7.0.0

Hello, salut, hola, hallo, привет, 你好!

Make yourself a tea/coffee, because today's log is gonna be a long one...

Translation. This was one of the topic that was discussed quite a bit. Lot of people asking me if I could translate the game in this or that language, and the answer I gave was always the same: No. I'd rather make a brand new game at this point. Why? Because the game simply was not made in such a way that localizing (the process of making a game fit to implement translation) was possible

And I mean, boy, I was right.
I spent a full non-stop 10 days of simply re working the UI to support translation. Text element by text element, it was a nightmare, by the end I just felt like a robot honestly.
The first two days, I even felt like I should simply give up given the huge amount of work that was needed to make this possible.
But I did not give up. And here we are, the game is finally translated... I, obviously, do not speak all languages on this planet, but you (the community), do! I therefore asked on the discord server if we had some volunteers to translate the game in their native language, and some of you rose their hands and actually did it! Big shoutout to all of you who helped translating the game (over 1800 lines of text, or over 40 pages in Word).

There is one thing, however, that did not make it into the translation, and it is all of the scenarios' briefings. I know it's a shame the game is not 100% translated, but gosh, there are over 130 scenarios, and each have an intro, defeat, and victory text, each being several lines long. The amount of work required for these is simply enormous and the benefits are simply not worth the work (they only give historical background, the actual important informations is located in the 'Objectives' panel).

The translation of the game is not limited to the current amount of languages. If your native language is not present in the game, feel free to write to me and I can send you the translation file so that everyone can enjoy the game in your language, starting with you!

If there are any issues with the translation, let me know too so that I can fix it.

This update comes with a -50% sale, in case some of you were waiting for a translation of the game in your language to pick the game up... Now is the perfect time!

Update 7.0.0 and all its changes is coming to the iOS/Android version of the game as well today! On top of this whole rework on PC, I decided to make a brand new port of the game for mobile devices with an improved gaming UI, taking into account safe areas with phone edges etc. New and improved!

And without any further ado, I will let you enjoy this change log...

ADDED:

