New Public Beta v2.2.0.0 for WiF

World in Flames is the computer version of Australian Design Group classic board game. World In Flames is a highly detailed game covering the both Europe and Pacific Theaters of Operations during World War II. If you want grand strategy this game is for you.

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Andrew Loveridge
Posts: 538
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2009 1:47 pm

New Public Beta v2.2.0.0 for WiF

Post by Andrew Loveridge »

Hi Everyone,

The next public beta for World in Flames (v2.2.0.0) is now available in the Members Club

Please check it out and note any new issues with the listed changes.

Change History:

Version 2.2.0.0 – March 10, 2015
    Land Operations[/b] [ul]
  • Added a check to avoid a fatal error when updating a unit’s status for whether its land move can be undone.
  • Removed a line of code so the Land Combat form updates the units in the selected combat whenever the player clicks on the land combat in the list of possible land combats. At times (e.g., when restoring a saved game from the land combat resolution phase) the lists of attacking and defending units are left blank. Clicking on the combat now refreshes those lists.
  • Fixed an obscure problem with assigning losses for a Land Combat result of 2S destroying a winterized unit first , when the defender has 3 units in the hex and one of the defending units is not winterized. The program was halting because it never enabled the OK - Done button.
Naval Operations
  • Added some checks for Non-phasing Side Naval Combat phase to detect when there is no deciding major power for the phasing side. I don’t understand how this situation can occur, but at least now, the program no longer generates a MadExcept error when it does.
  • Fixed a problem with the Naval Review Details form where switching from Sea Areas to Ports could cause an infinite loop [halting the game completely] when there was only one port with units “qualified by the filter”.
  • Made several additional changes to the Naval Review Details form for how it processes First/Prev/Next/Last for the ports and sea areas to avoid potential infinite loops.
  • Tightened up the implementation of when the Axis can attack US convoys after the US has chosen the US Entry Option Refute Naval War Zones.
  • Added code to permit Axis air units to fly naval combat support to sea areas where the only Allied units belong to the United States, with which the air units are not at war, but the US has chosen US Entry Options that permit the Axis to attack US units in the sea area.
  • Fixed a problem with calculating surprise points for a naval combat in sea areas where the only Allied units belong to the United States, with which the Axis units are not at war, but the US has chosen US Entry Options that permit the Axis to attack US units in the sea area.
  • Fixed a problem with calculating the antiaircraft fire in naval air combats so the benefits of spending surprise points only helps the side which spent the surprise points.
  • Fixed a problem with naval combat where a 1X result against a single convoy point could cause a fatal error under special circumstances.
  • Fixed a problem with undoing invasions from a transport that was carrying two divisions sometimes causing an infinite loop.
  • Fixed a problem with cancelling a naval interception at the time of selecting a unit to intercept. Now if the player clicks on Cancel on the Select Interception Unit form, it is the same as if he decided to not intercept.
  • Fixed a problem with naval interception when there are multiple major powers that can intercept. Now major powers can decline to intercept and the program advances to the next major power, where it again poses the question about intercepting.
  • Added a check so only units staying at sea can intercept enemy units returning to base during the Return to Base phases.
  • Added a check to avoid a possible fatal error when loading a unit onboard a naval transport of some type at sea.
Supply
  • Removed recalculating supply when ‘moving’ artillery units during the Ground Strike and Ground Support phases.
Production Planning
  • Dramatically reduced the time to calculate Production Planning routes for Build Points. This only affects trade agreements where the US is the source country or the USSR is sending a build point to the Commonwealth. What the program does is try to send a BP from one of the source country’s factories and if that fails, then it doesn’t try sending from any other factories. The logic here is that the US rail network is one monolithic structure, so if a BP from one factory cannot get to any valid destination, then there is no reason to check if starting from a different factory would meet with success. Similar logic was used for the USSR rail network, but the restriction only applies for trade agreements sending a BP from the USSR to the Commonwealth. For example, sending a BP from the USSR to China might be possible even with a severely damaged rail network in the western USSR.
Use Oil
  • Added a check to avoid a fatal error when searching for expended Supply Units when creating the Use Oil form.
  • For the Use Oil form, added a warning to players when they click on the Expend button and the remaining oil in an oil point used is more than 0.5 of an oil point. There still may be cases where a player has to expend an oil point which has more than 0.5 remaining, but in most cases, that doesn’t have to be done - typically the player can have the oil point magically restored to its full 1.0 value by simply not Expending it.
  • Added a Checkbox to the Use Oil form for including/excluding oil from cooperating major powers when using oil to reorganize units. The rules state that a major power can use oil from cooperating major powers - provided the cooperating major power agrees. The check box default (unchecked) is to only use oil controlled by the current major power. If you check the checkbox, then the entire form is refreshed and all available oil sources from cooperating major powers are added to the list of available oil sources.

