Axis & Allies 1942 Online News

Hello friends,

Patch #7 for Axis & Allies 1942 Online arrives today!

***Please note: there will be a short outage between 1-2 pm PST, Jan 22, 2020***

We've been working on a sweeping set of changes to transform our AI computer players into better opponents and teammates. This patch includes the first phase of our AI strategy improvements— plus UI updates, bug fixes and new features. Read on for full patch notes.

[h2]PATCH #7 NOTES[/h2]
[h3]New Features and Improvements[/h3]
- AI Strategy Improvements:

• AI players are better at reacting to game events and shifting goals
  
• AI players are better at executing team goals
  
• AI players are better at supporting teammates
  
• AI players use transports more effectively (specifically Japan, UK, & USA)

- Rules Implementations

• Players must now deploy all purchased units during the Mobilization phase. IPC will no longer be refunded for undeployed units
  
• Choose to ignore or engage enemy transports/submarines located in the same sea zone as your units at the start of your turn

1. By default, the game will treat enemy transports/submarines as “Hostile”
   
2. To ignore enemy transports/submarines:
   -Click on the relevant sea zone
   -Click on the “dossier” tab in the bottom left corner of the screen, or press “e”
   -Change the toggle below the Sea Zone name from “Hostile” to “Friendly”
   
3. You are no longer required to move your units out of the sea zone during Combat Move to avoid engaging enemy transports/submarines. Units starting in a hostile sea zone can now make Noncombat Moves

• Choose to ignore or engage enemy transports/submarines in a sea zone during amphibious assaults and bombardments

1. By default, the game will treat enemy transports/submarines as “Hostile”
   
2. To ignore enemy transports/submarines:

-Click on the relevant sea zone
-Click on the “dossier” tab in the bottom left corner of the screen, or press “e”
-Change the toggle below the Sea Zone name from “Hostile” to “Friendly”
-Mark the region friendly prior to moving units into the sea zone

New UI Elements

• Updated buttons and menu visuals to improve readability of game UI
  
• Tooltips appear when required info is missing or invalid on a game creation window
  
• When loading units to transports, players will now see an arrow from the starting region to
• the diamond icon (destination marker) to indicate the action
  
• Diamond icons (destination markers) have colored edges to showcase type(s) of movement to a region:

1. Blue: Sea Units
   
2. Red: Air Units
   
3. Yellow: Land Units
   
4. White: Bombardments

• When players make incomplete or invalid movements, the units and diamond icons for that movement will now flash

Cancelling Unit Action Improvements

• Unit Movements can now be cancelled by pressing SHIFT+Right Click on the Unit Stack
  
• Cancel individual land units loaded to a transport stack, without cancelling loaded units for all transports in the stack. To do this:

1. Click on the transport stack on the map
   
2. Open the “dossier” in the bottom left corner of the screen
   
3. Hover over the unit you wish to unload and click the red “X”

Engine Improvements

• Players with unsupported hardware configurations who were able to play the game prior to Patch #5, should now be able to play again with our newly updated engine
  
• Linux Players: We are still encountering issues with certain Nvidia hardware and drivers with Axis & Allies 1942 Online currently. Linux players with affected hardware will be able to play again through our Legacy Renderer until we resolve the core problem

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• [Automatic Aircraft Landing] - Resolved crash caused by players or AI attempting to automatically land unlanded planes
  
• [Aircraft Carriers/Fighters] - Resolved an issue where players could move fighters and aircraft carriers into positions that break game rules
  
• [Movement] - Resolved an issue where movements taking units out of and back into a starting region in a single move could not be cancelled
  
• [Finished Games] - Resolved an issue where finished games wouldn’t properly appear in the Player Profile
  
• [Finished Games] - Win ratio percentage for ranked games no longer calculates based off of all games played
  
• [Launch] - Game will no longer become stuck when loading into a game with a corrupted game state
  
• [Game Saves] - Saved games no longer become corrupted due to system activities
  
• [Unit Placement] - Resolved issue where certain units overlapped with Industrial Complex’s too much
  
• [Performance] - Resolved memory leaks and fixed more issues where players were encountering black screens, units disappearing from the combat board or other crashes after a short play session
  
• [Notifications] - Servers will no longer be affected by multiple unread Notifications in the database
  
• [Notifications] - Notifications are now capped at 100 notifications. Older notifications will be removed to make room for new notifications after the cap has been reached
  
• [Notifications] - Players who declined a game invite will no longer receive notifications that “The game has started without you!”
  
• [Online AI] - Resolved issue where the online AI wouldn’t take its turn
  
• [Movement] - Resolved issues where tanks could not Combat Move through friendly territories to attack hostile regions
  
• [Transports] - Resolved issue where Transports would “teleport” back to original sea zone after the combat phase
  
• [Transports] - Resolved issue where Transports could not pick up units from certain regions and islands
  
• [Movement] - Mass moving Fighters/Bombers will no longer cause under-fueled units to travel farther than capable
  
• [Map] - World Map will no longer only partially show up when returning to the Game Board from combat

Today's Deal: Save 50% on Axis & Allies 1942 Online!*

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*Offer ends Thursday at 10AM Pacific Time

We just released Patch #6 for Axis & Allies 1942 Online!

***Axis & Allies 1942 Online will be unavailable from Dec 5, 2019, 9 am - 1 pm PT while we perform the update***

We’ve been listening to your feedback and made a few adjustments to the features introduced in patch 5. Check out the patch notes below for a rundown of new features and fixes in today's update!



New Features and Improvements

Improved Movement Arrows

• Reduced the width and size of movement arrows introduced in Patch 5.
  
