Posted by Paul Chote on

Release 20190314

We are pleased to announce Release 20190314, which brings changes developed between August 2018 and January 2019 and polished with the help of player feedback across three playtests during the last 10 weeks.

The most exciting change in this release comes from a complete overhaul of the unit targeting logic, which fixes many long-standing bugs and introduces some important improvements to gameplay fluidity:

  • Tanks and other turreted units automatically target nearby units while moving
  • Automatic targeting now properly accounts for the Fog of War
  • Force-firing with long-range artillery style units targets the ground, allowing attacks to continue when vision is lost under the Fog of War
Tanks targeting while moving
Tanks now automatically target enemy forces while moving.

The specialised infantry in Red Alert have had a shake-down and a fix-up:

  • Engineers are now consumed when capturing buildings, after a short external wait
  • The Hijacker has been promoted to thief, who can steal cash from refineries as well as vehicles
  • Allied Mechanics now repair destroyed team-mate vehicles instead of capturing them
  • New Attack Dog behaviour resolves many issues and behaves more like the original game
Thieves and Attack Dogs
Improvements to the Attack Dog and Thief should make them more viable on the battlefield.

Thanks to the hard work of several new contributors, Red Alert now features an additional seven single-player missions, and Tiberian Dawn another two. Behind the scenes, the underlying AI framework has been rewritten to support the development of some long-planned improvements in future releases.

Some other notable gameplay changes include:

  • Units in the Return Fire stance will no longer chase their attackers
  • Infantry in Pillboxes in Red Alert no longer gain experience
  • Red Alert Balance changes include adjustments to the long-controversial Allied Artillery
  • A new Ctrl modifier queues items at the front of the production queue
  • The spectator UI now includes information on player army values
TD Campaign Mission: Nod 10b
Nine more single-player missions have been adapted from the original games.

This release brings several improvements to the map editor, including a map actor editor, a new Copy/Paste filter, and the ability to select multiple terrain categories in the sidebar.

Map Editor Improvements Profiles
The map editor now supports editing actor properties such as owner, health, facing, and stance.

There are a lot more minor changes and bugfixes, so take a look at the full changelog if you want to unwrap all of the details. Grab the installer now for your operating system from our download page!

We hope you’ll enjoy this newest installment of OpenRA! Have fun!