Thunderstone

Note: Thunderstone is still heavily under construction and thus much of what is said here is more of a roadmap than a list of actual features. Currently, only the Subversion exists as an extremely under-construction preview.

In the years following Under the Burning Suns and Invasion from the Unknown, the remnants of civilization have come in contact with high technology. Over a hundred years of mostly peace has allowed rapid advancements in a rebuilding world. In this age of mixed magic and science, the first powerful spacecraft have been developed and the elves, dwarves, humans, and orcs of the world of Irdya have ended their isolation from the galaxy at large...

Thunderstone is the far future of Wesnoth, a post-post-apocalyptic world where fantasy and science fiction collide. The core of the Thunderstone add-on will be an era, consisting of six all-new factions - Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Shaxthals (Biomechanicals from IftU), and Velirssh (aliens featured in UtBS and IftU). The add-on will also include a new space terrain for spaceships (although expect to see spaceships as often as you see ships in standard Wesnoth), as well as extra units and terrains necessary to be the core for scenarios and campaigns based in the far future of the world Wesnoth.

New Features

Terrains

Thunderstone introduces new sets of terrain on top of the traditional Wesnoth terrains. The two major terrain sets are Uninhabited and Space. Space is the void between the heavenly bodies and is only passable by spacecraft, robotic or semi-robotic creatures that do not need to breathe oxygen, and creatures shielded from the harsh environment and provided with oxygen with a specialized suit, such as the human Scout. Uninhabited is a similar environment except on a planet or moon, one hostile to living creatures. The major difference is that only fliers can travel in Space while any machine small enough to enter the atmosphere (all except the biggest spaceships) can travel on or directly above Uninhabited terrain.

Electric Damage Type

Thunderstone also introduces a new damage type called "Electric." Electric is similar to fire, but is usually produced from high-tech weapons. Electric's main difference with Fire is that it does extra damage against high-tech machinery such as spaceships, thus making it an effective counter for otherwise powerful units.

Weaponry and Ranges

Thunderstone introduces many new weapons of a higher technology level than standard Wesnoth, including guns. It also introduces a new attack range, long ranged, that is mostly used in spaceships and other weaponry capable of much higher range than bows or most guns, such as sniper rifles. Because of long ranged's rarity, it usually provides no retaliation to the attacker which is a key strategic advantage.

Guns are portable machines that shoot projectiles at people and have replaced the bow as the ranged weapons of choice. Thunderstone is the dawn of the space-traveling age for the sentient races of Irdya, so guns vary from bullets to bursts of harmful electricity. Unlike bows, the rapid-fire capability of guns enables many guns span two ranges. For example, a shotgun is able to be used in both melee in ranged. For such weaponry, they tend to have more damage but less strikes when close up. All standard guns that can be used in melee have firststrike there.

Despite the abandonment of the bow for the gun, some close-ranged weapons are still used. These wide variety of objects are not necessarily disadvantaged since they are usually unexpected weapons in a ranged world.

Vehicles

Each faction in Wesnoth have many vehicles. Most vehicles are so powerful and expensive that they are recruited at level 2 or higher. Machines are not living so they are unpoisonable, undrainable, and unplaugeable. Vehicles can be flying or ground-based, and tend to be superior to infantry in strength. Their major weaknesses are from electric-based attacks and their expensive prices and upkeeps.

Six All-New Factions

Elves

Elves are still in touch with nature and in the years of peace they have greatly enhanced their magical skills. Elves focus heavily on this magic, rejecting technologies which they find disharmonious, and excel at biology and medicine. Much of their technology is magically-enhanced. Tactically, elves focus on mobility and precision fire.

Humans

Humans are still the jack-of-all-trades race. Balancing magic and science, humans are generalists who adapt to novelty more effectively than the other races of Irdya. Their technical strength area is computers and miniaturization. They, more than the other speaking peoples, tend to win by luring opponents into fatal mistakes.

Dwarves

The dwarves are the master technologists and builders of Irdya, especially in the areas of power, weapons, propulsion, and large-scale engineering. They remain intensely conservative, and their technology is ultra-reliable even if it lacks the finesse and efficiency of human or elven work.

Orcs

Orcs have stolen most of what they have from the more civilized species, but focus mostly on war. Their technology tends towards the crude, overpowered hack, and is notoriously (and sometimes comically) unreliable. The flip side of this is that in any environment that doesn't outright kill them, orcs are less helpless without their tech than the other speaking peoples.

Shaxthals (Biomechs)

Main article: Shaxthals

The Shaxthals are an ancient race created by the original inhabitants of Irdya. These combinations of bioengineering and magic were made to aid in a war, but they soon became out-of-control. They were defeated, however, and only revived recently under the Chaos Empire. When the Chaos Empire was destroyed, the Shaxthals became free to do what they do best - kill.

Velirsshi

The Velirsshi are mysterious aliens about which little is known who have come into contact with Irdya before in several instances. In their most recent encounter, some Velirssh were minions to the forces of Chaos.

Needed work/art

Factions

• Elves (megane?)
• Humans (Aethaeryn)
• Dwarves
• Orcs
• Shaxthals (Shadow_Master)
• Velirsshi

Non-faction units

• spaceships
• new monsters

Terrains

• more varied craters for Moon
• more types of space terrain (nebula, asteroids, etc.)
• metal floor/walls
• various futuristic-looking villages:
  • spaceport (space village)
  • moon village
  • standard villages in futuristic style
• futuristic-looking castles/keeps

Versions

When released on the add-ons server, Thunderstone will use a versioning system that is designed to help users of the era understand the release. The version number will be in three numbers (e.g. 0.1.1). The first one indicates stability, so 1.x.x will be a balanced and "complete" version while 0.x.x is still under construction. The second number indicates incompatible releases with each other, which means that a Wesnoth client using 0.1.0 and one using 0.2.0 will run a risk of getting out-of-sync (OOS) errors in multiplayer. Content such as mappacks or campaigns for Thunderstone might also contain features not found in previous versions, and therefore it is always recommended to update when a new incompatible release is released. The third number indicates compatible releases. This means that content for Thunderstone and MP games using Thunderstone will still work with each other. One example is if 0.1.1 is released, which updates the art of 0.1.0.

Subversion

Thunderstone also uses Subversion (SVN) to coordinate work between the actual releases. You can browse the Thunderstone SVN repository to see the latest draft of Thunderstone. Thunderstone is part of the Wesnoth UMC development sandbox, which hosts the project's SVN. You can get Thunderstone with the command:

svn co https://wesnoth-umc-dev.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/wesnoth-umc-dev/trunk/Thunderstone Thunderstone

Please note that Thunderstone goes in data/campaigns/ in userdata like all add-ons and Thunderstone is only compatible with the SVN release of Wesnoth. Also note that Thunderstone is still heavily under construction so the SVN is merely a preview instead of a functioning era. SVN tends to be unstable and is generally not compatible with a release of Thunderstone on the add-ons server, so use it with caution.

Coordination

If you would like to help with Thunderstone, you can coordinate with others on our IRC channel (for real-time chat and to keep updated on the SVN revisions) and in our forum threads for general discussion and art.

IRC Channel

#thunderstone (freenode.net)

Forum Threads

A forum thread for general discussion and a separate thread for art will be released as soon as Thunderstone is officially published on the add-ons server. Until then, IRC is a suitable place for all communication.