Our next release for WWIIOL, version 1.34, is currently in beta testing and that means its time to do an update. Right now everyone's talking about Americans this and Bazookas that or their frothing over new terrain and other technologies like mine fields and wondering when these cool new technologies will find their way into the campaign. Very exciting stuff to be sure. However, today, I'm going to talk instead about several of the changes in 1.34 that might not have been getting so much press and explain some of the nuances of some that have.

New Host

There's really no better way to describe it. It's literally all new functionality. We started back in 1.27 trying to find a way to have more immediate kill feedback. What we were lacking was a connection from a player in the game to the host that runs the out of game stuff. This is called the Map and Mission Host (MMHost) and is where we do things like create your missions and keep track of scoring. In 1.33 and before, when you're at the UI you're at the MMHost. When you are in game, you're not.

That's changed. And it is GOOD NEWS!

Well mostly. Right now everything is pretty broken and being put back together but if you had my job you'd know that this is good news because that means the big work is done and now we just have to sew up all the giblets and make sure the pumps are pumping and we have a pulse. So then, what's all this mean...

First, it means that you're going to see some improvements in infantry combat lag. I actually think you're going to see massive improvements like we've seen in beta but since I haven't done testing with 100 players (only bots) I'll promise low in hopes of delivering big. But I do have to add that coming around the corner and shooting someone in the face at the same time they shoot you in the face is improved enough that I was school girl giddy the first time I experienced it.

The new host also allowed us to rewrite the rest of the update system and re prioritize things in a more efficient manner. That allows us to do things like update the in game map when towns change hands without you clicking on them! I know, magic right? How about since you now are persistently connected to the MMHost there's no way for your Mission Results to go all pending. Oh, even better, you know when you sometimes crash or get disconnected and then relaunch your game all of your persona are locked and you get all mad and curse and throw stuff? Yup, fixed that too.

So there's a lot of stuff associated with this fix and it opens even more doors for things to do in the future. Now we just need to get scoring working again and we'll be ready to ship!

Other Fun Stuff

We've also been killing off a lot of wish tickets and niggling bugs while all this host and Terrain 2 work has been going on. We've incorporated a sexy new code compiler that is showing some improvements on AMD systems that were having issues in 1.33 with performance. Also new, memory heap management. I know, you're probably overheating at that last one hehe. But those are good core technologies.

Planes now have flaps and gear data shown in the Vehicle Info HUD. This is huge for me because I've never really been a keymap hero so my use of flaps has been minimal. If you're like me this will open up air combat for you and you'll probably want to troll the Hangar for some tips from the pros on trimming your plane for various situations.

We also made the convergence command save across game sessions and by the time we release we expect to have it in the Keymapper with per plane settings. If you just said “w00t!” then I'm right there with you.

Mortarmen will be happy to hear that we added distance to the way-point tool tip. Good hunting boys.

All infantry will notice a slight decrease to the FOV when aiming. This is actually something that our testers never noticed until we pointed it out but it is something that really makes the “feel”, well, feel right.

We also backed out the lean function for now since it really just isn't working right. We'll return this when we can polish it a bit more.

We've literally made changes up and down the spectrum which is nice because we haven't had the opportunity lately to do as many of the little things that always need polish. Things like the adding sorting to the squad tab and some last played data or adding the brigade decals to the brigade pages like we've always wanted to do. We even increased the timeout on the 3 pounder for you navy guys and fixed the max sounds problems you AA gunners experience more than most.

In the end there's a lot more to 1.34 than just Bazookas and Beach Landings but I guess those things are nice too.