Release Notes - 2021-03-29

freezy wrote:

Hey guys, I understand your frustration and I cherish that you are so invested in the game and want to shape it's future. On this particular topic though there is no other outcome possible and no turning back. So I repeat once more: There is no chance that Canvas is coming back, I'm sorry. My previous post in this thread contains more details. Please use your energy in providing us with feedback and examples on how we can improve the WebGL version, because this has a much higher chance of success. We are actively looking into improving the newest version and we will continue to strive for technical and quality improvements.

Lord wrote:

@freezy if it was just different, I suspect not many players would complaint. However - I am not being funny mate - it is just rubbish. To give you a scale of the problem - it took me less time to make these 9 screenshots below than to write this post - so it is a very frequent problem, which has been generated by removing Canvass.

Maps in the new graphics are unreadable at all - you cannot judge your own / ally / enemy troops at glance - you need to spend good few minutes zooming in and out on each area or individually clicking dozens of stacks to estimate forces in the region. As a player with more than 5 years experience in CoW and a leader TOP1 alliance I find it as a huge pain in the back, which makes my playing experience just sh*t...

So without further ado - screens below:

1. How many enemies are under my planes?

Thank you for all the examples, I immediately forwarded this to get it fixed soon. The good thing is that all your examples point to a single issue: That in the low graphics mode the unit number is displayed below the army image, which is not intended.

In the meantime until this is fixed you could try out the mid/high graphics settings which display the unit numbers and stack information in a clear manner inside a label next to the army.

----

By the way: Did anybody realize that we implemented a setting in the bottom right menu to activate a gold confirmation popup on desktop (it already existed on mobile), that prevents you from accidentally spending gold? Many players requested this, so I hope you are happy about it. Another addition in this update that's based on player feedback is that we display small army labels again when zoomed-out very far (previously we were hiding armies completely on such zoom levels).

I wanted to highlight these things here to make sure they are not drowned by the canvas feedback and as an example of how player feedback can shape what we implement into the game. Although some strategic topics are off limits (like changing our business model or returning Canvas) we are very much open to implement changes on a more detailed level based on your feedback, as we did in the past (other examples include all the CoW1.5 updates after it's first release). So keep it up and I hope you all still can find some fun in playing the game!

If you try to play in pc or mobile you cannot enter to the game.

I did everything that the wiki says I couldn’t enter

And the people who can enter told me that the graphics are so bad, the animation poop , some cases told me that they couldn’t move their armies.

If you don’t believe me I will show you a video

Listen to us

Thanks for pointing the low graphic mode @freezy - it unfortunately is... the full graphics is so resource hungry that it makes the game on bigger maps so slow that it's unplayable on old-ish computers. I just tested it on my better machine - these items, which I highlighted look much better.

Although I don't like a shock therapy you have funded us, but after a bit of thinking I understand the rationale behind it. The new version is live for some time, but dinosaurs like me have never played it and they would never play if the old one was still available. Understood the point.

It looks like we will have to wait until some annoying elements will be adjusted and get used to it. However I think the revolt which has happened is really beneficial, as it will mobilize you to take immediate actions on feedback

So let me take another opportunity that you asked for this what doesn't work for us and ask you to look into this annoying element please:

Does this line need to be white? can it be made grey / black / etc.? Or at least much thinner.

[/img]

It's just misleading on many occasions, such like this one:

[/img]

Many thanks,

L.

freezy wrote:

By the way: Did anybody realize that we implemented a setting in the bottom right menu to activate a gold confirmation popup on desktop (it already existed on mobile), that prevents you from accidentally spending gold?

freezy wrote:

Thank you for all the examples, I immediately forwarded this to get it fixed soon. The good thing is that all your examples point to a single issue: That in the low graphics mode the unit number is displayed below the army image, which is not intended.

Besides the fixes mentioned above.

Why not create a modding system for the game, so people can choose which colors or icons they would prefer to use. Modding is a staple in most other games and it would allow people to view the map the way they want.

I know its a web game but its still a possibility.

AK3D

I don't know if anyone has raised this issue; but in the last few games I've played, the territory color of my land is very light yellow, or white. The unit paths are also a very light color. Hence, I can't see the paths when I'm directing units. Very frustrating.

