Release Notes 1.15.4

Instructions

This page is for documenting changes made between the 1.15.3 and 1.15.4 releases that are especially important or otherwise notable to players and-or UMC authors. The description of changes added here should be more verbose and detailed than what would be included in the regular changelog on github, and most importantly, should be written with the intended audience being non-developers - no prior knowledge or knowledge of Wesnoth's inner workings should be needed in order for players to understand the entries added here.

New Content

Addon titles and descriptions made translatable

It's now possible to add translated titles and descriptions to your addons, so they will show up in the target language when browsing the in-game addon manager. The original English title is also displayed below and can be searched for in addition to translations. If you want to add a translated title and description to your addon, see the wiki page.

Units

Dunefolk

Most of the Dunefolk faction's units have new/updated animations.

Knalgan Alliance

The Poacher and Trapper sprites and animations have been improved.

Changes To Existing Content

Campaign changes

Under the Burning Suns

Under the Burning Suns has been fully rebalanced, including all scenarios and all units in the Quenoth faction. Generally, the campaign is now more challenging.

Delfador's Memoirs

Multiple issues have been fixed with the twelfth scenario of Delfador's Memoirs, including to dialogue and the AI. This should make the dialog flow better and the AI behave more appropriately.

Balance changes

Drakes

Drake Burner line and Armageddon Drake cold resistance changed from -50% to -40% - this small change is supposed to make Burner more prevalent in matchup against Undead as well as counterweight newly buffed Ghost.

Dunefolk

Dune Spearmaster shield damage changed from 14 to 13 - this high impact damage on unit called Spearmaster was taking away from his lore identity and was making him too good against Undead and other impact vulnerable units.

Knalgan Alliance

Dwarvish Dragonguard hp changed from 59 to 63 - this is update to previous changes of dwarf level ups

Dwarvish Steelclad hp changed from 55 to 57 - Steelclad was earlier nerfed in order to help balance scenarios against ai but it turned out to be affecting competitive 1 vs 1 too much so we are reverting this change partially.

Poacher hp changed from 32 to 33 - main reason for this change are matchups against Loyalists and Drakes, this change is supposed to provide slight boost in not only strength but also amount of level ups that this unit receives thus allowing Knalgan player to get initiative thru them more often.

Loyalists

Heavy Infantryman cold resistance changed from -10% to 0 - this unit was not excelling in matchup against Undead where it should be doing so. This change is supposed to help with this problem.

Northerners

Troll Rocklobber hp changed from 49 to 51 - Rocklobber was level up that was simply not up to pair with usual Troll.

Rebels

Merman Hunter hp changed from 30 to 33 - this unit was weakest unit that was dedicated to water control. This was hurting Rebels too much on maps with lots of water. We hope that this change will provide them enough strength in this area.

Elvish Shaman ranged damage changed from 3 to 4 - Shaman was not used as much as we would like to see it in play, this change is supposed to help her receive just a bit more of spotlight in competitive matches.

Wose cold resistance changed from 10% to 0 - Wose was highly problematic unit in matchup against Undead, it allowed Rebels to play completely defensively until they had enough Woses to crush their opponent. This change should allow Adepts to kill Woses faster and thus make it much harder for Rebels to just defend.

Undead

Banebow hp changed form 50 to 55 - this unit had very low amount of hp for level 3 unit.

Bone Shooter hp changed from 40 to 42 - this units had very low amount of hp for level 2 unit and its performance as a leader was also subpar.

Ghost cost changed from 20 to 19 - matchups where Ghost can perform well are also ones where Undead are not in greatest shape, at the same time Ghost is easily countered outside of these matchups. This change is supposed to help both Ghost and Undead as a whole perform better in competitive matches.

Monsters

Various changes to Wyvern, Wyvern Rider, Roc, Falcon and Elder Falcon - changes to these units are supposed to make them more lore friendly.

Fixes

Graphics engine memory leak fix

An issue dating back to version 1.13.13 was found in the game’s graphics engine that would result in large memory leaks over time, particularly evident after performing a few save-reloading or game initialization (Campaign mode, Multiplayer, Map Editor) cycles. On Windows and other systems running 32-bit builds of the game, this could eventually result in a game session crashing due to reaching platform-mandated memory limits. Furthermore, either 32-bit or 64-bit systems with small amounts of available RAM could perceive substantial performance degradation during long game sessions, or even crashes in other running software.

Scenario configuration files created by the scenario editor

The scenario editor creates .cfg files; but if you edit that .cfg by hand and then use the scenario editor again, the editor will completely rewrite it, likely removing any hand-edited WML. A comment warning about this is now added at the top of these .cfg files.

The editor-generated .cfg files can be thought of as an extended format for map files. It’s possible to create a separate .cfg file with hand-edited WML, and then load the editor-generated file with [scenario]map_file=example.cfg. Support for this requires some bug-fixes that were added in this release.

Add-on manager downloading the same add-on twice when updating

Previously, when Add-on A depended on Add-on B and both add-ons needed to be updated, Add-on B would be downloaded by the in-game add-on manager twice. This has now been fixed, so that Add-on B will only be downloaded once.

Creating a game when a map contains an invalid terrain

When trying to create a game when one of the maps or scenarios used an invalid or unknown terrain, Wesnoth would crash. This has been fixed and Wesnoth now will correctly show an error when selecting the map with the bad terrain instead of crashing.

Handling of high resolution monitors

For screens that have a higher resolution, such as 4K monitors, text would previously be displayed far smaller than it should have been. This has been partially fixed, and most text should now be displayed at a more normal size.

General/Misc

Python2 removal complete

All tools that were written in Python2 have now been ported to Python3, or removed if they seemed obsolete.

Build report

The build report (which is very useful to us and should be included in all reports of bugs and other issues!) now additionally contains information on the monitor, sound configuration, and all installed add-ons.

Timestamps on replay file names

The date and time is now added to the file name of replays. This will avoid needing to manually enter a different file name after playing the same scenario multiple times.

Eclipse UMC plugin deprecated

The Eclipse plugin for UMC (User Made Content) is now formally deprecated, though it has effectively been unsupported for a few years now. Anyone who is still using this plugin should instead use other supported editors such as Notepad++ or Visual Studio Code.