Suggestions to improve Wesnoth if we had $500,000?

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What should Wesnoth Inc. do if given $500,000? (Select up to three options)

Poll ended at October 2nd, 2021, 7:56 pm

Advertise the 1.16 version of Wesnoth by pitching our content to media editors, making a professional promo trailer, buying ads, or something similar
6
17%
Commission portraits/sprite animations for all mainline units that may be missing them, or artwork for narrative sequences
11
31%
Hire freelance programmer(s) to completely port Wesnoth to modern engine (e.g. Godot)
5
14%
Hire freelance programmer(s) to create a secure multiplayer client (i.e. one not easy to cheat in)
4
11%
Commission writers/designers to develop/improve UMC add-ons to get them to “mainline” quality and have them mainlined
9
25%
Other (kindly elaborate with a response to the post, please)
1
3%
 
Total votes: 36

stencil
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Suggestions to improve Wesnoth if we had $500,000?

Post by stencil »

[Disclaimer: I thought to put this post in the Ideas Forum, but it appears to me from the category tags that that forum is centered on specific improvements to the game (my category #3), while hopefully this discussion is broad enough to fit in the General forum. If it needs to be moved no worries.]

Hello, everyone,

I think Battle for Wesnoth is awesome. I’m wondering what people think would make it even more awesome if the board of directors had a pile of moolah.

Note that this is a different question than the one asked many times (improvements poll, mainline story, 1.15 roadmap, project Haldric, backwards compatability, chess clock, how to save Wesnoth) about what direction Wesnoth should actually go given real-life constraints (i.e. everyone is volunteering). I’m asking, if a theoretical very generous donor gave Wesnoth, Inc. an unqualified $500,000 USD, what do you think would be the best thing(s) to do with it?

Of course I’ll share my opinion below, but I’m even more interested in hearing other people’s opinions. My motivation is that perhaps someday a Wesnoth player will know a non-theoretical potential donor and might want to ask that person/organization for money, and it’d be nice to have some consensus plurality-measure of what is worth asking money for. I elaborate this idea slightly at the end.

Without further ado, here are my thoughts. In broad terms, I see three possible foci: marketing, content creation, and new tools for the game.
Marketing
Wesnoth is the work of thousands of volunteers over 18-ish years. One idea to keep improving the game would be to expose even more people to it, and a certain small percentage would naturally convert into developers who do similar great things as previous contributors. I know it is strange to think a nearly 20-year-old game might be unknown to any group of game players, but since I was one of those people less than a year ago, there must be at least some pool. Perhaps the relevant question is how large people think that pool might be. If it is sizable, as I suspect, there are many different avenues marketing could take. For instance,
Buying ads: Lame, I don’t like this idea, paid ads for a free game seem ridiculous. (But maybe no more ridiculous than the following ideas.)

Making a marketing movie: Like the Wesnoth 1.14 trailer (~300K views), this could be freely uploaded to video-sharing sites. But not sure how many extra views a sparkly video would get compared to existing videos.

Media blitz: It seems like Wesnoth is mentioned as one of the best free/best strategy/best free strategy games in online reviews about every 8-10 months. Someone could send out advertising material to a bunch of different outlets and try to coordinate a synchronous surge in coverage.

Hosting a cash-prize tournament: Most interesting marketing idea to me, though I’m sure I wouldn’t win a penny. People love the chance to earn money, especially playing a free game. A random esports website suggests $300K prize money would be pretty significant, so one idea might be to have an initial tournament with a $200K pool, then advertise a subsequent tournament the following year with a $300K pool. I’m confident there would be a huge spike in players during that year. The major problem is cheating, of course, so it’d have to be paired with some technology development (point #3).
Content Creation
Another idea to improve Wesnoth is to incentivize more content creation from the existing developer pool. There are already hundreds of great add-ons, of course, but almost all of them could be polished or extended, and there are surely many narrative paths that haven’t been explored at all. For this point I mean using existing tools to develop/balance new units/factions and use them in new settings, or translate/update existing material to be more accessible/robust. Some incentive ideas:
Pay people who have already added to the game: if we said “thank you” with a cash payment to people who have already contributed so much over the years, they might be interesting in coming back to add some more. I’m talking people like
list of 105 forum contributors with >500 posts with colored roles, plus a few:
. Especially if we reserved some portion of money to keep paying them in the future. Of course it gets complicated about who might qualify for payments, and $1000 each is really not anywhere near compensatory for many hundreds of hours work, but it still might be nice.

