Warzone has just been updated to version 4.10.2! This update adds the ability to view profiles in the iOS/Android app, as well as fixes and improves a bunch of stuff. This blog post describes what’s changed.

The update is live now on the website. The Android app update is available now — your device should auto-update in the coming days or you can go to the Play Store to update it manually. The iOS app update will go live once Apple approves it, which usually takes 2-7 days.

Viewing Profiles

The Unity client now has the ability to view player’s profiles directly in the app! It used to redirect you to your web browser app when selecting a “View Full Profile” button.

This makes it much more convenient to view profiles. It also makes it much easier to add or remove other players from your friends list or blacklist, since those buttons are located on player’s profiles.

Sending Mail

The Unity client can now create private mail threads with other players! Previously, it was only possible to reply to mail threads that were sent to you.

This is done via the new Send Mail button on a player’s full profile page.

UJS-Canvas Default

The UJS-Canvas mode, that was introduced as experimental in the previous update, is no longer experimental and is now the default mode for all players. The UJS-Canvas mode makes playing games on the website faster and look nicer. You can still switch back to UJS if you don’t like it for some reason, but please send me mail and let me know why you did so!

Tweak to “MME Commanders LD No Cards”

I’m making a small tweak to the popular quickmatch template “MME Commanders LD No Cards”. West China will be worth 1 fewer army per turn, from 6 to 5. This will go live within the next day or two, so be on the lookout for that.

Other Changes

Full list of changes made in 4.10.2:
– Unity: Added the ability to view player’s profiles right in the app.
– Unity: Added the ability to send mail to other players.
– Unity: Added the ability to add/remove players from the friends list or blacklist.
– Unity: Long tournament names no longer get truncated on the tournament page.
– Unity: Fixed a “failed to deserialize vision” error.
– Unity: Updated Unity to 2017.4.17f1
– Unity/UJS: Tweaked the scale of the metal background image a bit.
– Unity/UJS: No-split games now hide the “attack by percentage” check-box since it has no use.
– Unity/UJS: The “Game Summary” button is now green.
– Unity/UJS: The statistics search dialog now displays all items in its list by default instead of requiring a search term. It also paginates its results.
– UJS: Tweaked image rendering mode to make them smoother.
– UJS: Fixed “Kp is null” error.
– UJS: Fixed “Failed to read responseText” error.
– Website: UJS-Canvas is now the default web mode.
– Website: The “Could not connect” dialog will no longer spawn more than one at a time. Thanks to Hades for reporting this.
– Website: Updated About page.
– Website: Changed some text regarding the use of the word “Risk”
– All: Fixed a bug that made points in the last 30 days extend beyond 30 days. Thanks to aoc for reporting this.
– All: Disabled trophy awarding for real-time ladder.

App Changes

In addition to the above changes, users of the iOS/Android app are receiving a ton more fixes:

– The Quickmatch voting page now allows sorting by newest templates.
– Fixed a bug that could make white territories overlap a map. Thanks to ViralGoat for being the most recent to report this.
– Android: The app now clears all notifications from the notification tray when it’s open.
– When inviting your friends to a tournament, it now separates them into pages. This keeps the page from getting too slow if you have lots of friends. Thanks to ViralGoat for reporting this.
– The “View Tournament” button in full settings now directs to the tournament correctly instead of opening your browser. Thanks to alexclusive for reporting this.
– Fixed a bug with the army cap that made your displayed income in the lower right corner show incorrectly after committing your turn.
– Coin tournaments now show in the settings how many extra coins the creator provided towards the tournament prize.
– Fixed a bug that allowed the quickmatch leaderboard category dialog be opened multiple times. Thanks to TBest for reporting this.
– Fixed a bug when a mod called GetTurn() with a floating point number. Thanks to kevin#1 for reporting this.
– Fixed a bug with viewing perspectives.
– Fixed a bug with community levels that could cause an error when adding multiple special units to the same territory.
– Fixed a bug with boss units on community levels that use high fog levels. Thanks to Rucka for reporting this.
– Fixed typo in tournament chat. Thanks to Olja for reporting this.
– Fixed a bug that could cause an error if a territory was clicked just as a game ended. Thanks to Drama for reporting this.
– Fixed a bug that prevented joining coin tournaments if you had exactly the number of coins as the entry fee. Thanks to Pohorex for reporting this.
– Fixed a bug that could cause “bubble doesn’t have a slot” error when loading a template that used custom scenarios then changing the players. Thanks to Johnson Dibbles for reporting this.
– When double-tapping to attack with all armies, it will force attacks into attack/transfer mode. This fixes an issue where the second tap could hit the mode button switching it into Transfer Only on accident. Thanks to Pooh and Muli for reporting this.
– The app has been renamed on the app stores to avoid use of the “Risk” trademark. App descriptions were also updated.

