Comments - Gizmotron

I plan to have another upload ready on June 6th, 2024. nothing special or exciting for this upload. I'm just correcting missing unit icons, red cubes (aka misnamed models), and other truly mundane things. I will take another look at revising the original SP campaign missions... but that's about it.

there won't be any special gameplay changes for the next upload.

as for Discord: I'm sure it is great for real time chat and instant messaging. it is not useful (IMO) for complex discussion.

I found that a large portion of the Discord content was new people all asking me the same three or four questions over and over again. nobody appears to bother scrolling through all the content to see if the question had already been answered.

it's just a never-ending stream of content that lacks any sort of formal organizing principles.

I hated my Discord experience so much that I set up a forum to deal with concerns and questions in a more organized manner. I read all of the forum posts and have been taking corrective action based on the suggestions provided there.

I have to admit, that after 12 years of development, I'm starting to focus on other things. I plan a new upload for 06/06/2024 and a final upload on 09/02/2025. (the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II) I probably won't include dozens of new SP campaigns as I had ambitiously planned years ago. there are roughly 480 new missions included. and, they cover such a broad range of times and places that I figured it would be easier to just leave them in the mission menu and let people pick and choose the ones they like. honestly, I don't feel like devoting all of the time required to scripting the campaign sequences. a lot of people wanted every mission to have cutscenes and objectives... and, honestly, some of the maps are so complex that I think it's enough that they're out there. the Budapest and Odessa maps were both massive undertakings. cutscenes can gobble up a lot of memory quickly... so, for some of the big maps it's going to lead to game crashes.

have you been able to successfully play the original, unaltered game yet?
the game needs to be installed on the C drive in Program Files (x86).
you paste the fully extracted mod Data and video folders inside of the Axis & Allies folder inside of the Atari folder.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Atari\Axis & Allies\Data

sometimes people have trouble playing the game because they need an authorization key. another common problem is that this mod only works for the English language version of the game. so, if you got another language version it might not function properly.

had to take some time off from the mod to tackle other things. I've started focusing on misnamed models, missing names, missing unit icons, and incorrect/missing unit skins.

I focused mostly on map-making for the last upload because I needed a break from units, regiments, and the related minutia.

if people want to post new SP mission packs or campaigns as a new add-on file, I encourage that.

Germany, Russian, and the USA can be very OP in the WW2 Metagame because I haven't studied how to restrict or eliminate technologies. if I could, for example, force players to wait for certain technologies to become available I believe this would help the WW2 game immensely.

unfortunately, the enemy deploying buildings INSIDE the player's sphere of influence was something that I commonly saw in the original game. I have made the AI far more aggressive at deploying buildings and units, so this inherent flaw in the original AI becomes far more pronounced.

the usual late-war units. I don't believe I put too many restrictions in the mission, though. so, you can probably expect to see a ton of Panzer Is, Panzer IIs, and StG.III Gs coming at you from the Mechanized HQ.

the German AI generals are Gustav-Adolf von Zangen and Kurt Student. so, you will see some German paratroopers being used every now and then.

since this program is over a decade old it needs to be installed in the Programs x86 folder in the latest version of Windows to function properly.

the mod STILL needs to be installed the C-Drive. if you have installed the mod on another drive there will be a LOT of missing skins!

I've included Eben Emael, Liege, Hanut, Gembloux, Sedan, Montcornet and a few other missions with Allied fortifications.

Honestly felt it was more interesting to make an Operation Dragoon map than on D-Day. A new Canadian D-Day mission has been included. I will update the original SP maps again for the next upload. By that time, I'll have a better idea of where to relocate the missions.

plan to post an update by the end of the month. I've made a lot of changes, but it's hard to articulate all of them. I've focused on game play balance.

honestly, most of my efforts have been on map building. the new upload will only have the original SP campaigns.

there are 425 new missions included. (some of them go back to 2018). over 100 of them focus on things that are NOT traditionally part of the WW2 narrative. I felt it would be simpler to include them in the skirmish map menu and let people test them out as they saw fit.

a lot of the maps don't have objectives... which some people objected to.

I plan on creating briefings, defeat debriefings, and victory debriefings for each map at a later time. some of the maps will probably just have the objective of "defeat all enemies". certain maps like Budapest and Leningrad are complex enough that I think THIS should be enough.

as much as I love this idea... I'm going to have to pass on implementing this fully in the next upload. now that I've improved the anti-tank guns and weakened the artillery mech and artillery tank units it doesn't feel quite as essential.

I'm not going to be able to tackle the other issues I'd like to fix AND get this done before August. sometimes life and responsibilities just sorta get in the way.

this idea has a lot of merit. however, I don't have enough time to use the concept before August of 2023. I have the longest work hours of the year at my job in front of me... and I already have a lot of other things planned that still need to be finished.

the concept is solid. and I'll definitely code-test it later this year.

for the next upload I intend to revise a number of the WW2 Metagame RMC maps. if I can make them larger and add in more regions of water, I think this MIGHT dramatically reduce the problem of the Shipyard HQ - if not solve it completely.

Uncommon Valor uses 88nosebleed's excellent WW2 map revisions. this set of maps was created before our shipyards were a practical aspect of the game. so, many of the maps are too small to allow the successful use of shipyard HQs.