Commission people to do new things: Something like this thread a couple months ago which suggests to pay people to make some epic campaign. This could also apply to new artwork, new music, new writing, and so forth. My thought: could we trust that what the paid person(s) developed would necessarily be any better than labor-of-love projects over many years? Possibly, but not guaranteed.

Pay for license to use trademarked material: I don’t really like this idea either, as it seems to dismiss the potential in Wesnoth-related lore (whole game, not just Irdya). But judging from it recurring in posts like these for LoTR, Star Wars, or Eragon, people have an interest in it. But it would probably conflict with GPL license.
Feature Creation
The behind-the-scenes people should get more credit. I used to think I didn’t care about graphics, and then I saw what Wesnoth looked like around 2007, and I definitely changed my mind. A final idea for continuing to improve Wesnoth is by potentially paying some programmers to improve and add features. There are many variations, but maybe a few worth mentioning:
Develop a secure multiplayer client: I have not played multiplayer, but in reading forums and from my experience with other games it seems to be a pretty critical piece of Wesnoth. My understanding (which could be wrong) is that currently players just have to trust one another not to cheat. It seems to work pretty well in general, but some people might play more if they could trust their performance wasn’t being sabotaged by a cheating opponent. A secure solution seems technically tricky, but would be necessary if people ever wanted to host tournaments with prizes (see Marketing above).

Improve AI: Very tricky, but rewarding if possible.

Improving map editor: It can generate code in addition to maps, but apparently not much interest.

Create standardized tool for items: Probably one of the most common modifications in add-ons is the ability to get items that change a unit’s statistics. I’ve seen half a dozen different implementations, and though I’m not linking any supporting thread, I think it might be a popular feature to have a standard interface for such items.
Finally, please know I’m NOT proposing to monetize the game by selling IP rights to some company. My vague idea for fundraising would instead be something like potentially outlining an open multiplayer tournament, probably with turn time limits so it could actually work in real-time, with streaming matches and possibly experienced players acting as commentators for some high-profile matches. Then someone could request sponsorship for the tournament from a company in return for advertising at the tournament. I know it’s only half-baked, but at any rate I’m interested to hear what other people think would be useful things to do with theoretical money. Thanks!

Edited to add ? to title to clarify that I'm soliciting suggestions rather than throwing down my own.
Last edited by stencil on September 2nd, 2021, 7:56 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Pentarctagon
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Re: Suggestions to improve Wesnoth if we had $500,000

Post by Pentarctagon »

Speaking for myself only, some of it would definitely need to go towards getting more attention to Wesnoth and trying to bring in new users and contributors. Throwing a bunch of it at a one time tournament would probably not be worthwhile though since it's unlikely much of the attention and many of the players would stay afterwards.

The state of Haldric would also be an open question - it wouldn't make a lot of sense to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on improving the current engine if it's likely to be replaced.
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lhybrideur
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Re: Suggestions to improve Wesnoth if we had $500,000

Post by lhybrideur »

I would pay people to make artwork for Wesnoth (sprites, portraits, terrains). All the people currently doing them are volunteers. Paying them or someone else would mean having people that can focus on doing that instead of it being a side project when they have free-time. This would allow to redo all of Wesnoth artwork in far less time that what is currently happening.

It was already mentionned that it is not a good idea to pay developers that are not interested in Wesnoth because it would mean no long-time support of the code (because the developer would not maintain it for free so we would have to first understand how they structured the code). It would also be really complicated for them to improve a code they did not write if they never played nor developed Wesnoth.
stencil
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Re: Suggestions to improve Wesnoth if we had $500,000

Post by stencil »

Thanks for your thoughts, @Pentarctagon and @Ihybrideur. @Pentarctagon, thank you especially for managing the whole transition to 1.16!

@Ihybrideur, thanks for emphasizing the important consideration in paying developers for feature creation, that maintenance might be a nightmare (and has been in past cases, I understand). I suppose what I had been thinking there was potentially paying some developers who had already been contributing to Wesnoth for a long time, so that there would be a better likelihood of longevity. But, I favor that option least of the 3 broad categories (see below).