• Arrows are 50% thinner
  
• Smoother curves
  
• Arrows take shortest distance to the region
  
• Arrow movement stops just after the border, improving map visibility
  

Click-through Destination Marker (Diamond Icons)

• Added functionality to the destination markers (diamond icons)
  
• Players can click markers to deploy/move units into regions
  
• Destination marker scales down in size when players zoom in
  

Ranked Game Matchmaking visibility

• Added toast-style notifications for ranked matchmaking
  
• Notification remains in lower left-hand corner while players navigate through the Main Menu
  
• Players cancel matchmaking from this notification
  
• Players can enter games from the notification once a match has been found
  

New Default AI Speed

• Reduced the default speed of the AI for new players
  
• Players can adjust the speed of the AI players to their liking by changing it within the Options -> Settings -> Gameplay screen.
  
• Existing players AI speeds will not be changed as a result of this change.
  Please Note: If your AI speed is set to “Fast” or “Very Fast” you will not be able to view live combats for the AI when it is taking its turn.
  

Player Profiles

• Finished Games have been added to the Player Profile.
  
• View the outcomes of your 5 most recent games.
  
• Expand the Finished Game card to see additional details, including who you played with
  
• Ranked Games no longer count towards the Custom games win/loss ratios
  

Unit/Token Placement

• Adjusted unit placement to improve map visibility
  
• Reduced instances of overlapping units
  

Bug Fixes

Memory Leak Fix

• We’ve resolved the issue players were encountering when playing the game that would result in a black screen, units disappearing from the combat board or other crashes occurring after a short play session.

Transport Loading

• We’ve resolved issues where players encountered problems attempting to load units in and around the area of Australia and the Solomon Islands

AI Fixes

• The AI will no longer take 24 hours to complete or start its turn
  
• Various fixes to the AI to provide additional stability when playing the AI

Server-side optimizations and performance increases
Players with supported lower-end video cards should now be able to load the game. Please note: Linux and macOS players with certain Nvidia GPUs may still encounter some issues with loading the game. We are working on increasing compatibility in the near future.
Various crashes during combat and movement phases
Typos when deleting/forfeiting a game

WE NEED YOUR INPUT!

Take our short survey (1-2 min) for a chance to win a Beamdog Steam Key of your choice!

We’ll draw 3 winners from the survey responses. Winners can choose a free Steam Key from Beamdog’s catalog of games & DLC including:

• Axis & Allies 1942 Online
  
• Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition
  
• Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition
  
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Details:

This survey is about Axis & Allies 1942 Online, but we want to hear from everyone whether you’ve played the game or not.

Recently, we released a big patch for Axis & Allies 1942 Online, which included substantial features & fixes, such as New Movement Arrows, Ranked Ladders, Matchmaking, and more.

We’re grateful for all the feedback from our players around the world and we’re eager to hear even more from you!

Take the Survey! (1-2 Min)
You could win a free game

Today we're releasing Patch #5 for Axis & Allies 1942 Online and this one is major!

The patch notes below outline the substantial features and fixes included in today's update— and check out Cody Ouimet's (Producer, Axis & Allies 1942 Online) development letter for a more detailed discussion of this patch, plus future development plans.

• New Movement Arrows

- Visually redesigned movement arrows for Combat Move and Noncombat Move Phases

New Player Controls

- Revamped control scheme that allows for separated selection and action buttons using their mouse or input device
- Revamped movement controls that allow for full stack movements through modifier keys

New Rendering Engine

- New rendering engine that improves performance substantially across a wide variety of hardware

In-Game Notifications

- Players will now receive notifications in game through a new notifications panel on the main menu and in-game.

Ranked Ladders and Matchmaking

- Competitive ladders and matchmaking are now an option when playing online. Note: Matchmaking is only available for ranked play at this time
- Current online games have been rebranded as “Custom Games”
- Layout for game cards for Active Campaigns and Join Custom Games have been adjusted for better readability

Player Profile

- New player profile contains statistics on your ranked and custom games

Tutorial Updates

- Tutorials 1, 2, 3 and 4 have been reworked for the new control and movement arrow systems.

New World Map

- The background art for the World map has been adjusted to give North America (Canada, United States and Mexico) more correct proportions.

Commander Name and Email Change

- We have removed the ability for players to manually change their Commander Name and Emails for the time being while we resolve issues with the system

Custom Movement

- Players can now customize the movement for Tanks and Naval units during the Combat Move Phase

Tooltips and Notifications

- User Error tooltips have been reconfigured into expandable windows

Transport User Experience

- Updated transport controls to quickly load and move stacks of transports

Improvements to retreating and crashes related to retreating to valid retreat zones

Variety of issues where Transports would no longer become selectable, would not allow for custom movement to pick up valid units for drop-off elsewhere or would not load units

Moving Tanks through one territory and into another will no longer result in a crash

Errors and crashes when spamming mouse clicks or hotkeys in large quantities when moving units

Errors and crashes related to the landing of Fighters on certain Aircraft Carriers.

War Diary will now show the correct information for the target player and round

AI Fixes

- We’ve fixed a number of issues with the AI that would result in the AI crashing and not being able to start back up
- German AI will now do more with the Battleship and Transport in the Mediterranean in the early game

Crashes when moving into and out of hostile sea zones

Stranded Defending Fighters will now find valid landing spots before crashing and no longer float in the sea zone

Server-side optimizations and performance increases

Valid Mobilization regions will now highlight when animations are disabled

Windowed Mode - Game will now remember window location correctly