who want “conscientious objector” status with regard to anything military related."
I stopped reading at this point because if you didn't bother properly reading my previous before blurting out a response, then explaining more, giving you more to not fully read, will likely achieve nothing beyond consuming my time.
To take this logic to it's extreme: Would you have signed up for a job in Nazi Germany that required clearance?
If not, it's all down to value judgements and your personal evaluation of the current power structures.
Personally, I would feel guilty if I did anything that empowered the Trump regime.
First, referencing "Nazi" has an age old tradition of immediately meaning you lose the debate. That's back to old Usenet and mailing list ethics.
Regardless, absolutely, yes, I would take a job in Nazi Germany which required clearance, if that job was to feed poor children. What the hell? I literally used feeding babies as an example, please provide some context in where innocent babies should be left to starve. Children are literally the absolute concept of innocence, and a baby is beyond culpability!
That is... unless you're advocating some form of weird let babies starve, because of the crimes of their parents?! Which is effectively along the lines of suggesting ethnic cleansing???
Any form of ideological stance which is this extreme, is realistically actually inline with fascism, for it puts politics before people.
> First, referencing "Nazi" has an age old tradition of immediately meaning you lose the debate.
True. Though to be frank, before typing my longer response I did consider just telling you the same about the “but forget everything else and think of the children” line of reasoning.
First, I purposefully avoided drawing direct comparisons to the Nazis, I only used the extreme end of the logic to illustrate my point, that it's a spectrum and value judgement, not an absolute.
Nobody said Trump is literally Hitler. But literal Hitler did exist, so it all becomes a question of where do you personally draw the line?. For you, it seems to be somewhere between Trump and Hitler. For me, it's somewhere before Trump. I'm not establishing equivalency, I'm establishing subjectivity.
Along those lines, who said anything about crimes of parents?
Let me be more concrete: Would you feed children on camera so the propaganda apparatus can film a movie about a concentration camp titled "The Führer gifts a City to the Jews"? [0]
Everything you do can and will be instrumentalized by the regime. The innocents, too, are just a medium for their machinations.
There is a treshold at which even nominally good acts become morally reprehensible because they serve to sustain a harmful system. The only question is which system do you consider harmful enough to pass that treshold?
You're presenting your moral line as if it's objectively correct. I’m pointing out it's a judgment call with no easy absolutes.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresienstadt_(1944_film)
Nobody said Trump is literally Hitler. But literal Hitler did exist, so it all becomes a question of where do you personally draw the line?. For you, it seems to be somewhere between Trump and Hitler. For me, it's somewhere before Trump. I'm not establishing equivalency, I'm establishing subjectivity.
None of that is relevant. Why? My statements have been quite clear; the government is not the party in power. And further, that there may be portions of the government that may offend, that saying "all parts" is obscene and inane.
Recall the original conversation. It's not the mess you've made of it now. Recall my objection was to someone saying that any government job was bad.
I cited a government department with a specific outcome. Feeding children. The counter with the Nazis, therefore, is inline with that statement of mine. Yes, in Nazi Germany, I would work for the government to feed children.
The sensible inference is that my statement is akin to the same for the current US government feeding children. You've now changed that condition to, instead, being some sort of actor for films about feeding children.
This is not what we were discussing. For the record, no, I would not star in a propaganda film willingly.
In as this entire conversation has revolved around how the US government has a myriad of programs which are ethical and moral, and how it therefore would not be untoward to seek clearance and work in those jobs, yes I stand my ground.
I have also indicated that if one found the job questionable, then don't take it! And naturally one can quit if the job changes.
It's such an enormous stretch to try to claim that every single possible job the US government has is reprehensible. The notion is absurd, see my other post about how some of these departments have been unchanged for decades. Lived through both parties.
So yes, there is an easy absolute here. That currently (because, no one can claim to know the future), there are government jobs which are moral and ethical. Period. Hands down. Absolute certainty.
You wonder about the "crimes of the parent". Well, if you refuse to feed children because their parents are in Nazi Germany, then presumably part of that has to do with their parents. For example, would you feed the children of dissenters? If the answer is "yes", yet when asked "would you feed the hungry children of Nazi zealots" you say "no", then you are indeed punishing babies for the crimes of their parents.
