Perhaps you could update your review to reflect the new version: 1.0.2 which was released for OSX on December 1, 2005.

- Marcus

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the review!

It’s a core design philosophy of Wesnoth that the key to this type of game is the user interface. We’d love to have better graphics than we do now in Wesnoth, but wouldn’t compromise the interface in any way in exchange for them.

Even when Civilization II went to an isometric view, I thought it was a bad idea — overhead views might not look the most attractive, but they are the most usable. 3D views are even worse imo.

It’s interesting that I’m the founder of the project, and I haven’t played any of the other games cited in your review not Warlords, not HoMM, and not Panzer General or Fantasy General.

In answer to some of the specific things you wrote:

Quote: “There are too many spelling and grammar errors; hopefully they’ll fix those soon”

We have someone, Eponymous Archon, who is taking time to concentrate on fixing these. He’s doing an excellent job hopefully it’ll be close to flawless by 0.7!

Quote: “The tutorial was a bit disappointing, and somewhat disorganized, and the unit recruitment rules are not well explained at first (you quickly figure it out once you move your hero out into the fray and then discover that you can’t hire new units if you’re not in your keep.)”

We’re actually in the process of revamping the tutorial, although it still might need some more work.

Quote: “while different terrain types exist and are implemented, their effect on the game is fairly opaque; the impact on movement is fairly straightforward, but it’s clear that it also impacts combat, but not how.”

Every unit has a defensive rating on every type of terrain. For instance, Elvish units have 70% defense in forest, meaning that you will have 30% chance to hit Elves on forest.

There are no calculations displayed, because there is nothing to display — if you are attacking an Elf on forest, you will have 30% chance to hit them. Likewise, if you are attacking an Elf on grassland, you will have 60% chance to hit them. No calculations at all — it’s just a lookup table.

You can gain access to this lookup table: firstly, in the latest version, if you click on a unit and select them to move, while you are mousing over the hex to move to, two numbers will be displayed in the top right hand corner — e.g. (2,60%) — this means that it takes 2 movement points to move over that terrain, and the unit has 60% defense in that terrain.

Also, if you right-click on the unit, and select Unit Description you can go to the ‘Terrain Modifiers’ table and see the units movement and defense on all terrain types. (But you said right-click isn’t working for you on OSX, I’ll have to defer to our OSX porter, Sithrandel, on that). An alternative is to select the unit and press ctrl-t. (Assuming you haven’t redone your key binding in Preferences)

I will also note here that there are two types of attacks which violate these rules: ‘magical’ attacks always have 70% chance to hit, no matter what. ‘marksman’ attacks always have at least 60% chance to hit when attacking. As you might imagine, this makes magical and marksman attacks very useful and strategic. (Mages and some undead units have magical attacks. Elvish Marksmen and Sharpshooters have marksman attacks).

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Anyhow, thanks for the review! I hope you continue to enjoy the game.

David

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“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupery