Panzer Battles Updates

[Strela]

The legacy short cut is in the windows menu under John Tiller Software.

This is true for North Africa 1941, but no Legacy short cuts were created in Kursk or Normandy start menu folders.

We actually removed the shortcut in North Africa in the latest patch as it was using incorrect directories.

The legacy shortcut for all three titles is in the Start Menu under John Tiller Software. You should be able to copy this to anywhere you want it.

David

[Strela]

Can't say I'm a fan of the new selection screen, there's no contrast. There's supposed to be a
shortcut for the legacy screen but I can't find it.

I agree, it's a bummer that legacy screens were removed.

I've found out however that you can still use legacy screens by making a shortcut of the .exe file, going to properties and adding " -d" at the end of the target folder.

It should look like this.

Thanks for that, that's a bit better.

The legacy short cut is in the windows menu under John Tiller Software. Just copy it onto your desk top and it will work fine. Please note that the legacy screen uses selection screen 16. They have been setup to improve the contrast. If you want the 'blank' legacy screen then just rename or delete selection screen 16.

Finally, the issue you're seeing is because you have a screen resolution of less than 800 vertically. Without the -d flag it will randomly select an image - usually something that doesn't help the contrast as you have shown. We may go and default to a single screen going forward for low resolution screens, but I need to talk to Berto about that.

David

Thanks for the renaming tip, that's much better. There's no legacy shortcut in the menu folder (This is for BoN btw), also there's  a couple of other little things I've noticed. There's no favicon anymore, it's just the generic windows one; and the title screen for BoN doesn't scale for smaller screens so it's cut off at the top and bottom. This has actually been the case since 1.00

The start screen is hard coded at 1440 x 1080 resolution. It does not scale. I'm guessing you have a 1366 resolution laptop and yes, every game will look truncated on the cover screen on that or lesser resolutions.

[Strela]

...a couple of other little things I've noticed. There's no favicon anymore, it's just the generic windows one

I can also confirm this, it is a minor detail but it's still there. As can be seen here.

I need to talk to Berto on this. I decided to update all the iconology and this has in the main worked. We thought the current problem with Favicons not changing was due to old icon caching in Windows and would self correct.

That doesn't appear to be the case and I proved it happens on new machines as I did a clean install on a brand new laptop recently.

It's weird as some programs have updated their icons perfectly and others not.

David

[Strela]

One of the menu pictures has a German tank that is about to be attacked by a T-Rex.  Was that the real Allied secret weapon at Normandy?

The name of the file in the screen directory is:

FileSelDialogBackground3.bmp

Yes, it's called an 'Easter egg'!

It's also there in Kursk and will be in the demo also. Just a bit of whimsical fun.

David

[Strela]

Please add the TAB feature also to Panzer Campaigns with the next updates, its great !

It is great! We will discuss this with John Tiller, but he has much less time than the WDS team to fix these kind of things.

David

[wiggum]

Please add the TAB feature also to Panzer Campaigns with the next updates, its great !

It is great! We will discuss this with John Tiller, but he has much less time than the WDS team to fix these kind of things.

David

So you guys have access to the Panzer Battles source code but not the Panzer Campaigns code ?
Honestly i think you guys should have access to both so new features and bug fixes can be included faster.

[Pinetree]

The legacy short cut is in the windows menu under John Tiller Software.

This is true for North Africa 1941, but no Legacy short cuts were created in Kursk or Normandy start menu folders.

We actually removed the shortcut in North Africa in the latest patch as it was using incorrect directories.

The legacy shortcut for all three titles is in the Start Menu under John Tiller Software. You should be able to copy this to anywhere you want it.

David

No it isn't. Here's what's in the start menu folder, I've had to open the folder in explorer as Win10 mixes all my JTS games together in the start menu so it's hard to find what's what:


As you can see, there is no legacy shortcut.

The start screen is hard coded at 1440 x 1080 resolution. It does not scale. I'm guessing you have a 1366 resolution laptop and yes, every game will look truncated on the cover screen on that or lesser resolutions.

Hmm, I've just resized the cover bmp to 768 height and now it fits perfectly. Why couldn't you do the same? 1366 x 768 resolution is still extremely common, you could easily have a cover bmp for each of the common resolutions and get the game to ask for the user's resolution or get it through an api call.

[Strela]

Thanks Pinetree,

I'm currently travelling and can't check my builds, but I believe you're correct. The legacy shortcuts only appear if you install the complete (latest) build, not apply the patch to upgrade an earlier build.

Unfortunately, using Winzip and other tools for patching gives us limited capability to make changed beyond overwriting files.

As far as the cover screen size, thanks for the suggestions. We will consider it.

David

[Simulacra53]

Please add the TAB feature also to Panzer Campaigns with the next updates, its great !

It is great! We will discuss this with John Tiller, but he has much less time than the WDS team to fix these kind of things.

David

Not sure, but for a company that still bears his name and still seems to carry some popularity it is surprising how little time he seems to have for these games, sorry.

If it were not for WDS and a still active modding community these games would be dead - no longer generating sales beyond the occasional grognard who doesn’t care about having to endure late 1990-ies graphics.

With all respect, he should find some more time.

[wiggum]

Please add the TAB feature also to Panzer Campaigns with the next updates, its great !

It is great! We will discuss this with John Tiller, but he has much less time than the WDS team to fix these kind of things.

David

Not sure, but for a company that still bears his name and still seems to carry some popularity it is surprising how little time he seems to have for these games, sorry.

If it were not for WDS and a still active modding community these games would be dead - no longer generating sales beyond the occasional grognard who doesn’t care about having to endure late 1990-ies graphics.

With all respect, he should find some more time.

True. And as i pointed out already. If he has so little time maybe he should give the WDS guys access to the source code and the documentation (there should be one) so they can fix stuff (bugs) and add new features.

Also i agree, without Jison and the WDS guys i dont see myself playing Tiller games in the year 2019.
But thankfully the customer service (free upgrades to Gold Version, Demos, technical support) is great.

I found a bug that has been reported to John Tiller by WDS. Its a nasty bug that basically prevents the AI from doing assaults across rivers. It was a month ago this was reported to him and i was also told that he has little time.
I still hope it will get fixed by John.