Thursday, July 26, 2012

UI changes with 0.8.0 update


Wargaming.NET announces that with upcoming 0.8.0 update there will also be some user interface (UI) changes.
The system is similar with what we can find in modern tactical shooters, called commo rose.

The new system will be activated by pressig the "Z" key and selection the action with the mouse.


Specimen of the new commo rose (russian interface):


Tuesday, July 24, 2012

WoT on Linux - how to


1st of all things this tutorial originates on the WoT RU portal and the whole credit for it goes to the user named wilderwind.
2nd, this tutorial is translated with google, so if anything goes wrong you can check the original post here.
3rd, me or WarGaming.NET are not reponsable for any damage or data loss for following the tutorial.


Here it goes:


Running the game World of Tanks under OS Linux: wine build from scratch

It should be noted that the considered method is a so-called Debian-based distributions of the operating system GNU / Linux, in particular, to Kubuntu - one of the easiest to learn and work the system in this family. Its main difference from Ubuntu only use the desktop environment: KDE instead Gnome3 or Unity. However, it does not have a material impact, if you try to follow these instructions in an environment that is Gnome, XFCE, LXDE, etc. The use of a particular shell - a matter of taste and your personal choice and convenience, as you know, - a matter of habit.

Everything described below assumes a basic knowledge of the operating system GNU / Linux: What is your home directory, which needs a terminal (or command line), who are sudo, root, and that they can, and so on. This knowledge will enable you to always have the latest version of the software, the flexibility to follow the changes, to avoid incompatibility between hardware and software, fix bugs yourself by applying patches and much more. In addition, well-assembled wine makes it possible to some extent successfully run other Windows-based applications and games.

Need to run wine - a kind of layer between the application and the Windows-OS system calls GNU / Linux.

Go to http://www.winehq.org/, on the right you will see a block of Latest Releases, two lines in it: Stable and Development. First - it is a stable release of wine, the second - is the latest available at the moment. How to choose - you decide, but it is better to use the Development-version, since it can add new features, improved functionality and old programs can work faster.



Next, you need to download winetricks by Dan Kegel - is a script or a batch script that will significantly simplify the installation of some components of the wine and further configure it.

Go to http://wiki.winehq.org/winetricks_ru and follow the instructions to save a script in your home directory. Do not forget to assign the attribute "executable" to do this, open a terminal and issue the command chmod + x winetricks. After that, it can be run either from the command line, or just double click, the script is fairly user-friendly interface.

There is a problem with the raw input API in the wine, which leads to the inability to control the cursor in the game. To resolve this problem you need to apply a patch to wine from Vincas Miliūnas.

Download the patch file

To improve performance a bit (the FPS in the game), you can use another patch, which is located here.



For installation, you must perform the following steps:
  • Unzip the downloaded archive to a folder.
  • Put both files in the patch folder.
  • Run a terminal, go to the directory with the unpacked files. Navigating the directory with the command cd, Tab key does not help build upon the name of the directory completely.
  • Apply two patches (downloaded earlier) command patch-p1 <imya_fayla.patch. The sequence of patches does not matter.
  • Execute the command. / Tools / make_requests (to take account of changes to the patches).
  • Optional: run the commands autoheader and autoconf, but it works without them.
  • IMPORTANT! Wine has a lot of dependencies. To put them all at once automatically, run the command sudo apt-get build-dep wine and agree with what is proposed.
  • Configure the wine command sudo. / Configure. Additional configuration options needed only if there are errors when you start the game.
  • Upon completion you should see something like "configure: Finished. Do 'make' to compile Wine". 
  • Start assembling a team of sudo make-j4,-j4 where is the number of concurrent tasks. If you have a multicore processor, you can change this parameter (increase in the number of units) and achieve a more rapid assembly (tested on Intel Core i7, the OS sees 8 cores (4 physical + technology Hyper-Threading), going for a couple of minutes with-j8) .
  • After assembly, you will see a Wine build complete. Run the command sudo make install.
  • At the end of the previous command to restart the command wine wineboot. The program will ask to install Wine Mono and Wine Gecko - check.

