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I'm afraid that I am a WW2 bore and this period is of little interest to me.

However, if there are enough new and interesting features in, what amounts, to a new engine and if these will be applied to a new WW2 game sometime in the future, I may be inclined to give it a look.

It is some time since I played the campaign series but I recall that the AI was less than stellar, such that many of the included scenarios could only be played H2H. Has that been improved?

Command and control was also fairly loose and, from memory, only really impacted on supply. Also every unit could spot for artillery, which was totally unrealistic.

Interested to see how things have improved and moved on, or not, as the case.

A brief summary list of the key new features in Middle East:

[*]Seven BattleView map modes: three 3D and four 2D (three and four levels of zoom-in & zoom-out respectively).
[*]A massive graphics face-lift, with: new and improved map terrains, hex highlights, night graphics, transparent map labels; and redone 2D counters and graphical unit icons, an expanded set of NATO icons, alternative counter types, multiple 3D unit base types, markers-as-terrain, 2D unit thermometers, and more.
[*]Air Levels for helicopter flight. Four unique zones that helicopters operate in; Ground, Nap of the Earth (NOE), Low, and High. Each having their own benefits and limitations.
[*]Adaptive A/I, with dozens of game parameters and behaviors varied and set based on nation, year, and scenario. And a much more fully fleshed out Audacious/Cautious A/I.
[*]Another, still larger toolbar option (joining the earlier, revised Standard, Small & None options). Expanded dialog boxes and Jump Map. New Infobox features and options.
[*]Map editor, with up to 49 levels of elevation and no limitations on size (dependent on the graphics limitation of the customer's hardware).
[*]Scenario editor, with the editors above, allows the customer to create any scenario the customer wishes. With dynamically reassigned nation sides.
[*]A new file/folder scheme, with support for folders: data, graphics, logs, misc, OOBs, pictures, saves, scenarios, sounds, special, texts.

And a long list of minor new features. Please skim the Coder & Developer Diaries here for details.

We will be repeating some of the Diaries material, and posting new Diaries, in the coming weeks.

A major review and overhaul of the games' A/I are planned over the next year and beyond.

All of the new features, and still more to be developed in the coming year and more, will be retro-fitted to the original JTCS games (EF, WF & RS) in the planned "mega-update" scheduled for late 2016.

I should clarify that the above features are key new features in Middle East beyond and over and above new features introduced in last year's JTCS 2.0*.

From the earlier JTCS 2.00 Changelog and 2.01 Changelog [changes from JTCS 1.04 & before]:

V2.00 – Feb 12, 2014

• ...
  
