The next Spring: 1944 release has finally arrived!
(click image for download link)


After about a year and half in development limbo (with some 1700 revisions in the repository) Operation Market Garden has finally made it to public-consumption stage. Folks who made this release excellent include (in no particular order): Evil4Zerggin, Tobi, koshi, SpikedHelmet, FLOZi, yuritch, neddie, carrepairer, smoth, the brains behind rapid/autohost support (det and licho), our dedicated testers/wiki editors (totbuae, godde, tiger88 and JAL leading the charge here), and artists who made maps for S44 or converted existing works to suit S44 better (SirArtturi, Nixa, Beherith, in addition to efforts by SpikedHelmet). This release is the culmination of a TON of effort by all of the above mentioned people (as well as many others who helped us with technical issues in #lua and #sy), and we hope you enjoy the result. Extra thanks to all the people who have made the Spring engine such an excellent platform for development.

Important news! We are establishing weekly game nights every Sunday at 5pm GMT. If you've wanted to check out S44 but felt intimidated by playing a 1v1 with a tester with thousands of hours up his/her sleeve, come join us in #s44 for Sunday evenings for awesome S44 matches, lessons, and generally good fun. Hope to see you there!

Note - We're rolling back the 1.51 release so we can fix a few more issues in our recently re-vamped supply gadget. In the meantime, 1.5 is still awesome! We'll get a fixed release out with the performance improvements as soon as we can. Thanks for the patience!

Changelog from v1.5:

Bugfixes:

• Fixed error in Partisan gadget when a partisan drop point died.
  
• Fixed crash in healthbars gadget.
• Con vehicles now get out of the way if 'pushed' so they don't prevent their own construction from occuring.
• Fixed crash in flaghandler
• Indirect fire accuracy code will now apply to mobile guns.
• Mortars will no longer blow each other up when firing in tight groups.
• Stuka will now target boats.
• AFP weapon range fixes.
• Various fx emit flares hidden.
• Stuart muzzleflash fixed.
• Took the gravity boots away from the US scout.
• Made it easier for pontoon raft to unload.
• German HQ no longer fires MG at tanks.
• Fixed LoS of British AT gun truck.

Balance:

• Infantry no longer drain logistics while firing - anywhere.
• Planes lose sortie duration at a lower rate while under fire (from 4 per second to 3 per second).
• AA weapons 10% shorter range.

Efficiency improvements/cosmetic changes:

• Infantry supply and vehicle ammo gadgets now MUCH MUCH faster! This should improve endgame performance noticeably for everyone. Flozi ftw!
• New shader for flags! They flap in the breeze and turn with the wind! (Thanks jK!)
• Flag radii now show at icon range.
• "Morph" changed to "deploy".
• "Su" changed to "SU" for various soviet vehicles.
• Paratroopers no longer leave corpses when killed in the air.
• Soviet supply truck morphs into a cardinal direction.
• V1s don't give air raid siren warning.
• Toned down tank reflectiveness/specular.
• A series of tweaks to vehicle textures.
• Mine clearing is now a queue-able map command.
• Fixed descriptions for Glider sortie and US assault squad.
• Added widget to show line of fire for AP weapons.
• Added widget to provide a 'control panel' for aircraft when they enter the map.
• Modified customFormations2 widget to allow line commands to single units.
• Removed night, darkening, chilichat, crudemenu, old customFormations widgets.
• Enabled buildETA, 1944 Icon Distance and doubleclick fight by default.

That's all for now, hope to see you ingame! If you have any questions, comments, or other feedback, you can find the developers at our forum.

Nice paratroopers. I really love a good farmers market.

man, this has come a loong way over the years

lookin sexy

Looks amazing.

A reason for me to play Spring again.

The changelog really shows what a long way this mod has come. Hopefully I can get a few games I always loved s44 but could hardly get any games.

Anybody with Spring installed on their computer, and not playing S44 is, imo, rather silly :)

Woooo! Bring on icon wars with 5% glam

Great job! I enjoyed quite a number of games over the last few weeks :)

I strongly encourage everyone to try out this mod, though it needs a few games to get accustomed to its unique features...

guys, you should upload some replays with nice action, see this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=24234

*sigh*

If you don't mind my asking, when might we see a version compatible with .86?
In .85 and .86 using 1.53 or 1.54 RC3 I get spammed with this error.

Up-to-date version available from #s44 channel on lobby

Could you post a link to it here? I don't have a lobby account, never really been into the multiplayer aspect of strategy games on account of my being abhorrently crap at them.

Main build:

http://spring1944.net/files/Build/S44v1 ... enrote.sdz

Patch:
http://spring1944.net/files/Build/S44v1 ... iveMAX.sdz

There will be a proper release at some point.. sometime... in the future... (we may have been saying this for months ).

Still getting the same error, on both .86 and .85 :/
Is there anything specific I need to do to get it to work? I've done a completely clean installation each time I install one of the versions of Spring.

Could I get some form of answer on this? I'm getting the same error in pre-1.59 on Spring 0.87.
Does this mod actually work on versions above 0.82? Is there something I need to do to get it to work? Is the CRAIG AI causing this problem?

Yes, S44 is very much compatible with recent versions of spring. We've been playing it regularly on every spring build for about five years

The consistency of your error suggests to me that you're not actually loading newer versions of the game (a unitID lua error is something that won't be specific to one system, and nobody else who is playing has run into something similar - that we've heard of - at least since MG 1.53). We can probalby rule out CRAIG, as CRAIG shouldn't be able to cause a crash in the flag gadget.

Could you please upload 1) a demo from 1.59 + spring 87 in which the error occurs and 2) the infolog from that demo (using pastebin)?

Got it to work if I didn't change any of the game options, how odd.
When I do, I get this error:
http://pastebin.com/mDfzRMxw
Demo:
http://filesmelt.com/dl/20120311_174727 ... _V3_87.sdf

Going to do some more thorough testing to determine what option or combination of options causes the crash.

EDIT: I've found that setting the unit limit higher than about 7900 (8000 is cert error. trying to isolate exact unit limit that causes error) causes the error.

EDIT2: Found that anything higher than 7996 on 1944_Road_To_Rome_V3 causes the error. Another unusual thing i've noticed is that at 7997, all the flags spawn, but the players don't. From 7998 to 8000, progressively less flags spawn before the error hits until none spawn at all.
Gonna try on different maps with more and less bots, see if that has an effect as well.

On the same map, removing 2 out of 3 of the bots means no error even at 8000. Dunno yet what unit limit would cause the error to reappear. Gonna look at different maps first.

EDIT3: On 1944_Terra_Firma, with 3 bots and myself, if I set the unit limit higher than 7993, that causes the error as well.
It would seem this error is affected by the number of players and bots, and the amount of flags on the map.

EDIT4: Unrelated to the above bug, vehicles always seem to get stuck on the next vehicle in the build queue. Means I have to babysit my yards and construct them one button press at a time, and absolutely cripples the AI as they can't get their vehicles out of the yards. AI construction vehicles seem to get out fine, or at least most of the time.

EDIT5: Unrelated to bugs in general but rather curiosity; are there plans to have CRAIG utilise air? I've never actually noticed the AI use them, even when set to hard.
Also, are there plans to implement heavier bomber aircraft and correspondingly heavier AA guns?
I apologise if these questions are rather annoying or have been asked before.

Heavier aircraft (and corresponding AA): probably no. They would be too large for our scale (so much so that with their real inaccuracy you'd risk getting your own base bombed by your B-17s or some such).