Perhaps this could be adressed at a future upgrade. Or if there is a way to set custom colors would work also. thanks

K.Rokossovski wrote:

I looked at the content of the new release again, and I couldn't find a single issue on it why Canvas would suddenly be broken. I am a software developer myself, so I have _some_ idea how issues link to eachother... and none of these would be linked to a failure of Canvas working. Bytro, would you care to explain which one of these issues cause it, and how it caused canvas to crash? Because unless you do, many people will feel that you are simply lying.

In general we do not list beta bugs and beta bugfixes in the news as those were never released to live and dont affect most players. We usually fix alot of alpha or beta bugs but in the news we only list fixes/changes to the live game. The Canvas problem happened only on beta shortly before our release, so we had to postpone it. The bug is not the reason why we removed Canvas in general, we just would have done it later with a proper announcement. But that bug prompted us to remove Canvas already now because if we released the bug Canvas would have been unplayable anyway and due to scheduling conflicts we also did not want to postpone the release another week just to fix a system we wanted to remove in the very near future. We are really sorry that we did not give a proper termination date beforehand and had to rush this, its not how we intended it to go.

100jan wrote:

Are you kidding? 4 days i CANNOT load the game on PC. I saw your shity new graphic on my phone, but I BASICLY play on PC!!! Can you tell me something? M? M? NOT! Now you will leave the topic and all we will discuse new graphic again.

- clear your browser or app cache h and re-login

- make sure your browser or app is up to date (if you have the app you could re-install it)

- make sure your operating system is up to date and also your graphics drivers (check for updates and install the latest ones!)

- if this does not work, try accessing the game in a different browser and also try if the problem happens in another game round, as a workaround to rule out reasons

- if you have another device/PC available where you can test your game on, please do so to rule out if this is a local hardware/software problem on your current device

- if this all doesnt help, please contact our support team which might have further troubleshooting steps or which can at least note down your system specs and forward them to our devs.

I cannot log into my game now for 4 days.

@freezy

What kind of minimum graphic card do you need to run this game with the new graphics. What if you have no graphic card, but just the internal graphics. What if they are say 10 years old.

I have a old quad core PC, it can run most relatively new ( or used to be) games like PUBG, GTA V for example but lately i have had to remove the graphics card, and have been using the internal graphics card.

Could that be a factor?

I could give a crap about canvas's...I CAN"T GET INTO THE F_ING GAME!!! DAY 5 NOW!!!!

...Oh...and not a peep from Bytrol.

• See image 101209. That province has level 3 roads and you can hardly see it that needs to be fixed.
• See image 101523 When you add the button to remove all text from the map, can you include the little tabs that are off the armies to be removed they can be distracting too.

I don’t understand why people like canvas

godofthegame2 wrote:

I don’t understand why people like canvas

It was beautiful and nostalgic, for us it was associated with memories. You do not understand it, because you are probably new to Call of War, and we are veterans of this game and have had accounts on it for many years.

I’ve been here for 2 years wdym

godofthegame2 wrote:

I’ve been here for 2 years wdym

Whilst i am only 1.5 years in cow i am a good player/active and have introduced 11 people to CoW. those people have now left alongside me due to update

I must admit I don't see the horribleness of the update. I'm not sure what canvas is or was. The maps still are clear and colorful.

For improvements I have had issue in setting paths for units because of close color matches difficult to see. usually in setting them.

It's not a fault but I think it would also be cool if terrain stood out a little more clearly. As far as game play, I was gone from COW for quite a while after 1.5 came out. Since I started playing again, i've found the balance near perfect. Good Game!

Balhog wrote:

I must admit I don't see the horribleness of the update. I'm not sure what canvas is or was. The maps still are clear and colorful.

For improvements I have had issue in setting paths for units because of close color matches difficult to see. usually in setting them.

It's not a fault but I think it would also be cool if terrain stood out a little more clearly. As far as game play, I was gone from COW for quite a while after 1.5 came out. Since I started playing again, i've found the balance near perfect. Good Game!

The update, I appreciate we are slowly getting some feedback on the new Webgl and can begin the tedious and slow process of fixing it and improving it so it is player compatible. However most of the players have left COW. A larger majority are not playing as often...................

The Horribleness:

1.80% of players cannot access the game.

2.There was no Beta version: That is why the terrain and roads are hard to see, why units do not work properly and why suddenly players are left with a game thaty doesnt work as normal etc.

