Warzone has just been updated to version 5.42.0! This update adds a bunch of new features and makes improvements to the game and app. This blog post describes what’s changed.
This update is live now on the website at warzone.com and on the standalone clients. It will come to the Android and iOS apps in the coming week or two.
Renamed Templates
The Strategic 1v1 template is used on the 1v1 ladder and is also a popular template on Quickmatch. I created this template way back in 2009. Back then, virtually nobody was making templates designed for a strategic head-to-head battle, so the name seemed appropriate.
Today, however, there are thousands of popular 1v1 templates, so the name seems less relevant. Therefore, the Strategic 1v1 template will now be known as Medium Earth Traditional, and the Strategic 2v2 template will now be known as Final Earth 2v2.
No changes are being made to the actual settings of the templates, just the names.
Onboarding Tab
This update adds a new tab to the main menu, designed to help new players learn about what Warzone has to offer.
Of particular note is the ability to jump straight into a strategic 1v1 game, such as on the aforementioned Medium Earth Traditional template. The onboarding tab makes it easy to view the guides tailored to the template, practice against an AI, play against a friend, or jump straight into a quickmatch. This is useful for new players who want to see Warzone’s strategic side without taking the time to unlock those templates.
On the website, the onboarding tab is visible by going to the home page and clicking the big Play Now button.
If you’re a Warzone veteran and don’t want to see the onboarding tab, you can easily get rid of it by using the Hide Onboarding button. This preference will be stored in your Warzone account so it won’t be shown again for you, even on another device.
Idle Autos Dialog
Warzone Idle’s auto-advancements (such as auto-conquer, auto-smelt, etc) are now all collected together in the new Autos Dialog
This makes it easy to enable/disable each one on a single screen, instead of having to scroll down the advancements tab to find the checkbox to turn them on or off.
Advanced Map Processing
Warzone has an entirely new internal map processing system. When a new Warzone map is published, it now will be made into a new map format that offers several advantages over the current map format:
- Edges are aligned: If two territories share a border, that shared border is identified and aligned to perfectly match the shared border. This fixes up cases where the map author had two adjacent territories that shared a border but weren’t sharing the exact same nodes.
- Completely overlapped territories: Two territories occupying the same space is disallowed per Warzone map requirements, but previously this was only enforced manually, which often led to mistakes making it into a public map. To create the effect of territories-within-territories, map authors are supposed to cut a hole in the outer territory to fit the inner one. However, if they fail to do this, it could lead to situations where one of the territories is not selectable and hence the map is unplayable.
The new map processing can now detect when a territory is completely overlapped and alert the map author to the issue, so that it can be fixed before the map goes public. - Partially overlapping territories: While territories are never supposed to overlap, it’s not unusual for there to be slight accidental overlap between neighboring territories. This doesn’t create an issue with Warzone, but maps look better when the borders are clean and precise. Therefore, the new map processing handles this automatically, and will snap borders to align with neighboring territories to create a clean look with no overlaps.
If two territories have significant overlap, but without completely enveloping one territory, then the new processing will pick one territory arbitrarily to “win” and shrink the other one so that there is no overlap. - Better optimization: Having shared edges allows Warzone to further optimize maps, since optimizing without shared edges could leave edges overlapping, or with holes between territories. Now, a shared edge can be optimized once and applied to both territories, which leads to much cleaner looking and better performing maps.
- Level-of-detail: In large maps, the new map processing can make multiple versions of each territory with varying levels of detail. The client can then select which version to use based on the zoom level: When you’re zoomed all the way out, you don’t need every detail rendered, so you can save on performance by rendering a low-polygon version of that territory.
- 3D edge optimization: Since Warzone now identifies which edges of territories are shared with neighboring territories, it can save performance by only generating the 3D sides of territories on edges that aren’t shared. this further increases the performance of 3D maps.
The net result of all of this is that, once this feature is fully rolled out, maps will perform better, look better, and be more reliable.
If you want a sneak peek, you can enable the new map format on the Change Experimental Settings page.
Fizzer AMA
This Wednesday, January 28th at 11am PDT, Fizzer will be doing an Ask-Me-Anything session live on twitch! Feel free to drop in and ask any questions you have! If you can’t make it, you can post your questions to this thread and view the recording of your question after it’s over.
Other Changes
- All: Added visual separators to table rows, such as the Recipe Stats table and the statistics Players table.
- All: The clan wars map page now specifies how many territories are remaining to be given out before the season ends.
- Classic: The statistics dialog now highlights yourself / your team, and always puts yourself at the top of the list.
- Classic: The Mega Strategy Pack now unlocks commanders.
- Classic: Added guides for Attack Only, Transfer Only, Blockade Card, Emergency Blockade Card, Order Priority Card, Order Delay Card, Invite Via Code, and Joining Auto Games.
- Idle: Fixed auto-artifact-swapper giving errors if you’re upgrading an equipped artifact of a higher rarity than one it wants to equip.
- Idle: Fixed battle points not saving to the server after a battle failed to start.
- Idle: Fixed arena rewards not popping up while the artifacts dialog was open.
- Website: Fixed checkboxes sometimes not registering that they were clicked.
- Website: Fixed layout issue on Clan War Players page.
- Website: Fixed spacing between rows in tournament brackets.
- Website: Fixed not being able to un-like a community level that isn’t public anymore.
- Mods: Fixed a bug that could cause a stack overflow if a player had negative gold.
- Mods: Fixed creating mega games with mods that used the Server_Created hook.