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Bos Wars
Saved games stay in this browser only.
About the game
Bos Wars is a real-time strategy game set in a science-fiction future. You start with a Vault, which is your headquarters, a couple of engineers and a small pile of resources. From there you gather what the land offers, raise a base, train troops and vehicles, and wipe out the other commanders on the map.
What makes it different is the economy. There is no gold mine to drain: the two resources, energy and magma, are rates. Power plants and magma pumps make a steady amount per second, and engineers add to it while they harvest trees (energy) or rocks (magma). Everything you build or train eats a steady amount per second too, and if your income cannot keep up, work simply slows down. Spending is a matter of balance, not of waiting for a pile to fill, and the bar at the top of the screen always shows what is coming in and what is going out.
The game has infantry, medics, tanks, artillery, helicopters, jets, bombers, ships, radar, hospitals, gun turrets and, late in the tech tree, nuclear power and missile silos. Computer opponents come in several skill levels, and there are tactics to learn on both sides, from early rushes to long sieges.
Bos Wars grew from the Stratagus engine and has been built by a small group of volunteers since 2004. The version here is 2.8, from 2023. It is free software, and its story and art are its own: it is not connected with any commercial strategy series.
Playing it here
This is Bos Wars 2.8 compiled for the browser from the project's source code with its original scripts, pictures and sounds. It downloads about 31 MB once, plays offline after that and keeps a copy in your browser. The picture uses the software renderer and follows the size of the player.
Your options and saved games stay in this browser. Press F11 during a match to save and F12 to load one. Clearing this site's data in your browser deletes them.
What is different from the desktop game, and why:
- Single player only. The network code is left out, so there is no multiplayer and no map editor. Skirmishes against the computer and the campaigns are all there.
- 33 skirmish maps and the 10 Oasis variants are included, plus the three campaigns (Tutorial, Conquest and Swindler). Seven large maps, which are mostly painted terrain of 3 to 15 MB, and a small test map are left out to keep the download reasonable.
- No quit button. The page cannot close the program, so the Exit entries are gone; Quit to Menu is still in the game menu.
- The sounds are Ogg Vorbis instead of WAV, a lossy conversion at moderate quality that makes them much smaller.
- The game language follows the site the first time you open it. The Options menu can switch among the 16 languages that come with the game.
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Left-click a unit or building | select it |
| Drag a box | select several units |
| Ctrl-click or double-click a unit | select all visible units of that type |
| Right-click the ground | move there |
| Right-click an enemy | attack it |
| Right-click a tree or rock with an engineer | harvest energy or magma |
| Letter on a command button | shortcut for that command |
| Esc | cancel a command or select nothing |
| Arrow keys, or the mouse at the screen edge | scroll the map |
| Click the minimap | jump to that place |
| Right-click the minimap | send the selected units there |
| Ctrl plus 1 to 9 | define a group (the number alone selects it) |
| Alt-I | find an idle engineer |
| Space | jump to the last event |
| F2 to F4 | go to a saved map position (Shift saves one) |
| + and - | change the game speed |
| Ctrl-P or Pause | pause |
| F10 | game menu |
| F11, F12 | save, load |
Getting started
Put engineers to work. Select an engineer and right-click a tree or a rock near your base. Trees give energy, rocks give magma, and the numbers at the top start to move. Train more engineers at the Vault: the more of them harvesting, the faster your economy grows.
Build the income. From the engineer's build menus, make a Power Plant and a Magma Pump (the pump goes on the orange glowing patches of ground). Then add a Training Camp and a Vehicle Factory to make an army. If a green box turns red when you place a building, the spot is blocked or not yet explored, so try another.
Keep an eye on the balance. If a unit takes forever to train, one of the two resources is running short. Add a pump or a plant, or send more engineers to harvest.
Learn in the Tutorial. The Tutorial campaign walks through moving, harvesting, building and fighting, with short voice lines.
Tips
Explore early. You can only build on ground you have seen, and resource spots are not always where you first look.
Do not leave engineers idle. Alt-I jumps to any that are doing nothing.
Repair and defend. Engineers can mend damaged buildings, and gun turrets help hold the approaches to your base while your army is away.
Mix your army. Units counter each other. Hover over a command button to see a unit's cost, health, damage and range before you train it.
Credits and license
Bos Wars is copyright of Tina Petersen Jensen, François Beerten and the many contributors listed in the game's Credits screen (graphics, sound, scripting, maps, campaigns and engine). It is free software under the GNU General Public License version 2, and the license covers the game's scripts, graphics and sounds as well as its code. It also uses the Guichan library (BSD), tolua++ and Lua (MIT), the Ogg Vorbis codecs, the DejaVu Sans font and, in the browser build, SDL2 and the Emscripten runtime. The source code of this build, with our patch, is hosted with the game, and every license text is on the license page linked below the player.
Screenshots
