Peter Schwanemann sent me an installer for Win32, which I've uploaded to the Download page.

He also sent me the files that he used to generate the installer. I haven't gotten around to integrating and uploading them (I will eventually); if you're really interested, send me an email and I will forward the patch directly to you.

Evil MrHenry sent me some nice little patches a while ago, which I have now integrated into the official version. I could get used to this pattern of one release per year. The changes in this version are:

• game data licensed under CreativeCommons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5, as previously announced
• fix a bug in editor undo/redo functionality (Evil MrHenry)
• improved difficulty level handling (Evil MrHenry)
• added level 4 (Evil MrHenry)

Please note that this release contains only sourcecode. I don't have a Windows installation, so I can't build Windows executables. Linux people need to install SDL development packages and just run make inside the source directory. If you have any trouble compiling, please tell me.

Now head over to the Download section to get it!

In almost, but not quite, entirely unrelated news, I decided to backup the stupid little XML munging scripts I've thrown together for this website.

Some time in January, I noticed that the license status of our artwork and levels is unclear. In order to legally secure this project and to enable other open game projects to benefit from our work, I decided to hunt down all contributors to the game data and get their permission for a license change.

I hereby declare that I have been successful, and that the game data is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 from now on. This roughly means that you can use the data for your own projects, as long as you state where you got it from (i.e. the authors of RTTS) and as long as you share any derived works.

This license change applies to the latest release of Return to the Shadows, that is version 1.2. Future releases will contain the new licensing terms in the release package.

After changing this website behind the scenes so that it is generated using xsltproc, it's become trivial for me to add an RSS feed to this website. The feed is here, but every decent browser will automatically notify you about the feed.

So, add it to your favourite aggregator, and you'll be among the first to know about the next release of RTTS, circa 2010 ;-)

It's been a long time in which essentially nothing has happened. Still, the game works as well as ever before, and I just felt like working on the source and the assets for a bit. This is probably not a rebirth of RTTS: Don't expect too much in the following months. But anyway, I decided to share my work with the world.

I've also decided to change the release numbering. Since the releases are so irregular, a three-part release number really doesn't mean a thing, so I've changed that to a two-part number. I'm never going to increase the first part unless a miracle happens, so from now on, all releases will be 1.x.

Enough talk. Here's the changelog for version 1.2:

• add undo/redo to editor (Nicolai Haehnle)
• add SDL_Delay()s to make the game more CPU and laptop friendly (Nicolai Haehnle)
• increase fireball damage (Nicolai Haehnle)
• convert level 1 to the nicer terrain set (Nicolai Haehnle)
• tweak enemy movement in level 3 (Nicolai Haehnle)

Please note that this release contains only sourcecode. I don't have a Windows installation, so I can't build Windows executables. Linux people need to install SDL development packages and just run make inside the source directory. If you have any trouble compiling, please tell me.

Now head over to the Download section to get it!

The forums have been taken down due to a security flaw. Since they have been essentially dead for several years, I'm not going to restore them any time soon.

Of course, if there is enough demand at some point in the future, I will install forums again.

Even though the wait was so long, you shouldn't expect too much in the way of updates. I've mainly integrated things sent to me and implemented some small suggestions.

In particular, there simply aren't enough levels, and the levels aren't good enough. I think this is an important lesson for future games: Either make sure that there are people who are dedicated to creating levels, or design the game in a way that creating levels is extremely simple, or design the game in a way that you don't need any levels. Originally, RTTS had a random level generator, but that just sucked. Instead of fixing the level generator (which, quite frankly, would have been an insanely difficult job), we decided to add a level editor. Unfortunately, creating levels is just an extremely tedious process, and creating enemy movements isn't easy either. Oh well...

Here's the changelog for version 1.1.0:

• added new road tiles: end and T-junction (Evil MrHenry)
• added new enemies: mine, uship, forkship, redship, bigboss (Evil MrHenry)
• added new enemy missile: fireball (Evil MrHenry)
• added new enemy movement type: chase
• raised attachs and attacks limit
• some UI tweaks

Head over to the Download page to get version 1.1.1. Please note that the Windows version hasn't been tested. If there are any crashes, please report them to me.

... and so this project is not dead at all :)

Over the last months I've been occupied by all kinds of different things. Among others, I've been working on Widelands, an open-source clone of Settlers 2. Go check it out - it's far from playable, but it's moving along nicely. However, we really need graphics artists to create all the sprites for buildings, trees, humans, etc...

Back to Return to the Shadows, though. Version 1.1.0 has been released! This release features a (hopefully) big improvement in the editor. You can do quite a number of nice things now, such as copying complete enemy formations, flipping them horizontally etc..

Speaking of which, I've updated the mapping guide. Oh, and we still need a lot of levels!

Anyway, here's the changelog for version 1.1.0:

• added Small Laser
• improved test run configurability in editor
• applied gcc-3.x compatibility patch by bero from http://www.arklinux.org/
• editor: tile editing and unit editing modes are now completely seperate
• added multiple selection through dragging
• Ctrl+LClick unselects units
• added relative node editing modes (Shift+Drag, new entries in right-click menus)
• added copying of formations (multiple enemies including their paths of movement)
• Level 2 now complete with enemies for higher difficulties
• Level 3 contributed by Evil MrHenry

Head over to the Download page to get version 1.1.0.

The sourcecode page is now up, and the forum is installed. All this is a pretty huge experiment, I hope it proves to be useful :)

After a long wait I've finally gotten around to create and upload a proper website for Return to the Shadows. Enjoy :)

I have decided to release the source code of the game under a rather lenient license. Have a look at the Sourcecode page to learn more.