A New 1.02 Public Beta Uploaded

[Greg Wilcox]

Hi everyone,

The new v1.02 Update for Carriers at War is now available as a Public Beta via our Members Club. While we do final testing we figured we'd offer you a change to get it early as well. This is still a beta, but it's stable and solid as far as we can tell. Barring any major issues being found, this will become the official update.

You can download this as a Registered Download as long as you have registered your Carriers at War serial number in our Members Club (click on the MEMBERS link in the top nav bar).

Here's the change list:

New Scenario

• Version 1.02 introduces Tarawa, a complete new scenario that covers possible Japanese reactions to the US invasion of Tarawa in November 1943. This scenario comes complete with mystery variants, so you can never be sure what forces are opposing you, or what their plans will be.

Game Changes

• Separated landbase names on the map to better cope with the situation of multiple landbases in a single hex.
• Added a 3 second pause after the last plane leaves the strike screen before the next report is shown (if the Wait for Click option is off).
• Added help text landbase orders.
• Added text to the profile of carriers being attacked that have planes arming and/or fuelling to let the player know of any extra damage.
• Added an extended range icon to squadron displays to let the player know that a squadron is ineligible for a strike because the strike is too far away. Also ensured that these calculations are made correctly in all circumstances.
• CAP now lands at the end of the Dusk hour, not the beginning, and CAP planes that happen to land after Dusk is officially over will not suffer landing penalties.
• Added Utility Windows to the game. These windows are customizable by the user, and appear above the map and to the left of the time and game speed windows. There is an area in the Options Screen to control them. A Utility Window FAQ is included with this patch with more details.
• Made minor changes to various scenarios.

Game Bug Fixes

• Fixed a problem where crippled taskgroups were not eligible for surface combat
• Fixed a problem with cohesive strikes ordered using the right click on map menu and a related problem where the TG included a carrier that was incapable of air operations.
• Fixed a problem with planes cycling through stations after a strike
• Fixed a display bug where plane totals were sometimes not updating correctly when a strike was being assembled.
• Fixed a display bug where occasionally ships that had been already sunk would show as not sunk in the combat screen
• Fixed a minor bug where gamelog text entries would be incorrectly displayed until the gameclock had run for 5 minutes.
• Fixed a display bug where fighter bombers would sometimes not have their armament shown when their strike wing was being displayed.
• Fixed a display bug where ships in combat could sometimes show damage animations before being attacked.
• Fixed a display bug effecting shadows and debris of planes in the combat screen.
• Fixed a bug where damaged planes that actually crashed while returning from a strike were shown as being destroyed in the combat screen.
• Fixed a rare hang bug that could occur when flicking between cohesive/noncohesive strikes and different targets while assigning squadrons
• Ensured that ship and plane reports always update correctly every 5 minutes.
• Prevented right mouse clicks on map orders window as being misinterpreted as destination orders.
• Fixed a problem where planes that actually died while on a CAP mission would still be shown in the total of planes available for CAP.
• Fixed a problem where floatplane fighters carried by capital ships would be counted as available for CAP

Editor Changes

• A number of changes have been made to the Editor. These improve the layout of data and include extra help text and info displays to help scenario creators.
• Stopped many Editor crashes when confronted with incorrect data, and substituted error messages to provide much better feedback to scenario creators.
• Added a resource search control to speed up locating resources.
• Added a number of functions and resources to enable creation of new countries.
• Increased the size of some textboxes and allowed for extra text entry.

Editor Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug which prevented entry of large numbers for AA and DP guns for ships.
• Fixed an occasional crash when adding new submarines.
• Fixed a number of bugs when deleting or copying/pasting WarRoom actions.
• Fixed some display and text handling problems.

Options Changes

• Added the Max Autosave Space option in the Other Options section to specify the number of megabytes that autosaves may occupy. When the limit is reached, older autosaves are deleted so as to keep within the limit. Set the save limit to 0 if you don’t want any limit on Autosaves.
• Added the Utility Windows options area to enable users to choose which windows to show, and in which order.
• Added the internet stats options area to allow users to set details allowing them to upload their game statistics to the internet. Internet stats will only include in-game details such as side scores, number of ships sunk etc.

Editor Tutorial Scenario

• The framework of a new scenario, Cape Matapan, has been included in the ‘Mods’ folder. This scenario has a complete OB and AI, but lacks various graphics. An Editor Tutorial and template files accompany this scenario framework and explain how to integrate the various graphics into the game. The WarRoom cards in the scenario AI have been heavily commented in order to further explain their functions. We hope that this will help the user community better understand the CAW scenario creation process and the result will not only be a finished Cape Matapan scenario but the production of other scenarios as well.

[Wolfe1759]

I've just downloaded the 1.02 update and decided to have a go at the Pearl Harbor - Advanced Warning scenario playing as the Japanese things were going well and a decisive victory was looking likley then things started to go a bit odd. Instead of the scenario finishing the time remaining started to count upwards rather than downwards and I finally quit the game at 10.25 on the 10th Dec 1941 with net victory points of -693. I'm assuming something isn't right.
 
Appologies if I've missed something obvious I'm more of a board wargamer at heart and this (and Commander) are my first ventures into computer wargaming !
 
P.S. hope I've posted this in the right place
 
 

[alexs]

Hi Wolfe,
Thanks for the info - we've updated the exe, and we are hoping it will make it into the v1.02 patch.

The issue is only visible in warrooms where the scenario designer has altered the scenario length (ie the Pearl Harbor variant is the only one so far). This alteration causes the game to incorrectly display the Scenario Time Remaining (though this is the only effect - the game will still end on the correct date / time).

[Stele]

Thank you, much appreciated.  Will play around with it.