Making History: The Second World War News

We were not expecting to offer a new pre-release update this week. The plan was to push through most of the remaining outstanding bugs and feature revisions in preparation for a February official release. Then more of those frustrating memory crash reports popped up. This inspired us to set aside all immediate goals and take one more serious crack at reducing a problem that has plagued the game throughout the Early Access period. It was clear The Second World War would not be ready for final release without finding someway to make these crashes a rarity.

The team had already implemented numerous optimizations across the game engine and art in order to minimize the memory spikes that triggered the crashes. These solutions often reduced the frequency. But as we continued making improvements to the game, we eventually overwhelmed any savings previously gained. And while reducing the number of models definitely helped, it was an unsatisfactory trade-off.

This memory issue is associated with the application not the machine. So no matter how great your PC is, the game could still run out of memory and crash. Fortunately, our lead engineer had one final idea that he’d estimated might give us some relief - more head room so to speak. As it turns out, the solution was rather easy to implement, especially in comparison to the other things we were considering. None of which could have delivered more than a fraction of savings we ended up with.

Essentially the game is no longer rendering every unit in the game on every frame. The camera now defines the viewport and only renders objects within view. This has a huge impact on game memory. So much that we feel these type of memory crashes should no longer occur during a normal game.

It may sound like an obvious modification, and of course I wish we’d done this a year ago. The team inherited this engine and it has taken some time for us to tear through it and make changes. There could have been a good reason for setting the camera up as it was but ultimately, it did not work for the Second World War.

There are many other new fixes and additions with pre-release #9, but this memory solution is just such a big deal, I felt I needed to focus my update on that. Much of the work we’ve done beside optimization has been targeted at finishing the task list and responding to user requests and bug reports.

While the production schedule was slowed down last week, a massive hurdle appears to have been overcome. Like any application, it could still crash but it will unlikely be a game memory crash. We are interested in hearing about issues players may have. It’s always possible we missed something.

The next update will likely be the final one before the official release. We are a little behind schedule.


Notes for Early Access Update #9

AI Changes:
- Air missions no longer suspended for hard-coded number of turns when Fuel is low
- Reworked air patrol and bombing planning for splitting off groups for missions
- AI will now stop repairing ships if there are no ships to repair
- Production AI focuses on reducing overall demand rather than meeting specific demands
- Improved Production AI to be smarter about key production inputs like Steel.
- Increased DesiredBomberPower to encourage larger bomber stacks
- Increased the desired power for AI Sea Invasions
- AI no longer has turn restrictions for limiting nuke targets

Game System Changes:
- MPU growth rate is now based on Population rather than MPUs
- Fixed MPU growth rate calculation error
- Re-balanced MPU growth modifier after change to population based growth
- MPU Recruitment now uses random region culling
- Apply HP reduction penalty to Anti-Air fire
- Bombardment hit generation of cities now more closely matches naval combat
- Shore bombardment of units and coastal defenses now using consistent algorithm
- Upgrading units maintain same health fraction after upgrading
- Fixed projected revenue being less than 0 in the UI
- Ship breakdown now spreads itself across shipyards


Memory Optimization:
- No longer render off-screen unit models (major memory savings)
- Reworked model culling for smooth transitions over x = 0
- Set lower y FOV offset to avoid near camera clipping
- Load models in before showing them when zooming in
- Fixed bug where units located at some air bases would not be shown


UI Changes:
- Fixed Graphic distortion in French Flag
- Added now Strafe Icon to Encyclopedia entries
- Altered string for Health Infrastructure bonus from MPU to Pop. to reflect actual value
- Relabeled "MPU Growth Bonus" to "Pop. Growth Bonus"
- Moved Panama City to correct side of Isthmus
- New Terrain modifier tooltips and Icons
- Updated terrain modifier icons for engagement tooltips
- Added terrain modifiers to the encyclopedia
- Defender resistances tooltip now uses defense bonus from terrain modifiers
- Revised trade and supply access mapviews
- Fixed Supply (battery) icon on group selection panel for air, army, and artillery units
- Added some Treaty background images

Content Changes:
- Lowered Research bonus of Research Buildings
- Reduced requirements for Research to speed up
- Added new D-Day trigger & revised others
- Increased Possible Research Points Per Turn from 4 to 5
- New American Deployment Events
- Revised Altitude values for Aircraft
- Modified (Lowered) Research requirements for some projects
- Fixed misspelling of Gulf of Tonkin

We were not expecting to offer a new pre-release update this week. The plan was to push through most of the remaining outstanding bugs and feature revisions in preparation for a February official release. Then more of those frustrating memory crash reports popped up. This inspired us to set aside all immediate goals and take one more serious crack at reducing a problem that has plagued the game throughout the Early Access period. It was clear The Second World War would not be ready for final release without finding someway to make these crashes a rarity.

