Welcome to World at War Online Developper's corner. Here you can find simple note form updates on progress being made by the programmers. The "To Do" button on the left takes you to a short list of programming tasks yet to be completed by the developpers (there are many other tasks that are not on the list). We appreciate everyone's patience with the time it is taking for the World at War Online to be complete, and provide this update area to let everyone know how development is progressing. Good Gaming!
July 8th: Nearly all major programming elements for the game are complete, and an alpha version is being prepared for testing. It is quite likely that the alpha version will be offered to anyone that pre ordered and is interested in assisting with testing the game. The alpha version will be fully functional, with the exception of the server connection portion, which is being redesigned. Player turns are contained within a file, which can be emailed. The server portion is being redesigned because of stability and reliability issues (we are changing platforms), and once complete will fully automate player turn transfers. The alpha version release date will be announced soon.
Dec. 06: - Completed submarine withdrawal from combat - Overhaul of AA gun rules and functionality - Enabled submarine first strike rules and casualty removal - Fixed issues with AA targeting tanks or air rules and AA guns rolling before other units
Oct 30,: During the past several months steady progress has been made in many areas. War declarations and rules have been completed, Improved units purchases completed, an edit mode was created and completed allowing players to customize games if desired. Submarine detection and combat completed, implemented activation of technologies successfully obtained, redesigned unit purchases and reinforced code to make it easier to allow future "head to head" play if desired (real time play), as well as many, many minor things and bug fixes. We are steadily getting closer to a Beta release and hope to be able to announce a firm date soon.
June 16th: Lots of progress in many areas. Save/load to and from file completed, in preparation of beta version allowing testers to play without requiring the server to be up at all times. Bugs fixed with German tank blitzing. Neutral country units can now be attacked. Created a player edit mode, allowing players to manually destroy units as part of the beta testing tools. Fixed some bugs with damaged battleships and with battleships retreating from combat. "Solo simulation" play enabled; allowing a single player to play all countries for beta tester purposes, simulation purposes, and for the game itselt allowing players to test strategies, etc. Removed requirement that game be connected to the server, therefor allowing email play for beta testers and solo play. Fixed some bugs with German rocket V1/V2 technology.
Apr 19: Technology development screen completed, rules for tech development completed, Russian military espionage enabled immediately when successfully developed. Full description of technologies added. Combat screen redesigned to include units that attack on a zero and modified to make the text description of rolls easier to read. V2 rocket technology separated from V1. Russian espionage combat effects completed.
Mar 31rst: Overhauled the combat system to allow saving of combat results at the end of each round, instead of at the end of all battles, which previously allowed players to reload a game and redo combat rolls. Modified the graphics showing what units are in combat. Did all combat roll modifications needed for sub pens, damaged sub pens and hit battleships. Changed military espionage to make it easier to use. Overhauled all technological development to allow saving of results after each roll (for same reason as combat system overhaul). Fixed a lot of bugs and improved functionality of many things. It's been a busy few weeks.
Mar 6th: Made German sub pens roll 3 dice when defending instead of 1. Made heavy bombers roll 2 dice when attacking instead of one. Did code allowing sub pens and battleships to be hit once and continue to fight at reduced capabilities.
Feb 14th: Unit interface rendered a bit more intuitive. Added arrows showing combat moves of units that survived combat to more easily show units that must be moved in non combat movement. Fixed various bugs.
Feb 7th: Completed code for Russian Military Espionage technology. If the Russian player has Military Espionage technology he can now choose an area in advance, which when attacked or defending will have all die roll results modified by one in Russia's favor.
Feb 4rth: Allowed players to reposition units on areas as they wish to a large extent, as opposed to having units be placed in a fixed way on areas. Allowed players to merge units together into a stack or split them off as they see fit. Also any units being transported by repositioned units are also themselves repositioned. Fixed various bugs found during testing of repositioning.
Jan 13th: Various bugs fixed also completed code for voluntary destruction of submarine pens and removal of reference to subs in the pen when destroyed.
Dec 23rd: Placement of newly built submarine pens completed
Dec 17th: Combat screen selection modified: units in sea zones that are not themselves being attacked when a sub pen in the same sea zone is being attacked are no longer added to combat.
Dec 10th: Air units entering a sea zone with an enemy sub pen in it are now offered the choice of attacking the pen instead of automatically attacking other enemy units in the sea zone.
Dec 9th: Code completed to separate sea zone attacks on a sub pen from a regular attack on other enemy units in the same sea zone.
Dec 6th: Submarine ability to enter pens completed, submarine ability to move and enter pens completed.
Oct 14th: Completed all preliminary code planning for implementation of sub pens, for entering, leaving, attacking, building and placing sub pens.
Aug. 19th: "Carrier week" Completed all code enabling fighters to land on aircraft carriers, launch from carriers, combat rules for carriers in combat with fighters launched from them and various other rule validations for fighters taking off from carriers, etc.
Aug. 8th: Created U.S. Special transports unit that can load up to two tanks or armored infantry instead of 1 regular infantry plus 1 tank or armored infantry. All rules validations for transport completed and tested.
Aug. 6th: Units retreating from a battle can now only retreat to on area from which an attack came from, as per the rules
Aug. 6th: Units retreating from a battle can now retreat onto a transport that unloaded them
Aug. 4rth:Completed preventing units from retreating to areas that they did not attack from