3.There was no warning or announcement that they would do this, so any competitions such as AWC and or the Alliance 100 Map and other events that players have organised thermselves were hit hard. This happened in the middle of 2 very big alliance events.

4.That is selfish of a game company that is very far out of touch with its main player base.

5.There had been no follow up or feedback from bytro or News on what actions they are going to take to correct the fact so many players simply cannot get past the load screen of the game

6.The absolute majority of people are not impressed with the new graphics as basically this is stil in BETA stage and they just flung it at us, and the result is half the players cannot access the game thru pc and the other half do not understand why this could not have been introduced in conjunction with the ' old game version' ( canvas)?. If they had intriduced webgl along with the canvas and had games with gold prizes to get players to experience their webgl and get feedback from players. Then over time they could fix all the terrible bugs and problems with the new webgl ( like if the terrain stood out a bit more) and have it fit and ready for the big day when they make it the new compuslory.

7.It is that it was just flung at everyone and the old canvas ripped up and thrown away, and the new WEbGL is no where near as good as the old canvas, and while it might in the future become good, by good i mean comparablye to how good the old canvas was.

8. What we have lost, however it seems is our accounts and player rank, as we cannot access the Browser version on old accounts, the cow community of players that organise events have lost confidence in bytro and the player base has been hurt. It could result in cow community events been suspended as many of the top players from the biggest

alliances are all considering leaving Bytro.

9.The worst and most horrible is that Bytro are just ignoring them.

I agree that the rollout was mis-managed. I have to admit I've never seen a company piss off it's customers introducing improved products as much as BYTRO. The 1.5 rollout was the same type of disaster. But it ended well.

The issue of all the customers who lost access is frankly unforgivable. If it had happened to me, I'd be done with it as well.

BYTRO: You've got a good game. Your improvements generally end up well. But you have GOT TO GET BETTER AT beta testing and rollout of updates.

Balhog wrote:

BYTRO: You've got a good game. Your improvements generally end up well. But you have GOT TO GET BETTER AT beta testing and rollout of updates.

DoctorDR1 wrote:

Hi guys!

I know a lot of you miss the old canvas mode. When WebGL first came out, I had a hard time getting used to it as well. But after a while, I found that I actually liked WebGL. If you give it a chance, maybe you’ll like it too. As for those of you who can’t run it properly because of your hardware, you can try the low graphics mode, made especially to counter that problem.

Because WebGL is more graphically demanding (even in low-graphics mode), the system gets bogged down as the browser (tested on many browsers) keeps allocating more and more memory to the page. Since Bytro has never taken [full] advantage of "threading" for processor usage, the graphics keep bogging down, especially on systems that have graphics built in on the CPU, and not as a separate processor...this causes the slowdown as the memory allocation rises (there's no longer enough system resources to maintain performance).

Because Bytro doesn't properly utilize "garbage collection" in their design, the memory allocation for any given page keeps rising, and swallows up RAM to the point that the CPU has to spend more time moving memory blocks back and forth from active memory to virtual (HDD) memory. These allocation switches force the game to wait to run, so it gets harder and harder to do anything in the game without refreshing the page (and by that, I mean close it and then reopen it, not just an ALT+F5 refresh).

I have to kill the process-tree for my browser, at least once or twice a day, just to be able to play the game (killing it on Chrome makes it easy to bring back all pages (including the game's), upon restarting Chrome…but I shouldn't have to do this workaround).

Without killing the browser, the memory allocation for each page of the game climbs from around 200MB (initially) to as much memory as is available. On my computer, I typically see the game swallowing memory up to 4 GB and more — per page — while my system struggles and activity slows to a crawl. And THAT is how bad it is while playing only in low-graphics mode. In normal mode, the memory leak swallows allocation so fast as to have to kill the browser several times a day, at least.

My point is, that low-graphics mode is barely alright for slower systems, but only until the memory gets too full, which ALWAYS happens in ALL of Bytro's (and their sisters') games.

Please learn how to employ better threading for improved game performance, and…

* * * PLEASE LEARN HOW TO USE GARBAGE COLLECTION * * *

* * * TO ELIMINATE OLD, UNUSED, AND DISCARDED MEMORY BLOCKS! * * *

freezy wrote:

In regards to the shutdown of the old Canvas view mode, I will quote my own post made in a related thread:

freezy wrote:

Hey guys, to be completely honest with you: There is basically a 0% chance that the old Canvas mode will return, sorry.