The team had already implemented numerous optimizations across the game engine and art in order to minimize the memory spikes that triggered the crashes. These solutions often reduced the frequency. But as we continued making improvements to the game, we eventually overwhelmed any savings previously gained. And while reducing the number of models definitely helped, it was an unsatisfactory trade-off.

This memory issue is associated with the application not the machine. So no matter how great your PC is, the game could still run out of memory and crash. Fortunately, our lead engineer had one final idea that he’d estimated might give us some relief - more head room so to speak. As it turns out, the solution was rather easy to implement, especially in comparison to the other things we were considering. None of which could have delivered more than a fraction of savings we ended up with.

Essentially the game is no longer rendering every unit in the game on every frame. The camera now defines the viewport and only renders objects within view. This has a huge impact on game memory. So much that we feel these type of memory crashes should no longer occur during a normal game.

It may sound like an obvious modification, and of course I wish we’d done this a year ago. The team inherited this engine and it has taken some time for us to tear through it and make changes. There could have been a good reason for setting the camera up as it was but ultimately, it did not work for the Second World War.

There are many other new fixes and additions with pre-release #9, but this memory solution is just such a big deal, I felt I needed to focus my update on that. Much of the work we’ve done beside optimization has been targeted at finishing the task list and responding to user requests and bug reports.

While the production schedule was slowed down last week, a massive hurdle appears to have been overcome. Like any application, it could still crash but it will unlikely be a game memory crash. We are interested in hearing about issues players may have. It’s always possible we missed something.

The next update will likely be the final one before the official release. We are a little behind schedule.


Notes for Early Access Update #9

AI Changes:
- Air missions no longer suspended for hard-coded number of turns when Fuel is low
- Reworked air patrol and bombing planning for splitting off groups for missions
- AI will now stop repairing ships if there are no ships to repair
- Production AI focuses on reducing overall demand rather than meeting specific demands
- Improved Production AI to be smarter about key production inputs like Steel.
- Increased DesiredBomberPower to encourage larger bomber stacks
- Increased the desired power for AI Sea Invasions
- AI no longer has turn restrictions for limiting nuke targets

Game System Changes:
- MPU growth rate is now based on Population rather than MPUs
- Fixed MPU growth rate calculation error
- Re-balanced MPU growth modifier after change to population based growth
- MPU Recruitment now uses random region culling
- Apply HP reduction penalty to Anti-Air fire
- Bombardment hit generation of cities now more closely matches naval combat
- Shore bombardment of units and coastal defenses now using consistent algorithm
- Upgrading units maintain same health fraction after upgrading
- Fixed projected revenue being less than 0 in the UI
- Ship breakdown now spreads itself across shipyards


Memory Optimization:
- No longer render off-screen unit models (major memory savings)
- Reworked model culling for smooth transitions over x = 0
- Set lower y FOV offset to avoid near camera clipping
- Load models in before showing them when zooming in
- Fixed bug where units located at some air bases would not be shown


UI Changes:
- Fixed Graphic distortion in French Flag
- Added now Strafe Icon to Encyclopedia entries
- Altered string for Health Infrastructure bonus from MPU to Pop. to reflect actual value
- Relabeled "MPU Growth Bonus" to "Pop. Growth Bonus"
- Moved Panama City to correct side of Isthmus
- New Terrain modifier tooltips and Icons
- Updated terrain modifier icons for engagement tooltips
- Added terrain modifiers to the encyclopedia
- Defender resistances tooltip now uses defense bonus from terrain modifiers
- Revised trade and supply access mapviews
- Fixed Supply (battery) icon on group selection panel for air, army, and artillery units
- Added some Treaty background images

Content Changes:
- Lowered Research bonus of Research Buildings
- Reduced requirements for Research to speed up
- Added new D-Day trigger & revised others
- Increased Possible Research Points Per Turn from 4 to 5
- New American Deployment Events
- Revised Altitude values for Aircraft
- Modified (Lowered) Research requirements for some projects
- Fixed misspelling of Gulf of Tonkin

In the prior three months, work on The Second World War was dedicated almost entirely to land-based Offensive and Defensive military AI. This process consumed most of our efforts and kept us from moving into other areas. For this release we’ve turned our attention to improving the Air and Sea gameplay.