  • And finally, go to the folder with a game, run and play WorldOfTanks.exe.

Some features of the method described above:

  • On wine 1.5.8 (latest version at time of writing) mode of artillery work without remapping keys (by pressing Shift).
  • The configuration file is playing in your home directory in the .wine / drive_c / users / username / Application Data / Wargaming.net / WorldOfTanks / preferences.xml, you can change the screen resolution settings of both the game and editing the file in the section Device preferences. If you set up the game so that there were problems with the launch - just delete this file when you restart the game will recreate it with default settings.
  • Play in full screen mode (fullscreen) on GNU / Linux folds and unfolds correctly. For convenience, you can use a different virtual desktop (not a separate X-server!) And run the game in windowed mode, which allows you to easily switch to other desktops and do not close the game every time. The function of virtual desktops available in most modern distributions.
  • The sound works fine.

WARNING! Supplement only for those who owns a graphics card NVIDIA (or laptop with this graphics card) with the technology of Optimus.

What is this technology? The system has two video cards: Built-in mat.platu (as a rule, Intel HD Graphics 3000, designed to save battery power) and discrete (shared) video card, designed to ensure performance in demanding video applications for processing. Unfortunately, despite the availability of drivers for the Optimus-cards under Linux on the official site, an attempt to install these drivers results in a drop in the X-server and the overall system does not function correctly. In connection with this group of enthusiasts was the start of the project http://bumblebee-project.org/, which is quite successful technology allows the use of Optimus. Instructions for installing Bumblebee, unfortunately, is beyond the scope of this guide, but there is a command for optimal performance World Of Tanks (which is not very different from the traditional start for Ira wine):

optirun-c proxy wine / put_do_papki_s_igroy / World_of_Tanks / WorldOfTanks.exe

Just create a shortcut to start the game with this team, not to run each time the terminal. A little explanation about the parameters: optirun - it is very Bumblebee,-c proxy - a way of "communication" discrete and integrated graphics, in which the greatest FPS values, as processing-intensive videoprotsessov goes to the powerful discrete graphics card and built-in this case is only responsible for the phone.

link to the russian forums - here

Thursday, July 12, 2012

0.7.5 preliminary patch notes overview




List of main changes in 0.7.5


  • Added 3 new maps: Seaport, Highway, and Quiet Beach
  • Added new tier X medium tanks: Е-50 Ausf.M, Т-62А, M48A1
  • Added new tier V french light tank: ELC AMX
  • Added new tier X tank destroyers: JagdPz E-100, Object 268, AMX 50 Foch 155, T110E3, T110E4
  • Added new tier VIII german tank destroyer: JagdPanther II 
  • Added new premium British medium tank: Black Prince
  • Reworked mechanics for shell-shocked crew damage with High-Explosive rounds
  • Reworked mechanics when hitting the internal module case; it will still deal damage if the armor was not penetrated
  • Fixed the game crash that could occur when leaving a battle to go to the garage
  • Fixed density of some bushes
  • Many minor changes to the UI
  • Reworked matchmaking for most vehicles
  • Rebalanced tier II & tier III tank destroyers
  • Adjusted credit income and repair costs for some tanks



Tier IX Medium Tanks and Tier X Heavy Tanks:
With the addition of new tier X vehicles the current top tier tanks will be in need of adjustment.