A child is a child is a child, and to feed that child is noble. To feed the children of your enemy is noble. To feed the children of someone who murdered your children is noble. To feed the children of those who wish you harm is noble.
There is no ground where not feeding children is reasonable. None. Nada. Ziltch.
Children are not a political game. Children are not something you use to do battle. Children are not something cease helping, because you worry about it helping the enemy.
You. Feed. Children.
Period.
I would feed the children of both Nazis and Dissenters, but not under Nazi command.
To do so reinforces and legitimizes the power structure, and that is what I take issues with. Children are not enemies, I am fully with you on that.
The enemy is power structures and me not supporting a particularly harmful one might save more children than the concrete act of me feeding them personally.
And yet you have not even remotely addressed how this translates to every US government job being a morally / ethically bankrupt job.
You wave your hands about, and cite far flung examples of how it could be, then there is not here, but then is not now, the future is not now, and we are speaking of the current.
If your concern is that it "could be" at some point, well I hate to break it to you, but that also covers every type of job you might imagine. "Could be" covers a lot of change and time. "Could be" is a wide brush to paint with, especially considering the object isn't even before us, but a misty, intangible, not yet formed thing.
That is sad. Maintaining something like this really takes almost all the skills also needed for enterprise, or a dozen places.
That it doesn't get him instant hired is the sad part, what are we coming to.
I work on the mapping team at Zoox (self driving) and we have c++ roles at the entry and mid levels. Requires onsite in the Bay Area though. Charles, if you're reading and would like to chat, I (Carl Chatfield) have sent you a linkedin request.
Thank you for your work on Wesnoth, I spent many hours playing back in the day. There's also a good android port.
It's sad to admit, but being a chef étoilé does not make it easier to find a job in the fast food industry. It can even be detrimental.
Would highly recommend. Worked with Vult for years, on Wesnoth and on Frogatto, a sister project from some of the same folk who did Wesnoth.
So, uh, I'm now one of the leads of Frogatto and boy howdy could I use a job too after a recent mass staff reduction at my day job.
edit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-roberts-b9410654/
Thank you for your work DDR, seeing Frogatto evolve over the years has been so fun. I remember finding it on the Linux Mint software store around a decade ago, and how one of you guys gave me a Steam code in 2023 when I revisited the game so I wouldn't have to compile it on my old Macbook. I'm not an employer or anything but I wish you the best.
My only gripe with the game is that healing doesn't give XP to the healing units. This means you need to place them in combat to level up instead of placing them behind the fighters like they are intended to be, and with them initially having low health they are very squishy. I know you can kinda cheese it by reducing a monster to 1-2 HP and then getting them to attack, but it feels like going against their role.
> Frequently Proposed Ideas (FPIs)
> 7. Healing/leadership should give experience
> It is felt that allowing units to gain experience without risk would make leveling-up of such units inevitable. Further, one of the motivating examples of this is so that units such as shaman can have a hope to level up in multiplayer. It is pointed out that if the experience gains were high enough to allow shaman to level up in a single multiplayer game, then it would be trivial to gain the best type of healing unit in a campaign very quickly.
https://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=34904#w0fpi7 (2011)
There's various ways around this (like capping amount of experience per level by source), but ain't game design fun?
It depends. Personally I think they should make alternatives more easy. For instance, under Options, for people to pick other ways to level up. Does not have to be 1000000 ways, just, say 3-5 ways in total, first one being the main default and only the main default is kept balanced, the rest can be unbalanced, just allowed per option as-is.
Other aspects of the game or mod-able, but such things as this I guess is against the grain enough to probably be difficult.
I've enjoyed this, honestly. There's a whole short-term pain/long-term gain tradeoff to risking healers that adds more strategy to the campaign.
> I know you can kinda cheese it by reducing a monster to 1-2 HP
In practice, I've found it difficult to get monsters to 1-2 HP since it often means not using your most powerful attacks. On harder difficulties I usually can't afford the opportunity cost.
