Aachen - West Wall Battle

[Jason Petho]

A quick chat about what's been going on behind the scenes before we dove back into the Aachen scenario. There is some serious progress on most of the entire front, although I keep running into ambushes. I called in some airstrikes this turn, which were about as effective as tomatoes. My artillery seems to be far more effective, especially since I've moved most of the batteries close to the Schill Line. I'm using a lot of the German bunkers and pillboxes to protect them against counter-battery fire. A lesson learned from the disaster when the Luftwaffe showed up a while back. That said, progress is feeling good, especially as we come into the last 20 turns.

[Jason Petho]

I showed off some new vehicles for Cold War and explained a few things before we dove into the Aachen scenario. We managed to get through two German phases this time although I skipped some behind the scenes movement for Turn 51 to get things rolling. German artillery is honing in on some of the locations as my advance pushes. The most exciting part of the session was the revelation of a wackload of Panzers in the rear that I'll have to deal with. The advance is generally solid, with a few hiccups. The first being the mass of armour in the center, the second being an attack developing from the Hurtgen Forest in the south and third is that the time is clipping by pretty quickly so I need to prioritize the attacks. This is still a lot of fun though!

[visionoflove]

I showed off some new vehicles for Cold War and explained a few things before we dove into the Aachen scenario. We managed to get through two German phases this time although I skipped some behind the scenes movement for Turn 51 to get things rolling. German artillery is honing in on some of the locations as my advance pushes. The most exciting part of the session was the revelation of a wackload of Panzers in the rear that I'll have to deal with. The advance is generally solid, with a few hiccups. The first being the mass of armour in the center, the second being an attack developing from the Hurtgen Forest in the south and third is that the time is clipping by pretty quickly so I need to prioritize the attacks. This is still a lot of fun though!

[visionoflove]

Oh I get some wrong reply.
I want to say:
If the AI were more intelligent, it would effectively utilize combined arms tactics (such as armor divisions V/IV or Jgdpz V units) coordinated with rifle platoons. By leveraging favorable terrain advantages, these forces could create formidable defenses against the US Army, with howitzer units demonstrating improved targeting precision. However, in reality, the AI's behavior resembles an uncoordinated swarm rather than strategic deployment. The system fails to establish defensive positions at strategic high ground locations or capitalize on forest cover. Ultimately, this game appears to prioritize casual entertainment value over military simulation authenticity.

[Jason Petho]

That is where the scripted AI will bring new life to the game, which we are working on after Cold War.

Of course, this game really shines against a human opponent.

[Jason Petho]

We took a moment to go over the passing of John. Following that a brief overview about the next UPDATES and what I've been working on in regards to the WARSAW PACT. Then we dove back into Aachen. Time is getting tighter now, we are down to the last 17 turns. There is still a lot of ground to cover and some pockets to clean up. There are massive tank units in the last two towns and Panthers have been spotted in the Hurtgen. The general overrun just became more difficult, especially since my airstrikes are pretty useless! C'est la guerre.

[Jason Petho]

We went over the latest news about the Campaign Series and showed off some new BMP-1's that will be used in Cold War. After that we dove into Aachen and continues our advances on all of the fronts. It was a pretty successful turn as we were able to capture two outlying Victory Locations and cleared an important highway for one of the last German bastions in this sector of the front. In the north we also managed to destroy the two Tiger platoons that were causing us grief and starting to regain some momentum. We also have a new plan for the southern German counter-attack. It will be fun to see if it works.

[Jason Petho]

I am back in the saddle from my outing! Well, we have some big news in regards to the JTCS or Matrix Campaign Series games as well additional news about the Cold War game. After the news and comments we went back into the Aachen scenario. I had to spend a hot minute to remember where I was at, but then we got right back into the action. There was a massive tank battle this turn with burning hulks all over the place. The progress is slow but we're making some steady progress. The Americans secured one more victory location, with now only five remaining.

[Crossroads]

Well, we have some big news in regards to the JTCS

Long post ahead. 

What's behind this is the white screen issue, discussed HERE also affecting a few CS Middle East and Vietnam players. Matrix Tech Support provided me with a code snippet that should ensure the AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards in some certain (older?) setups should kick in and do their job. 

I put together the Middle East and Vietnam quick fixes in March, Updates went to Public Beta in April, and after ensuring everything was in order, the official releases came out a week ago.

They also asked me if I could do the same for JTCS: just add the code snippet to the code initiating the game’s main window, compile, and create the executables. However, I didn’t have the latest source code, just the 2.00 source (and a Visual Studio 2008 dev setup backup for the same version).

Berto ran a highly professional shop, and his son Chris spent a good few days going through his dad's daily backups in the number of USB drives he kept in safe. He first located the 2.01 source code, and then the final 2.02 source code. Thank you again, Chris!  So, and as a nice surprise, we were suddenly good to go.

Except 2.02 was created with Visual Studio 2008, while I have the latest 2022 version which is not compatible. Still, I really wanted to ensure this game remained playable, so I purchased a Microsoft license to download older Visual Studios. This is where things got tricky. 

Visual Studio 2008 support ended long ago, so I thought I’d upgrade the game at least a few versions up. Berto upgraded from VS2008 to VS2015 back in 2016, and it was a Royal Pain for him at the time, too (a Microsoft SDK nuked his development rig, among a ton of other details I won't go into). I tried the upgrade step by step, first VS2010, then VS2012. Then, BOOM—my dev rig setup was gone. A ton of SDK, lib paths to keep in order. Too many. Back to a latest Windows 11 restore point I had made. After a good few days, I was able to continue with VS2022 for Middle East and Vietnam while sticking with VS2008 for JTCS. Lesson learnt.

So, while I did not manage to upgrade JTCS to a supported development environment, I did manage to create game executables with VS2008 that run on my two computers, on Dave’s computers, and now Jason has given the green light as well. That in itself is great news. (JTCS 1.04 was compiled and linked with VS2005, it still runs on my Win11, too.)

At this stage, we are very much in the "If it works, don’t touch it" zone. The white screen quick fix is important, making it worth creating new executables with that fix, using VS2008. (We’re all familiar with installing the C++ 2008 distributables for any new JTCS install. VS2008 is the reason behind it.) 

So, let’s not rock the boat.

That said, I took two wish list items from this forum. The first was the "Player Alert Number of Saves Exceeds 2" warning when opening a PBEM file from an opponent. I also dislike it, as I often play in bits and pieces. I hate that this prompt is the first thing my opponent sees, and I recall many others mentioning this issue. Now, if you all really want to keep it, I can do that too. I simply commented out the Message Box prompt.

The other small code fix is for the Victory Dialog, allowing for larger values.

And with that, I feel like I’m already rocking the boat. So, as Jason mentioned, data fixes and issues with Platoon files, maybe there’s a chance to address those.

TL;DR: Matrix is willing to release a new update for JTCS, featuring the White Screen hotfix—how great is that? Even if that’s pretty much the main focus of the update.

[Dan Caviness]

Hello Jason:

If I have it right you'd delete the "warning" but still have a display that informs you how many saves?
I think we have all played enough to realize saves do not equal cheating.

Nevertheless, it would be nice to know if dawags suddenly saved 24 times on the last turn...;)

So delete the negatively connotated "warning" and just let us know the count.

My two cents.

Regards,

Old Man Dan

ps: I'm not a robot I am an organic meat popsicle.