M46 Patton:

  • slightly lowered balance weight
  • lowered suspension armoring
  • corrected the M46T80E1 suspension (first one) on soft soils
  • corrected dispersion upon movement
  • increased turning speed of  the top turret (M46M67)
  • decreased view range of the top turret (M46M67)  to 410 m
  • decreased characteristics of the 105 mm Gun T5E1M2 on both turrets

T-54:

  • increased durability with first turret
  • slightly lowered balance weight
  • increased turning speed of first suspension
  • increased aiming on move with first suspension
  • corrected aiming speeds for both turrets
  • corrected D-10Т gun RoF
  • Decreased LB-1 gun RoF on stock turret
  • Increased characteristics of all guns, except the highest gun

E-50:

  • slightly lowered balance weight
  • decreased durability when equipped with the top modules
  • slightly reduced turning speed with the top suspension
  • increased dispersion on move
  • Increased aiming time of highest gun and decreased its’ RoF

IS-4:

  • Increased vehicle durability
  • Decreased dispersion for М62-Т2 gun on turning the turret

Maus:

  • + 200 HP

E-100:

  • +100 HP
  • +5% to accuracy
  • +1.1 sec of top gun reloading

French Tree Changes:
With the 7.5 addition of a few new tanks the French Tech Tree is in need of some rearranging.

With the addition of the ELC AMX, the АМХ 12t is going to be moved up to Tier 6. Its place at tier 5 in the Tech tree will be taken over by the  ELC AMX.

Case 1. AMX 12t isn’t in the garage at the time of the update release, but is fully researched:
  • Both tanks, ELC AMX and AMX 12t, will be researched
  • All undistributed experience goes from AMX 12t  will be moved to the ELC AMX
  • Any crew member in the barracks or in a tank, who possesses the tier 5 AMX 12t skills, get the ability to be used in the tier 6 AMX 12t without any changes or losses
  • Tier 5 AMX 12t combat statistics will be moved to the tier 5 AMX 12t  without any losses
  • All AMX 12t modules in the depot that don’t fit other tanks will be automatically sold at the original purchase price
  • All AMX 12t modules fitting other tanks will be saved in the depot, the same goes for shells of the respective guns

Case 2. AMX 12t is in the garage at the time of the update release. All the rules as mentioned in Case 1 apply along with the following:
  • AMX 12t as tier 5 light tank is substituted with AMX 12t as tier 6 light tank
  • Ammunition mounted onto the AMX 12t goes to the depot
  • Consumables and Equipment mounted onto the tier 5 AMX 12t remain on AMX 12t  at tier 6.
  • Players get the light french Tier 5 tank ELC AMX (without equipment, consumables, ammunition) and one slot for this tank for free
  • Players get a new full crew for the ELC AMX with 100% training
  • Camouflage mounted onto the Tier 5 AMX 12t  is moved to tier 6 AMX 12t and to ELC AMX as well
  • The expiration date of the camo on both vehicles stays the same as it was for the AMX 12t at the moment when the substitution takes place.

Other French Tech Tree Changes:
AMX 13 75 is going to be moved up to Tier 7

АМХ 13 90 is going to be moved up to Tier 8

Lorraine 40t is going to be moved up to Tier 9:
  • There will be no additional compensation
  • Modules will be changed to equivalent new ones
  • Maybach HL 230P45 Engine and Gun 90mm DCA 45 mounted onto the tank go to the depot. The tank will have only stock modules and ammunition for the stock gun
  • Shells for Gun 90mm DCA 45 go to the depot

Bat Chatillon 25t is going to be moved up to Tier 10:
  • There will be no additional compensation.
  • Stock modules will be changed to equivalent new ones (both in the Tech tree and mounted onto the tank).  There is nothing being moved to the depot
  • All stock modules in depot that don’t fit other tanks are sold at original purchase price and credits go to player’s account
  • Suspensions in depot are sold at original purchase price and credits go to player’s account
  • Gun  105mm CN 105 57 will be mounted onto the tank only if the Gun 100 mm SA 47 was researched and mounted onto the tank
  • If There was a Gun 90 mm DCA 45 mounted onto the tank the shells for it go to the depot and the gun will be replaced 

Changes in Profitabliity and Repairs Costs of Vehicles after Update v0.7.5:
All values in green represent income increase and reduction in repair costs.
All values in red represent income reductions and increase in repair costs.