Yeah I personally found this to be a big part of the tactical and strategic challenge. It reminded me a lot of Pokemon where you have a similar challenge, of slotting "exposure to fighting" into a limited action and HP budget.
Edit: Now that I think about it, most turn-based games have this mechanic. It's almost an idiomatic balance/design decision in gaming.
Compare to Dota where support heroes have acquired more and more opportunities for assist gold/XP, it does in some sense make the game "easier" for the support players, but then the game is harder in other ways because now the supports are all way more farmed and dangerous than in older versions. It's the difference between controlling an army of many units and having to manage them all, versus controlling one unit and needing to work together within a team.
Dota/League does this because each hero is controlled by a human, and humans don't like playing low-impact, low-wealth, low-exp supports.
20 year Dota player here. I always play support and I’m ok with low wealth/ low xp. High impact tho!
Only thing I’m good at carrying is wards.
gloomhaven has a reasonable solution to this - some heals give experience, others dont, and often times gaining experience comes with giving up other resources
There's actually an add-on for this (and a bunch of other things too): Advance Wesnoth Wars. It adds options for XP-for-healing but also for making terrain affect damage taken rather than chance to hit (which is fun when you get tired of the randomness).
This fork[0] of a fork of the original allegedly works with 1.18. I haven't tested it, because these days I play with the built-in predictable RNG and it suffices for me.
https://github.com/ilya-ilya/Advance_Wesnoth_Wars
> built-in predictable RNG
What's that?
Essentially it makes it so that if your attack is 4 swings attacking a unit on 50% defense territory, it will hit twice and miss twice every time. Any remainders are dealt with randomly, but the seed is based on the save, so it removes save-scumming (which has always tempted me, and I don't like).
Isn't the strategy then to keep them behind the fighter units, wait until an enemy is 1 HP away from death, make the healer advance and make a kill, then put a fighter in front of them again?
Yes, but people don't like that because everyonce in a while a unit misses completely and then it will be targeted and die the next turn.
No risk, no gain
At the more difficult levels it is really easy to get to a point where your strategy relies on a high probability event (a healer landing just one hit on a low HP unit) and then losing because it went against you. Which is frustrating, even if completely expected.
An indirect compensation is that these units require less XP to advance, but I understand your concern too.
> I know you can kinda cheese it by reducing a monster to 1-2 HP and then getting them to attack, but it feels like going against their role.
This is a problem with the XP-per-kill system. Wesnoth could use a variant instead. I use the above strategy all the time to level the healers up.
Note that elven units have slow (their healers), which is very powerful in its own right for getting a kill on a unit. First slow, then deal damage with other units.
My big gripe is that ranged weapons are not ranged. It just feels wrong and stops you trying some interesting tactics.
It's OSS, no?
It is, but making a change that doesn't mess up the balance of the game can be tricky.
I played the heck out of this about a decade ago. It's an amazing game, and I'd love to return to it and see what has changed.
Same, i think It was on my first Linux OS. The good old days hehe
Same!
Same! Just downloaded the latest version for nostalgia’s sake.
I'm still nostalgic for the pre-1.12 Heir to the Throne portraits. Bring back anime Konrad and Li'sar!
(There's an add-on for that too btw)
A+! They even had an iOS version a while back: `https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-battle-for-wesnoth/id14507...` (this may be the "Mac" version, see: `https://www.reddit.com/r/wesnoth/comments/1pjkwbw/i_had_wesn...`).
If that's your jam then there's also a (non-open-source) "Hero's Hour" which tickles the old Heroes of Might and Magic stylings, works reasonably well on Xbox, where I've been doing most of my gaming lately.
As far as Open Source gaming success stories, I'd put this up there in the Top 5 for "Original IP and Concept" (if that makes sense). Just a stellar labor of love, worth giving it a shot to play!
Also on Steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/599390/Battle_for_Wesnoth...
Don't suppose you've played in the steamdeck? Curious how well it works there
It's a pity that it's no longer available on iOS.
I do wonder how realistic it would be to maybe crowdfund the dev team with 3 weeks of Claude Code in order to achieve a working WASM port?
