Great update—good work.
The interface looks much more professional now.
I'm continuing to work on the infantry counters.
I noticed a few issues:
- The hex grid appears on top of the sprites (you can clearly see in the screenshot that it overlaps the Panther's gun barrel and the infantry counter). Would it be possible to have it appear over the terrain but underneath the units?
- The infantry unit sprites change size depending on the number of soldiers inside. This is distracting when using counters. Is it possible to keep their size constant regardless of the number of soldiers?
Very nice looking counters. I will see if I can get a fix out for both of those issues tonight. The infantry sprites changing size is a hack that I forgot about and shouldn't be necessary at all.
Congrats to the developer! This game is already looking great and foremost is fun. I recall when Steel Panthers first came out. It was a disappointment to me because I was a big fan of Gary Grigsby and SP was originally a tank versus tank game that imho didn't have the depth of GG's games Panzer Strike and Typhoon Of Steel for SSI. In fact I knew the fellow who created the very first editor for SP, which opened the beginning of all the possibilities, and I was the guy who removed that (to me) irritating bugle blow sound for cavalry movement, replacing it with hoofbeats. But that was a long time ago and now we have Steel Company, which right out of the gate is doing things right. Gentlemen, it is unlikely we will ever have Steel Tigers, but Steel Company is looking great and I am more than ready with my wallet to appreciate what may very well be a fantastic new squad level war game (and I think it already is)!
Very happy about this one!
I think I am going to start posting patch notes here (as well as on the Discord) for anyone interested.
PATCH NOTES for v0.87.0
Major features:
- Scenario editor has been completely reworked! All essential settings have been consolidated into a "Scenario Setup" menu, and the terrain placement UI has been made significantly more powerful and intuitive.
- New shot info tooltip that allows you to see a detailed breakdown of what is affecting your chance to hit/kill. It could still be made more intuitive, but hopefully gives you some idea of what's happening under the hood.
- The debug settings tab can now be enabled by checking the "Debug settings" checkbox under "Game" settings. This allows disabling fog of war, spectating AI vs AI matches, and more.
- Added a loading screen while the game is booting up.
- Improved AI usage of artillery on defense. They will now much more aggressively target large groups of infantry and obvious avenues of approach.
- Improved AI infantry/armor coordination. Infantry will generally advance more aggressively while armor will more often hang back in support (unless desperate to secure the win).
- Improved AI flanking and spreading units intelligently across multiple objectives where appropriate. This makes the AI much harder to anticipate and counter when attacking.
Other features:
- Improved sniper accuracy.
- Most vehicles now leave tracks on the ground.
- Japanese landing craft: Daihatsu, Shohatsu, and the Type 95 collapsible boat.
- Added subtle random variation in grass color.
- More ambient sound variety.
- Shortened infantry movement sound.
- Made artillery barrage sounds 10% less abrasive.
Bug fixes:
- Fixed bug where buildings were shown as collapsed the instant a shell was fired instead of when the shell lands.
- Fixed counter colors for Australia and Imperial Japanese Navy to be in line with faction colors.
- Improved logic for how tanks determine which direction to face to maximize armor protection.
- Line of sight tool (V) works in map previews.
- Fixed bug where the casualty % shown when hovering over an enemy in a bunker was much higher than actual casualty chance.
- Soviet HQ on bunker line is moved to foxholes so it's less likely to die on first turn.
This is not an exhaustive list of all the changes, and everything is open to feedback!
