Headquarters: World War II News

Attention, Commanders!


We are excited to announce the launch of a new patch for Headquarters: World War II, which adds new features to the PBEM system and multiplayer. This update allows us to host a beta test for the very first Headquarters: World War II Tournament!

Do not miss the chance to sign-up to the Beta Speed Tournament which will feature 3 multiplayer maps:
#1 Riverside Battle
#2 Cannonade at Royal Chateau
#3 Military Base Takeover

You can sign-up here.

The tournament follows Swiss Tournament rules: you can find the full list of rules here.
The first round will commence on Thursday, 4th July 2024. No further entries can be accepted after the tournament has begun.

The tournament will last 3 rounds, 7 days each. Games are paired, so each matchup will be played both ways. All you need to do is sign up, then the system will pair you with opponents and create your PBEM games. You will be notified by mail of when the tournament is starting and when it will be time to play your turns.

And now, a message from the devs.

Hello! It is Oleksandr from Starni Games.

First of all, I am sorry for the issues many players had with the 1.00.06 Update. We just released a 1.00.07 Update that should address all key problems - please make sure you are playing the most up-to-date version of the game. We will keep polishing the game and making sure it runs smoothly for everyone.

Secondly, we are starting to run regular tournaments for Headquarters: World War II. We did a number of internal tournaments for testing, and we found a few issues that were fixed with the 1.00.07 Update. So, we think it is time to start running the public tournaments. However, we would still treat the first couple of tournaments as Beta-tournaments to make sure everything works well for a larger number of players.

We are really excited to see Headquarters: World War II played more competitively, and looking forward to making more and more tournaments in due time.

If you have any questions about tournaments in Headquarters - do not hesitate to ask them in the comments below or at Slitherine forums and Steam Community hub.


Looking forward to hearing your feedback!

Hi everyone,


There is a new update available. This update should fix a number of stability issues, including crashes and some problems players were experiencing with Multiplayer logins. It also improves AI, especially in Skirmish/Multiplayer modes.


The full changelog is:

v1.00.07 – 24th June 2024

• Fixed a major issue that was introduced in the 1.00.06 Update, a crash that prevented from finishing the operation with a “TModule::IsStackable()” error message.
  
• Fixed a major issue that disallowed new players to log in to the Multiplayer section.
  
• Improved AI: AI now proceeds better from capturing one flag to another in Skirmish/Multiplayer and can capture more than one flag per turn. (We will continue improving the AI, and more improvements are in the making)
  
• Fixed the Motion Blur setting being reset to default on each launch of the game.
  
• Fixed bug with quick save / quick load sometimes creating extra units with 0 Crew.
  
• Fixed bug with a possible crash if pressing F5/F8 fast enough.
  
• Fixed Gamepad controls for the Awards tab. Now you can see the description of the awards.
  
• Fixed a crash that would happen if damage to Morale exceeded 999. (Possible in Assault attacks)
  
• Fix the Crew member description for Hero when it serves in a unit - it no longer displays the Hero
  
• Bio instead of the Crew bonus.
  
• Fixed the bug with the Transport icon not showing correctly when another unit was loaded into it.
  
• Fixed a multiplayer crash due to the “Hit the track” skill negative effect.
  
• Fixed the “Player eliminated” notification appearing on turn 1 for the “Closed” slots in Multiplayer.
  
• Fixed a multiplayer bug that could lead to crashes sometimes after using the Scouting ability.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed the AA units loaded into Transport units to intercept the aircraft from inside the Transport.
  
• Fixed the visual issue with unit highlights overlapping with unit models.
  
• Corrected the order of the armor values in the hint: from back/front/side/top to front/side/back/top.
  

THE NEW UPDATES:

v1.00.06

Fixes:

• Fixed Auto Login system issues: some problems with Steam auto login, and GOG autologin not working.
• Now the “Stay logged in” button state is saved correctly and not reset on restarting the game.
• Now the “Stay logged in” button for Steam login works correctly.
• Fixed a major bug that was introduced in the 1.00.05 update, that caused crashes if there was a truck unit with level-up (that only could happen if the Skirmish/Multiplayer game was set with a
starting level higher than 0) on deployment.
• Fixed one of the most frequent multiplayer crashes (SendNetworkCustomizedChanged)
• Fixed bug with the Closed slots in Skirmish/Multiplayer, where the AI would try to make moves for the Closed slot player resulting in endless wait for your next turn.
• Fixed an issue in Multiplayer that caused crashes if the host took too long to connect to the game.
• Fixed bug in LIVE multiplayer that caused the “X Turns left” notification to show up when Player 1 turn started for all players, instead of showing up for each player when their turns started.
• Fixed crash (TApplicationInitializer::OnInitInWorkerThreadEnd)
• Fixed bug that prevented Fog of War update after using the Air Recon HQ Skill
• Now capturing the enemy HQ flag in Skirmish/Multiplayer yields an instant victory (it was victory after some delay before).
• Fixed a Multiplayer issue that caused the “Player eliminated” pop-up not to show up sometimes.

