Hex of Steel update for 5 March 2021

This update is a special one, because …. THE GAME IS ONE YEAR OLD TODAY ! Happy birthday Operation Citadel !
Damn. Who would have thought that after a failed kickstarter, with only 53euros collected, including 20 from my dad, we would be here today, with such a product for everyone to enjoy on any platform ! This is INCREDIBLE ! I’m seriously shocked to see how far we’ve come all together.
For those that don’t know, for the newcomers, it is my brother and I that are working on the game, we’re both student and working on it when we have free time. Many MANY players helped us with their feedback, suggestions, ideas, even with their own work to help make this game what it is today. Thank you everyone ! Thank you !

Additions

• A new tile type ! COASTS. Those tiles have been added purely for graphical purposes (and oh BOY it looks good. Thank you for the suggestion @MaitreBongo). We added a whopping 189 tiles (all variants and biomes together) to the game ! They are of sea type, but make the map look better overall.
• Auto placement for coast tiles in the map editor. Just paint with a coast tile and they will be placed automatically :) You can easily create lakes and others with this, play with it !
• 5 new achievements : Watch your step: walk on a land mine. Safari (bronze, silver, gold): Destroy 1, 10, 100 of any Tiger or Panther or Elefant tanks). Statistics: Lose 100, 1000 units. Win Operation Bagration big scenario as the Axis and as the Allies.
• Legacy graphics option in the settings. Since all the counters have new graphics, and not everyone will like them, I still let you choose between the old ones, and the new ones !
• End of match statistics : Number of units bought per player, amount of money spent per player, and more (save compatible).
• 3840 x 2160 resolution setting (4K).

Changes

• A COMPLETE UNIT GRAPHICS REVAMP, made possible by a single man @MaitreBongo ! He has been working on this for a week, and did everything himself, I will hold no credits for it since it is his work. He proposed to implement it into the base game, which I accepted due to the good looking counters he was making as a separate mod. THANK YOU !
• When managing your diplomacy with other countries, thanks to the code improvements I made this week I am now able to offer an instant FOW recalculation. Meaning, when you declare war on someone, or make peace with someone, the FOW will be instantly recalculated so that you don’t / or do see your opponent / ally territory. This is awesome :D
• LOT of code optimization, map generation has been improved by quite a lot. Slight freeze at the end of a turn should be gone too now. I really spent a lot of time (an entire day) just going through my code and optimizing anything I could.
• Updated campaign maps previews in the main menu, campaign section.
• Various UI changes / improvements.
• Small changes made to Battle of France 1940 and Italy 1943 quick game scenarios.
• Updated store trailer + screenshots.

Fixes

• HP of your core units weren’t set back to max when going to another scenario of a campaign.
• Broken V1 kill achievement (sorry for fixing it so late, but better late than never !).
• Ships ignored each other’s armor completely.
• Tooltip didn’t go away after you bought a unit.
• Custom campaign were broken.
• AI plane bug.
• AI only variable not being reinitialized after an AI vs AI game. Meaning you had to restart the game if you wanted to play a normal (non AI vs AI) game.
• Tooltip going over the resupply cost (yay, finally haha).
• Font looking bad on windows.
• UI in the main menu not scaling to screen (not taking all space).
• AI only games could unlock you achievements if it finished the map (Example: the Europe map).
• Notifications could be created more than once (for the same one).
• On mobile : Diplomacy panel / slots UI issues (part of it was hidden).
• On mobile, the potential damage window was right on your finger making it hard to see anything.

Removals

• Lake tile graphics. It is not required anymore with the addition of coast tiles. You can just place a sea tile surrounded by land or any of the coast tile, they will be replaced by the correct tile upon map opening. No need for you to worry about anything ! :) (bonus: it looks better).

It is suggested that you toggle «NO ROTATION» in the settings if you are playing with the new counters, as well as reducing their size to a third of the total length of the slider. They are incompatible with rotation. I mean, you’re gonna notice it pretty fast haha. When your tank is gonna look upside down, you’re going to realize that :)

Now what ? Oh well … I don’t know. There’s still plenty to do ! The pacific campaign is far from being made, and there always is tweaking to be made, or new features to be implemented … !
Keep suggesting stuff, scenarios, units, I will take note and be working on it when I have time !
Please never stop to report bugs, YOU are making this game stable :)