Warzone has just been updated to version 4.20.5! This is a small update which fixes a few bugs and makes some minor improvements. This blog post describes what’s changed.

This update is available now on the website. The iOS and Android apps will hopefully be updated in the coming weeks, since I’m dealing with a few bugs that prevent me from building the apps so the timeframe is very variable.

Changes

– Unity/UJS: Tweaked layout of Full Settings dialog so it looks better on small devices.
– Unity/UJS: Fixed “load orders card not found” error.
– Unity/UJS: Fixed the “Armies actually deployed each turn” graph from showing 0 on turn 1.
– Unity/UJS: Fixed the clock in NLC games so it uses a dot instead of a colon to separate seconds and partial seconds.
– Unity/UJS: Fixed a bug that made level skipping not work if not signed into an account.
– Unity: When returning to the Main Menu from a game, the My Games section now stays on the page you were browsing instead of always reverting back to page 1. Thanks to OgreZed for reporting this.
– All: It’s no longer possible to invite someone to a tournament who has you on their block list.
– All: Fixed a bug with the “Get all gold stars” achievement.
– All: Exiting history of a finished game no longer takes you back to watching the last turn.
– Website: Fixed a bug that caused an error if you typed a negative number into the entry fee of a coin game.
– UJS: Fixed a bug that rarely made chat messages sometimes append a few characters of gibberish at the end.
– Android/iOS: Push notifications that come in for the active game no longer cause a visible refresh. This fixes the issue of “Refreshing” appearing right after a turn advances, which can block the player tapping Watch.

Have you ever wondered what Warzone would be like if players took turns instead of all playing at the same time?

Take Turns Mod

There’s a new mod available, called the take turns mod! In this mod, instead of all players entering orders every turn, players will alternate turns. For example, in a 1v1, one player would get to enter attacks on evened-numbered turns and the other would get to enter attacks on odd-numbered turns.

When it’s not your turn, you’ll still be prompted to enter orders like normal but you should instead just commit your turn without any orders. If you do enter orders, they’ll be ignored by the mod.

If you’re a member, give it a try and let me know what you think! You can use this template as a starting point.

Mod Development Tutorial

I put together a video walking through how mods are developed. This is intended for people who know how to code already and are looking to see how to make a Warzone mod. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Warzone has just been updated to version 4.20.4! This is a small update that just fixes some bugs. This blog post describes what’s changed.

Changes

– Unity: Fixed a bug with the standalone client opening a modded game when set to the German locale. Thanks to dabo1 for reporting this.
– Unity: Improved detection of double-tap-to-attack.
– Unity/UJS: Creators of community levels that use custom scenarios can now alter the cards that the human player starts with like they can for AIs.
– All: Fixed a bug with Quickmatch that made the rating penalty of double-boots be stricter than it was supposed to. Thanks to Lepanto and Timiniator for reporting this.
– All: Fixed a bug that could, in rare cases, cause a single player win to be recorded multiple times. Thanks to Jose for reporting this.

I’m taking a trip around the western continental United States! I rarely get to to leave the house, so I’m taking this opportunity to meet up with as many Warzoners/WarLighters as I can. So if you’re in the area over the next couple months and want to meet up, send me a message!

Warzone has just been updated to version 4.20.3! This is a small update which fixes some bugs and has some small improvements. This blog post describes what’s changed.

This version is live on the website and the standalone client now. It will eventually go live for the iOS and Android apps as well, though this may take a while as I’m waiting on the Unity team to hear back about a couple bugs in Unity.

Changes

– All: Default reinforcement card value changed from 10 to 5, and default map changed from Earth to Final Earth.
– All: Fixed a bug that caused an error team IDs greater than 600 were passed in.
– All: Fixed a bug that caused an error if a mod used invalid player IDs in an event.
– All: Optimized games with many thousands of armies so they’ll run faster and avoid de-stablizing the server.
– All: Fixed a bug with uneven-team manual-distribution games using the cyclic move order that could cause the less even team to get a late pick instead of an early one. Thanks to Den-Sel for reporting this.
– All: Fixed a bug with attack animations that could leave the source territory in the wrong state. Thanks to shrubbery moves for reporting this.
– All: Fixed a bug that made some email providers block Warzone emails.
– All: Fixed a bug that could make the results of some levels not be persisted if there was no internet connection when the level was defeated.
– Website: Setting Unity WebGL mode to “Automatic” is now the same as using the Web-Assembly option, since it seems to give better performance in 2018.4.
– Website: Ladder pages now show text explaining what the arrows mean.
– Website: Fixed the duplicate “Tournament has started without you” message. Thanks to Rento for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed statistics resizing from getting stuck when you drag out of the browser window. Thanks to Joi for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed a bug that caused errors if you were viewing the map out of a lobby of an auto game and the game started without you. Thanks to shrubbery moves for reporting this.
– Unity/UJS: Increased height of quickmatch waiting page.
– Unity/UJS: Hid icons on past games page, since most games won’t have them anyway.
– Unity/UJS: Fixed a bug with loading templates that use mods as a non-member. Thanks to Dubbers530 for reporting this.
– Unity: Updated Unity to 2018.4.4f1
– Unity: Fixed a bug that sometimes made income labels sometimes not fully return to their normal color after flashing red.