v1.00.05

Fixes:

• Fixed major bug with units camouflage bonus from buildings that happened in both singleplayer and multiplayer, but was causing a lot of crashes in multiplayer only, due to game events being desynchronized (calculated differently for different players). This should reduce the number of crashes in multiplayer significantly and also eliminate this issue in single-player, where it was hard to notice.
• Fixed serious issue with the game crashing is the player does not have access to the folder with save files for any reason. (Now you will get a warning telling you about that and you can play, but you cannot make save files and your settings will not be saved after you leave the game)
• Fixed missing option in Skirmish settings to set the cooldown reduction for HQ skills. (It was available in multiplayer, but was missing in Skirmish mode due to this bug)
• Added an option in Settings (Game) to disable the unit’s highlight. (A players-requested feature)
• Fixed bug with tile highlights sometimes disappearing if you selected an HQ skill and moved the cursor outside the playable zone on the map.
• Changed logic of unmoved units (and End turn button hint). Before: a unit was considered unmoved if it still had available tiles to go and/or attacks. Now: if the unit spent at least one move point or attack, it is considered “moved”. So, now unmoved units are only the units that have not moved or attacked this turn. The End turn button hint was changed accordingly.
• Fixed bug with mouse and keyboard scrolling speed Settings were reset to default values after each start of the game.
• Fixed bug with Review and Leave buttons sometimes being inactive after finishing a multiplayer match.
• Fixed Fog of War in Hotseat mode not updating after the next player’s turn starts, until the player did some action.
• Fixed UI in Map Editor and Map Generator map selection filters.
• Removed the Level up indicators for Truck units. (As they cannot level up)

Hello!

It is Oleksandr from Starni Games with the new Dev log entry. One month has passed since the Headquarters: World War II release, and I would like to tell you more about how it went, what feedback we got, and what our team has been focusing on since the release. Additionally, I will touch on how we plan to move forward with the project.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

One month has passed since the release of Headquarters: World War II and we can finally draw our first conclusions.

First of all, most players enjoy the game overall and would like to play it more - which is very important for us as developers to understand. We would not want to develop a game that nobody likes and nobody wants. So, that is a big relief to our team that the overall reception of the game is positive and we can keep working on the project.

Secondly, we acknowledge there were numerous issues in the release version of the game that were detrimental to the players’ experience and enjoyment. We already fixed some of those issues, and we are trying our best to address the remaining problems as soon as possible. This is our top priority at the moment - to make sure the game runs as smoothly as possible.

Thirdly, we received lots of feedback and suggestions from the players on Discord, the Steam community hub, and Slitherine forums. We are looking through all the feedback very carefully, and categorizing all the issues and suggested improvements to prioritize them correctly. So, do not worry if you suggest some new feature and do not see it in the next update - chances are high it is stored for later updates.

Interesting fact: so far we get more improvement suggestions than the actual crashes and bug reports. So, there are lots of things you guys want to add, change, or improve. And it may take us some time, but we keep track of every suggestion.

Lastly, we see a lot of interest among the players towards the potential new content for the game and get a lot of questions about that. We are happy to hear that you want more content and we listen to your ideas and suggestions for it.



[h2]What is our plan?[/h2]

Step 1:
For now, our top priority is fixing all the most annoying issues and gradually adding some of the most-wanted quality-of-life improvements. We keep a good pace of 1 update per week and we want to maintain it until all most pressing problems are resolved. Then we will switch to less frequent but larger updates.

AI - We have made some improvements to the AI system since the release, but we are still getting reports of AI behaving passively in some games. We further investigate this issue and will do our best to address it as soon as we can.

Multiplayer crashes - we are gradually moving towards a crash-free multiplayer experience. So far, we are not satisfied with our results, but we are looking to improve the situation very soon.

File system issues - we had some issues if the path to the system folder with save files was in non-Latin symbols, or the game was run by a Windows user who is not an Administrator, and so on. We fixed the folder names issue in the 1.00.04 Update, and a couple more fixes are coming up in the next updates.