Warzone has just been updated to version 4.10.0! This update adds a new map rendering engine called UJS-Canvas, as well as some bug fixes.

This is a server-only update, which means the Unity app (iOS/Android apps) will not receive this version.

UJS-Canvas

UJS-Canvas is a new map rendering engine for players playing Warzone through a web browser on a computer. It is similar to the UJS mode already available, but it renders the map using the html <canvas> element.

The goal of UJS-Canvas is increased performance on large maps. In UJS mode, large maps can cause a significant amount of framerate lag. UJS-Canvas aims to fix this by redrawing the map only when you pan/zoom around instead of every frame. This leads to a smoother experience, which helps on maps of all sizes but is most noticeable on large maps.

It also has some small visual improvements over UJS mode. For example, when territories bounce, the army number on that territory bounces with them which looks more natural. Also, when territories glow, the glow effect is done much more efficiently than UJS mode which also saves a lot of CPU. This is most noticeable when selecting very large bonuses, such as super bonuses on large maps, which highlight much more smoothly in UJS-Canvas over UJS mode.

You can try it right now! Just head to the Change Web Mode page and check the UJS-Canvas option. If you try it out, let me know what you think!

Other Changes

– All: Fixed a bug that made community level descriptions not show up in some cases. Thanks to Slovakia for reporting this.
– All: Fixed a bug with real-time Quickmatch/Ladder/Tournament games with auto boot times under 5 minutes that could delay the automatic force join. Thanks to Krzystof for reporting this.
– All: Fixed a bug with community levels that could cause an error when adding multiple special units to the same territory.
– All: Fixed a bug with boss units on community levels that use high fog levels. Thanks to Rucka for reporting this.
– Website: Fixed a bug that prevented tournament custom scenarios from being viewed while in UJS mode.
– Website: Removed real-time ladder from the multi-player dashboard.
– UJS: Fixed a bug that could cause an error message when trying to modify orders.
– UJS: Fixed a bug that made hotkeys not work in Firefox after closing chat. Thanks to 89thlap for reporting this.
– Unity: Fixed typo in tournament chat. Thanks to Olja for reporting this.
– Unity: Fixed a bug that could cause an error if a territory was clicked just as a game ended. Thanks to Drama for reporting this.
– Unity: Fixed a bug that prevented joining coin tournaments if you had exactly the number of coins as the entry fee. Thanks to Pohorex for reporting this.
– Unity/UJS: Fixed a bug that could cause “bubble doesn’t have a slot” error when loading a template that used custom scenarios then changing the players. Thanks to Johnson Dibbles for reporting this.

One year ago today Warzone was born!

We’ve come a long way in the last year. Most of the year was spent on fixing bugs and issues, most notably the UJS client. Thankfully, we did fit some new features in as well with a graphics overhaul, quickmatch leaderboards, tournament byes, tournaments in the mobile app, and continued improvements to the mod system.

I’m happy to report that this game is in the best place it’s ever been. The game is more stable and reliable than ever before, and we can finally say it doesn’t rely on any outdated technologies! (Except map design…) Plus we finally have one UI that runs across all devices (iOS/Android/Web), which we’ve never had before. This means that, going forward, you should expect to see more features and improvements to the game than ever before.

Warzone is not a one-off game like is so common in the games industry, where a company finishes a game and moves on to a new one. Warzone is my full time job and I intend to relentlessly pursue improvements to it for as long as I can. I’d love to continue improving it for the rest of my life, if I can. Over the last two weeks, I’ve been working on something that will make UJS users happy. Stay tuned to the blog for an announcement.