Bombing your enemy’s cities has become more consequential with the new factory hitpoint system we’ve added in Update #8. When your air units target city industries, the attacks can damage factories and potentially wipe out the buildings. Damaged factories do not run their production but they do automatically heal. While it’s not meant to be easy to destroy factories, sustained bombing can keep them idled while chipping away at the infrastructure hitpoints.

A new air unit property called “Accuracy” has been added to give us a better way of distinguishing technically superior units. The combat routine uses this factor to modify the % chance to achieve a successful hit on the target. Before this feature, bombing results were mostly differentiated by Attack Power which determines how much damage a successful hit might inflict. Accuracy will be applied to both bombing and strafing attacks.

The air Ai is being encouraged to aggressively carryout bombing campaigns on enemy cities. This will require players to take measures to defend their industries from production interruptions. AI fighters are ordered to escort the bombers to the extent of their own range. Beyond that distance, bombers will be at the mercy of enemy fighters and AA guns. There’s upcoming work needed to improve AI air defense priorities, engaging enemy air attacks and air group size management. This should all be completed for Update #9.

We’ve also worked on improving how the AI manages troop transport convoys. Too many of these units were being sent off without escorts. Now the AI will wait and try to find combat vessels to pair with. If a naval group escorting troop transports is intercepted by an enemy force, the AI is now more likely to attempt to retreat in order to save the convoy. Both these measures should make troop transports less vulnerable and reduce the MPU losses at sea.

On the system side, we did another round of memory optimizations that should help minimize issues with game crashes. Going forward, we’ll continue looking for more ways to improve stability and performance. Some players have pointed out that city building demolishing took too long. We’ve alter the time to be 5 turns for all buildings. And finally, because of the changes that added hitpoints to factories, Mods created before this release will not work properly. There is file you can download from the Factus Games Support page that will fix the issue.

Next week the team is scheduled to continue finishing up Air and Naval AI. Some further focus will be given on the American entry and impact on the war. This should involve gameplay improvements associated with invasions and nuclear warfare.

We are also beginning to work through the overall list of remaining must-have items needed for release. There’s still plenty to do, features to polish, bugs to fix and remaining content to balance. Still, with the majority of AI rewrites completed, the final release of the game should be a matter of weeks rather than months.



Notes for Early Access Update #8

AI Changes:
- Revised air AI so that fighters no longer accompany bomber groups
- Fighters will defend bomber groups to the extent of their range
- Bombers will not limit their bombing targets to fighter ranges
- Prioritize Air defense over offensive missions
- Fixed AI bug that improperly handled canceling projects
- Improved accuracy of AI Stockpile evaluation
- AI splits off unsupplied units from groups when wanting to move
- Reworked troop transport AI to use escort ships
- Naval groups more likely to retreat from combat when escorting transports
- Changed Super Power nation status definition to 30% of World Power Points.

UI Changes:
- Added Unit Icons in game for all nations
- UI now shows correct dismantle time and costs
- Predicted time display for construction is fixed
- Summary panel now uses the 'Demolish' text when showing active projects
- Added icon for Carrier Conversion
- Updated Strafing icon in encyclopedia
- Updated factory related UI to show damaged factories
- Added factory Hitpoints and Repair Rate to encyclopedia

Game System Changes:
- Added Hitpoint system for factories to stop production, damage and destroy
- Added Accuracy property to air unit
- Modified Air Combat algorithm to use the Accuracy property
- Air units no longer applies the Morale Modifier to combat power.
- Upgrading city buildings no longer fails if system can't find the old building
- Dismantle for buildings time is now fixed at 5 turns
- More accurate group fuel calculations
- Fixed Research power points calculation
- Fixed bug in event function TriggerInheritResearch
- Removed TriggerInheritResearchFromString

Memory Optimization:
- Fixed bug where AI could research the same topic multiple times
- Revised research data storage
- Removed redundant TriggerConditionMinimumTurn event function
- New Model Options to lower memory impact

In the prior three months, work on The Second World War was dedicated almost entirely to land-based Offensive and Defensive military AI. This process consumed most of our efforts and kept us from moving into other areas. For this release we’ve turned our attention to improving the Air and Sea gameplay.

