Hello everyone!
I hope you all are happy with the recent events overhaul ! :)
It really opens up a new world of possibilities...
Anyway, since I recently finally found a way to open modding to iOS, people on all platforms can now enjoy modded games!
One thing that got back to me a lot (and that I was aware of for a long time) was that mods crashed the game on phones/tablets. I really didn't understand what was going on and decided to... ignore this issue... Until recently, when iOS users got back to me with the same 'mods crashing the game' issue.
This was the drop in the bucket and I decided to do some serious research.
(All this time I was sorta helpless because I am in an Apple environment and the game being only available on Android, I was not able to perform any debugging).
Turns out... This whole time, it was a memory issue. Loading mods taking several GBs of memory.
Now that's good, because I learned what was causing the crash. Only thing that was left was to solve this excessive memory use. TURNS OUT, when loading images into the game, those images remain uncompressed, so they take a LOT of space.
All I had to do all this time was add an extra line of code saying 'downloadedTexture.Compress()' . And voila! By doing this, I cut the RAM usage by 50%.... Now, this is not ideal, but it's a good step in the right direction! And many mods now work on phones/tablets.
For this compression fix to work though, images need to have a specific resolution. Only multiples of 4 can be compressed. Currently, in the game, almost all textures are multiples of 4, at the exception of all round ones (Round counters, all ships, and heroes images).
So, I have resized all textures from the base game to be properly sized (So that the remainder of the resolution divided by 4 never is a decimal: 1024 / 4 = 256) but mods remain largely unchanged.
I am calling all modders to update their mod and make sure the images they are using are all multiple of 4. Without that, there will be no formatting, and excessive memory usage when loading them.
I have updated the modding doc, and the base files that you can use for making mods.
For modders, flags must be 200x100. Tiles must be 2000x2000. Units must be 1024x1024. All counters must also be 1024x1024 EXCEPT for ships or planes (or any round counter), they must be 1260x1260. Heroes must be 212 x 308.
Please, double check your files and update your mods :)
[h3]ADDED:[/h3]
- Engineers for Denmark.
- Brand new policies category: Economy! Coming with 5 brand new policies to pick from (Manpower and/or Tech Tree options must be ON).
- Save file locking when starting a new scenario. This will prevent anybody to ever open the save in the map editor and edit it. Convenient when you want to play with someone online but don't trust him. Or just to be sure.
- Light infantry to Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
- Parachute logo in the store panel to better show ground units that can go airborne.
- Turn production stat in the store.
- Friedrich Paulus as a german commander.
- Showing the true production value of a tile when destroyed, with normal values in '( )'
[h3]CHANGED:[/h3]
- RAM usage when loading mods. Has been reduced by 50%.
- AI carriers will now play before AI planes, so that the planes better follow and cover allied carriers, and provide better resupply possibilities.
- Mouse cursor from the old ugly one to something more in line with the game's UI.
- Unit's name (real one) is now shown in its history panel.
- Next human player panel when doing local multiplayer.
[h3]FIXED:[/h3]
- Some campaign scenarios' balance.
- Shanghai spelling error in Pacific 41 and 42.
- Event action 'Spawn unit' could in some cases not execute properly.
- Not possible to upgrade units that had a max purchase limit.
- Fixed AI freeze instance due to policies changes.
- AI never moving its ground units in some instances.