Sweet! Does anyone have a list of high-quality open source games like this?
(Subjective interpretation, but something like, "I couldn't believe it's free, I would have paid for it anyway.")
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead: Like Dwarf Fortress but post-apocalyptic survival horror. Endless Sky: top-down space shooter inspired by Escape Velocity SuperTux: inspired by Super Mario SuperTuxKart: inspired by Mario Kart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_video_game... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_video_games...
Well:
- Supertux2, it got recently revamped, the quality skyrocketed. Much better controls and artwork.
- Supetux Advance, this is really great too.
- Retux (More Wariolike than Mario)
- Nethack/Slashem. A Roguelike more bound to interaction/exploration/mechanics than combat, but Slashem makes combat crazy with the Doppleganger Monk, which is basically a Shonen Manga, the role. (Dragon Ball/Naruto depending on your age).
- DCSS. Basically, not Nethack/Slashem, much more combat oriented than the Slashem combinatorics playing with the Monk a la Jackie Chan, this is more like an ARPG made a Rogue.
- Frotz/Lectrote/Winfrotz/whatver Z Machine interpreter and "All Things Devour". Spiritwrak, too. Great libre text adventures and still enganing because of weird mechanics.
- Frozen Bubble
- OpenArena.
- FreeDoom, better compiled with Deutex on daily builds.
- FreeCiv.
- OpenTTD today can be standalone enough.
- Frozen Bubble
- Minetest+tons of subgames such as Glitch, Nodecore...
- OOlite
- Speed Dreams. If the controls are hard, try the arcade mode. If the controls are still hard, get SupertuxKart, pick some real life car from the addons and get all the SD tracks from the inline downloader, they are several.
> Minetest
Heads up: they recently changed name to Luanti to get away from the "it's Minecraft but worse" perception. They also un-bundled the built-in game and are trying to be a game engine these days.
I recommend looking into Age of Mending. It's still in alpha, but if it's ever finished it'll give Minecraft a good run for its money, especially among the builder-minded players.
Luanti had an annoying habit of regenerating terrain while I was still walking on it. In my book it is very much still "minecraft but worse." I was on a very weak ARM device though.
Regenerating? Luanti doesn't ever regenerate terrain. Do you mean generating the first time? Or loading? I've had it happen that I run into the edge of the mapblock and can't walk into the next one because it's loading or still generating. Maybe give it another chance, because I can't picture the behavior you're describing.
OpenArena even has a browser version these days but sadly it doesn't seem to have any active servers anymore. I had progressed to the point where I could strafe jump and rocket jump all day.
> Speed Dreams
I wonder why that isn't in the Debian repos?
Non free data were real life tracks have copyright.
If you like Endless Sky you may also like Naev, which is very, very similar.
Seconded SuperTuxKart! The engine is really impressive when they push it.
Mindustry is worth a look if you like factorio and tower defense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindustry
Edited to add:
If you like RTS then Beyond All Reason is fantastic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_All_Reason
Oh, I need to get back into playing Mindustry.
Wait, on second thought if I did that I wouldn't get anything done.
If you like RTS Beyond All Reason is pretty amazing.
https://www.beyondallreason.info/
The amount of care they put into the little quality of life ui stuff is impressive. Something about how you can tell when the developers enjoy playing their game.
I know it's a very niche domain, but I feel this way about Lizard.
My lizard is the lizard of website: https://rainwarrior.ca/lizard/
My lizard is the lizard of source: https://github.com/bbbradsmith/lizard_src_demo/
Also Brad Smith is a heavyweight in the NES ROM/Emulation scene, once you know his name you’ll start to notice it pop up all over the place. (e.g. nsfplay)
The Free Civ and Free Colonization games are good. Brogue, Nethack, DCSS are good if you like roguelikes. OpenMW is a totally open source reimplementation of Morrowind, so that might fit the bill.
If you like arena shooters, Xonotic is quite remarkable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xonotic
Oh, yeah! And I believe there are not many games which have Linux, Windows and MacOS versions allowing interplay. Several years ago we had one or two LAN parties with hardware running all three operating systems.