Production
  • Added checks to prevent the number of available pilots from going negative (i.e., 64,000+).
Peace: Conquest, Liberation, Surrender, Vichy France, Claims
  • Fixed a problem for the scenario Decline and Fall where Germany liberating Italy caused some problems because no player was assigned to control Italy at the start of the game. The program now assigns Italy to the player controlling Germany.
  • Fixed a problem with which country controls hexes in a liberated minor country where sometimes an enemy major power lost control of a hex it occupied with a land or air unit.
  • Made changes to guarantee there are no duplicate entries in the Return to Base stack (e.g., during the Return French Naval Units At Sea subphase of the Vichy phase).
  • Made changes to support the new Vichy phase: Vichy Creation Check. There is one place in the Vichy phase where an Autosaved game is generated. It is named: Vichy Declaration - Vichy Country Control. Restoring that saved game will cause the die rolls for determining whether Free France or Vichy France controls various French possessions around the world to be rolled (which may mean that they are rerolled).
Save/Restore Game
  • Added a check to avoid a fatal error when restoring a Head-2-head game in the Phasing Side Naval Combat phase.
  • Added a check when restoring saved games so the available pilot count is never more than 1000.
  • Fixed a fatal error when loading a damaged game that has a land unit at sea - and not loaded aboard a naval transport of some type. The game may still have problems later. How this situation arose is unknown.
Other
  • Reenabled Mad Except reporting, which had been disabled since version 01.04.05.00.
  • For Fascist Tide, made the cost of rail moving a factory to Siberia 3 Rail Moves.
  • For Fascist Tide, set the USSR resources and factories to fulfill the special rules for the scenario.
  • For the Fascist Tide scenario, added code so in Siberia, only factories that have been moved are available to the USSR. For Fascist Tide, when the USSR moves factories off the eastern map edge (i.e., into Siberia) they must to be moved to one of 10 cities: Kirov (35, 79), Kuybyshev (45, 80), Ufa (43, 85), Chelyabinsk(42, 90), Magnitogorsk (45, 87), Tyumen (38, 94), Astrakhan (58, 77), Omsk (43, 101), Akmolinsk (50, 99), or Karaganda (53, 101).
  • Added code to halve the US production multiple in the Day of Infamy scenario.
  • Added code for the Day of Infamy scenario to strict the USSR to using just the factory in Vladivostok and the resource nearest Chita.
Cosmetic
  • Added a text message for what the die roll must be less than to end the turn when playing with Set Die Rolls on.
  • Removed a spurious warning message when restoring a saved game and there is a transport at sea which had unloaded one of two divisions.
NetPlay
    [b]Land Operations[/b] [ul]
  • Added code so the splitting of a large overrun convoy unit into individual convoy units occurs or all computers. Prior to this change, the new units would only be on the owner’s computer, causing a fatal error when they had to rebase.
Naval Operations
  • Modified which major powers have the End-of- Phase button enabled during the Return To Base phases.
Production Planning
  • Added a check for unknown controlling major powers of resources belonging to neutral minor countries when making Production Planning changes during setup. Prior to this it was possible to generate a fatal error simply by using the Recompute button while major powers were still in the setup phase.
Production
  • Fixed a problem with saving build points possibly causing the production form to reappear after the build points had been saved.
Peace: Conquest, Liberation, Surrender, Vichy France, Claims
  • Added a subphase at the beginning of the Vichy phase: Vichy Creation Check.
  • Added a lot of code so each of the Vichy subphases is processed only once on each computer, and when only one major power has decisions to make; the computers operated by the other major powers wait until the decision maker has completed the subphase.
  • Added code so the Vichy French units can be placed on the map during the subphase for doing that.
  • Enabled the end-of-phase button in the Vichy subphase vspMoveFrenchAtSea, once all the French units at sea have been moved.
  • Enabled the end-of-phase button in the Vichy subphases vspMoveFrenchLandAirAxis and vspMoveFrenchLandAirAllied once all the French units have been relocated.
Save/Restore Games
  • Modified the name of saved NetPlay games to add ‘NP: ‘ to the front and the abbreviation of the local major power to the end of the filename. The purpose for this change is twofold: so automatically saved NetPlay games do not overwrite automatically saved Solitaire games (and vice-a-versa) and so a locally saved game can be part of a collection of saved games from all the major powers playing a NetPlay game without confusing which game was provided by which player.
  • Made all saved games for NetPlay games occur on all computers. So, if the Axis player makes a saved game, then the Allied player’s computer makes a matching saved game. While that is happening, neither player can make any decisions. The player(s) who did not originate the request to save the game receive(s) an informative message to that effect. Autosaved games are only initiated by one of the Allied computers: Master MWIF. Note that while the file names will match on all computers (except for the - abbreviation part), the drive and directory path name can be quite different. For instance, if one player saves games on drive C and another player saves his on drive D, the program will place the saved games on drives C and D appropriately.

