Warzone has just been updated to version 4.08.2! This update marks the official launch of the UJS client!

The UJS client is the best way to play Warzone from computers (from iOS or Android you should continue to use the app.) It loads much more quickly than the Flash or Unity clients, and also don’t require a plugin like the Flash client does.

All players switched into UJS mode

Shortly after this update goes live, I’ll switch all players who play on the website to use the new UJS client instead of the old Flash/Unity clients.

Of course, you can always switch back if you have an issue with it. But if you do, please let me know why!

App Update

Version 4.08.2 of the Android and iOS apps will be delivered to the app stores soon. This version fixes a bunch of bugs (basically all of the non-critical bugs that have been reported to me while I was busy working on UJS). For the full list of fixes, see the Changelog below.

What’s next

This update marks a major turning point in the history of Warzone. With the UJS client fixing the slow-Unity-WebGL-performance problem, it means that we have finally accomplished the goal of the 2-year Unity project: One user interface that works well on all platforms (iOS/Android/Web).

What does this mean for the future? It means we can finally get back to adding new features! For the first time in two years, my primary focus is adding to the game again. I’m excited to get back to it, as it’s what I love doing.

As if that wasn’t enough, I’m going to start streaming my development of Warzone again, as I did last year. I’m not announcing yet what the first feature I’ll be working on is. You’ll have to tune into the stream to find out!

Most of the streams will take place from around 1pm to around 5pm PST. They’ll be broadcast at twitch.tv/FizzerWL so give a follow if you want to be notified when they go live. I plan to begin as soon as I can finish the aforementioned iOS/Android update.

Exciting times are ahead!

Full Changelog

4.08.2:
– Website: Moved “Custom Game” link from the bottom of the play page to the single-player drop-down menu.
– Unity: Updated Unity to 2017.4.10f1.
– Unity: Fixed a bug that could cause chat to overlap the game when rotating your device.
– Unity: Fixed a bug that could cause the app to temporarily freeze while websockets were connecting.
– Unity: Tweaked number of tick marks on the graphs to better accommodate small phones.
– Unity: Fixed a bug that caused Small Earth Board Map to have some flickering on Moto G phones. Thanks to Karl for reporting this.
– Unity: If maps can’t be downloaded due to your device’s date/time being set incorrectly, the app now notifies you of this instead of giving an generic error.
– Unity WebGL: Fixed a bug that allowed pasting more text into a text box than was allowed, resulting in errors.
– Unity/UJS: Chat no longer scrolls to the bottom if it’s not already near the bottom. This allows you to scroll up and read earlier chat without it jumping back to the bottom when someone says something.
– Unity/UJS: Fixed a bug that could cause an error in commerce NLC games.
– Unity/UJS: Fixed a bug that caused an error when inserting invalid numbers into card weight box. Thanks to ReddRush1 for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed minification bug for improved performance. Thanks to Muli for reporting this.

Prior to this update, there were three small big-fix updates that weren’t big enough to deserve a blog post on their own. Here’s the change logs from them:

4.08.1.1:
– UJS: Open Games list now returns commerce and modded games.
– UJS: Fixed a bug that made the Commerce Game checkbox not appear in Army Settings.
– Flash: Fixed “Open in UJS” link.

4.08.1.2:
– UJS: Enabled blockade dialog, as well as many other dialogs, to be draggable by their header. This makes them easier to move around. Thanks to elbee for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed double question mark in single-player game URLs. Thanks to DanWL for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed enter key inserting newlines into chat box. Thanks to 89thlap for reporting this.
– Website: On the Switch Mode page, removed the word “default” from next to Unity and put it next to UJS.

4.08.1.3:
– UJS: Adjusted the way the chat button responds to clicks+drags to make it more reliable to click. Thanks to krunx for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed loading community level saves. Thanks to DanWL for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed sorting friends on Create Game page. Thanks to DanWL for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed searching for friends on the Create Game page. Thanks to DanWL for reporting this.
– Website: Fixed tournament names. Thanks to celticfridge for reporting this.