Bombing your enemy’s cities has become more consequential with the new factory hitpoint system we’ve added in Update #8. When your air units target city industries, the attacks can damage factories and potentially wipe out the buildings. Damaged factories do not run their production but they do automatically heal. While it’s not meant to be easy to destroy factories, sustained bombing can keep them idled while chipping away at the infrastructure hitpoints.

A new air unit property called “Accuracy” has been added to give us a better way of distinguishing technically superior units. The combat routine uses this factor to modify the % chance to achieve a successful hit on the target. Before this feature, bombing results were mostly differentiated by Attack Power which determines how much damage a successful hit might inflict. Accuracy will be applied to both bombing and strafing attacks.

The air Ai is being encouraged to aggressively carryout bombing campaigns on enemy cities. This will require players to take measures to defend their industries from production interruptions. AI fighters are ordered to escort the bombers to the extent of their own range. Beyond that distance, bombers will be at the mercy of enemy fighters and AA guns. There’s upcoming work needed to improve AI air defense priorities, engaging enemy air attacks and air group size management. This should all be completed for Update #9.

We’ve also worked on improving how the AI manages troop transport convoys. Too many of these units were being sent off without escorts. Now the AI will wait and try to find combat vessels to pair with. If a naval group escorting troop transports is intercepted by an enemy force, the AI is now more likely to attempt to retreat in order to save the convoy. Both these measures should make troop transports less vulnerable and reduce the MPU losses at sea.

On the system side, we did another round of memory optimizations that should help minimize issues with game crashes. Going forward, we’ll continue looking for more ways to improve stability and performance. Some players have pointed out that city building demolishing took too long. We’ve alter the time to be 5 turns for all buildings. And finally, because of the changes that added hitpoints to factories, Mods created before this release will not work properly. There is file you can download from the Factus Games Support page that will fix the issue.

Next week the team is scheduled to continue finishing up Air and Naval AI. Some further focus will be given on the American entry and impact on the war. This should involve gameplay improvements associated with invasions and nuclear warfare.

We are also beginning to work through the overall list of remaining must-have items needed for release. There’s still plenty to do, features to polish, bugs to fix and remaining content to balance. Still, with the majority of AI rewrites completed, the final release of the game should be a matter of weeks rather than months.



Notes for Early Access Update #8

AI Changes:
- Revised air AI so that fighters no longer accompany bomber groups
- Fighters will defend bomber groups to the extent of their range
- Bombers will not limit their bombing targets to fighter ranges
- Prioritize Air defense over offensive missions
- Fixed AI bug that improperly handled canceling projects
- Improved accuracy of AI Stockpile evaluation
- AI splits off unsupplied units from groups when wanting to move
- Reworked troop transport AI to use escort ships
- Naval groups more likely to retreat from combat when escorting transports
- Changed Super Power nation status definition to 30% of World Power Points.

UI Changes:
- Added Unit Icons in game for all nations
- UI now shows correct dismantle time and costs
- Predicted time display for construction is fixed
- Summary panel now uses the 'Demolish' text when showing active projects
- Added icon for Carrier Conversion
- Updated Strafing icon in encyclopedia
- Updated factory related UI to show damaged factories
- Added factory Hitpoints and Repair Rate to encyclopedia

Game System Changes:
- Added Hitpoint system for factories to stop production, damage and destroy
- Added Accuracy property to air unit
- Modified Air Combat algorithm to use the Accuracy property
- Air units no longer applies the Morale Modifier to combat power.
- Upgrading city buildings no longer fails if system can't find the old building
- Dismantle for buildings time is now fixed at 5 turns
- More accurate group fuel calculations
- Fixed Research power points calculation
- Fixed bug in event function TriggerInheritResearch
- Removed TriggerInheritResearchFromString

Memory Optimization:
- Fixed bug where AI could research the same topic multiple times
- Revised research data storage
- Removed redundant TriggerConditionMinimumTurn event function
- New Model Options to lower memory impact

A newly updated version of The Second World War is now available. The team lost a week or so to the holidays and there were a few sick days to overcome. Even with those obstacles, we executed a long list of improvements to the game. Again, most of our efforts have been AI related but we are continuing to add new content, events, feature improvements and of course bug fixes.

In this release we are introducing a new scenario called Last Days of Peace. It begins a few weeks before the Invasion of Poland. This allows players to skip the buildup years and get right into the war. Neither scenario is 100% complete so expect to see further balancing and content as we work towards release.

