User:Eduemoni/sandbox/Hedgewars

Hedgewars is an free and open-source two-dimmensional artillery tactical video game that began in 2004. Hedgewars features the antics of pink Hedgehogs as they battle across bright and humorous cartoon like maps with a varied arsenal of bizarre weapons bearing similarities in both graphics and gameplay from Worms series. The game is cross-platform, playable on Windows, macOS, FreeBSD, Linux, and iOS. It is entirely free and open-source, using the GPLv2+ license for the game engine and various free-licensing for the game art, such as CC0, CC BY 4.0, MIT, GFDL, among others.

Gameplay
Hedgewars is a turn-based artillery games presented in 2D environment, drawing a large influence from the Worms gaming series, which are also artillery based. Each player controls a team of several antics of hedgehogs. In a similar fashion manner to Worms, during the course of the game, the players take turns selecting one of their hedgehogs. The players use whatever tools and weapons available on their arsenal to attack and kill their opponents, thereby winning the game. Hedgehogs may move freely around the terrain, with some constraints, and there are a variety of ways to do so, such as by walking or jumping, but a player may also use a particular tool to move to otherwise steep or inaccessible areas. Each turn is time-based, preventing players to do not hold up the game with excessive thinking or moving. The time limit modifier can be modified within the game.

Over fifty weapons and tools are available each time a game is played, and differing selections of tools and weapons can be saved into a "scheme" for easy selection in future games. Other scheme settings allow options such as deployment of reinforcement crates, from which additional weapons and tools can be obtained. The game can be configured to sudden death mode, where the game is rushed into a conclusion once a time limit is met. The game can be changed by choosing from a set of different modifiers, which change the appearance of the map or the workflow of the match, for example by changing the map deformity to either destructible or indestructible. The objects placement can also be modified in such a manner, by randomly placing mines and explosive barrels. The modifiers can change the border of the map, its gravity, its wind intensity, among others.

When most of the weapons are used, they can cause explosions that deform the terrain, creating cavities. The types of playable terrains on the game can be procedurally generated, through a series of 37 environments, it also features static pre-generated set of 44 maps and the game also allows custom-designed maps to be played created with its own map editor. Their terrains can include "islands" (either floating bodies chumps of terrain or on a body of water), or "snow flakes" that pile up on the terrain and become an actual part of the terrain if the theme with snow flakes is enabled, or "caves" (which may be a map surrounded by indestructible borders, which prevent air reinforcements or weaponry such as "Air Strike", the cave can also feature water at its bottom).

The game can be played either singleplayer or multiplayer (either locally or network based), with optional AI based opponents. A total of two singleplayer campaigns are available, for a total of 24 missions. The game also features tutorial-like missions for learning the game, which may be well suit for target practicing, a series of challenges or just for-fun missions. If a hedgehog is hit with a weapon, the amount of damage dealt to the worm will be deduced from its initial amount of health. The damage dealt to the attacked hedgehog or hedgehogs after any player's turn is shown when all movement on the battlefield has ceased.

Hedgehog dies when one of the following situation occurs:
 * When a hedgehog is completely engulfed by water (either by falling off the island, through a hole in the bottom of the terrain, or by waterline being raised above the hedgehog above the worm during the sudden death).
 * When a hedgehog is thrown off either side of the arena, if the arena is not horizontally bound.
 * When a hedgehog's health is reduced to zero.

Weapons
Hedgewars features an extensive variety of weapons. The weapons available in the game range from standard time grenade and bazooka to exploding bees and the highly destructive Hellish hand-grenade. It also feature bizarre weapons such as the Cake, which is a birthday cake mounted on top of robotic legs, the Watermelon Bomb and the Ballgun (which launches a series of 51 colorful timed explosive balls toward the target).

Some weapons were inspired from popular video-game series such as the Shoryuken from the Street fighter series and the Portable Portal Device which is inspired by the Portal series.

History
The project started January 2004 by the russian developer Andrey Korotaev (also know as unC0Rr). It started as free and open source video game clone of Worms World Party with additional features. The game is developed, both in source code and data, as free software distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. The core game logic is written in FreePascal, its GUI elements are written in C++ and the optional network-play game server in Haskell. The game utilizes FOSS cross-platform software libraries like SDL, OpenGL, Qt, and Lua. Due to the cross-platform SDL middle-layer the game was ported to many OSes and platforms: Windows, macOS, FreeBSD, Linux, and iOS.

After a front-end rewrite with Qt the game was relicensed 2006 under the GPLv2 license. The game was also translated and localized over the years for over two dozen languages. After its initial public release, version 0.8.1, Korotaev distanced himself from the development. Finn Brice (known at that time as Uriah, later Tiyuri, the founder of Chucklefish) took over the development, but once Brice himself got involved in the development of Terraria, he also became inactive towards Hedgewars developement.

The Hedgewars project was selected and participated in several Google Summer of Code (2011, 2012 , 2013) and Google Code-in (2011 , 2012) events; mentoring organization in 2013 was OpenSuse Linux.

To prevent development stale, a collaborative team was assembled. Hedgewars has been active by both its community and its developers, its latest version 1.0.0 was released on the 9th of October 2019. This release comes thirteen years after its initial alpha release. As of March 2020, development is ongoing.

Reception
Critiques of the game are generally positive. Silviu Stahie at Softpedia praised how nostalgic Hedgewars makes everybody remember favorite games from their "childhood with great pleasure", since it is built on the recipe of Worms, "it has the same appeal as the games it was inspired from, and best of all", it is completely free. Softonic claims that while its a little weird to control the hedgehogs, since there is no cursor displayed on screen, "if you're tired of commanding worms and lemmings perhaps it's time to switch to Hedgewars", praising its cute and colorful graphics, its fun sound effects and unique gameplay, awarding it 8 of 10 points. An October 2010 Softpedia review of version 0.9.15 Hedgewars awarded "Excellent" with 5/5 stars, concluding on the game: "Hedgewars is an amazing game and it’s no wonder that is one of the most downloaded and highest rated titles from Ubuntu Software Center. It has something for everyone, it can be played either by young or older people and we wish it could capture a more wider audience."

In 2009 Gamehippo.com's staff awarded 7 of 10 points German computer magazine C't reviewed the game in 2009. In June 2009 a Free PC Game review called Hedgewars: "a Blast! This is the funniest and most addictive game you'll ever play". German newspaper FAZ reviewed the game with 4/5 in 2010. Youtube technology channel Hak5 reviewed the game in 2010 as part of their coverage of the E3 2010.

In 2012, Joel Lee at MakeUseOf.com claimed that it is "always nice to see something that comes out of nowhere and blasts you into the past with a large dose of nostalgia" and that Hedgewars is "a comedic remake of Worms that keeps the strategy intact but injects a nice touch of fun and playfulness". The game is fairly popular among both Free Software and Open Source communities, often being cited as one of the best games for Linux distributions.

Hedgewars was selected in May 2008 as "HotPick" by Linux Format print magazine. Hedgewars was also used in research regarding the social dynamic and impact of (multiplayer) games,  and also Jane McGonigal's 2015 book SuperBetter. The game was also used in sociological research and papers.

Hedgewars popularity raised before Warmux became discontinued, by 2012 in both Gna! and Ubuntu Popularity Contest it had surpassed WarMux download, installation and usage.