I want to thank everyone in the Warzone community for everything. I don’t say it often enough, but you all rock. Warzone has the best community of any game I’ve been a part of, and you are all a big part of what makes the game awesome.

Last month also set a record for activity. Here’s a graph of the number of multi-player games played per month:

Warzone’s future is bright, and I’m thrilled to go on this journey together!

Warzone has just been updated to version 4.09.3! This update fixes several bugs and makes some tweaks to tournaments. This blog post describes what’s changed.

This a server-only update (meaning the Unity client + apps won’t receive this version).

Change Log

– All: Fixed a bug with the army cap that made your displayed income in the lower right corner show incorrectly after committing your turn.
– All: Coin tournaments now show in the settings how many extra coins the creator provided towards the tournament prize.
– All: When providing 500 or more extra coins to a tournament, the creator can now set any entry fee they want. Thanks to B for the suggestion.
– All: Reduced maximum start time of multi-day public tournaments to 1 day to ensure they start quicker.
– UJS: Fixed a bug when a mod crashed that would cause the error message to not be visible in some cases.
– UJS: Fixed the way partial cards render in Edge and Internet Explorer: since they can’t display masked cards it will simply fade them out instead.
– Unity/UJS: Fixed a bug when a mod passed a non-function when a function was expected that caused it to get a generic error dialog instead of a Mod Crashed dialog. Thanks to Meop for reporting this.
– Unity/UJS: Fixed a bug that allowed the quickmatch leaderboard category dialog be opened multiple times. Thanks to TBest for reporting this.
– Unity: Fixed a bug that could make white territories overlap a map. Thanks to ViralGoat for being the most recent to report this.
– Unity: Fixed a bug when a mod called GetTurn() with a floating point number. Thanks to kevin#1 for reporting this.
– Unity: Fixed a bug that could, in rare cases, cause some new maps to fail to be converted into Unity format. Thanks to Goldtank for reporting this.
– Website: Changed the way app redirects work again so that it’s a better experience for devices without the app installed.
– Website: Fixed color of the wiki link when viewing the settings of a tournament that has highlighted settings. Thanks to number for reporting this.

Warzone has just been updated to version 4.09.0! This update overhauls and adds a lot to tournaments, as well as brings a bunch of new features. This blog post describes what’s changed.

This update is particularly noteworthy, as it’s the first time since the Warzone launch that I’ve been able to focus on adding features to the game again. Expect more features in the future!

This update is live now on the website at https://www.warzone.com. The Android app will receive this version in the next day or two, and the iOS app will receive this version in the next week or so.

Tournaments added to iOS and Android app

The iOS and Android app now support tournaments! Tournaments were previously a website-only feature. The app can do everything the website can, such as joining/declining tournaments, viewing the bracket, chatting, viewing players, etc.

Also noteworthy are that team tournaments in the app are much easier to view, as the teammates are listed directly on the bracket instead of requiring a click to see. Further, in large tournament brackets it’s much easier to find yourself or players with the new “find” button that highlights all of their games and allows cycling through them.

Adding tournaments to the app will increase tournament use a lot, as the majority of Warzone players play through the app and never had access to tournaments before.

Tournament Byes

Tournaments now support byes! This drastically increases the flexibility of tournaments, as it means it’s no longer required for the number of players to exactly match the tournament size. Previously, starting a 128 player tournament required that exactly 128 players join. Now, the tournament can start with any number, as long as at least one game can be created.

Multi-day tournaments will start in one of three ways: When it fills up (as normal), when the tournament creator clicks the new “Start Tournament” button listed on the tournament page, or when it reaches a specified time limit as defined by the tournament creator.

Real-time tournaments will always start when they reach their start time as defined by the tournament creator. The 30-minute delay that existed before was removed. Real-time tournaments will always start exactly on time.

Byes are awarded randomly to participants. If a team tournament attempts to start with unfilled teams, those teams will be merged automatically.

Other Tournament Improvements

The most recently created open tournament is now advertised on the multi-player dashboard again, as well as in the Unity app under your games. This helps increase the visibility of open tournaments.

The UI for creating tournaments has been re-written from scratch! It’s now much easier to use and more intuitive.