• Localization system to the game, allowing me to translate it into any amount of languages.
• Zone of Control mechanics (optional, you can turn it ON in the settings). Many of you wanted this, so here it is (a little late, but hey, it's here now!). In its current form, and after debate with the discord members, we chose to apply ZoC only to land units (so, not applying to planes or ships). ZoC does not apply to several units: Commanders, Land mines, buildings (except bunkers), partisans, garrisons, militia/volkssturm, units having less than or 30% HP, units having no ammo.
• Possibility to access the upgrade menu with a unit from another country.
• Possibility to upgrade any unit from your reserve (very useful in campaign scenarios).
• New setting: Instant season change. If you turn this ON, there will no longer be any animation/smooth transition, but the map will instantly convert all the tiles graphics to match the proper season.
• Right clicking in the editors will now unselect the currently selected item (unit, tile...)
• In the Leaderboards menu, the game will now let you know if there are no entries for a specific leaderboard, instead of not displaying anything at all which could be confusing.
• Changing the country of a unit in the units editor will now instantly refresh its counter.
• Thanks to the UI upgrade, sharing links is now possible in the chat. Sending links has been disabled for those who do not have an account, this is to prevent potential spam. Guests will not be able to send links.
• New 'Water Freezes' mechanics. I have added two new properties to tiles: 'Can Freeze' and 'Frozen'. The 'Can Freeze' property will be directly set in the map editor, you will have the possibility to choose what water / river tiles can freeze during winter. The 'Frozen' property will be set at runtime whenever the season changes in the game. When a body of water freezes, it becomes walkable for regular ground units, and unwalkable for ships. I have added this to all Europe scenarios to all Northern Areas of the game, such as Finland, Norway, Sweden, and East/North Russia. This should change the battle dynamic during winter and make it pretty interesting to play ;)
• You can now easily purchase units from other countries in the map editor.
• New Soviet Unit: NKL-26 aerosan.
• New toggle in the units editor: Cannot be captured. Does what it say ;) Prevents a given unit to be captured.
• New toggle in the units editor: No Lend Lease. Does what it say as well, the unit will not appear in the store when trying to purchase units from other countries.
• Foldered saves support. You can now create folders in your Saves folder, the game will recreate the hierarchy in the UI. Meaning you can have a Europe playthrough, and place all your relevant saves in that folder, they will be grouped in the game/UI.
• Support for mods and Research. Since there is a finite amount of historical periods, I have added some supported time periods that the Research menu will support. 5 new time periods have been added: (Napoleonic Wars) 1790-1820, (American Civil War) 1861-1865, (World War 1) 1914-1918, 1947-1991 (Cold War), 2000-2030 (Modern Era). Regular base game time period now is 1936-1946.
• New toggle in the Tiles Editor: is Capturable. By default, this toggle is ON for every tile, except the reinforcement tiles.
• New toggle in the Tiles Editor: is Reinforcement tile. You can now make any tile behave as a reinforcement tile.
• New toggle filter in the Order of Battle to display only core units. This is replacing the old top of the UI core units menu.
• Possibility to generate High Res. screenshots by pressing F12. They will be saved in the new Screenshots folder, alongside the other more usual Saves and Maps folders.
• War declarations from Italy to Greece and Yugoslavia on Europe 1939.
• You can now set a player target for the 'Show Message' event action to show messages only to certain players. If you leave the player target empty, it will be considered as 'Everyone'.
• Button in the mod menu that links directly the youtube tutorial about how to mod the game.
• AI will now finally use the 'strategic redeployment' for its units. It has been a little tough to find good use cases for it, but Europe 39 was as good test map for it, as for example Germany would have all its army on the eastern front when declaring war on Denmark, and moving it all from the east to the west was super long, now it simply sends everything back to the reserve (just like a human player would do through the Order of Battle) and redeploys them where it's needed.
• Strategic redeployment is now authorized/enabled in real time multiplayer matches too (previously was not possible).

CHANGED:

• Upgrade of the entire UI across the game. Lots of optimization were made, as well as QoL. Enjoy :)
• Pretty much all tooltips got their text updated and clarity was improved.
• Paratroopers while in airborne mode have a reduced autonomy. From 100 tiles (before) to 35 (now). This change was made to make paratrooper use closer to reality, and not use them as a ballistic missile which could fly across the entire map.
• Paratroopers now can be resupplied at and around friendly airfields while in airborne mode.
• The 'Random Damage Modifier' setting is now a percentage, no longer a flat damage. Goes from 0% to 100%. Works the same as before. Default value is 15%.
• Mentions (@) in chat will no longer stay forever and remind you that you got tagged in a message every time you load the game scene. They will be shown a single time per message where you were tagged per game session.
• In online chat, the real time at which messages were sent will now be displayed.
• Spain (Axis) in the Spanish Civil War scenario will now properly perform landings from Africa.
• Changed graphics of major Victory Points circles when opening the Objectives panel.
• Changed the look of flags on Victory Points on the map.
• The files auto refresh in the Saves / Maps folders is now properly working / more sensitive. The UI in the game will now properly refresh when a file is renamed or moved or deleted.
• Various UI improvements.
• Flamethrower bonus is no longer a flat 15 damage, but is now a 30% damage bonus.
• When setting 'Auto Supplies for all' in the Order of Battle, it will now be saved per player. No more need to enable this every time you load a save.
• Newly spawned in units will now properly have their 'auto supplies' set according to the toggle value in the Order of Battle.
• Your local game settings will now be saved before joining an online game (PBEM or real time) and be restored properly after going back to the main menu.
• When changing a player's country in the map editor, all units owned by the player that are on the map will see their counter refreshed (they used to keep the old counter).
• In the Tiles Editor, changing the biome of a tile will now refresh the tile's graphics.
• Events panel will no longer disable the currently active event when closing the scenario settings.
• Removing a player from the map in the map editor will now properly refresh the 'unit is target' for secondary victory conditions.
• Updated version of the multiplayer compatibility.
• Units slots generation in the Units Editor has been increased by 2.
• Pausing the game will now instantly pause the AI (previously the AI would keep playing for some time).
• Policies are now available in campaign scenarios, given you enabled it in the settings.
• Winter season Lake tile graphics now show the lake as frozen.
• IMAM Ro. 44 can now be launched from ships having a catapult.
• Re. 2000 can now be launched from ships having a catapult.
• Destroyers attacking submerged submarines have a 30% chance at every attack to force the sub to the surface.
• Several tiles' variable types (from integers to shorts), doesn't have any impact on gameplay but cut the weight of save files. On Europe 39 for example, save files now are 1MB lighter.
• AI planes purchase rate has been reworked. It will no longer 'spam' air units. It will stop buying planes when it is not needed.
• Adjusted research time for units, more granular now.
• Updated manual with Zone of Control.

