Bos Wars
Encyclopedia
Bos Wars is an open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

, cross-platform real-time strategy
Real-time strategy
Real-time strategy is a sub-genre of strategy video game which does not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....

 video game. The project was started by Tina Petersen in 2004, and the current project leader is François Beerten. The game is written in C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

 and Lua with the SDL
Simple DirectMedia Layer
Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform, free and open source multimedia library written in C that presents a simple interface to various platforms' graphics, sound, and input devices....

 library.

Bos Wars was on LinuxLinks "42 More of the Best Free Linux Games" list as well as their later top one hundred list.

Bos Wars currently uses a game engine based on the Stratagus
Stratagus
Stratagus was a free cross-platform real-time strategy game engine used to build other games. It is written in C with the configuration language being Lua. SDL, gzip and bzip2 are among the external libraries used.-History:...

 engine, and the Stratagus project was merged into the Bos Wars project shortly after the engine change.

Gameplay

The game map initially starts with a fog of war
Fog of war
The fog of war is a term used to describe the uncertainty in situation awareness experienced by participants in military operations. The term seeks to capture the uncertainty regarding own capability, adversary capability, and adversary intent during an engagement, operation, or campaign...

 covering all area which is not covered by the player's units range of view. As the units explore the map, the darkness is removed. Revealed areas which are not in view range are again darkened to hide enemy unit movement on those areas.

All players have the same buildings and units. There is no research in the game so you can instantly build new buildings, aircraft, land vehicles and troops after you have collected enough resources to build them.

The resources in the game are magma and energy. Magma is gathered by engineers or harvesters from rocks or manufactured by magma pumps from hot spots. Energy is gathered by engineers or harvesters from trees or morels or manufactured by power plants.

There are three types of structures: basic, unit, and defense. The basic structures are power plants, magma pumps, radar, cameras, and vaults. The unit structures are training camps, vehicle factories, hospitals and aircraft factories. Lastly, the defensive buildings are gun turrets, cannons, and missile silos.

Online Play

Although an official central server has not been created as of yet, Bos Wars supports multi-player online play provided that users are able to obtain the IP addresses of potential opponents. Certain web-sites allow users to swap IP addresses easily (see A list of IPs for playing Bos Wars online in the External Links below).

See also

  • List of open source games
  • Stratagus
    Stratagus
    Stratagus was a free cross-platform real-time strategy game engine used to build other games. It is written in C with the configuration language being Lua. SDL, gzip and bzip2 are among the external libraries used.-History:...

  • Wargus

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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