The tournament prize system has been simplified and had its flexibility increased. When creating a public tournament, creators can now specify any entry fee from 0 to 2000. Creators can also add extra coins to the prize.

Mods

Members can now create one multi-player free mod game per week that allows non-members to join! Previously, this was only allowed one time, and then cost 3 coins per player. Now, this can be done every week. This resets every Sunday.

As always, single-player modded games are always free for members in unlimited quantity, as are multi-player games with other members.

History Date/Time

When viewing history, the date/time of the turn is now displayed below the turn number in the upper left corner. This makes it easier to see when a turn happened, which was previously only available on hover.

Local Deployment Status

In Local Deployment, when a bonus is fully deployed to, it will disappear from the tooltip in the top left. This makes it much easier to see what’s left to deploy when you’re playing on large maps.

Other Changes

– All: Fixed a bug with the army cap that made your displayed income in the lower right corner show incorrectly. Thanks to Master Farah for reporting this.
– Unity: Updated Unity to 2017.4.12f1.
– Unity/UJS: Fixed a bug that made the AI pick very slow on some very large maps. Thanks to TerribleHerbst for reporting this.
– Unity/UJS: The Autopilot button is now present in the menu for non-members, and explains what it is when clicked.
– Unity/UJS: Non-members will sometimes get a free autopilot trial when playing single-player.
– Unity/UJS: Non-members that click the “Change Mods” button now get more info about what mods are.
– Unity/UJS: Fixed a bug that made your level and member icon not show up next to your name in single-player.
– Unity/UJS: Fixed the double-tap-to-attack feature of the attack/transfer dialog so that if your finger happens to be over the Cancel button as the second tap is clicked, it will now be considered a double-tap instead of a cancel-tap.
– Unity/UJS: Increased size of army box in the attack/transfer dialog slightly.
– Unity/UJS: The deployment slider will now pop to the left of the cursor when opened near the right side of the screen.
– UJS: Fixed bugs with the “C” hotkey toggling commander checkbox. Thanks to Muli for reporting this.
– UJS: The red “close” button is more intelligent about sending you back to the page you came from. Thanks to GentlePurpleRain for reporting this.
– Website: Changed the way redirects to the app work so that, if the app isn’t installed, you get a better error message than “cannot open”.
– Website: The /Points page has been re-formatted to use bootstrap.
– Website: The /Mobile page has been re-formatted to use bootstrap. It also now shows your platform on the top if visited from Android/iOS.
– Website: Fixed the “Play” button on the home page when browsing from iOS / Android so it correctly directs you to install the mobile app.
– Website: Fixed a bug when using unicode characters and double quotes that could cause output to be incorrect. Thanks to TBest for reporting this.

Warzone has just been updated to version 4.08.4! This update fixes a bunch of small issues. Here’s a full list of the changes:

– UJS: Fixed audio issue for some players.
– UJS: Fixed a bug that made the deployment slider and inspect window close when trying to drag them.
– UJS: Increased buffer around the edges of the map.
– UJS: Fixed deploy hotkey on OSX.
– UJS: Decreased font size of input boxes slightly.
– UJS: Fixed the “next game” button. Thanks to Pooncrew for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed going back from playing community levels. Thanks to Muli for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed images in the “pick your team” and “pick your color” dialogs. Thanks to Muli for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed custom scenario editor focusing on text box. Thanks to Muli for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed custom scenario editor hotkey for changing to Neutral. Thanks to Muli for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed broken image of boss 2. Thanks to Muli for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed a bug when two dialogs were open that overlapped that could allow dragging the underneath one when clicking on the above one.
– UJS: Fixed a bug that made # characters get inserted to the end of the current url.
– UJS: The highlight animation is now skipped when selecting very large bonuses to save on excessive CPU costs. Thanks to Master Farah for reporting this.
– Unity/UJS: Fixed a bug that made NLC games not show teammate’s orders after clicking “Begin”. Thanks to Muli for reporting this.
– All: Fixed a bug that sometimes caused AI colors to not be assigned correctly in community levels. Thanks to Muli for reporting this.
– Website: Updated instructions to unblock Flash in Chrome 69.

Warzone has just been updated to version 4.08.2! This update marks the official launch of the UJS client!