  Improvements
  o The game engine now runs as a full-fledged, resizable, movable windowed application. Before now, the game engine was a fixed, immobile, full-screen application. (In future, the player will have the option to switch between the two game windowed/non-windowed (full-screen) modes.)
  o Hot keys documented in-game in the Menu Bar options, also in the toolbar tooltips.
  o Relocated and resequenced several of the Menu Bar options (in engine mainly, but also in edit, edmap & edorg).
  o Variable Animation Speeds.
  o Changed "slots" and/or "slot" designations for several nations: Australia, New Zealand, Communist Vietnam, Communist China, South Africa, Philippines.
  o Merged the Campaign Series & Modern Wars codebases.
  o Implemented File>New & File>Open in the game engine .exe.
  o Added TEM & Morale modifiers to the unit Info Box display.
  o Added new LayManyMines & Commando unit capabilities. (For now, ME & VN only.)
  o Moved unit capability (graphical) display from the unit Info Box to (as text) the Unit Handbook.
  o Variable highlight colors, available via the Options menu. Includes five new graphics .bmp files: StackHighlights1D.bmp, StackHighlights2D.bmp, BaseHighlights3D.bmp, BaseHighlights4D.bmp, BaseHighlights5D.bmp. Install them in the top-level game folder (alongside the game .exe's).
  o New Continuous AI Play mode.
  o New game engine toolbar.
  o New Units menu options, and toolbar buttons, for: Banzai, Fire Smoke, Fire Starshell.
  o New player-selectable A/I options: Aggressiveness, Audacious, Cautious, Shifting.
  o New ai.ini AI configuration file.
  o New Backup Saves option.
  o New Test Trial Play mode.
  o New -X NOENCRYPTION command-line option, permitting access to unencrypted data files (e.g., OOB instead of OBX) (for testing and solo play only, not for multiplayer).
  o At the frontend Main Menu, selecting Edit Map takes you directly to the edmap EXE, bypassing the frontend Map Editor display (no more direct random map generation).
  o The frontend Scenarios selection screen no longer displays Backup Saves versions.
  o Reorganized the nation names & sides Msg strings.
  o The screen-top main Menu is now fixed, and cannot be toggled off. Removed the Menu icon from the screen-bottom toolbar, and freed up the Ctrl-M hot key for other uses.
  o With High Details in effect, the Damage Report dialog box now reports the firing side.
  o Removed the Details/Delay toggle from the Damage Report. (One sets this in Options > Highlights.)
  o With Extreme FOW in effect, High Details are unavailable.
  o Removed several hard-coded numbers in edit, redoing them as macros instead (defined in misc.h).
  o Added support for AlliedFinland & AlliedGermany.
  o Added game-specific Results & Command dialog boxes.
  o New feature: dynamic, designer specified day/night & visibility.
  o Restored game-specific Damage Reports & Command Reports.
  o For nations ID#s & Msg* strings, fixed many omissions, inconsistencies, and other faults.
  o Implemented a flexible, full-featured logging facility, all EXEs (frontend.log, engine.log, edit.log, edmap.log, edorg.log, error.log, ai.log).
  o Added a Redraw Display (Alt-D) menu selection (hot key), for fixing any graphics glitches and map display corruption.
  o Added Jump Map (J) menu selection (& hot key) to edit & edmap.
  o Like engine, edit & edmap now have all available hot keys annotated in the top-level menu, also in the status bar.
  o Incorporated Warhorse's new terrain[12]d.bmp files, all regions. These support elevations from 0 to +19.
  o Incorporated Warhorse's new Beach[12]d.bmp files. These show beaches in the proper sandy color.
  o Coded in support for elevations > 12, also separate beach graphics.
  o For all logging, added the option to show in-EXE message pop-ups indicating significant, noteworthy error conditions.
  o Implemented a functioning in-game (for engine only) F1 General Help access of the CS Manual PDF file.
  o On edorg launch, added a message box warning of data loading/processing delay.
  o Redid the implementation of Variable Visibility (optional rule). (Note: Visibility varies only once per turn. The same Visibility applies throughout the turn, both sides, all phases.)
  o In the engine, F2 now summons the EBOOK version of the game Manual (with table of contents), no longer the LIGHT version.
  o Toned down some needlessly worrisome logging "errors".
  o At the Status Bar, clarified use of the Unit Handbook icon.
  o Due to a, for now, unfixable bug, retired Hot Seat Replay. Will be fixed and restored in future. (Standard & PBEM Replay remain intact.)
  o Changed the WF window border & toolbar color to match the EF color. (Had been matching the tropical RS color.)
  o Fine tuned the "duplicate ID" error messages in edorg.log.
  o Further refined the error messages in edorg.log, adding file & line number where the error occurs.
  o Improved (if not quite fixed) night shading in ZoomIn25 (3-key) map mode. Includes three new files: Gray3d.bmp, Gray4d.bmp, Gray5d.bmp.
  o If a unit has no assigned Unit Handbook picture file, attempt to display any graphic defined in its bitmap3d field instead.

V2.01 – May 10, 2014

• ...
  