There are many other things, of course, but I highlighted the most problematic ones.

Step 2:
Since some updates may affect the ongoing multiplayer games, if the players have different versions of the game (all updates we released so far should be compatible, so I am talking about some future updates) - we want to implement a system that would check the game version and warn the players about the need to update their game to continue playing in multiplayer. That is when we will release a bigger update that would also include some stats rebalancing and so on. At the moment we are gathering the data and feedback, but not changing unit parameters for now.

Step 3:
Introduce the roadmap for the project to communicate to you our plans for its further development and expansion. We want to be very transparent about our future plans, and we will share our plans as soon as we finish gathering and analyzing all of your feedback and adjust our plans accordingly. Your input is most critical for our decision-making following the release.

Step 4:
Start running the multiplayer tournaments. As soon as we ensure that multiplayer is stable and solid, we will start running various tournament events and we hope that you will enjoy playing in them. For now, you have the time to get a better understanding of the game and train against other players on Discord to make sure you can show your best in the competition when the time comes.

Step 5:
Work on some additional content for the game. This could be in two forms - free extra content that comes to all players who purchased the full game at no additional cost; or a paid DLC that offers even more content and helps the team to keep working on the project in the long run - as we are speaking of years of additional development here, potentially.

I know many are skeptical of paid DLCs, but I think it greatly depends on how the developers approach them. From our perspective, it helps to produce more content and features for the game in the long run, part of which will become available for everyone to enjoy completely free.

We already got a bunch of questions as to what the next DLC would be. We have some ideas, but we also want to make something that you - the player’s community - want. So, please let us know in the comments or on Steam/Slitherine forums - what future DLC of your dreams do you anticipate the most?

Ah, and one last thing - we are now looking into the possibility of adding the Steam Workshop support, so we will keep you updated on that!

Stay tuned, and see you next time!

Hello everyone!

We keep working to process all of your feedback and ideas and use this information to plan our future updates accordingly.

Here are the key changes in the 1.00.04 update:

• The Bias setting is now working as intended. (It allows you to add a modifier to all incoming prestige in Skirmish/Multiplayer for each player. For example, a Bias of 80% would mean that this player receives 20% less Prestige from both Starting Prestige and Prestige Income. While setting Bias to 140%, would mean that the player gets 40% Prestige more than other players (if they have Bias set to 100% for them)
  
• Fix an issue that caused problems when the user had non-Latin symbols in his Windows folder names. For example path to the save files folder, etc. One example would be having some key folder names in the Chinese language.
  
• On Steam Deck the UI scale is now set to 75% not only during the first game launch but at every launch.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused Tile information to sometimes show incorrect Armor and Camouflage values.
  
• Fixed numerous UI issues when using 100% scale on resolutions higher than Full HD. (We still recommend using a higher UI scale on resolutions above Full HD)
  
• Fixed bug where new units that join your army (for example scout unit in tutorial, etc) are only displayed in the unit list after you did one more action. (Now they appear in the list immediately).
  
• Fixed a bug with the AI, that caused it to not be able to use the Clear Wreck ability on the Wrecks that were set in Editor. (It could only clear the ones that appear during the game)
  
• Fixed the problem with Overwatch symbols sometimes showing incorrectly. This issue was due to a rule that units do not overwatch if they are guaranteed to do 0 damage (for example MG vs tanks). The problem was that when displaying the Overwatch area, the armor and attack angle were not always predicted correctly, so you could move a unit thinking there would be no overwatch, but because the angle changed you would get hit and receive some damage.
  
• With this update, the Overwatch icon will be displayed over a Tile even if you are expected to take 0 damage there, so some Tiles could be shown as Overwatch tiles, and then your unit would not get Overwatched if the enemy unit sees that it would deal 0 damage with all types of hits.
  
• Now after generating and exporting a new map in the Random map generator, you will be taken back to the Skirmish/Multiplayer game creation form, instead of the Main menu.
  
• Fixed a bug when the unit could in some situations be dislocated from its tile (be shown in an incorrect tile), potentially causing the game to crash.
  
• Minor localization text fixes. (Added a few missing strings)
  
• Minor UI fixes for Multiplayer screens.
  
• Fixed some environment objects behaving incorrectly when under fire in the “Marshland Clash” skirmish map.
  

We have a lot more fixes and improvements in the works and will keep updating the game regularly, so stay tuned for the next updates. We are also working on a bigger update that would introduce some balanced changes based on your feedback and our observations.

Please, share your feedback and thoughts with us on Discord, the Steam community hub, and Slitherine forums!

See you soon!