FIXED:

• AI not 'fighting back' against submarines, it will now properly produce destroyers in priority to match enemy subs.
• Typo on Europe maps with the tile 'Fort Maddalena' in North Africa.
• For some reasons autosaves were made during PBEM games.
• Tooltips were always shown, even when option turned OFF in the settings.
• Newly imported overlays would not show in the game, their opacity would be at 0% by default.
• In the store, it would always be written 'Remove core unit' even if the selected unit was not a core unit.
• Lag spike issue in the Diplomacy menu when hovering with your mouse over a country when it displayed the relationships.
• Multiplayer online leaderboard is now responsive again and will no longer freeze the game when you click on the button. I have applied some filtering to only display relevant information. Players will need to complete at least a game (losing or winning) to appear in the leaderboard.
• Clicks going through the musics playlist background.
• Fallschirmjäger name display. Properly showing the 'ä'. This is a save breaking change, it will take effect only if you start a new playthrough or purchase a new unit. Existing Fallschirmjäger will have the "?" graphics show.
• Upgraded units lost the Flamethrower bonus.
• Modded tiles did not carry their Manpower and Occupied Manpower values.
• Random Damage Modifier is now properly synced in multiplayer.
• No more lag spike when pressing TAB and using numbers on counters when having a huge amount of units on the map (Ex: Europe scenarios). Probably improved performances as a whole too.
• File Locked game settings would be saved after you went back to the main menu, and if you created a new map in the map editor right after that, you would lock your new map and you could never open it again.
• Partisans never spawning.
• Carrier/Naval planes could resupply at battleships using their catapult rendering carriers useless.
• Pressing 'escape' while in the map editor menu did not close it.
• Units disappearing (planes) when they were above a land/naval mine and the mine was from an enemy team (= unseen). Your plane would simply disappear when swapping air/ground view.
• Units getting a hero in battle did not refresh their counter to show the hero icon on it.
• Placing supply depots on cities/towns/villages would confuse the game and they would get ignored and it would use the tile instead of the unit (as a supplies source).
• Issue campaign scenarios and HQ points when playing with the Policies option ON.
• Issue with season change. When season was changing already and another season change request was made before the first completed.
• Tech Tree tooltip research time did not take into account some policies.
• Showing low ammo icon on units that have a max of 1 ammo (V1s, V2s...)

REMOVED:

• Core Units panel from the top of the UI. No longer needed since I added a toggle 'sort core units' in the Order of Battle.

Alright, it was a big one! I will be around to fix any potential issues, so let me know if anything is wrong or missing...

I hope you will all enjoy this MASSIVE update!

Cheers and see you in the comments/forum ;)

PS: This is not it for Hex of Steel quite yet, there is another update in the works, a whole ships rework with new mechanics and options for ship customizations... Stay tuned for more...