  Improvements
  
  ⦁ Implemented Options > Toolbar > None/Classic/Standard/Large.
  ⦁ Implemented Options > System Colors.
  ⦁ Implemented Help > Unit Viewer (F3).
  ⦁ Implemented the -X NoEncryption option implemented in all of: engine, edit, edorg, edmap.
  ⦁ Added, in ai.ini and elsewhere, three new moddable A/I parameters: AI_smoke_prob, AI_blind_fire_prob, AI_dig_prob.
  ⦁ Tweaked the highlight/selected colors for greater color contrast.
  ⦁ The game engine now defaults to window maximized mode on startup.
  ⦁ Adapted paradrop and airplane animations to the new Variable Animation Speed system. (Also, flight animations are now capped at 80% of the max ground unit animation speed.)
  ⦁ Applied a minor code tweak for ground unit animations.
  ⦁ Added more logreturn() calls and better exception handling for missing files.
  ⦁ Added a new Campaign.pdt and .pdx data file for all engines
  ⦁ Added a new Main.pdt and .pdx data file for all engines (supply covers now all countries for 1930-1952
  ⦁ Implemented a moddable timelines.dat, for customizing nation timelines.
  ⦁ Corrected several nation timelines.
  ⦁ Improved frontend exception handling and crash prevention.
  ⦁ Improved and extended frontend error reporting/logging.
  ⦁ Eliminated many code & data redundancies between the (TS) frontend and the other four (JT) EXEs.
  ⦁ West Front 2D graphics:
  ⦁ Most units now will have an unique 2d picture on the game counter when using graphical icons.
  ⦁ Units were all given a military icon to add more variety to the very limited original mix. The original game had less than 90, now there are 303!
  ⦁ Enhanced many of the 3D graphics as well.
  ⦁ Updated all countrys to include common files such as trains, supply depots, etc.
  ⦁ Updated a lot of the Minor countrys kit, especially Belgium, France, Italy, Albania, Yugoslavia, Norway, and Ethiopia.
  ⦁ East Front and Rising Sun to follow in Patch 2.1
  
  A couple of late minute additions were included as well, such as:
  
  - Implemented Help > Manual (F1).

In my previous post above, again those are just the key new features in Middle East. When Middle East is released, we will post a complete Changelog for ME too, which will be longer still than the Changelog for JTCS 2.0*.

Old Wine in New Bottles. Or to mix metaphors: Old-timer Campaign Series players will find themselves right at home in Middle East, while still enjoying all the new renovations. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Note: I edited the previous post (post #3) to give a fuller account of the new features introduced in both 2.00 & 2.01. Those are changes vis-a-vis JTCS V1.04 and before. The changes in the forthcoming new Middle East game will introduce still more new features and bug fixes than already added in the updated 2.0* JTCS games.

More than a simple revamp, the Campaign Series really is evolving into a substantially new, but still familiar, modernized game series.

(Further note: In the years ahead, we don't rule out, indeed we plan for, significant new UI and graphics improvements also!)

Thanks Berto

Wow, an impressive body of work has gone into this since I last looked.

Perhaps I may be tempted after all.

Berto is something like this do-able at all, helpful for stacks. This is from Flashpoint campaigns this pops in when you hold mouse over.

ORIGINAL: **budd**

Berto is something like this do-able at all, helpful for stacks. This is from Flashpoint campaigns this pops in when you hold mouse over.

Well I am not Berto but what we've got at the moment is the Hex Info Box, which when enabled shows the content of the selected hex. See the picture below.

As whether what you are showing would be do-able at all, well as Jason introduced him we've got a magician as a programmer so there you go [8D]. But we need to draw the line somewhere, we need to call in the feature freeze, so maybe something for the future versions.

We have a long internal wish-list, just saying, and we do listen to our community as well - so please do keep these ideas coming!

I mentioned in the other thread we've got some 420 individual NATO unit symbols in place. This is a platoon sized game after all so we need the details. In the picture, light trucks together with a mortar unit in the selected hex, a stack of medium trucks next to it. Neat, eh [:)]