fog of war

[Pocus]

the fog of war checkboxes are reset to false each time I restart the app and load a game (whatever the settings I put before). A bit annoying but far from being critical.

Same thing for the show autosave checkbox, not memorized.

[Redarmy]

Same problem

Bump I guess!

[Joel Billings]

This is very odd behavior as I just tried it and they are remembered just fine for me. The wawpref.dat and wawgame.dat files are in the dat/save directory. They should be updating when you exit the program. Can you verify that the date modified value for these files are changing when you exit the program? If not, does it ever update? We could use more information about your systems and what you are doing if it is updating sometimes but not other times.

[willgamer]

I have what may be a slightly different FOW problem, but its behavior is clear:

1. Before chosing a country, set all countries to computer controlled, computer production, Adv. supply, FOW on; Autosupply, Area supply off.

2. for 1 country, choose human control, human supply; start game:
if Germany, all is fine;
if any other country, the FOW for that country and all countries to its right will be fine, but the FOW will be off and the Autosupply will be on for all countries to its left. [X(]

[Redarmy]

Exactly my same problem. Only Germany works.

And then everyone else gets autosupply.

[Redarmy]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

This is very odd behavior as I just tried it and they are remembered just fine for me. The wawpref.dat and wawgame.dat files are in the dat/save directory. They should be updating when you exit the program. Can you verify that the date modified value for these files are changing when you exit the program? If not, does it ever update? We could use more information about your systems and what you are doing if it is updating sometimes but not other times.

Yeah They update fine. Its odd. I click all powers having FOW and it works, but by next turn all are switched off and the entire AI gets no fog of war and all auto supply!

However, If I play Germany, all works perfectly!! So im a bit confused. *EDIT, NOT TRUE*

There are two people in my area having the same problem.

[Redarmy]

Alright, again checked to see if those files in the DAT folder are updating, and they are. This also plays hell with the supply problem too, reformat will be done pretty soon, we'll see if that helps!

[Redarmy]

Alright, no fog of war and advanced supply toggled=no fog of war remains toggled however auto supply goes to the AI.

It just does this automatically.

[Paul Vebber]

YEs it looks like it is somehow resetting the FOW for players to teh Left of the human controlled player to FOW off. This only affects the Allies. Its been reported to the bug collectors.

[Pocus]

it affects Japan too. Once I proceed a turn as Germany, all others country loose the checkbox.

[Paul Vebber]

Yes, but since I don't think FOW hides what Allies aredoing from each other, it has no effect. We are looking into it.

[Joel Billings]

Ok, here's the story from the programmer. The AI player is not restricted by Fog of War limitations. This was done for many reasons (like keeping the computer from getting stuck in potential moves it was trying out but would be forced to make if the move discovered an enemy unit). I was aware of this when I posted before. What I wasn't aware of was that the computer actually changes the game options setting for itself once the game has begun. Basically the AI will always set it's game option to no fog of war when it is moving, no matter what you try to set it as. This will not change your saved game option values for the next game you start, but will impact the current game. We never intended to force the computer to play with Fog of War on for itself as this would have increased the difficulty of AI programming by a factor of 10. So consider this one of the cheats the computer gets (computer AI in any game needs all the help it can get).

As for the Auto Supply, we have a similar situation. The computer always wants to use Auto Supply. This is not a cheat, but just the way we had the computer operate when using Advanced supplies. Basically when you play with auto supply on, you are giving yourself some of the automatic features that we had used to program the way the AI moves it's supplies around. Keith made the game option screen adjust to show this so that's why after an AI player has moved, if Adanced Supplies are on, you will see that the computer is using Auto Supplies. Again, the change in the game does not impact the permanent game option settings.

Originally I thought you were reporting that these changes were causing a permanent change in the saved of game options for future games and thought this was the bug, but I don't think that is the case. For those of you that wanted the computer to be limited by Fog of War, I understand the desire to use strategies that would take advantage of this. However given the realities of AI programming, this just wasn't something we could do. We felt it was more important to invest time in making the AI play as good as we could get it to play with fog of war off. Sorry for the confusion.

[Adam Parker]

So Joel could you please post at this stage what settings players are exepcted to see/should see in the options screen after a save and reload?

Also what now is 1st the patch attempting to look at? This may help players not be sidetracked whilst gaming for a little while longer.

Thanks,
Adam.

[Paul Vebber]

From what I can tell, because the AI needs "FOW off" if you watch the turn being carreid out by the AI, you can see everything and if you mouse over areas, see everyting while the AI is doing its turn. When it gets to your turn, FOW works correctly.

The "Check boxes" issues is a technical one, but I don't think it has any real effect (since the AI isn't affected by FOW). THe obvious work around is "don't watch" and then use the VCR to watch what happened.

[willgamer]

Interesting choice of UI behavior as opposed to disallowing the boxes to be checked unless human was previously selected.

So this approach is designed with the model that the player will set the options screen as if all the players were human with respect to options, but AI as to control. When any game turn is played, all conflicting options are dynamically reset.

Thus new games can be started selecting any human controlled country(s) from the main screen without having to use the options screen again,

A little tricky but ultimately labor saving I guess.... [8D]

[Pocus]

Thats a bit of a deceiption I must say, that AI dont play with FoW. I wont argue about the fact that it renders the AI more difficult to code, and less able, but I least it should have been made clear in the rule book. [:(]

[Joel Billings]

Sorry, I have to take responsibility for that. I've known for so long that the AI didn't play with Fog of War that I didn't even think of mentioning it. We weren't trying to hide the fact. We've always seen fog of war as a way to help even the playing field because an AI is always playing in a fog. [:)]

[Pocus]

Thats ok Joel, and I can understand the reasoning: between a bad AI (but the game mechanics are more complex, I'm speaking of HoI) and a fair one (WaW), I prefer to not have FoW and have the later. My point that I ranted and made very elogious remarks about the AI in my review article, and knowing at this time that it was partly because there was not FoW would have thrown a slightly different light.
Anyway, thats would not have changed my opinion and the essence of the review, your game is a very good and very enjoyable one. [:'(]