Warzone has just been updated to version 4.20.2! This is a small update with some bug fixes and improvements. This post describes what’s changed.

This version is live now on the website. The Android and iOS apps will be updated over the coming weeks.

Upgrading Unity

This update upgrades the version of Unity that’s used from 2017.4 to 2018.4. This is a big upgrade which only happens once per year. Due to this upgrade, I’m being extra careful in the release, and trying to ensure everything gets extra testing to avoid breaking anything. Due to the extra caution, the update will roll out slowly across iOS and Android.

In addition to upgrading Unity, I’ve also taken the opportunity to re-organize a lot of the internal code with the goal of increasing the performance and reducing the startup time. The iOS and Android apps now start up faster than ever, and the WebGL app can load in less than 1.9 seconds!

Other Changes

– Unity/UJS: Fixed color of team label when inviting players to a fixed team game.
– Unity/UJS: Fixed invite-by-code so it doesn’t appear in single player. Thanks to DanWL for reporting this.
– Unity: Un-bolded main font style.
– Unity: Fixed a bug that made the Standalone and WebGL apps show wrong prices in the store. Thanks to Baneos for reporting this.
– Website: When viewing a tournament with mods on the website, the names of the mods are now shown.
– All: Fixed a bug that caused errors if you made a tournament with mods and the “non members can use mods” box checked.

Warzone has just been updated to version 4.20.0! This blog post describes what’s changed.

This update is live now on the website. The Android app will be updated in the coming days, and the iOS app will be updated in the coming weeks.

Multiple Push Notification Devices

Prior to this update, only one device could receive notifications for a Warzone account. This means if you had multiple devices, such as an Android phone and an iPad, each time you played on one device it would move your notifications to that new device and the other one would stop receiving them.

Now, all of the devices you sign into will receive push notifications. If you sign out of a Warzone account on a device, or uncheck the “Push notifications” box in the settings, that device will not receive future notifications.

There’s also a new page on the website that shows you all devices you currently are receiving push notifications on and allows you to remove ones you don’t want.

New color: Green Prison

For the first time ever, you can apply a pattern to your territories! For a limited time, you can purchase the ability to play as green with black vertical bars:

Purchase now to get unlimited use of this color forever. After June 28th, the option to purchase will disappear forever, making this a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Multi-day Quickmatch Boot Adjustment

Multi-day Quickmatch games now have a more forgiving boot time structure! As discussed previously, the new banking boot controls give more flexibility that Quickmatch can take advantage of.

All multi-day Quickmatch games created after this update will use the following boot times: 24 hours boot, 24 hours initially banked, and 4 hours of bank restored per day (up to a max of 24 hours, awarded on turn advance).

The net effect of this is that it’s now possible to take one day per week off without having to worry about getting booted. Since you get 4 hours returned per day, that means you’ll get more than 24 hours returned per week, which is what enables this.

The hope is that this change allows people who have less reliable schedules to participate in multi-day Quickmatch without having to worry about the occasional boot. If this sounds like you, give it a try and let me know how well it works for you!

Modded Tournaments

Public tournaments now support templates with mods! Only trusted mods may be used. At the time of this writing, all of the Standard and Promoted mods are marked as trusted. If you find a mod you’d like to use in a tournament that you can’t, please let me know.

Improved Graphics

Some new improvements are coming to some of the menu pages, most notably the places that list items look a lot nicer!

Other Changes

– All: When loading a finished game, the game will now default into history mode so you can watch the game without spoiling the winner.
– All: Clan invites are automatically deleted after 30 days if they aren’t accepted or declined.
– All: The “Are you sure you want uneven teams?” message no longer appears in single-player.
– All: Fixed a bug that made real-time games not sort to the top in the default filter. Thanks to Krzystof for reporting this.
– All: Fixed a bug with community levels that use teams and also change the number of pieces of cards that are distributed to players on that team.
– Unity/UJS: Fixed a bug when loading a template with banking boot times enabled, but auto boot and direct boot are set to different values. Thanks to ssɐɹ⅁ƃuoË¥ for reporting this.
– Unity: Fixed a bug that made community events sometimes duplicate themselves on the community tab. Thanks to Cowboy for reporting this.
– Unity: Fixed a bug that caused an error when loading a private GitHub repo. Thanks to Boyd for reporting this.