A new big addition to the AI has been to give it motivation to create and maintain contiguous fronts against enemies and potential threats. The implementation for this system took us through several variations. Initially the AI tended to become too narrowly focused on specific regions due to strength evaluations. Rather than spreading the units out along a front, we ended up with big stacks that led to gaps in front. Eventually the big stacks became pockets, often surrounded by Heavy Artillery that pounded them to extinction. It was kind of fun to see but not the gameplay we were looking for.

There were many factors to consider beside just having an enemy on the border. There is the opposing nation’s strength to consider but also the relationship status. We do not want Canada to think they need troops on the US border and vice versa. Some nations like the Soviet Union are so large that their defensive needs are always greater than what they have available. So the defense priority evaluations are especially challenging for the Soviet AI. They became our ultimate test case while we worked out the rough edges.

The AI is also considering potential invasion threats by sea or through bordering buffer states. Support Allies improvements allows the AI to better defend on Allied fronts and fill the fronts throughout their empire. Additionally, we’ve introduced the concept of Secondary Fronts so the AI will now try to create lines of reserves.

All the Major nations now have unique Unit Icon images. So you no longer will see a British soldier or Tank in a Japanese unit panel. We’ll soon have all the images in to match the unit you see on the map.

Next week the team will be shifting attention over to Air and Sea gameplay. One goal is to significantly increase the impact of strategic bombing against industrial targets. This will include changes to the way cities receive damage and the presentation of bombing results. Nations should be compelled to focus attention on defending the homeland against attacks by patrolling fighters and constructing air defense infrastructure. The AI is already doing a lot of air operations. But we’d like to increase the activity and add greater emphasis to air weapon systems that truly came of age during WWII.

With the Naval Ai we’ll be looking at improving survivability decisions like convoy grouping for troop transports, knowing when to run away from a fight and avoiding unnecessary engagements with coastal defenses. Carriers are currently good at air attacks but they need to get better at using their fighters to defend the task force.

Thanks again to all the current users out there that take the time to post messages about issues and ideas. This process would be taking us even longer to get through without your support.




Content Changes:
- Added new pre-Poland invasion scenario “The Last Days of Peace”
- Fixed icons for mapview tooltip for food production
- Lowered Militia Hitpoint & Defensive Strength
- Added Italian, Soviet, French & Japanese Unit Icon Images
- Updated Cossack, Huisu & Kyrgyz Communist Flags
- Added missing Soviet claim on Tajikistan
- Updated Initial Diplomatic Influence for Soviet vs. neighbors
- New Soviet-German Axis Trigger
- Added events that can damage German-Soviet Relations pre-Poland Invasion
- Added Spanish Gibraltar claims
- New Argentina Coup and Axis Decision events
- Added Soviet Armistice event
- New Brazil Joins Allies, Nationalists Coup Attempt and Communist Revolt events
- Added German Claims in Africa event

AI Changes:
- Implemented AI to maintain Front against enemies and threats
- Front AI will avoid creating gaps when evaluating regions to invade
- Revised defensive AI to spread along contiguous fronts
- AI accounts loss of defense in a region for moving troops in the support allies plan
- No longer uses attack power from equipment units for offense planning
- Better accounting for support allies in the return home plan
- Support Allies AI has more defensive awareness
- Added group splitting logic to Support Allies AI
- Implemented AI to create secondary (reserve) fronts
- Increased AI defense for coastal regions in other nation's sphere
- Added Amphibious Assault penalty & Terrain modifiers for offense AI evaluations
- End attack plans when desired power can not be deployed
- Add pre-war land Regions to Sphere of Interest target checks
- Great Powers and Superpowers can invade outside their sphere
- Increased desired strength for overseas invasions
- Fixed AI bug sending wrong group when splitting units for defensive
- Modified desired strength estimate and definition of Obvious Targets
- Regions that don't border the enemy but do border an Ally use less defense
- Ignore equipment units when evaluating target planning
- Expand definition of bordering an enemy to include unfriendly regions with troops
- Include Buffer States when evaluating border defense
- AI won't abandon coastal regions when reorganizing defenses

Game System Changes:
- Neutrality Pacts no longer prevent defensive evaluations
- Revised supply access rules to be based on region control
- Troop Transports no longer contribute to Military Totals
- Troop Transports no longer contribute to World Power Points

UI Changes:
- Fixed fuel penalty displays on non-Naval Group panels

Editor Changes:
- Can now edit sea regions for existing cities
- Fixed adding city buildings when no city building of that type existed