@Pentarctagon, I should have clarified initially, I presented my ideas in the general order I think worth pursuing, so I definitely agree that marketing to bring in new users seems like the best current option (compared to e.g. feature development). Another clarification is that I'm interested in what people think would be worth using the money for given the current state of Wesnoth (i.e. what if someone gave Wesnoth, Inc. the money today).

As for the tournament idea, yeah, a single tournament would probably be pretty useless. That's why I thought of maybe having 2; once people saw that payouts were real for the first one, I think that would probably provide some good motivation for investing playing time toward the second one (especially if payouts were widely distributed). What about some prize system like this: finishers #1000-501 $20/each, #500-201 $50, #200-101 $100, #100-51 $200, #50-21 $400, #20-11 $1000, #10-4 $2000, #3 $5000, #2 $10000, #1 $20000? Total would be $116,000, so even a couple of tournaments would still leave >$260K from our hypothetical cash pile available for developing a secure multiplayer system. I think that out of the marketing ideas I suggested, some funded tournament(s) would probably have the largest short-term spike in players, but I agree the big question is how many of those would be interested in staying around longer-term.

Finally, one thing I should have included initially, even if people don't contribute add-ons or features or artwork or anything, there is still value in having people just playing the game as far as sense of community. For instance, for me it's been almost as fun just lurking around on Discord recently and reading what all the very funny people have to say there as it is to actually play the game. Looking forward to any other suggestions!
Thank you to everyone who has worked on this game!
Mawmoocn
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Re: Suggestions to improve Wesnoth if we had $500,000?

Post by Mawmoocn »

I would do an open world franchise that may allow creators to have a chance to be a part of the official content.

Development continues for campaings using a timeline branch (campaings have different timelines), to allow content creation to reach mainline status.

Factions can be a part of a bracket (time, place), so we can reintregrate and balance other user made content for new content creation.

New content can be used to explore and redefine the countries, events, people, and players surrounding Wesnoth.

We could probably invest on a framework documenting coding standards for integration and simplify what needs to be done.

The goal is, open source, open world, Battle for Wesnoth is a character, to create content.
shevegen
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Re: Suggestions to improve Wesnoth if we had $500,000?

Post by shevegen »

To be fair, while having money available is useful, the "best" game in the world isn't worth
anything if you can not get people to play it. I am not referring to wesnoth - I am referring
to where people invest time to PLAY a game in general.

Having said that I think if you'd have a seizable donation you should distribute it somewhat
"evenly" in regards to different aspects of the game/project. Meaning art, game design,
help/documentation, add-ons, mainline campaign, in-game engine and so forth.

You don't necessarily have to do an "even split" but you need to somehow determine:

a) what is necessary/useful/used by players a lot
b) what has problems (problem areas ... ) or useful ideas that haven't yet been added (but
all of this also has to be designed ... otherwise you end up with inconsistencies)

What I would love is an online-based variant of wesnoth where people can simply
add and create content as-is. So a bit like IRC, but it can happen specifically for
wesnoth where every campaign that allows it can be co-created by folks as-is.
Right now you need to know WML and/or lua and I think the lower the entry
barrier can be made, the better. Existing functionality could be re-used by
people just fine and they could then focus on creating content, and artists
could easily and quickly see online which campaigns need portraits and what not.
All of this can be worked around, but I really refer to the "make it easier to
contribute". Keep in mind that many people have a low patience threshold; they
may drop off for various reasons including reallife time constraints. So the easier
you make it to contribute, the better. Also you don't have to be online to
play either; so you can take turns step after step and people can resume
gameplay. A bit like online chess!

As for marketing:

> One idea to keep improving the game would be to expose even more people to it

Back when I was more actively involved with games, at the PARGP Engine for a fallout
clone, what helped were motivated people "spreading the work", giving updates and
so forth. Wesnoth could perhaps also try this in a regular manner, every 3 months or
so, or 6 months if that seems better, add what is new and so forth. Evidently you
need some time to pass for new things to be added ... a changelog that lists more
relevant changes or additions. So perhaps every 6 months or so.

Other than that I don't think marketing is really that important.

Content creation is an area I agree with. For instance I only play add-ons these days.
Baldur's Gate 2 EE also had a lively add-on community.

