Version 1.3.1 released

I released a minor update (version 1.3.1) today; it has the following changes compared to previous version:

- Added a setting to define the odds, above which attacking unit will always win. This is by default 75%, but you can set it to any value between 70%-100% on 5% intervals. Value of 75% here means that whenever any player (human or AI) attacks with odds equal or better than that, the attack is considered to be so overwhelming that the defender does not have a chance against it. To disable this and get back the behaviour of version 1.3.0 and earlier, just set this to exactly 100% and it's like it used to be.

- Feature request: Settings for screen centering behaviour. You can disable centering on unit selection, and/or centering after unit has moved.

- Bugfix: Fixed a rare OpenGL ES crash when switching between the game and other applications. Occasionally happened while switching back to game after some time had already passed since playing, and Android had killed the graphics context already.

- Bugfix: Fixed a crash that sometimes occurs when last enemy unit was killed and AI then recruits a new unit in a town.

- Bugfix: Long range skirmisher can no longer be hit back when skirmish fails (thanks for the bugreport, this completely eluded me earlier!)

- Several variants of plains hex background textures to give a bit more varied appearance. I'll be tweaking these still a bit, also the forest hexes are going to see some variance in a future version ...

Version 1.3.0 released

Version 1.3.0 released, with the following bugfixes/improvements/feature requests implemented:

- Added setting to allow/disallow screen dimming
- Added setting to enable/disable a player color marker under units (disabled by default)
- Town names are now displayed always (including when under fog of war)
- Small villages have their own graphics now (seen in Hannibal campaign)
- Rule adjustment: Failed skirmishing has now 50% chance of hurting the skirmisher
- Minor bugfixes for savegame handling (skirmished enemy units don't lose skirmish status prematurely)
- Performance enhancements for Android 2.2 and later (2.1 is unaffected)
- AI performance optimizations (should be now somewhat faster on maps with larger distances between armies)
- Fixed one more rare Force Close issue

Version 1.3.0 is initially available on Google Play (Android Market), with Amazon Appstore version following up in nearby days if/when Amazon QA is passed.

A brief update on the Hannibal campaign

The Hannibal campaign is going to contain the following scenarios:

1. Siege of Saguntum
2. Battle of Rhone crossing
3. Battle of Ticinus
4. Battle of the Trebia
5. Battle of Lake Trasimene
6. Battle of Geronium

These are the main battles (or otherwise particularly noteworthy / interesting events) in Hannibal's advance towards Rome, before the notoriously famous battle of Cannae. Speaking of which ... Cannae itself is a battle for which I'm not yet sure if it will be added to the game; It was such a large event within a small area, that modelling it with the same game mechanics as smaller battles (smaller by order of magnitude) might not result in believable results. I'll try to check if I can do it though, as it would make a great addition to the campaign, as scenario #7 :-)

I'm planning on spending time to finish scenarios 4-6 on the next few weekends, and hopefully have a playtestable campaign available in April (but not promising exact release date though, I'm working on the game on my free time which is a very limited natural resource) ... by the way, if there's someone who'd like to be a playtester for the new scenarios before it hits the market, send me email to poprominfo AT gmail.com.

Meanwhile, I released now version 1.3.0, which is a bugfix and feature request release (the Rhone crossing scenario is also included, by accident. Its not finetuned yet). Details on the new release in the next blog post, which will follow up shortly!