The UJS client is the best way to play Warzone from computers (from iOS or Android you should continue to use the app.) It loads much more quickly than the Flash or Unity clients, and also don’t require a plugin like the Flash client does.

All players switched into UJS mode

Shortly after this update goes live, I’ll switch all players who play on the website to use the new UJS client instead of the old Flash/Unity clients.

Of course, you can always switch back if you have an issue with it. But if you do, please let me know why!

App Update

Version 4.08.2 of the Android and iOS apps will be delivered to the app stores soon. This version fixes a bunch of bugs (basically all of the non-critical bugs that have been reported to me while I was busy working on UJS). For the full list of fixes, see the Changelog below.

What’s next

This update marks a major turning point in the history of Warzone. With the UJS client fixing the slow-Unity-WebGL-performance problem, it means that we have finally accomplished the goal of the 2-year Unity project: One user interface that works well on all platforms (iOS/Android/Web).

What does this mean for the future? It means we can finally get back to adding new features! For the first time in two years, my primary focus is adding to the game again. I’m excited to get back to it, as it’s what I love doing.

As if that wasn’t enough, I’m going to start streaming my development of Warzone again, as I did last year. I’m not announcing yet what the first feature I’ll be working on is. You’ll have to tune into the stream to find out!

Most of the streams will take place from around 1pm to around 5pm PST. They’ll be broadcast at twitch.tv/FizzerWL so give a follow if you want to be notified when they go live. I plan to begin as soon as I can finish the aforementioned iOS/Android update.

Exciting times are ahead!

Full Changelog

4.08.2:
– Website: Moved “Custom Game” link from the bottom of the play page to the single-player drop-down menu.
– Unity: Updated Unity to 2017.4.10f1.
– Unity: Fixed a bug that could cause chat to overlap the game when rotating your device.
– Unity: Fixed a bug that could cause the app to temporarily freeze while websockets were connecting.
– Unity: Tweaked number of tick marks on the graphs to better accommodate small phones.
– Unity: Fixed a bug that caused Small Earth Board Map to have some flickering on Moto G phones. Thanks to Karl for reporting this.
– Unity: If maps can’t be downloaded due to your device’s date/time being set incorrectly, the app now notifies you of this instead of giving an generic error.
– Unity WebGL: Fixed a bug that allowed pasting more text into a text box than was allowed, resulting in errors.
– Unity/UJS: Chat no longer scrolls to the bottom if it’s not already near the bottom. This allows you to scroll up and read earlier chat without it jumping back to the bottom when someone says something.
– Unity/UJS: Fixed a bug that could cause an error in commerce NLC games.
– Unity/UJS: Fixed a bug that caused an error when inserting invalid numbers into card weight box. Thanks to ReddRush1 for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed minification bug for improved performance. Thanks to Muli for reporting this.

Prior to this update, there were three small big-fix updates that weren’t big enough to deserve a blog post on their own. Here’s the change logs from them:

4.08.1.1:
– UJS: Open Games list now returns commerce and modded games.
– UJS: Fixed a bug that made the Commerce Game checkbox not appear in Army Settings.
– Flash: Fixed “Open in UJS” link.

4.08.1.2:
– UJS: Enabled blockade dialog, as well as many other dialogs, to be draggable by their header. This makes them easier to move around. Thanks to elbee for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed double question mark in single-player game URLs. Thanks to DanWL for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed enter key inserting newlines into chat box. Thanks to 89thlap for reporting this.
– Website: On the Switch Mode page, removed the word “default” from next to Unity and put it next to UJS.

4.08.1.3:
– UJS: Adjusted the way the chat button responds to clicks+drags to make it more reliable to click. Thanks to krunx for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed loading community level saves. Thanks to DanWL for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed sorting friends on Create Game page. Thanks to DanWL for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed searching for friends on the Create Game page. Thanks to DanWL for reporting this.
– Website: Fixed tournament names. Thanks to celticfridge for reporting this.