> My vague idea for fundraising would instead be something like potentially outlining an
> open multiplayer tournament, probably with turn time limits so it could actually work
> in real-time, with streaming matches and possibly experienced players acting as
> commentators for some high-profile matches.

This may work for starcraft or Warcraft 3 but I don't see this can work with a strategy
game.
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Re: Suggestions to improve Wesnoth if we had $500,000?

Post by stencil »

Thanks for your comments, @Mawmoocn and @shevegen. If I understand correctly, it sounds like both of you generally favor content creation. @Mawmoocn, I think you’re basically suggesting making it easier to add UMC content to mainline through investing money in a simple(r), clear coding framework? And @shevegen, it sounds like you’re suggesting investing in both content creation and feature development through developing an online version of Wesnoth with an easy coding platform (and repository of existing code/artwork)? I guess I’m not as clear about that, as I am not a programmer, so I’m not sure how an ‘online’ version of Wesnoth would be different than what we currently have.

I agree that any TBS tournament would be much more difficult to run successfully than a RTS tournament, but I do think it might be theoretically possible with very careful planning. Even if not, I still lean more towards marketing; it feels like there are so many features already possible within Wesnoth (and manifested in UMC), my inclination would be just getting more people involved in deploying those features in interesting ways. And based on download statistics from a site like Sourceforge, it looks like there were significantly more people playing in 2006-2012 than nowadays (although yes, I know that many people download through Steam or the Apple store, etc., so it’s probably higher now than pre-Steam [2018] or pre-iOS [2009 initially, but out of date by 2016 and reimplemented for iPhone in 2019]), so I think more involved people is certainly possible. (See this 2019 post for how many people are playing multiplayer at any given time over the past year.) But still interested in other people's opinions on big-picture ideas of how money could help Wesnoth, so keep the ideas coming!
Last edited by stencil on August 17th, 2021, 8:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Suggestions to improve Wesnoth if we had $500,000?

Post by max_torch »

stencil wrote: August 16th, 2021, 6:58 pm I’m not sure how an ‘online’ version of Wesnoth would be different than what we currently have.
Like this: https://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.ph ... 14#p667214
stencil
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Re: Suggestions to improve Wesnoth if we had $500,000?

Post by stencil »

Ah, a browser-based version of Wesnoth, thank you for clarifying, @max_torch.

Also, I edited my previous reply to include a feature to see how many people have been playing multiplayer at any time over the past year. So many interesting things stored on these forums!
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Re: Suggestions to improve Wesnoth if we had $500,000?

Post by Pentarctagon »

stencil wrote: August 17th, 2021, 8:45 pm Also, I edited my previous reply to include a feature to see how many people have been playing multiplayer at any time over the past year. So many interesting things stored on these forums!
There's actually already https://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=53912 as well as http://wesnothd.wesnoth.org/.
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Mawmoocn
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Re: Suggestions to improve Wesnoth if we had $500,000?

Post by Mawmoocn »

@stencil

Content inclusion, coding standards, establish a framework that makes contribution...... basically easier to know where to contribute.

New content is integration of efforts.

To contribute..... is basically new content.

Coding framework is required for maintenance of code.

Eventually there will be better or worse coding standards.

Upgrading Wesnoth, some features will be the same, but the code might be different.

Figuring out what features need to have identical coding logic, is one of the reasons to invest on code.

The reason we have to invest on it is to easily maintain Wesnoth for a another century or we could take away a feature and reintroduce it later with no complications.


Content creation is an enhancement or downgrade to Wesnoth.

Depending on how you look at it.

Guidelines for content creation is a tricky proccess, you basically need a management for 2 things, the standards and the explainers.

Otherwise you risk a slow or stopped development.

The standards are about:
  • What should I do if I want to be part of mainline?
  • Should I prioritize difficulty for challenge or for time balance?
  • What are the exceptions?
......and many more.

Explainers (?) prioritize answering exceptions, basically they don't have full control of the standards until futher deliberation has been agreed upon.

Anyways I don't know how would that work as you need to find someone who can handle the stress for doing it......

I prioritize coding first, so we can focus on the easier (???) part to include content creation as a source of continous growth.


In summary, 500k is or isn't, enough for both, and you need to prioritize on what you should start, like a vision you have in mind.
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Re: Suggestions to improve Wesnoth if we had $500,000?