But there is a good chance that we will keep improving the new WebGL mode further. Your feedback will help in that regard.

IF THAT IS THE CASE, THEN CAREFULLY READ MY DETAILED RESPONSE BELOW THE QUOTE.

…one feedback is that players dont like the new map colors and want it like the old version -> we already have a political view mode which colors the map like in the old version,

THIS DOESN'T APPEAR TO WORK LIKE YOU CLAIM.

To give you some more reasoning:

From a usage standpoint Canvas users were a small minority nowadays, the vast majority already plays in WebGL (we tracked this and we wouldnt have done this step if this wasnt the case). I know it might feel different because long time players tend to favor canvas as they are used to it, and those players also tend to be more active in forums/chats and be vocal about their opinion.

THE PROBLEM WITH THIS^ THINKING IS THAT THE CULTURE OF THE PLAYING COMMUNITY IS ESTABLISHED AND MAINTAINED BY THE LONG-TERM PLAYERS.

WE SET THE CULTURE.

WE MAKE IT POPULAR.

WE ARE THE ONES THAT WILL COME BACK AGAIN AND AGAIN, PAYING FOR HIGH COMMAND AND OTHER FEATURES BEYOND JUST TRYING OUT A GAME FOR A FEW DAYS, WEEKS, OR MONTHS.

WE ARE YOUR DEDICATED PLAYERS. IF YOU CHOOSE NOT TO RESPECT OUR SIMPLEST OF NEEDS, THEN YOU WILL FACE A MASS EXODUS THAT WILL BOTH DESTROY CoW's CULTURE AS WELL AS DAMAGE YOUR BOTTOM LINE, BOTH CONSEQUENCES OF WHICH WOULD SEE THE EVENTUAL END OF THIS OTHERWISE-GREAT GAME.

THE REASON THAT NON-LONG-TERM PLAYERS TEND TO NOT BE VOCAL ON THE FORUMS IS BECAUSE THEY SIMPLY DON'T CARE ABOUT THE GAME.

WE CARE ABOUT THE GAME, AND WE'D LIKE TO CONTINUE TO DO SO…BUT ONLY SO LONG AS BYTRO DEMONSTRATES THAT IT CARES ABOUT US.

(This is a bit long, so pay careful attention…especially the game devs.)

OK, Canvas Mode ain't coming back. So what? That can work out IF you make the following needed changes to the game, for the low graphics mode. (This will appease nearly ALL of your core players who are complaining about this change while not affecting everyone else.)

1. Rename low-graphics mode as "Classic View" mode.
2. Create a subset of buttons that ONLY become visible when Classic View is activated (so as not to bother other users with screen clutter).
3. For the subset of buttons, once Classic View has been turned on (and the page is refreshed), there are these following options visible when the "Show Settings" button is activated:[list=1]
4. Activate/Deactivate Dynamic Zooming (use only tiered zooming). This option would make the game "feel" more like the original play style, without having to be maintained as the old "canvas mode" would be. This also reduces the demand on system resources by a small amount.
5. Show/Hide Resources. This helps with screen clutter for game purists like myself.
6. Show/Hide Units. This is a must for classic players. There are too many reasons in favor of this, and they're so obvious that I should not even have to state them.
7. Activate/Deactivate Classic Color mode. This is an ABSOLUTE MUST for almost all players who are complaining about the lack of "Canvas Mode". Once implemented, like with the other options on this subset of button choices, it won't need to be maintained as new updates would almost never affect it. The current low-res version of WebGL does not retain the classic coloration as falsely stated that deactivating the "Display Relations" option would simulate…it does not. WE WANT THE ORIGINAL COLOR SCHEME. It doesn't have to be on a per nation per map basis, just make a simple conversion for every color that is used, in which "Classic View" would automatically translate the WebGL color palette to a simulated Canvas Mode palette (it's a lot easier to implement than it sounds). Once implemented, as a simulation of the Canvas Mode palette, then switching to morale view while in "Classic View" would naturally show the morale color schemes as Canvas Mode without having to add any programming.

[*]Make the subset of buttons appear in a secondary column, to prevent overlap with the province list tab. This should actually be implemented on desktop for all versions of the game since the province list tab sometimes moves south and the expanded set of settings buttons tend to overlap it. Making the buttons form new columns is already a default behavior, so shrinking the height of the