User:Singlemaltscotch/NAEV

NAEV is a free 2D space trading and combat simulator first released in 2008. It is inspired by Ambrosia Software's game, Escape Velocity.

The current release of the game is 0.4.0, released on September 6, 2009. NAEV is cross-platform, so it is available for a variety of different operating systems. With code released under the GNU General Public License v2 and media primarily under Creative Commons licenses as well as in the public domain, it is free software.

NAEV is a played from a top-down perspective with isometric sprites.

Ships each possess a number of slots in which equipment can be placed, similar to the paper doll concept employed in many role-playing games. Travel is implemented in a similar manner to Escape Velocity, in that star systems are interconnected by a series of hyperspace links.

Planets and stations in NAEV allow the player to accept missions, buy and sell items and ships, and re-equip their vessels.

The Battle for Wesnoth is set in a fantasy environment, in which players build armies made up of units from races such as humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, trolls, and more. This includes many custom made races, as anyone can customize the game.

The name Wesnoth was originally developed by the game's creator as a combination of syllables that he thought would sound good as a name for a fantasy land. When the project became larger and more elaborate, the developers created a fictional etymology for the name: the inhabitants of the land of Wesnoth came from the West and North, giving Westnorth, which eventually evolved to Wesnoth. This etymology is explained in the campaign The Rise of Wesnoth.

The Battle for Wesnoth currently has six default factions to choose from:

• Rebels: Consist mostly of elvish units, with ent-like woses, mermen, and mages. Most of their level 1 units are capable of both melee and ranged attacks, making the rebels very versatile. Elves ignore the time of day and have high defense in forests. They are generally faster, but slightly weaker than other units in most other terrain.
• Knalgan Alliance: These consist of slow but sturdy dwarves with strong melee attacks, allied with human outlaws who fight better under the cover of darkness. Generally, dwarves gain a high defense when occupying mountains and hills. Dwarves are also more adept at traversing caves than any other faction and ignore the time of day. They are vulnerable to attack in open terrain, while their human outlaws fight better in this same terrain.
• Loyalists: These are human cavalry, mages and infantry that ordinarily fight better in the daytime, with mermen allies. They are the most diverse faction, with more units than any other faction except the Knalgan Alliance.
• Northerners: A faction of orcs and goblins, along with troll, and naga allies. Their focus is on cheap recruiting, brute force, and close combat, fighting much better at night. Most units require little XP to advance levels. Units often achieve higher mobility when crossing hills.
• Undead: The undead are vulnerable to fire, impact, and arcane attacks, but have high resistance against blade, pierce and especially cold damage. The undead rely on easy access to magic and poison attacks. Some units are able to drain health from enemies in order to replenish their own, and most are immune to poisoning. Unlike other races, most undead units have no traits and no personal names.
• Drakes: A dragon-like race that fights better by day. Most can fly and breathe fire. Their Saurian allies are faster and prefer fighting by night and in swamp areas, though they share the Drakes' vulnerability to cold. Drakes are the most maneuverable faction, though their size makes them prone to attack in most terrain.

The exact units used by the factions, and the faction names, change based on the era or the campaign. The above are the factions of the "Default" era, which is the most played one on the multiplayer servers, and its extension "Age Of Heroes".

There are also a number of user-created factions, several of which are grouped together in downloadable "Eras." For example, the Imperial Era includes the Roman-influenced Lavinians, the Marauders, and the Wild Elves, featuring completely new unit trees and abilities. However, it is quite possible to create factions that can be used in the default eras, though the amount of blessing given by the creators for each may vary.

NAEV has several utilities designed to make content creation easier, most of which are written in the Python language. Ships consist of sprite sheets generated by rendering 3D Blender models and combining the output with the mkspr utility. Shell scripts are used to resize the large renders to a size usable by the game.

A resource-editing utility is included with the game, allowing quick creation of planets and star systems.

The core of the game is programmed in C. The AI and missions are written in Lua, with most data files consisting of XML. It is cross-platform, and is known to run on FreeBSD, Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows.

While NAEV possesses a mailing list, the majority of its development discussion occurs on its IRC channel, located on the Freenode network.

While not possessing a plug-in architecture like Escape Velocity, the open formats used by the game ensure that it is easier to contribute content to.

Though the game had been in development for several years, it was not publicly released until November 14, 2008. The last of the 0.3 line, 0.3.9 was released on April 24, 2009. Following this, a substantial amount of features were developed and included in 0.4.0, released on September 6, 2009.

• List of open source games

• Google Code project page
• GitHub source page
• NAEV at The Linux Game Tome
• Gameplay Video on YouTube