Development
White began development of Wesnoth because he wanted to create a freely-available, open source strategy game with very simple rules, but one that had strong artificial intelligence and that was challenging and fun.
The game is programmed in C++. It is cross-platform, and runs on AmigaOS 4, BeOS, FreeBSD, Linux (including OS flavors running on GP2X and Nokia n800, n810, and n900 handheld devices), Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, MorphOS, NetBSD, OpenBSD, RISC OS, iOS, Solaris, Android, Playbook and Google Native Client running under Google Chrome.
Wesnoth development is decentralized due to its free and open-source nature. The officially-blessed campaigns and units bundled with the game download are often derived from content created by the community, somewhat differently from the user-generated content in proprietary games where such content, while available, is usually not incorporated into official builds of the game. The Wesnoth forums and wiki are used to develop new campaigns, including new unit types and story artwork. The game is able to download new campaigns from a central add-on server. Content featured on the official campaign server must be licensed under the GNU GPL, like the game itself.
Even when not counting this community content, the list of contributors to the official version of the game as displayed in-game contains over 550 unique entries (May 2010). Developers of the game also include well-known authors from the free software and open source scene, like the co-founder of the Open Source Initiative Eric S. Raymond, or Linux kernel programmer Rusty Russell.
As of April 2010 the game is available in about 50 languages, 10 of which have more than 95% of messages translated.
Read more about this topic: The Battle For Wesnoth
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