Patch and saved games

[Petrus58]

Firstly thanks for the patch. I had pretty much stopped playing due the memory Vista 32 issue. However, after installing, all of my save games have gone! I didn't see any mention of this in the read me notes. Any help?

[GoodGuy]

I installed the patch and tested the first US mission, because I figured all the savegames are gone (at least not showing up in the list).

I can't finish the first US mission now, i can't seem to find the trigger anymore. All Germans dead.

[Petrus58]

I also played the first US mission, but when I try to load a saved game it freezes. The same happens when I try to start either the Brit of German campaign. This never occured pre-patch.

[Petrus58]

I have no idea why, but restarting my pc solved my problem - everything runs fine now!

[Prattboy9394]

please share improvements that you notice

[Sneaksie]

There is a way to make old between-missions saves work (saves made during missions won't load). Go to users\player1 directory - there are many folders here with names like save1, autoend... Folders which contain only two files - header.xml and reservs.sav - are saves made between missions (you can delete folders which contain more files since these saves taken during mission are not useful anymore).

To make between mission saves appear in the game again, edit header.xml and change value in <version> tag to 1.1.0. You can do the same with saves taken during mission, but they won't load.

[Sneaksie]

GoodGuy, it's strange since mission logic wasn't changed. If you can't finish the mission, please send the save (zipped) to dina@1c.ru, we'll look what's up.

[Flavious]

I think I'll just start my campaign over again. The campaigns are short, anyway, and the patched game will be more fun to play from the beginning.

[GoodGuy]

GoodGuy, it's strange since mission logic wasn't changed. If you can't finish the mission, please send the save (zipped) to dina@1c.ru, we'll look what's up.

Well, mission works fine, my ally's (yellow) artillery immobilized a german tank right at mission start (without me seeing it in the heat of the battle), so the tank was halted just behind a hill where i couldn't see it. I searched the whole map, killed inf survivors, tank crews, and finally found the german tank:

It had been immobilized OUTSIDE of the mission area, though, so my tanks couldn't go there.... and I couldn't get to the top of the hill either, as the top was right outside the mission area.

It took 5-10 minutes to find a way to fire at the tank.

Saving works fine now, no crashes when saving yet, no CTDs right in the middle of a game either.

[Petrus58]

My impressions of the patch are also v. positive. I no longer have any ctds, and have noticed a marked performance improvement. All in all I'm loving it! Just need more Brit vehicles!

[Prattboy9394]

my feelings are mixed in regards to the patch. Playing at half speed on a 3.5ghz dual core system, which ran butter smooth for me previously, i now notice the frame rate is jerkier. I imagine 1C deliberate decreased the frame updates to made it more playable on slower systems but now my armor cars and motorcycles move very rough, especially when i zoom in. Speaking of zooming in, some textures on german tanks seem less detailed. Once again, done to please the masses but I frown on this approach.

Also, at the Fald Pass mission for the Germans, I still get sniped by the 105mm everytime my motorcycle or sd.kfz fly across their field of view. The ally gunnery is so consistent as to be unbelievable. I can't wait for better support on modding so I can increase the dispersion for the ATs.

As for the smartpause, there is no smooth auto-panning to the trouble spot. What is seem in the video teaser is misleading, unless I'm doing something wrong.

[Sneaksie]

my feelings are mixed in regards to the patch. Playing at half speed on a 3.5ghz dual core system, which ran butter smooth for me previously, i now notice the frame rate is jerkier. I imagine 1C deliberate decreased the frame updates to made it more playable on slower systems but now my armor cars and motorcycles move very rough, especially when i zoom in. Speaking of zooming in, some textures on german tanks seem less detailed.

There shouldn't be any difference between 1.0 and 1.1 versions regarding movement smoothness and tank texture detail... Did you enable memory compatibility mode as described in readme? Is the model detail set to highest in game options?

To decrease howitzer accuracy, edit the Data\Guns\USA\105mm_Howitzer_M2A1.ini file (you need to extract it using Dr. Jones tool first).

Resulting accuracy can be changed by various ways. Look for strings

AimDistance 0 50 100 500 1000 1500 2000

AimRadius 0.1 0.3 0.8 4.5 7.5 10.0 20.0

these are aiming errors for worst gunner (skill 0). You can increase this values, and for example change 7.5m at 1000m error to 75m, anything you want (change errors on other distances too). This error decreases as gunner skill increases.

Shells also have Dispersion parameter (inherent property of the shell), you can change the dispersion of each shell type this way.

This is the dispersion of 10mm HE shell:

Dispersion 1000 0.4

[Prattboy9394]

Good info. I wish I have better luck using the sfs extractor. I put the .exe and Oudy's listfile.txt into the mission editor directory. I also have a config.xml file in the same directory which has a path to the sfs.exe. But when I run sfs.exe and open gamedata.sfs, all I get are a list of random HEX chars as filenames.

Can anyone that is familiar with this software tell me what else I'm missing? Much thanks.

[Oudy]

Prattboy

There are five files in the sfs extractor archive. All of the files need to be put in the MissionEditor directory along with the filelist.txt. Also make sure the directory you copy the SFS files to is different from your Theater of War directory. If you do this and still have problems, you'll have to ask Dr. Jones for help, but that should do it for you.

Oudy

[Piecekeeper]

After i changed the version file I cant save....got vista 64

[Sneaksie]

You can't save the file? It's the same access denied issue. Run the notepad using 'run as administrator' command.

[Piecekeeper]

of course....thanks.

[GoodGuy]

my feelings are mixed in regards to the patch. Playing at half speed on a 3.5ghz dual core system, which ran butter smooth for me previously, i now notice the frame rate is jerkier. I imagine 1C deliberate decreased the frame updates to made it more playable on slower systems but now my armor cars and motorcycles move very rough, especially when i zoom in. Speaking of zooming in, some textures on german tanks seem less detailed. Once again, done to please the masses but I frown on this approach.

I forgot to reply to this....

I can confirm this, frame rates are jerkier now, 3ghz quad core (AMD X4 940). It's pretty much as choppy as with the unpatched retail version now, again. Either installing the AMD dual core optimizer or the AMD Cool+Quiet drivers (i can't tell which one may have improved things, since I installed them both before restarting TOW2) gave me a significant performance boost -> with the unpatched retail version.

Maybe the boost came from the dual core optimizer, as TOW2 doesn't use 4 cores.

After this patch, things got somewhat jerky, especially at FF game speed, where it used to be rather smooth before the patch.

What happened there?

There shouldn't be any difference between 1.0 and 1.1 versions regarding movement smoothness and tank texture detail... Did you enable memory compatibility mode as described in readme?

I can't find that detail in the readme? What are you reffering to in particular, and which OS?

To decrease howitzer accuracy, edit the Data\Guns\USA\105mm_Howitzer_M2A1.ini file (you need to extract it using Dr. Jones tool first).

I would have expected that a correction for the game, which aims at depicting guns and vehicles with historical accuracy, would be executed by the devs, not by some modders.

Questions:

• Did the patch correct long range-accuracy of small arms fire? I haven't had time to check that with the patch, but before the patch ... running infantry struck by the 6th or 10th bullet fired by a machine gun at a distance of around 700 meters was pretty ridiculous.
  AT guns are still "sniping" at least, killing crawling soldiers at 500-700 meters.
  
• Do you intend to set the ranges/accuracy of guns and optics of German tanks to historical values? (as outlined in my posts in the "TOW2 sniper war?"-thread)