Hedgewars - a turn-based strategy game
======================================

Description
-----------
This is the funniest and most addictive game you'll ever play—hilarious fun
that you can enjoy anywhere, anytime. **Hedgewars** is a **turn-based strategy
game** but the real buzz is from watching the **devastation caused by those
pesky hedgehogs** with those fantastic weapons—sneaky little blighters with a
bad attitude!

Each player controls a **team of up to 8 hedgehogs**. During the course of
the game, players take turns with one of their hedgehogs. They then use
whatever tools and weapons are available to **attack and kill the opponents'
hedgehogs**, thereby winning the game. Hedgehogs may move around the terrain
in a variety of ways, normally by walking and jumping but also by using
particular tools such as the rope or parachute, to move to otherwise
inaccessible areas. Each **turn is time-limited** to ensure that players do
not hold up the game with excessive thinking or moving.

A large **variety of tools and weapons** are available for players during
the game. Hedgewars features the standard artillery-genre classics (such as
grenade, cluster bomb, bazooka, shotgun), but also boasts a host of other
weapons quite unique to it alone.

Most weapons, when used, cause **explosions that deform the terrain**,
removing circular chunks. Hedgehogs can die by drowning, being thrown off
either side of the arena, or when their health is reduced to zero.

Getting started
---------------
For complete beginners we recommend to start with the the first 2 or 3
missions of the campaign “A Classic Fairytale” in the singleplayer menu.
It explains the basic controls and gameplay.

Note that Hedgewars doesn't have a *complete* tutorial yet, but it is
planned to create one in future versions.

In-depth information about the game can be found online:

* <https://hedgewars.org/start>: Getting Started
* <https://hedgewars.org/wiki.html>: Hedgewars Wiki

Default controls (excerpt)
--------------------------
The most important default controls are:

* Cursor keys: Walk and aim
* Mouse: Move camera
* Right mouse button: Open ammo menu
* Left mouse button: Select target or weapon
* Space bar: Shoot
* Left shift: Precise
* Left shift + Up/Down: Precise aiming
* Enter: Jump
* Backspace: High jump
* Backspace ×2: Backjump
* Tab: Switch hedgehog (after activating the utility)
* 1-5: Set weapon timer
* F1-F10: Weapon shortcuts
* P: Pause (also shows mission panel)
* Esc: Quit with prompt (also shows mission panel)
* T: Chat

For the full list, go to the Hedgewars settings. Also read the weapon tooltips
for weapon-specific controls.

### Special controls

These are lesser-known controls of Hedgewars, they are based on your
configured controls:

* Confirm: Team chat (if not confirming quit)
* Hold down Precise: Prevent slipping on ice
* Precise + Left/Right: Turn around
* Precise + Toggle team bars: Change hedgehog tabs
* Precise + Toggle team bars + Switch: Toggle HUD
* Precise + Screenshot: Save current map + mask in Screenshot directory

Installation instructions
-------------------------
See the `INSTALL.md` file.

Or see our wiki at <https://hedgewars.org/kb/BuildingHedgewars>.

Source code
-----------
Our main repository is located at <https://hg.hedgewars.org/hedgewars/> using
Mercurial as DVCS. A Git repository is also available (mirrored daily)
at <https://github.com/hedgewars/hw>.

[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/hedgewars/hw.svg)](https://travis-ci.org/hedgewars/hw)

Contribute
----------
If you see a bug or have any suggestion please use the official bug tracker at
<https://hedgewars.org/bugs> or the integrated feedback button.

If you want to help or get to know the sources better you can do that with some
easy tasks from <https://hedgewars.org/kb/TODO>. We also have an extensive API
in Lua to customize your adventures. See our wiki at
<https://hedgewars.org/kb/LuaAPI>.

If you know your way through the code feel free to send a patch or open a pull
request. The best Lua scripts get released in the official DLC page and later
integrated in the next version.

Licence and credits
-------------------
This game is free software (“free” as in “freedom”). Source code is
distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence version 2;
images and sounds are distributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation
Licence version 1.2. See the `COPYING` file for the full text of the licenses.

Copyright 2004-2015 Andrey Korotaev <unC0Rr@gmail.com> and others.
See `QTfrontend/res/html/about.html` and `CREDITS` for a more complete list of
authors.

Contact
-------
* Homepage        - https://hedgewars.org/
* IRC channel     - irc://irc.freenode.net/hedgewars
* Community forum - https://hedgewars.org/forum
* Mailing list    - https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/hedgewars-dev