I added a forum post here for further discussion
Moddb.com

yes, it's been quite awhile. I only do mod-work when I have spare time. my job and a death of a family member have certainly put me behind schedule. I do plan to release another upload by this summer. (August)

yeah... had a death in the family. so, I had good reasons for being away. but, I still do this for fun when I'm not at work.

if you're talking about a bare bones computer without a good graphics card... I would say 768x768 is the largest you could go. there could still be lag issues, though.

if you have a solid graphics card the biggest maps, I find 896x896 to be a very reliable size for larger maps.

the largest map I have always managed to complete in offline play would be 1024x1024 (1,048,576 ground surface units)

if you know that a large portion of the map is going to be covered in water 1152x1152 is the largest map I've managed to consistently finish during offline play.

I don't believe either of these maps will work in the vanilla game. not without a considerable amount of revision.

the Burma and Singapore maps were custom-built maps designed for the Uncommon Valor mod. they have a number of generals, units, regiments, buildings, and related restrictions that are not found in the original game.

I'm getting rid of the Burma maps. these were created on my old XP tower. I believe those files have been corrupted. I've tried updating them... and it's just not working.

Moddb.com

forum has been added

the infantry halftrack (with regimental summons) is being removed as an option for deployment. I'm keeping the unit in the game, however, because it's just too much work trying to get rid of them.

the problem with the infantry summons is that it increases the accumulation of experience points at an exponential rate. a player could recruit four vanilla halftrack regiments that each have four spawning units... once combat is engaged this creates sixteen additional regiments that add experience points to the game.

I haven't found a way to prevent the summoned regiments from gaining experience points. this means that a player can get thousands of XP points to use for special ops within a minute or two of fighting. it disrupts the balance of gameplay tremendously.

WW2 has an invisible map? never encountered that. I do know that the mod uses up a lot of resources and memory. I don't play WW2 mode and then switch over to SP campaign during the same gameplay session. I found that if I did that some of the WW2 game pieces would turn invisible. I'm including this advice for the next upload. remember, this game is well over 10 years old. we can't always predict how it will behave.

the new longer ranged artillery gave artillery tanks and halftrack artillery units an advantage that was simply too big. with their higher levels of attack damage, health, and defense... they were simply too powerful. they could also advance and retreat quickly so that it was difficult to neutralize them without airpower.

after researching multiple nations and historical usage for mechanized and armored artillery units, I decided to eliminate the bombard command from these regiments altogether. it felt necessary to balance out the game.

I couldn't get the friendly fire damage code to work. it resulted in units attacking friendlies in preference to enemies. that code should not be in the latest upload.

not yet. I'm going to look at the possibility of adding a forum to the Uncommon Valor page. I think there might be a Discord... something related to Axis and Allies... but I've never used Discord.

sure, I do have a list of things to look at... but it doesn't hurt to have another pair of eyes. you can send me a private message. one fellow started off with the nations going A-through-Z.

there are some things that are red cubes right now that I plan to change or eliminate altogether. I'm definitely getting rid of the Mechanized Regiments for Finland (since they didn't have any!)

which maps are demonstrating lag? I experienced lag and glitches on one of my old Burma maps. it might be that the files created on Windows XP are having problems interacting with Windows 10 or later.

having a dedicated graphics card is probably the best solution. an integrated graphics card will inevitably end up with lag and problems. the mod was created on a computer that has two graphics cards... and the heavy lifting was done by a Nvidia GeForce GTX with 3GB and 16 GB of Ram.

so, having a better graphics card is probably the best solution. my other box, where the mod doesn't work very well, only has one built-in graphics card.

not much of an expert on computers. but I would suggest reducing the graphics settings to the lowest settings and try to avoid playing on maps larger than 704x704. unfortunately, a lot of the new SP campaign missions ARE based on larger maps. the new Shanghai map, for example, is large and complicated. one thing that could help out is change the fog of war setting to FULL. with most of the map completely blacked out the game won't invest as many resources in animating things. that's all I can think of at the moment. a better computer would definitely help. the mod runs great on my gaming computer... but is very slow and clunky on my music-writing computer. and for me, it's all based on the relative performance of the graphics card for each machine.

for now, keep the graphics on the lowest settings and play on smaller skirmish maps.

sorry for the late reply. been doing stuff at work in real life. I'm not really aware of a discord server. I haven't played online games in about 20 years.

I thought I would have accomplished more by this time... but when you need to work long hours at the job and help people out... the mod-work gets put on the back burner. I do still work on it in my spare time. I'll try to post some pictures later in the month. a lot of the work I've done isn't flashy.

I've been working a lot lately... sorry for the VERY late reply. I am honestly not a tech-oriented guy. all I could suggest is reducing the graphics settings. the game is so very old that I can't think of anything else to suggest. I've noticed that the mod functions very well on my high-powered gaming computer... but when I try running it on my music writing computer it runs very slowly.

hopefully it's better than the older versions of mod. especially since I cut out 1.5 Gigs of memory usage.

I've been working a lot... so, I haven't really been here in awhile.

as per bad frame rates... without knowing anything about your computer, I can only suggest to turn down the graphics settings and avoid playing on maps larger than 704x704. (which would include most of the new SP campaign maps, ironically).

the original game needs to be installed with a Windows XP service pack 2 compatibility mode in order for the mod to work. the reason being is that 2/3rds of the files in the mod were created while I was using a Windows XP operating system.

this mod is a stand-alone patch. you should get rid of the older mod files, or set them aside in a different Data folder that the game doesn't automatically read.

I've had a lot of things going on in life right now, but I -DO- plan on posting an update.

you should probably archive this file (and other obsolete versions) - otherwise people will keep downloading it!