Warzone has just been updated to version 4.08.1! This update brings more features to UJS, and a few fixes and improvements to the website. Here’s what’s changed:

– UJS: UJS is now the default web mode for new players.
– UJS: Added toasts (boxes in the top right that tell you when you earn points or unlock achievements)
– UJS: Added level-up dialog.
– UJS: Added rules dialog for new players.
– UJS: Added quickmatch-template-unlock notification dialog.
– UJS: Added announcement support.
– UJS: Quickmatch real-time games now load in-process instead of redirecting. This improves performance and also makes the close button take you back to quickmatch instead of the multi-player dashboard.
– UJS: Fixed editing community level AI names and colors. Removed obsolete “edit details” link.
– UJS: Fixed editing custom scenarios with special units.
– Website: Removed “Promoted games” section of multi-player dashboard. These games are now included in the “Open Games” section.
– Website: Added a link to quickmatch on the multi-player dashboard.
– Website: Updated multi-player dashboard to use bootstrap for its layout.
– Website: The home page’s Play Now button now takes you straight to the tutorial for first-time visitors. It still takes you to the single player main menu once you’ve played at least one single-player game.
– Website: Fixed a bug that made Share On Facebook not work for players who didn’t sign into Warzone through Facebook.
– QM: Fixed a rare bug that could cause quickmatch to give an error. Thanks to DESTRUCTION for reporting this.
– Flash: When accessing commerce games or games with mods, it will now prompt you to open them in UJS intead of Unity.

Warzone has just been updated to 4.08.0! This update adds a bunch of features to the new UJS client.

UJS Create Game

When your account is in UJS mode, selecting Create Game under the multi-player menu, or Custom Game under Single Player, will now launch the new Create Game UI. This UI is much easier to use than the old Flash one, and also supports all the new Unity features such as commerce games and mods.

It’s similar to what you would see if you were in Unity mode, except that it loads in a fraction of a second instead of in over 30 seconds!

More importantly, this reduces our dependency on Flash even further. Now, the only thing that Warzone still depends on Flash for is for map creation.

Other UJS Improvements

– UJS: Implemented the add/remove players button in lobby.
– UJS: The app now sets the page URL so that game links can always be accessed from the address bar, just like Flash does.
– UJS: Made some optimizations for faster performance on all UJS pages.
– UJS: External links now open in a new window.
– UJS: Fixed team brackets in the lobby.

What’s next

The next step for UJS is to implement toasts, the level up screen, and the quickmatch template unlock screen. Toasts are the small popups in the top right that notify you when you receive points or unlock an achievement. This is the last thing to add to UJS before it can be declared feature-complete.

Warzone has just been updated to 4.07.7! This update contains some bug fixes and minor improvements.

This is a server update only. This means the server updates, as well as the Flash and UJS clients, but not the Unity client or iOS/Android app.

Here’s everything that changed:

– All: When creating fixed team open games, the game now gives a prompt confirming you really want to do this.
– All: Fixed a rare bug when publishing a community level that uses the army cap. Thanks to Panzerelite for reporting this.
– All: Fixed an issue when using the API with the Non Members Can Use Mods flag. Thanks to Krzystof for reporting this.
– All: Fixed a bug with boss4 that caused an error on community level 1157992.
– All: Fixed a rare bug that could cause invite notifications to be delayed and go out after a game had ended.
– Website: Fixed Share On Facebook. Thanks to DanWL for reporting this.
– Website: Fixed a bug that caused signing into an account in UJS or Flash mode to show the Play button immediately after signing in.
– Unity/UJS: When chat has plenty of room, it will give more space to the player’s name. Thanks to TBest for suggesting this.
– UJS: Fixed tooltips getting stuck in Firefox. Thanks to TStorm for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed bonus links with negative sizes, such as was seen on the United States Big map. Thanks to TStorm for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed recon card territory highlight. Thanks to Krzystof for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed the Add/Remove Players button so it at least tells you that it’s not implemented yet instead of not working. Thanks to TBest for reporting this.
– UJS: Fixed issue with opening/closing chat rapidly that would offset the screen. Thanks to TBest for reporting this.
– UJS: Removed the far right vertical line in the Statistics table since it was overlapping the scrollbar. Thanks to TBest for reporting this.

With these fixes, the UJS client is now looking much more solid than before! The next step is to get the Create Game UI working in UJS, so that it won’t have to fall back to Flash like it does today.

Do you play Warzone from your computer? Good news! The new UJS client is now available to everyone!

The UJS client is being developed as an alternative to playing the Unity or Flash clients in your browser. The Unity client takes a while to load, and the Flash client is missing many features. UJS is the best of both worlds — it loads quickly and does everything!

How quickly, you may ask? Well, I just tested loading a game and here’s how long it took for Chrome to load the same game in each mode on my PC:

Unity: 39 seconds
Flash: 3.5 seconds
UJS: 2 seconds

Yep, it’s even faster than the Flash client!

