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.

Thunderstone

Maintainer(s)	Aethaeryn
Factions	Human Troopers, Elvish Mystics, Dwarvish Guardians, Orcish Raiders, Shaxthals
Current Version(s)	Preview 1 or SVN
Wesnoth Version(s)	1.7.1 or SVN
Forum Thread	N/A
Unit Trees	SVN unit tree
Status	{{{status}}}

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...

A post-post-apocalyptic world where fantasy and science fiction collide, Thunderstone is the far future of Wesnoth's world Irdya. The core of the Thunderstone add-on will be an era, consisting of five all-new factions - Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, and the Shaxthals (the Biomechanicals from IftU). The add-on also introduces new terrains, the electric damage type, new weaponry and a new attack range, vehicles, and special units. Altogether, Thunderstone hopes 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 Thunderstone will have many vehicles. Most vehicles are so powerful and expensive that they are recruited at level 2 or higher. Vehicles are not living and thus are unpoisonable, undrainable, and unplaugeable. Vehicles can be flying or ground-based, and tend to be stronger than infantry. Their superiority comes with major weaknesses: electric-based attacks, and high prices and upkeep. In addition to the recruitable flying vehicles, there are also unrecruitable spaceships that are much stronger, but can only travel in space terrain. These units are non-standard and much rarer than the normal vehicles.

Five All-New Factions

Human Troopers

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.

Elvish Mystics

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.

Dwarvish Guardians

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.

Orcish Raiders

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.

Add-ons

By the time Thunderstone 1.0 is released, the project will be published on the add-ons server using multiple add-ons.

Thunderstone Era will be the core add-on for the Thunderstone project and will provide the units, terrain, and other files necessary for every other Thunderstone-based add-on. This will be the only add-on necessary to play normal multiplayer.

Thunderstone Campaign Pack will contain main campaigns for the Thunderstone project (including the title campaign, Thunderstone). These campaigns will be considered canon with Thunderstone's storyline and will be good examples of what Thunderstone offers. All of these campaigns will require and feature the core era.

Thunderstone Map Pack will provide a diverse multiplayer experience exclusive to the Thunderstone era. The map pack should include both "traditional" style maps and special, WML-intensive maps. Together, these maps will greatly enhance the Thunderstone experience.

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. Prior to 0.1, Thunderstone will be released in a series of alphas and betas on Wesnoth's development add-ons server for testing and preview purposes. Only when some sense of stability is reached will Thunderstone be released as version 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 on the wesnoth-umc-dev 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

The official Thunderstone channel has dropped from inactivity, all coordination should take place in the wesnoth-umc-dev channel until further notice.

#wesnoth-umc-dev (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.

Wiki Pages

Thunderstone art is used to keep track of what art is needed and what art is done.