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Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game

wesnoth.org

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Re: Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game

#171

Post by setgree »

bandrami wrote: post #127
setgree wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

St. John’s college is a great place that draws a special type of young person, but its graduates are not very STEM-legible. As far as I know they still offer no choice of major & no hands-on classes — just the great books. Of course that makes this person’s skill all the more impressive.

Huh. I graduated from there and about a third of my class (including me) works in tech in some form. Though being a sysadmin seems to be more common than being a programmer. But I had no idea the Wesnoth dev went there too!

Did you do a coding bootcamp or such?

Re: Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game

#172

Post by drzaiusx11 »

nimih wrote: post #94
henryfjordan wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone will take a job that requires clearance because they are usually "defense" related.

Also, acquiring said clearance is not always straightforward, even if you lack sufficient scruples to be willing to pursue it in the first place.

I'd argue there's easily more folks lacking said "scruples" in tech's private sector than the typical on the ground government employee or contractor.

Half of what actually makes money in tech these days involves active spying on consumers or manipulation of base human desires at scale. Not exactly the paragon of morality.

Re: Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game

#173

Post by bandrami »

setgree wrote: post #171
bandrami wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. I graduated from there and about a third of my class (including me) works in tech in some form. Though being a sysadmin seems to be more common than being a programmer. But I had no idea the Wesnoth dev went there too!

Did you do a coding bootcamp or such?

No, the email system was a Unix server you telneted to from the Mac SEs in the computer lab so I just kind of picked up Unix usage. Then once I graduated I got a job tending a BIND and sendmail cluster for a local ISP (the "training" was handing me the Cricket book and the Bat book on the first day). The jaw-dropping salary for that was $22K at the time (this was the 90s; about $46K in today's money). That led to learning Perl (via the Camel book) to automate some of the tasks, which led to some CGI work, but I've never really been a "programmer" per se, always a sysadmin.

Re: Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game

#174

Post by pidgeon_lover »

wiradikusuma wrote: post #34

Sweet! Does anyone have a list of high-quality open source games like this? (Subjective interpretation, but something like, "I couldn't believe it's free, I would have paid for it anyway.")

Wagic the Homebrew and MtG Forge are both high-quality FOSS Magic the Gathering simulators.

Re: Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game

#175

Post by Discordian93 »

gowld wrote: post #107
setgree wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

St. John’s college is a great place that draws a special type of young person, but its graduates are not very STEM-legible. As far as I know they still offer no choice of major & no hands-on classes — just the great books. Of course that makes this person’s skill all the more impressive.

For software development, degree is irrelevant. Employer-managed competency exams and public experience dominate.

You aren't getting to the exam stage without that degree though

Re: Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game

#176

Post by rkuykendall-com »

wiradikusuma wrote: post #34

Sweet! Does anyone have a list of high-quality open source games like this? (Subjective interpretation, but something like, "I couldn't believe it's free, I would have paid for it anyway.")

The entire Marathon trilogy, a 2.5D Bungie FPS with a rich story, is open-source and well maintained for all platforms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_(series)

Re: Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game

#177

Post by cisco801 »

What kept Wesnoth alive for twenty years is the same thing that kept BBS door games alive in the 80s: the content was community-created. Trade Wars 2002 was different on every board because the sysop configured it differently and the players made it their own. Wesnoth's WML scripting language lets anyone build campaigns, factions, entire rulesets. Most open-source games die because the core team burns out and nobody picks it up. Wesnoth survived because thousands of people have a stake in their own content inside it. The game is a platform, not a product.
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