Note that the UJS client is still being developed. Some parts of the app don’t work yet in UJS, such as the ability to create games, or be notified of points you earn and achievements you unlock. These things are coming soon.

How to try it

It’s easy to try, and also easy to switch back if you don’t like it. Select your name in the upper right and select Account Settings:

Then select Web Mode:

You’ll see the option to easily switch your account between Unity, Flash, or UJS.

Let me know what you think!

Feel free to drop me a line! If you find bugs, please report them and I’ll do my best to fix them.

Warzone has just been updated to version 4.07.1! This update brings improvements and fixes to the game.

This blog post describes what’s new. In addition to the features below, this update will bring features from the previous updates to the mobile app, such as the new analyze tool for no-luck games.

This update is available right now for the website and standalone versions of the game. The Android app will be available soon, likely tonight or tomorrow. The iOS version should be available within a week.

The app can now read mail threads

Prior to this update, Warzone mails could only be read on the website at warzone.com. This created an issue where players who only play within the iOS or Android app would never even know if someone had sent them mail, and therefore never read it.

With this update, anytime you have unread mail the button in the top right corner will flash a small envelope icon. Tapping this and then tapping Mail will allow you to read and reply to mail threads directly in the app.

Fixes

– Unity: Pressing the enter key after clicking on the attack/transfer mode button no longer closes the attack/transfer dialog. Thanks to DanWL for reporting this.
– Unity: Fixed the positioning of the profile popup window on the lobby. Thanks to Muli for reporting this.
– Unity: Fixed a bug that made attack arrows appear from the destination territory when double-clicking to attack a territory. They should only appear on triple-clicks.
– Unity: Increased default map buffer to 3, to allow more space on the edges when zoomed in.
– Unity: Updated Unity to 2017.4
– Quickmatch: Fixed a bug that could cause templates to randomly check themselves.
– UJS: Fixed disabled buttons. Thanks to Master of the Dead for reporting this.

Warzone has just been updated to version 4.07.0! This update brings a bunch of improvements and fixes to the game.

This update is available on the website and standalone versions of the game now. The iOS and Android app won’t receive this update, because there was a lot of internal code churn I want to let it get tested for a bit before updating the apps. Both iOS and Android will get version 4.07.1 which will have this update’s features and should be released soon.

Analyze Graphs for no-luck games

You can now select Analyze Attack from the game menu in no-luck games (0% luck modifier, straight round) to get these graphs:

This allows you to easily see how many armies are killed by different numbers of attackers. This info was previously available in the attack/transfer dialog by typing in numbers into the armies box, however this new dialog makes it much easier to visualize.

This new dialog also has the new “defenders” tab, which allows seeing how many armies are killed on defense. This data wasn’t available previously without doing the math yourself, so it’s a very useful tool!

Other Changes

– All: History no longer needs to be downloaded from the server a game you’ve had open from the start, as is common in real-time games.
– All: Fixed a bug that could cause an error when changing perspectives in history. Thanks to Min34 for reporting this.
– Unity: Fixed a bug that caused an error if you pressed escape just as the turn was advancing.
– Unity: Player names now use a fixed font size instead of auto-sizing.
– Unity: Fixed a bug that made loading replays of community levels from the website sometimes cause an error. Thanks to Muli for reporting this.
– Quickmatch: All multi-day games now honor vacations.
– Quickmatch: When waiting for a real-time game, the templates now show your rating, setting icons, and thumbnail.
– Quickmatch: Leaderboard buttons are now colored, blue = template, green = built-in category, red = country.
– Quickmatch: Templates with 0 votes are now automatically deleted. This happens once every 24 hours.
– Quickmatch: All 1v1 templates no longer allow “booted players turn into AIs”. This fixes players from saying “surrendered” when they get booted, such as commonly happened on Imp Rom LD template.
– Quickmatch: If a template falls off the top 40 and then re-makes the top 40 and you unlock it for a second time, it will now pop up an alert letting you know that it unlocked instead of silently unlocking. Thanks to Nemo for reporting this.
– Website: Fixed a bug on profile pages of invited but not-yet-signed-up players. Thanks to DanWL for reporting this.

UJS

UJS (originally announced here) is a tool for converting Unity apps to Javascript that I’m working on.