Post by Spirit_of_Currents »

I guess that, if you want to complete campaigns on harder difficulty levels without savescumming nor cheating, you need to use strategies and tactics that only work against stupid AIs. This would be very bad.

If I'm right, getting a smarter AI and re-balancing scenarios will be important.
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Re: Suggestions to improve Wesnoth if we had $500,000?

Post by stencil »

Thanks for your thoughts, @Mawmoocn and @Spirit_of_Currents. I also like the idea of improving the AI, though I think implementing the existing micro AIs into more campaigns would probably improve it quite a bit.

I apologize to keep bumping this post, but I am still genuinely interested in what kind of large-scale vision other people have for Wesnoth, and 6 responders is not such a large sample. So I’m trying out posting a poll, hoping that it will be easier for others than reading through my very wordy rambling. I put up a few options that I get the impression might be most popular (though I’m probably wrong!). When it’s over then future readers can see a snapshot of what (some people in) the community thought at this time.
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Re: Suggestions to improve Wesnoth if we had $500,000?

Post by demario »

This topic sometimes feels like people discussing how their life would improve if they win the lottery.
The problem is that it tends to make them overlook how they could improve their life in ways that doesn't require money :(

Anyway as the current topic is about money only, let me try to contribute some more ideas around money:
  • art commissions: the drawback is that high quality art is made by non-regular contributors, the money being spent without improvement of project fundamentals (attracting new artists) which is what investment is about.
  • targeted commissions: some people have the resource to contribute their skills, some people need to get money from their work. Money should not go to anyone who can contribute for free (whatever high quality), money should go to the other (improving their skills in the process and feeling good about it).
    Already highly skilled people are more likely to be employed and busy.
  • translation commissions: paying translators to get document translated is pretty standard thing (well established process, price and professionals everywhere)
  • universal credit: people who have passion to contribute to wesnoth, but struggle with money, should get a monthly allocation, no question asked, to pursue their endeavors.
  • (Thank you to you stencil for having dug out some very interesting threads, some of them I have never read)
    Ravana wrote: July 26th, 2015, 6:52 pm That is what addons are for. I feel the core factions are introduction, to understand how game works. Wesnoth is more than just what is included in the original download.
    Pentarctagon wrote: July 31st, 2015, 5:53 am I agree that add-ons really help keep the game interesting
    To be consistent with these statements, the game Wesnoth Inc is expected to support and develop includes both mainline and UMC contents.
    Any money settlement that apply to mainline, should be possibly extended to selected UMC (project of the month, ...): pixel art, portrait, translation, ...
  • Lastly, if a "vast" amount of money was spent on enlarging the horizon for the wesnoth project, I would like to see the following set of goals:
    • Develop a new world (probably from "After the Fall"), where lore, units, factions and art can be worked from "scratch" to open up to a new set of contributors
    • Offer a world with: less European background, less white skinned sprites, more genders/less gendered behavior, less humanoid "races".
    • NRIW being extended to: no torture, no rape, no slave, no "savage", no hate based on "race", ...
    • Use bigger size (144x144?) for sprites for more details and use on larger screens
    • Sprite sheet
    • Allow new standards in art (vector drawing, 3D portrait)
    • New style of music (electronic, less orchestral, ...)
    • Improvement in project management :mrgreen:
    I believe the investment should not produce a "new" experience or open it to a new public but kickstart the work to give the wesnoth project a new momentum.
Last edited by demario on September 25th, 2021, 10:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Suggestions to improve Wesnoth if we had $500,000?

Post by vghetto »

demario wrote: September 25th, 2021, 12:11 pm
  • universal credit: people who have passion to contribute to wesnoth, but struggle with money, should get a monthly allocation, no question asked, to pursue their endeavors.
You can't be serious. Wesnoth shouldn't be a charity.
demario wrote: September 25th, 2021, 12:11 pm
  • Offer a world with: less European background, less white skinned sprites, more genders, less humanoid "races".
  • NRIW being extended to: no torture, no rape, no slave, no "savage", no hate based on "race", ...
Ugh, this mentality makes me want to puke. Didn't we go through this already with WoV and it almost ripped wesnoth apart?
It's a good thing that Sigurd is still on board and contributing after what had happened.
Sure let's do it all over again *sarcasm"
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