Other
  • Added a Review Game button to the opening Splash Screen when restoring NetPlay games. The Review Game button is only visible for NetPlay games. Clicking on the button restores the game locally. That is, the program does not connect to the Internet. Instead, the player is able to review the state of the game, looking over the map and using other forms (such as the Pools form), to see how things stand. The player is not able to advance the game, since the End of Phase button is disabled. The purpose of this new capability is to enable players to study the current game situation and make plans. It is also useful for writing After Action Reports, letting the player take screenshots off-line, without requiring the other player(s) to be connected to the internet.
  • Disabled the end-of-phase button during Setup - Lend Lease Air Units for the players not making decisions at that time.
  • Added a check to see if the error message about having lost the NetPlay connection has already been shown. If it has, the program does not show it a second time. Previously, that message was shown endlessly, requiring the player to use the Windows Task Manager to exit MWIF.
[/ul][/ul]
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paulderynck
Posts: 8356
Joined: Sat Mar 24, 2007 5:27 pm
Location: Canada

RE: New Public Beta v2.2.0.0 for WiF

Post by paulderynck »

I regret to advise people not to try NetPlay yet. We beta testers found some problems with setting up a game but it seem that message did not get relayed prior to this release.

Of course anyone who wishes is welcome to test out NetPlay and report their findings and post saved games from both players; this warning is for those who may have been looking forward to completing a NetPlay scenario using the latest beta release.
Paul
goulash
Posts: 91
Joined: Thu Aug 04, 2011 5:06 pm

RE: New Public Beta v2.2.0.0 for WiF

Post by goulash »

Ok so I download this public beta just to see if my air phases do not crash.

1. Start a fast start full campaign,
2. Get to Japan strategic bombing phases and allocate 1 bombers and 2 fighters,
3. China has one fighter to intercept,
4. Bomber gets though and then crash (air phase panel freeze)

Why do I bother (back to playing other games and will check back in months again (most likely for more bugs). Netplay this and AI that (ambitious at best).

Can't a new player just get through a solitaire game without these freezes?

Do I need to start from scratch e.g. no fast start loading? Are there current problems with air combat freezing panels?

Help me out folks, I want to get into this game but if I can even practice by myself without these freezes, what hope is there?



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paulderynck
Posts: 8356
Joined: Sat Mar 24, 2007 5:27 pm
Location: Canada

RE: New Public Beta v2.2.0.0 for WiF

Post by paulderynck »

I suspect you hit one of the situations where a dialog in air-to-air combat was hidden behind another screen. There have been repeated attempts to find and get rid of this bug but it seems quite resilient to treatment.