Warzone has just been updated to version 4.19.0! This blog post describes what’s changed.

This update is live now on the website. The Android app will be updated in the coming days, and the iOS app will be updated in the coming weeks.

Banking boot times

Game creators can now specify banking boot time to be added based on a schedule.

If you aren’t familiar with banking boot times, this is a way to go over the boot time in a game without getting booted. Doing so will deplete your banked time, and you’ll only be able to be booted if your bank time reaches zero. If you’ve played a real-time game with banking boot times, you’ll see a second clock in the upper right corner that starts depleting when the first clock reaches 0.

Prior to this update, it was only possible to start the game with banked time, which would never replenish after being used. Now, game creators can specify for banked time to replenish, as a factor of how much time passes.

For example, let’s say you’re making a multi-day game with a 24 hour boot time and 24 hours of banked time. Starting with this update, you can now define that 4 hours of banked time is added to each player every day, which is awarded when the turn advances. This means that, over the course of a week, players will get 28 hours of time added to their bank. This allows players who are active 6 days of the week to still participate in that game, as they can skip one day per week and still not get booted.

Note that your banked time can never exceed the amount you started the game with. In the example above, no player could ever go over 24 hours of banked time, since that’s how much you started with.

One of the goals of this system is to make multi-day Quickmatch more accessible to players who aren’t able to play every day. Once this feature is proven reliable, it will be enabled for Quickmatch which will allow players to skip a day without having to worry about getting booted from multi-day Quickmatch games.

Other Boot Time Improvements

Multi-day games now show the clock in the upper right corner just like real-time games do. This makes it easier to tell how much time you have left in a game.

When viewing a list of your games, the boot time displayed below the map thumbnail now adds in your current banked time. For example, in a game with 1 minute boot times plus 3 minutes banked, the thumbnail will show 4 minutes at the start of the game. As you use up your bank, the number displayed will accurately go down to show you how much time you really have to take your current turn. This makes it much easier to see at a glance how much time you really have to take your turn.

Also when viewing a list of your games, multi-day games where it’s your turn now sort by how long you have until you get booted. This makes it much easier to see which games are in most danger since those games will always be put at the top of your list.

Invite via code

When creating a multi-player game, you now have the option to invite players via a code instead of inviting them directly:

You can then share this 4-digit code with anybody. They’ll be able to type it into a special box on the Open Games page which will join them to your game. This makes it much easier to start a game with your friends as it alleviates the need to enter all the players before starting.

Once all your friends have joined the game, the game creator can click on the new Start Game button to start it. Once it’s started, no more players can join it.

One specific use of this is making it easier for brand new players to get into a game with their friends. Prior to this update, the game creator had to either use e-mail invites, or wait for all players to make an account and then locate those friends’ accounts by hand. Now, they can just give the code to all their friends and everything will work out.

Other Changes

– All: Added new single-player levels, and tweaked some of the previously added ones. Thanks to Lepanto31 for level suggestions.
– All: Removed vote-to-boot.
– All: Fixed a bug that made points not be awarded for new single player levels in some cases. Thanks to Hornet for reporting this.
– Unity/UJS: The lobby now has a Start Game button that allows the game creator to start any multi-player game. For a non-code game, this is just a shortcut to removing all open seats and players who haven’t accepted the invite.
– Unity/UJS: Fixed a bug that made single-player levels with AI teammates not show their orders for the first turn after resuming a saved level. Thanks to Nemo for reporting this.
– Unity/UJS: Fixed a mod limitation to allow mods to transfer armies in an unsuccessful transfer order. Thanks to Krzystof for reporting this.
– Website: Fixed [hr] inside of [code]. Thanks to TBest for being the first to report this.
– Unity: The “Past Games” button on the multi-player tab is not shown to players with no games.
– iOS/Android: Fixed a bug with clan in-app purchase.

Warzone has just been updated to version 4.18.0! This blog post describes what’s changed.

This update is live now on the website. The Android app will be updated in the coming days, and the iOS app will be updated in the coming weeks.

Clans integrated into App

The iOS/Android app now have official support for clans!

