v2.0.11.4 Open Beta Available

Hello All,

v2.0.11.4 Open Beta is now available. Below is a comprehensive change log for this Beta.
Please check it out and give us your feedback.

Change History:

v2.0.11.4 Beta – 27 April, 2016

Additions

• Added a color overlay to “Show Elevations” function (Ctrl+E) if the Advanced Elevation Colors option is on. The colors are shades of yellow to orange to brown as the elevations get higher. This color scheme does work (mostly) with LOS and other tools. The option check box can be found in on the General Tab of the Set Game, Player, and Unit Defaults dialog via the User Preferences button on the main menu or hitting the F5 key.
• The option check box to use the advanced colors for Line of Sight has moved from the Turn Resolution Tab to the General Tab of the Set Game, Player, and Unit Defaults dialog via the User Preferences button on the main menu or hitting the F5 key. This places it with other similar functions.
• For those of you who dislike all of the informative radio message dialogs that pop up during game turn resolution, there is now an option on the General tab of the Set Game Player and Unit defaults that will turn them off. Use at your own risk since you will miss important game related information. You can always turn them back on by going into the options during the Orders phase of the game.
• As an added bonus for 2.0.11, we are including a revised set of Red Storm maps hot of the press from William that move the Red Storm maps up to a Southern Storm standard seen on the maps used in Germany Reforged. These maps are now JPG instead of PNG and have a smaller memory footprint, but still look awesome. The JPG Revision 2.0.11.4 April 2016 | What’s New, Enhanced, or Fixed 7 version of a map will load in place of the PNG in the maps folder. If you want the older maps, just move all of the JPGs to a new subfolder and the PNG version will load in game. Enjoy!
• If you now load a scenario, save game or PBEM game made from a game version greater than the version you own, the game will display a warning message and then go back to the Main Menu instead of locking the game up. If you wish to play the scenario, you will need to update your game engine to the latest version. NOTE: If you are planning to play a PBEM game, make sure you and your opponent are on the same game version.

Enhanced

• We also made some adjustments and improvements to the AI pathing for ground assault and helo movements. In both cases, the AI will look to use better approaches and avoid diving over exposed hills. Helicopters in deliberate movement (attack profile) will seek out low terrain to mask their approach to targets. Hasty moving helos (Returning to base or looking to cover ground) with look to stay low, but will crest hills if it is faster to the objective. We also caught and fixed a bug were the pathfinder would crash if the path went over a lake/large river hex.
• We were able to make a few tweaks to the AI to improve its ability to send better-formed combine arms groups to objectives. This should make things a bit more entertaining as the Red Storm rolls in.
• We made numerous cosmetic improvements to campaign game screens to make them easier to read and work with.
• The game can now be closed by clicking on the top right Windows close icon (X) during turn resolution or during and AI vs AI game. Before it would stop the turn but not exit properly. Clicking on the close button again risked an access violation. It should be well behaved now.
• Fixed a bug that was preventing units “unknown” units (shown with a “?” on the counter) from showing in player versus AI games. There does seem to be some spotting oddness with this that we are investigating in order to correct it for the official release.
• We added a standoff range to helo deliberate movement. Three hexes for Soviets and four hexes for NATO Attack helicopter units. This should help them from sitting on top of enemies. Scouts have a much larger standoff and will tend to back off if they fly into the standoff range.
• The Scenario Editor and game will now load JPG maps just like PNG. JPG maps have a much smaller memory footprint. You can have both in the maps folder and the game will take the JPG version first. File names must be the same to load properly in a scenario.
• All popup forms were given a proper Owner control to preserve Z order of forms (what dialog shows above another). This should reduce the chance of a dialog box or other form 'popping under' the main screen or other form and force the game to have to be closed from Task Manager. On the off chance this does happen, you may be able to recover by hitting the escape key and closing the offending form/dialog. Once closed, you can attempt to reopen the form you were looking for.
• The rate of these notification messages has been reduced to a reasonable level. You should not see the same HQ getting “detected” every couple minutes.
• Do not show the FPGR ‘thank you’ message more than once per session.
• The following changes have been made the UDP panel for game play.
  • The UDP would change to show the unit currently moving but it did not show the currently firing unit (or friendly unit receiving fire if appropriate). This has been added.
  • At the bottom of the bullet list is a new entry for “Kills Claimed”. This adds some color and gives the player attachment to units that have been doing well so far.
  • Fixed up apparent corruption for Air Unit UDP reports but did not find any memory corruption issues.

• The force name at the very top of the information panel could be cropped on both ends if the name was too long. The game will now display part of the name and truncate with ellipses if it is too long. We will look for a better solution in Southern Storm.
• We made a few minor adjustments to the weighted values used to change the weather to reduce the amount of time and the chance of Heavy Rain. It will still happen, but at a reduced chance from Light Rain. If the weather is at Heavy Rain, there is now a greater chance to fall off to light rain. Best we can do for now until Southern Storms new weather model.

• Fixed a bug that broke AI helo aggressive movement (helos were defending or not plotting forward movement at all). AI Attack and Recon helicopters will now move forward after objectives again.
• In some cases, a unit would get caught shuttling back and forth between two hexes when the AI evaluated the route and there was a change is best path. Plotted units should now follow the initial path better and not dance about.
• Air Units in some cases were not fully resupplied by a resupply order. This is now corrected.
• We fixed the artillery reporting times in the diary that were reversed.
• We fixed a bug in Line of Sight/Line of Fire (LOS/LOF) that was causing some odd attacks that should not have been occurring and some rare cases of missing a good LOS/LOF. Combat should be a lot better now.
• We have fixed a bug where the setup zone warning hint would go off even when the unit was in a setup zone.
• We fixed the Force Roster hyperlinks that we broke in Beta. They should work fine now.
• Found and fixed what may have been the killer memory corruption bug in campaign games, fingers crossed.
• We fixed a bug corrupting the effect of certain HEAT attacks with tandem warheads to calculate out incorrectly versus composite armors (ACA specials). The armor will now reduce HEAT penetration as intended.
• We corrected a rare bug that would offset the last counter moving onto a stack in the wrong direction.
• Upon exiting a PEBM game, a PBEM++ exit routine was invoked that could cause a game crash in certain situations.
• We found and fixed two deep bugs in parts of the direct fire combat code. This error was causing medium to long ranged shots in many cases to be greatly reduced in accuracy. Tank combat will be more effective and brutal now with kills being made more often at ranges over 1500m.
• We shut off AI “Move Delayed” hints seen in Beta 11.1.
• We fixed a major memory leak with the Scenario Editor and main game when switching from one to the other.
• We fixed the calendar control to show properly in the Scenario Editor. A recent tool update changed some settings on us.
• We fixed a problem in Setup whereby a user loads a saved game and half the display blanks out for a few seconds.
• We fixed bugs that broke the AI stacking limits for ground and Helo units. The AI will now try to limit two ground units and one helo unit in a hex at a time. Recon units will be limited to one per hex. AI units will plot paths around congested hexes to reach objectives. This should fix the “skyscraper” unit stacks made by the AI and allow helicopters to move over ground unit stacks without being stopped.