There are a number of work-arounds to try to bring the right form to the front. Not sure if you are aware of them or it you tried any?

A zipped and uploaded (to the Tech Support thread) saved game from just before the problem, is the only way this bug is going to get found.
Paul
Pax25
Posts: 119
Joined: Sun Apr 01, 2007 10:21 pm
Location: Chicago, IL

RE: New Public Beta v2.2.0.0 for WiF

Post by Pax25 »

ORIGINAL: paulderynck

I regret to advise people not to try NetPlay yet. We beta testers found some problems with setting up a game but it seem that message did not get relayed prior to this release.

Of course anyone who wishes is welcome to test out NetPlay and report their findings and post saved games from both players; this warning is for those who may have been looking forward to completing a NetPlay scenario using the latest beta release.

So NetPlay still does not work? Bummer, was really looking forward to this with the latest update.
AlbertN
Posts: 4201
Joined: Tue Oct 05, 2010 3:44 pm
Location: Italy

RE: New Public Beta v2.2.0.0 for WiF

Post by AlbertN »

My friend cannot install the patch - it blocks on the way of being installed without any error message.
How can one get the previous patch just before this one as currently we're stuck and cannot move on with our game?
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AllenK
Posts: 7266
Joined: Mon Feb 17, 2014 1:17 pm
Location: England

RE: New Public Beta v2.2.0.0 for WiF

Post by AllenK »

Is it his anti-virus software? Mine blocks it and quarantines the file. I have to tell it to restore the file before I can get it to run and install.

Failing that, the version before is the official update 2.1.4. If you are having problems, uninstall the game completely then reinstall from your original disc/download and then use the updater.
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paulderynck
Posts: 8356
Joined: Sat Mar 24, 2007 5:27 pm
Location: Canada

RE: New Public Beta v2.2.0.0 for WiF

Post by paulderynck »

2.1.4 is still in the member's club so you should be able to just replace the MWIF.EXE.

I would always advise renaming the current MWIF.EXE prior to a new version so you have a quick way to go back.
Paul
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AllenK
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Joined: Mon Feb 17, 2014 1:17 pm
Location: England

RE: New Public Beta v2.2.0.0 for WiF

Post by AllenK »

Only the Public Beta 2.2 is showing for me.
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paulderynck
Posts: 8356
Joined: Sat Mar 24, 2007 5:27 pm
Location: Canada

RE: New Public Beta v2.2.0.0 for WiF

Post by paulderynck »

It's a convoluted path. Follow the link above, complete the log-on (again!) in the upper right of that webpage, then click on the link: "Downloads for Registered Games" on the right, then click on World in Flames near the bottom of the list (it should say you are registered to the right of that, but click the game name), then you get the WiF product page, but at the top is a "Downloads" link, click that, and you should see links to download 2.1.4 and Patch 1.4.5 and Update 1.3.3.

Now when I followed the link there for 2.1.4 (and also the first link for 2.2.0) on my old XP PC with AVG anti-virus, there is an indication it is getting something from an ftp site, but it always timed out.

On my new Windows 10 PC I had no problem downloading them.
Paul
AlbertN
Posts: 4201
Joined: Tue Oct 05, 2010 3:44 pm
Location: Italy

RE: New Public Beta v2.2.0.0 for WiF

Post by AlbertN »

I found the 2.1.4 on my PC, stocked.
Though the game has gone bogus as I tried to install the patch over the 2.2.0 one; I suspect I need to go dig my CD of WiF to reinstall it anew or so.

I am more concerned in the patch installer that blocks though midpath.
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paulderynck
Posts: 8356
Joined: Sat Mar 24, 2007 5:27 pm
Location: Canada

RE: New Public Beta v2.2.0.0 for WiF

Post by paulderynck »

Likely an anti-virus issue, most of them have been.

I don't understand why the update has messed up your install. All the latest new versions have been just an EXE and maybe a "changes since" log.

If you get an error where one player had updated and saved the game file and now the other non-updated player can't open it - that is very simple to fix. Just use Notepad and change the version number in the top left of the file to the common earlier one.
Paul
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