I'm surprised no one mentioned Shattered Pixel Dungeon yet!
https://github.com/00-Evan/shattered-pixel-dungeon
EDIT: forgot to refresh comments, already mentioned
Doom RL (drl) is also amazing
https://drl.chaosforge.org/
https://www.beyondallreason.info/ is high quality and in active, open development. And fun. For some weird reason 8v8 is the default experience but there are several other modes: PVE, 1v1, etc.
0ad https://play0ad.com/
My first reaction was exactly that; I can't believe it's free!
Surprised this isn't at the top, alongside Mindustry.
0 A.D. is like a free Age of Empires and is lovely to play!
I'd probably also put Luanti up there, and maybe OpenTTD (despite the niche UI).
Not Open Source but still/now free to play (these are my favs, I played them through back and forth):
- Trackmania Nations Forever (e.g. via Steam) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj2u2OrZ2vI
- Starcraft Brood War - though I have not tested it via the battlenet.exe, played it when it still was payware.
- Gemcraft Labyrinth - played it when flash was a thing, but now it is again, e.g. on Armorgames
And, I got games like Portal 1 & 2, Outer Wilds, Osmos, Manifold Garden, Planet Crafter and many more for under ten, some for under five Euros each when they were on special offer on Steam. I once got Just Cause 3 for three Euros.
The entire Marathon trilogy, a 2.5D Bungie FPS with a rich story, is open-source and well maintained for all platforms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_(series)
Shattered Pixel Dungeon: https://github.com/00-Evan/shattered-pixel-dungeon/releases
Surprised Teeworlds hasn't been mentioned yet (https://teeworlds.com/)
Stardew Valley isn't open source, but it has been decompiled (.Net) and has a an open-source modding API inclding Harmony integration for patching the base game code and and a huge open-source modding community.
ttps://github.com/pardeike/Harmony
Luanti aka minetest
Widelands as a settler clone
Wagic the Homebrew and MtG Forge are both high-quality FOSS Magic the Gathering simulators.
Star Control 2 —- one of the greatest action adventure games ever made
https://sc2.sourceforge.net/
For anyone that was into Star Control check out Endless Sky:
https://endless-sky.github.io
Stepmania comes to mind, although the legal status of the content the community made for it is dubious at best.
OpenRCT2 is a reimplementation of RollerCoaster Tycoon 2.
Just like its cousing OpenTTD which is a reimplementation of Chris Sawyer's Transport Tycoon.
Endless Sky, GPLv3 space trading game. Being a space trucker is dangerously addictive.
Grew up playing Wesnoth, still adore the game. There is a TON of third party content and a serious extended universe, too!
Could you name a few places to find 3rd party content?
It's under the "add-ons" menu in game. I would recommend playing the top-ranked campaigns. Some amazing stuff in there. I adore Legend of the Invincibles. Fun story, tons of new gameplay mechanics.
There was (still is?) a Middle East themed campaign with just absolutely gorgeous artwork.
Last time I checked there was an option on the main menu to download user-made campaigns.
There's a "addons" browser in the game.
My kids and I have been playing this for about 20 years. It's worked on Linux, Mac and Windows and has never stopped working.
In the meantime so many other favorite games have disappeared or become obsolete.
There's no absolute reason great games can't be as immortal as chess. Maybe Wesnoth can be.
Nethack/Slashem too in case of Roguelikes. Nethack adds tons of Terry Pratchett references as and homage and it's cool but Slashem has tons of weapons, classes, objects, environments... And supertux2 has both the main campaingn add tons of downloadable ones too.
Ditto with Oolite, tons of community content.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon it's a fork and still has tons of contents and it might be the most playable FLOSS game in Android among Unciv. Oh, and it can be run on potatos.
Sometimes you don't need AAA graphics.
I loved this game playing on an Arch Thinkpad in university with budget graphics capability.
The best part is being able to pin locations on the map for your teammates, so we were able to plot the adventures and battlegrounds of a goated unit by naming the pins "Ronant's Triumph," "Ronant's Revenge," "Ronant's Folly," and ultimately "Ronant's Last Stand." Great times with a few beers and the lads.
