Hello All,
v2.0.11.2 Open Beta is now live, choose to join the Beta on the Properties window beta tab.
Change History:
v2.0.11.2 Beta – 17 March 2016
- As an added bonus for Beta 11.2, 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 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!
- 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 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 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.
- Fixed a Beta 11.1 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.
- 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. This should fix the “skyscraper” builds seen in Beta 11.1. Recon units will be limited to one per hex. AI units will plot paths around congested hexes to reach objectives.
- Added a color overlay to “Show Elevations” function if the Advanced 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.
- Scenario Editor will now load JPG maps just like PNG. JPG maps have a much smaller memory footprint. You can have one or the other in the maps folder. File name must be the same to load properly in a scenario.
- We fixed the artillery reporting times in the diary that were reversed.
- We fixed the Force Roster hyperlinks that we broke in Beta 11.1. Doh!
- We corrected a rare bug that would offset the last counter moving onto a stack in the wrong direction.
- We shut off AI “Move Delayed” hints seen in Beta 11.1.
- We fixed the calendar control to show properly in the Scenario Editor. A recent tool update changed some settings on us.
- 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.
New from Beta 2.0.11.1
- Found and fixed what may have been the killer memory corruption bug in campaign games, fingers crossed.
- We made numerous cosmetic improvements to campaign game screens.
- We fixed a major memory leak with Platforms in the Scenario Editor and main game use.
- Give all popup forms a proper Owner control to preserve Z order of forms. This may fix the problem where sometimes a dialog box or other form would 'pop under' the main screen and force the game to have to be closed from Task Manager.
- When exiting a PEBM game, the PBEM++ exit routine was invoked and could cause a game crash.
- UDP Enhancement – 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.
- UDP Enhancement – 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.
- Fixed a problem in Setup where user loads a saved game and half the display blanks out for a few seconds.
- Fixed a bug where Air Units were not fully resupplied by a resupply order.
- Raise an error if too new a saved game version is attempted to load.
- Do not show the FPGR ‘thank you’ message more than once per session.
- 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.
- Fixed two deep bugs in parts of the direct fire combat code that was causing medium to long ranged shots in many cases to be greatly reduced in accuracy.
- Fixed a bug that was corrupting the effect of certain HEAT attacks with tandem warheads to calculate out incorrectly versus composite armors (ACA specials).
Known Issues in 2.0.11.2
Here is a list of the items we worked on for this final major Red Storm update with a brief summary of the changes. Please use the Matrix Tech Support Forum to report any problems with game play. Thanks and enjoy!
- Game Skin Issues:
- The main menu bar sometimes disappears or is not refreshed when it should be. This appears to have vanished recently as sudden as it showed up. This could be an OS update, video drive, other update that both broke and fixed the issue. If you have any graphics glitching, please let us know and try to get screen shots. Thanks.
- If a unit is selected in the Chain of Command tree and then dragged up or down far enough to scroll the tree, the units passed over will get the highlight but not lose it when they should.
- There is an occasional ghost unit drawn. It can be seen if Ctrl-U is used to clear the map of units. The very first selected unit will sometimes be visible as a ghost. Intermittent bug.
- “Popcorning” units – With fog of war turned on we sometimes see units pop in and out of visibility that should be visible the whole time, at least show a “?”, or still be hidden. We are still working on this behavior.