Warzone has just been updated to version 4.08.1! This update brings more features to UJS, and a few fixes and improvements to the website. Here’s what’s changed:

– UJS: UJS is now the default web mode for new players.
– UJS: Added toasts (boxes in the top right that tell you when you earn points or unlock achievements)
– UJS: Added level-up dialog.
– UJS: Added rules dialog for new players.
– UJS: Added quickmatch-template-unlock notification dialog.
– UJS: Added announcement support.
– UJS: Quickmatch real-time games now load in-process instead of redirecting. This improves performance and also makes the close button take you back to quickmatch instead of the multi-player dashboard.
– UJS: Fixed editing community level AI names and colors. Removed obsolete “edit details” link.
– UJS: Fixed editing custom scenarios with special units.
– Website: Removed “Promoted games” section of multi-player dashboard. These games are now included in the “Open Games” section.
– Website: Added a link to quickmatch on the multi-player dashboard.
– Website: Updated multi-player dashboard to use bootstrap for its layout.
– Website: The home page’s Play Now button now takes you straight to the tutorial for first-time visitors. It still takes you to the single player main menu once you’ve played at least one single-player game.
– Website: Fixed a bug that made Share On Facebook not work for players who didn’t sign into Warzone through Facebook.
– QM: Fixed a rare bug that could cause quickmatch to give an error. Thanks to DESTRUCTION for reporting this.
– Flash: When accessing commerce games or games with mods, it will now prompt you to open them in UJS intead of Unity.

Warzone has just been updated to 4.08.0! This update adds a bunch of features to the new UJS client.

UJS Create Game

When your account is in UJS mode, selecting Create Game under the multi-player menu, or Custom Game under Single Player, will now launch the new Create Game UI. This UI is much easier to use than the old Flash one, and also supports all the new Unity features such as commerce games and mods.

It’s similar to what you would see if you were in Unity mode, except that it loads in a fraction of a second instead of in over 30 seconds!

More importantly, this reduces our dependency on Flash even further. Now, the only thing that Warzone still depends on Flash for is for map creation.

Other UJS Improvements

– UJS: Implemented the add/remove players button in lobby.
– UJS: The app now sets the page URL so that game links can always be accessed from the address bar, just like Flash does.
– UJS: Made some optimizations for faster performance on all UJS pages.
– UJS: External links now open in a new window.
– UJS: Fixed team brackets in the lobby.

What’s next

The next step for UJS is to implement toasts, the level up screen, and the quickmatch template unlock screen. Toasts are the small popups in the top right that notify you when you receive points or unlock an achievement. This is the last thing to add to UJS before it can be declared feature-complete.

Warzone has just been updated to 4.07.7! This update contains some bug fixes and minor improvements.

This is a server update only. This means the server updates, as well as the Flash and UJS clients, but not the Unity client or iOS/Android app.

Here’s everything that changed:

– All: When creating fixed team open games, the game now gives a prompt confirming you really want to do this.
– All: Fixed a rare bug when publishing a community level that uses the army cap. Thanks to Panzerelite for reporting this.
– All: Fixed an issue when using the API with the Non Members Can Use Mods flag. Thanks to Krzystof for reporting this.
– All: Fixed a bug with boss4 that caused an error on community level 1157992.
– All: Fixed a rare bug that could cause invite notifications to be delayed and go out after a game had ended.
– Website: Fixed Share On Facebook. Thanks to DanWL for reporting this.
– Website: Fixed a bug that caused signing into an account in UJS or Flash mode to show the Play button immediately after signing in.
– Unity/UJS: When chat has plenty of room, it will give more space to the player’s name. Thanks to TBest for suggesting this.
– UJS: Fixed tooltips getting stuck in Firefox. Thanks to TStorm for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed bonus links with negative sizes, such as was seen on the United States Big map. Thanks to TStorm for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed recon card territory highlight. Thanks to Krzystof for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed the Add/Remove Players button so it at least tells you that it’s not implemented yet instead of not working. Thanks to TBest for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed issue with opening/closing chat rapidly that would offset the screen. Thanks to TBest for reporting this.
– UJS: Removed the far right vertical line in the Statistics table since it was overlapping the scrollbar. Thanks to TBest for reporting this.

With these fixes, the UJS client is now looking much more solid than before! The next step is to get the Create Game UI working in UJS, so that it won’t have to fall back to Flash like it does today.