RIP Ronant, Wesnoth will never see another hero of your like again.
An absolute gem I came across randomly many years ago. Picked up Mewgenics and it left me wishing it had some mechanics from Wesnoth like faster animations (Mewgenics caps at 4x), undo action (at least if the action doesn't trigger any rng/damage behavior), skip enemy turns.
I only wish they added more campaigns into the official lore.
Because of the level-up mechanics of Wesnoth, I don't think its really possible to balance a long-running campaign. The tier3 or tier4 units are just so much more powerful than the earlier tiers... and yet a "recall" costs only 20G.
I'm not sure how I'd balance the game. You want the feeling of progression, but its too "slippery", the game gets easier if the player feeds their units and lets them grow. But it feels like the player could get "trapped" if they had unfortunate or unlucky losses at the incorrect time.
On the other hand, I always thought the "single map" or "scenario maps" of Wesnoth were excellent. I mean, I like the campaigns its just... tough to figure out the proper design scope there.
What kept Wesnoth alive for twenty years is the same thing that kept BBS door games alive in the 80s: the content was community-created. Trade Wars 2002 was different on every board because the sysop configured it differently and the players made it their own. Wesnoth's WML scripting language lets anyone build campaigns, factions, entire rulesets. Most open-source games die because the core team burns out and nobody picks it up. Wesnoth survived because thousands of people have a stake in their own content inside it. The game is a platform, not a product.
It's been probably 20 years since I played this game. But I still think it's the best Open Source game I've ever played. I had lots of fun, and more than a few late nights, running through some of the campaigns.
I would love to see a Nintendo Switch port of this game, if anyone is interested in making one!
> I would love to see a Nintendo Switch port of this game, if anyone is interested in making one!
I think many would be, but AIUI it's illegal. It would require modifying the source to use Nintendo's SDK which is under NDA. The GPL would require releasing the modified source, which would be prohibited by the NDA. So it's legally impossible without special permission from every single Wesnoth contributor ever.
Unless you mean a homebrew port, in which case it's doable.
I heard about this game many many times due to software developers showcasing it as an example of a good libre videogame. However, I don't know a single person who played it and I have never seen anyone recommending it for its gameplay.
It is a relatively simple formula that is very combat heavy with extremely simple economy. The campaigns are excellent though and as long as the true randomness of attacks/defense doesn't drive you crazy it is a lot of fun. Very challenging and has real strategic and tactical depth as well as pretty well balanced.
I personally never did multiplayer but last I checked the multiplayer community was pretty healthy.
That’s absurd. It is the only game I’ve ever played other than chess. Maybe it’s not popular with FPS gamers, but a lot of people don’t like FPS.
i played it, its fine, its a solid game. Easily can lose several hours in a session and probably played over 40 in total. Its enjoyable to play through due to the upgrading mechanics and wanting to see all the potential evolutions. That said, I'm not always a huge fan of the level design as you're often encouraged to play into negative fights (e.g. the timing for meeting the enemy aligns with their daytime bonuses) which forces you to play a bit more defensively than I'd like.
Someday I hope Wesnoth will have Fire Emblem-esque cutscenes. I can dream.
Oh, and I'd really like them to be in the original style of Heir to the Throne. I'm a sucker for the old anime style of 1.10.
What is pretty cool is how long-living the project has been. I have seen many open source games die over the last 2 decades; some were quite cool. So wesnoth staying alive is pretty epic in itself.
Just downloaded Wesnoth due to this post. I'll try it out this weekend maybe. I was wrong in my other post -- I believe I played it around 20 years ago.
Blocked by Anubis? Just says "invalid response" with no explanation or instructions for how to fix it. Chrome on Android - not exactly niche.
Thanks for that.
Same happened for me when I clicked on the link, I had to delete the cookies for wesnoth.org and then load the site again. I think their Anubis setup might be broken a bit
It's been a long time ago since I last played and I was one of those rng haters (that's why i never got hooked... i want to have fun, not some pseudo random roll the bones simulator). I just took a look and I see three different "rng modes"... i have to laugh and give credit to the devs for sticking to their guns.