This means when you tap a clan icon in the Unity app, it will now let you see clan info directly in the app, instead of redirecting you to the website. There’s also a link to view your clan in the top right menu, as well as a link to view all clans on the Community tab.

Also, if you are invited to a clan, you will now receive a push notification, and you’ll be notified of the invitation via the top right button.

Upon opening the notification of a clan invite, you’ll be shown a new dialog that lets you accept or decline the clan invite.

This is a big improvement for clan invites! Prior to this update, invites only sent you an email. Many app users don’t even have email addresses registered, so they would never even know they were invited to a clan. Now, they can’t miss it.

Also, the store tab now allows for creating your own clan via an in-app purchase.

Liked / Recently Played Community Levels

On the Community Levels screen, there are now links to view a list of all levels that you’ve liked, and another link to view all levels that you played in the last week.

This helps a lot for keeping track of levels. Prior to this update, I frequently heard feedback that someone would start playing a level but weren’t able to finish. When they came back the next day, they weren’t able to find the level to resume their game.

Other Changes

– Unity: Fixed a bug that made clan chat not be registered as viewed, leaving the red number up when it shouldn’t have been. Thanks to ViralGoat for reporting this.
– Unity: Fixed a bug that caused an error when posting to an old forum thread. Thanks to number for reporting this.
– Website: Clan pages now show their icon.
– Website: To help reduce spam invites, clan managers can no longer invite someone to a clan that’s already in a clan. If someone wishes to move clans, they must first leave their existing one to receive an invite to the new one.

Warzone has just been updated to version 4.17.0! This blog post describes what’s changed.

This update is live now on the website. The Android app will be updated in the coming days, and the iOS app will be updated in the coming weeks.

Expanded Single Player

Although I’ve always viewed Warzone’s multi-player as the best way to play it, there are surprisingly a lot of people who only play single-player. Those people haven’t gotten much love in terms of features over the years, but today they get some!

When single-player was first added in 2009, it was primarily designed to act as a tutorial to teach players how to play before they jumped into multi-player. Initially, it only had 5 levels! (three normal levels and two challenges). A 6th level was added shortly after and then eventually a tutorial level.

In 2016, single-player was expanded to 35 levels. It was still a tutorial of sorts, as most of the levels introduced a new concept or game mechanic. Community levels were also added at this time, which as exploded in popularity as they now approach 10,000 published levels!

With the Warzone release in 2017, offline play support was added.

Starting today, the single-player campaign is being expanded to a whopping 127 levels!

These are divided into two parts: The first 36 levels are still a tutorial, introducing new Warzone features (one was added to the previous 35 to introduce commerce mode, which didn’t exist in 2016). The remaining are some of the best community levels that have been copied into the main campaign to show them off more broadly.

In order to accomodate adding so many new levels, some of the way the app treats levels had to be re-worked. Prior to this update, all single-player levels in the campaign were embedded in the app. This was great as it allowed for offline play, but it wouldn’t scale to 127 levels since embedding all of the maps into the app would make the app too large. With this update, the app will download the levels and maps from the server for all levels after World War Pixel. To help enable offline play, the app will pre-download the next 5 levels in the campaign to your device ahead of time. This will enable you to play five levels without an internet connection. You can see this work if you look at the single-player tab and look at the bottom right corner of a level’s thumbnail. If this level is not cached on your device, a small internet icon will appear to let you know that you need an active internet connection to play that level.

This update also now adds the ability to skip levels if you’re having a hard time with them. If the app detects that you’re struggling with a level, it will ask you if you want to skip. You can always come back to a skipped level in the future.

Additionally, due to the increased level count, player’s profiles no longer list the names of all the levels, as this would get too long. Instead, it simply shows the number of wins, gold stars, and skips.

Other Changes

– All: Made level World War Pixel easier since it’s no longer the final level.
– All: Profile pages now show some quickmatch ratings.
– All: Fixed a bug in team games with huge numbers of orders. Thanks to krinid for reporting this.
– Unity/UJS: The stroke opacity on a map’s bonus links are now displayed correctly. Thanks to NinjaNic for reporting this.
– Unity/UJS: Improved the quickmatch tutorial.
– Unity/UJS: Links sent in chat by players using the red color are now white instead of blue.
– Unity: If no open tournament is available, the My Games page will now show a random open game instead.
– Unity: Replaced the multi-player “Play now” arrow with a less intrusive button highlight.
– UJS: Fixed a bug with the map designer that made bonuses not register their bonus link right after being added. Thanks to Bane for reporting this.
– Website: The “Switch Web Mode” link is being moved into the Account Settings page. The old link will remain for a bit to tell people where to go if they need to switch.