Contribute
Do you want to help?
You came here because you are interested in contributing to Widelands? That is great! There are many ways to help making Widelands an even better game.
Maps
The easiest way to contribute is to make your own map and share it with others by uploading it to our maps repository. In the main menu of Widelands, you should find a button to start the editor. Your own map could also be the base to create a new campaign .
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Report a Bug
Another easy way to help is to report a bug whenever you find one in the game. All you need is an account for either codeberg.org or github.com (whichever one you prefer) to file bug reports in our bugtracker(Codeberg · GitHub). Please also read how to write a good bug report . You can help us further by testing development builds .
Related forums:
- Technical Help - If you aren't sure about a bug or if you don't want to create a Codeberg or GitHub account
- Game suggestions - For suggestions on gameplay or gamehandling
- Editor forum - For suggestions to the Editor
Translations
In case you speak a language other than English, you are invited to help translating Widelands into your language. Just log in at Transifex and start translating at the Widelands translation page. Read Translating Widelands carefully for more information. You can use the Glossary as a reference for frequently used terms.
Related forum:
Campaigns
If you know LUA, you can also try to create a scenario map similar to the campaign maps in Widelands.
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Graphics
You know how to make great graphics and want to improve some of Widelands' game art? Visit the graphics development page.
Related forum:
Music and Sound
You are a sound artist or music composer and want to add one of your creations to Widelands? Just post them in the Sound & Music Development forums. More information about music and sounds can be found on the About Audio page.
Widelands Code
- If you have some programming skills you can check out the Widelands source code and get familiar with it. To build that code check Building Widelands.
- Once you are able to compile, you can try to fix some small bugs or add a feature you think Widelands is missing. But first make sure this feature is accepted by the community by asking in the Game Suggestions forum.
- Commit your changes in a new branch and start a pull request. We also recommend that you manually run code check and additional regression tests before sending in your merge request.
- We follow the Google Style Guide for code layout etc.
The Website
The website just got an major overhaul but there are a lot of bugs and missing features. If you know Python and the Django Framework, feel free to help. The code for the website can also be found on GitHub. On getting the code, see Gitprimer.
AI-Generated Content Policy
Please do not submit content generated purely or largely by or with Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or Large Language Models (AI, ML, LLMs). We will not accept such content as it conflicts with the objectives of the Widelands project.
We hold that AI-generated content generally stands on dubious ethical and legal grounds, as it violates the copyright of creators whose work was scraped for the AI's training data set without their permission and without due attribution. Also, we find that it is frequently of low overall quality and/or is overly generic and fails to embrace requirements specific to Widelands.
Pull requests that have been generated by AI may be closed immediately in order to prevent their time-consuming and often fruitless reviews and discussions.
Widelands is created by people, for people.