Today we're releasing Patch #5 for Axis & Allies 1942 Online and this one is major!

The patch notes below outline the substantial features and fixes included in today's update— and check out Cody Ouimet's (Producer, Axis & Allies 1942 Online) development letter for a more detailed discussion of this patch, plus future development plans.

Patch #5 Notes

New Features and Improvements

• New Movement Arrows
  • Visually redesigned movement arrows for Combat Move and Noncombat Move phases
• New Player Controls
  • Revamped control scheme that allows for separated selection and action buttons using their mouse or input device
  • Revamped movement controls that allow for full stack movements through modifier keys
• New Rendering Engine
  • New rendering engine that improves performance substantially across a wide variety of hardware
• In-Game Notifications
  • Players will now receive notifications in game through a new notifications panel on the main menu and in-game
• Ranked Ladders and Matchmaking
  • Competitive ladders and matchmaking are now an option when playing online. *Note: Matchmaking is only available for ranked play at this time
  • Current online games have been rebranded as “Custom Games”
  • Layout for game cards for Active Campaigns and Join Custom Games have been adjusted for better readability
• Player Profile
  • New player profile contains statistics on your ranked and custom games

Other Changes

• New World Map
  • The background art for the World map has been adjusted to give North America (Canada, United States and Mexico) more correct proportions
• Commander Name and Email Change
  • We have removed the ability for players to manually change their Commander Name and Emails for the time being while we resolve issues with the system
• Custom Movement
  • Players can now customize the movement for Tanks and Naval units during the Combat Move phase
• Tooltips and Notifications
  • User Error tooltips have been reconfigured into expandable windows
• Transport Controls
  • Updated transport controls to quickly load and move stacks of transports

Bug Fixes

• Improvements to retreating and crashes related to retreating to valid retreat zones
• Variety of issues where Transports would no longer become selectable, would not allow for custom movement to pick up valid units for drop-off elsewhere or would not load units
• Moving Tanks through one territory and into another will no longer result in a crash
• Errors and crashes when spamming mouse clicks or hotkeys in large quantities when moving units
• Errors and crashes related to the landing of Fighters on certain Aircraft Carriers
• War Diary will now show the correct information for the target player and round
• AI Fixes
  • We’ve fixed a number of issues with the AI that would result in the AI crashing and not being able to start back up
  • German AI will now do more with the Battleship and Transport in the Mediterranean in the early game
• Crashes when moving into and out of hostile sea zones
• Stranded Defending Fighters will now find valid landing spots before crashing and no longer float in the sea zone
• Server-side optimizations and performance increases
• Valid Mobilization regions will now highlight when animations are disabled
• Windowed Mode - Game will now remember window location correctly