Generals are not dead. April has been quieter on the blog as I had no capacity to write updates, but work on TinyGenerals has continued.
What Changed In April
Artillery suppression landed. Artillery now splits damage into permanent HP loss and temporary suppression, with pinned units unable to counter-attack. The UI, replay system, and ruleset/modding support were updated around it. This was an important one as artillery was able to one-shot many units. Balancing will happen over time.
The map editor got much stronger. April added desert and swamp terrain (not yet adopted), procedural terrain growing, balance validation, flood-fill generation, style options, balance scoring, and automatic building placement for bases, factories, cities, airfields, seaports, and starting units.
Chat became more usable and safer. Links are now handled as rich messages, external URLs show a warning dialog, guests are blocked from sending links, line breaks are preserved, and the chat input now auto-expands.
The upcoming desktop version moved forward. The v0.2 work added income, building capture, unit production, a build menu, lobby room lists, backend HTTP support, AI production, visual polish, and later a spectator mode with live game-state parsing.
Account deletion and security work shipped. Players can now request account deletion from settings, with anonymisation and a 14-day recovery window. There was also CORS/security-header hardening, better registration validation, and API/auth documentation.
The AI and combat engine got a deeper refactor. New shared action/attack paths, combat simulation scoring, raycasting and line-of-sight helpers, spotter awareness, better target assignment, capture handoff logic, anti-oscillation fixes, battle logs, and improved AI debug panels all landed.
What I Am Working On Next
Every time I mention plans to work on something - I work on something different, but here goes nothing:
- I want to make the game better and more accessible so the work continues: new terrain types, terrain bonuses which are already there but not yet wired with values. I made good progress on new units and types: flying, sea units, engineering - those will come soon to the game
- There will be more improvements to the map editor and maps - tiling of roads and rivers is already in the game but has not been surfaced
- And hugely improtant to me: user experience of battle creation. I see that players manage but I think this is one of weakest UI’s I have right now. Will be fixed and instant battles are coming.
- I launched Patreon along Ko-Fi. I do consider moving this “blog” over to Patreon where I will be writing also about my other projects
- I am making steady progress on the desktop version of the game. The main difference will be: offline play. The game is self-contained and can be played alone on your local computer. But if you wish, you can instantly connect with the TinyGenerals online and play with others. Mobile version is coming as well.
- There will be a more change to the documentation, including brand new changelog
Your Feedback Matters
If you have thoughts, ideas, or feedback, join TG’s Discord or support me on Patreon and let me know what you want to see next.