UJS has been expanded a lot in this update, but it still has a ways to go before it can fully convert the entire Unity app. Nevertheless, it’s now possible to view Map Preview links using the UJS tool. To give it a shot, add “&Mode=UJS” to the end of a map preview url, for example: https://www.warzone.com/SinglePlayer?PreviewMap=13682&Mode=UJS

This is considered an experimental alpha at this point, but if you try it out let me know what you think!

This game is now 10 years old! It’s been a long journey from where WarLight started:

I started this game thinking I’d just play a few games with my friends and move on. I never thought it would turn into what it has today — thanks mostly to the great community! Thanks so much for coming on this journey with me. I look forward to the next 10!

Warzone has just been updated to version 4.06.0! This update brings leaderboards to the Quickmatch system, as well as other fixes and improvements.

The website and standalone versions are updated now. The Android app will be updated within an hour or so. iOS devices will not receive this update.

Here’s the full change log:
– Quickmatch: Added leaderboards. If your global rating is 200 or higher, you’ll now see a “Leaderboards” button appear in the Quickmatch page.
– Quickmatch: Fixed duplicate “country” ratings. Thanks to Timiniator for reporting this.
– Unity: If you issue an attack, then remove all of the armies from the source territory of that attack, then open the attack/transfer dialog again, the text box now defaults to “0” so that selecting Okay will now remove the attack without having to manually type a “0” into the box.
– Unity: Fixed a bug that made changing perspectives in history give an error.
– All: The “Retrieve older messages” button no longer appears on games without any chat.
– All: Updated loading images.
– Website: Improved the tooltips on the Points page. Thanks to EFHIII for reporting this.
– Website: Updated Press page.
– Android/iOS: Fixed a bug that could cause parts of a chat message you’re typing to be lost when using the “enter” key on the software keyboard. Thanks to MGO for reporting this.

Warzone has just been updated to version 4.05.1! This update fixes some bugs, and makes some improvements throughout the app. Basically, this update contains all the fixes and improvements that were reported to me while I was working on UJS over the last month.

The website and standalone versions are updated now. The Android app will be updated within a day or two, and the iOS app will be updated within a week or two.

Here’s what’s changed:

– All: Clicking “modify orders” while a game is past or very near the boot timer will now present a confirmation message, ensuring you actually want to do this and risk getting booted.
– Quickmatch: When creating a 1v1 between two players with multiple templates checked, some random variance is now applied when deciding the template, instead of just picking the one with the most similar rating. This creates more template variety between players who play often.
– Quickmatch: Fixed a bug with memberships expiring that could make templates un-changable.
– Unity: Reduced memory usage. This should fix the “Your device has run out of memory” error that some people were getting.
– Unity: Updated Unity version from 2017.2 to 2017.3.
– Unity: Updated layout of Quickmatch page.
– Unity: The map browser now has a checkbox “Hide locked maps” that can be used to hide or show maps you haven’t unlocked yet.
– Unity: The store now always shows coin prices, instead of only showing coin prices if you could afford it.
– Unity: Fixed a bug that could make the map unnecessarily zoom in if an animation played near the edge of the screen.
– Unity: Fixed “1 army per turn per turn” text. Thanks to saftschachtel for reporting this.
– Unity: Fixed several bugs that could cause errors when entering numbers greater than 2 billion into number fields.
– Unity: Fixed a bug that allowed the settings panel to allow opening multiple mini profile dialogs. Thanks to EFHIII for reporting this.
– Website: The WebGL app should load faster on repeated loads now. In Firefox, my computer can refresh the WebGL app in less than 5 seconds. Chrome is still much slower, so I still recommend using Firefox.
– Website: Updated a few pages to be more mobile-friendly, most notably the Map page.
– Website: Added receive card dialog setting to account settings page.
– Website: Fixed a bug that caused some players to get an error message when accessing quickmatch through the website.
– Website: Fixed a bug that made the radio buttons unclickable on the Create Custom Coin Game page. Thanks to MaikMcJuggle for reporting this.
– Website: Fixed the tournament links on a mobile device. Thanks to Derfellios for reporting this.
– Website: Fixed a bug that made the blacklist not work in Unity WebGL in some circumstances. Thanks to neal for reporting this.
– Website: Fixed a bug that could cause an error in Microsoft Edge when using the arrow keys to navigate between All/RealTime/MultiDay buttons. Thanks to Otto von Bismarck for reporting this.
– Flash: Fixed a bug with the redirect-to-unity prompt that appears when trying to open a Unity-only game.