I've been playing this for 10+ years :) it's one awesome game and the details for sprites and art direction is sweet.
Great game. I only wish there were more "one off" or even random scenarios - I like playing against the computer but I find campaigns become a bit of a grind with the whole "OK we need to level these units for the scenario coming up..."
I love this game. It is also fairly easy to tinker with the units if you are like me, that is a big win.
There is even an Android build since this year https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.wesnoth.Wesnoth/
I tried it on my tablet last month, and it's pretty unplayable. The touchscreen input needs a lot of work, half the time it does something completely wrong and random, like selecting a tile halfway across the screen from where you touched.
Wait, how is that build different from the one Alessandro Pira (?) has been publishing for years now?
In high school I kept a USB drive full of portable apps. This was one of them. I can still recommend it.
Oh man
My first distro was a live cd with Knoppix.
It had this game, I played so much. This, and Kobo deluxe.
So many good memories
What would need to happen that more players are available for online games?
I would need more time on my hands.
stupid question: if your game is open source, how do you prevent some random dude from ripping your code and releasing a slightly different version?
> how do you prevent
You don't. Giving people the right to do this is the whole point of open source.
If that possibility is not acceptable then don't open source your game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_Dungeon is an example of that. The bad forks dont become popular
And if it's a better fork... it's still open source, so you can switch to it or fork it back.
Open source licenses shouldn't be viewed as a marketing strategy; it's a gift.
So it's like HMM but the whole map is in battle mode?
It feels more like a war game to be honest. I played both for a while and they share some aesthetic, but not much beyond that.
I remember playing this a lot back in the Ubuntu 6 days.
I think this was featured on the Ubuntu software manager at some point and that’s how I discovered it. It was one of the few games on Linux that’s was genuinely fun to play
Fond memories, playing this throughout my youth :')
Interesting! Is this similar to Age of Empires?
0 A.D. https://play0ad.com/ is more similar to Age of Empires.
More like Heroes of Might and Magic. It's a turn-based strategy game where battles take place on a hex grid map. It's got full campaigns, lots of factions and units, resources to gather... it's one of my favorite OSS projects. Wesnoth has been in active development forever and is a real labor of love, as well as a showcase of collaborative game development.
Not at all. That would be a game called 0ad.
More like Fire Emblem
think more hexbased, turnbased, terrain and dice roll mechanics with unit upgrades being extremely important.
More like Final Fantasy Tactics
Not really. This game uses a turn-based combat system with a hex grid. It's more like Sid Meier's Civilization, but with a drastically simplified economy and a strong focus on battles. It also has a Tolkein-esque fantasy theme instead of a real-life history theme.
If that sounds at all interesting, I suggest giving it a shot.
Open Source Games are really underrated Gems
Never heard of this game. Is it similar to Warcraft III?
It's turn based, the most similar game I've played is probably Fantasy General. Closer to Advance Wars or Fire Emblem than Warcraft.
No. Warcraft 3 ist real time strategy, Wesnoth is turn based strategy.
No. This is turn based, it doesn't play like any RTS game.
Not really. It's turn-based and hex-based.
Similar to panzer general then?
Yeah, except that troops in Wesnoth don't require fuel or ammo. And you have to explicitly recall veterans. And leveling up makes units grow into different, stronger units.
only missing point about this game is some of the real word parameters like moral,flanking etc. Maybe a real history mod would be amazing like ancient era or medieval ages.
Modern strategy games for leisure can be traced back to actual militaries or hardcore history buffs—systems that would try to model morale etc., often to a degree which, er, doesn't have mass-market appeal. :p
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsspiel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chainmail_(game)
> flanking
The Zone of Control mechanic kind of simulates this. If you're not careful about unit placement, you may find your units ganged up on by more enemies then they can handle. On the other hand, if you keep a good formation, you can pretty much hold a solid line with a fairly modest number of troops. Unless of course the enemy soldiers have "skirmisher", in which case they'll waltz right past your ZoC.
Actually, Wesnoth's ZoC is the reason I never could get into Fire Emblem. I couldn't get used to not being able to protect my injured units without completely surrounding them.
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