The Launcher interface above has most likely become quite familiar for you in the last few years. In 1.11 it was used not only for checking updates and making it possible to download custom components, but it also allowed you to change some important compatibility settings needed for running DTA on some systems. In 1.12 it has so far remained necessary for checking updates. Until the next update, that is.
With the next update, DTA's client will get a huge update. You no longer have that old Launcher interface requiring an additional click before you get in-game, but instead its functionality has been moved into various other windows. One of them is the changed options menu:
As you can see, the custom components and update settings have been moved to the options menu. With the next update we're also introducing the new Renderer option, which replaces the old, hardcoded Windows 8 fix which forced on Windowed mode as well as the possibility of disabling DDraw hardware acceleration on Windows XP. This new option makes a large difference especially for those of you who use Windows 8; now you can use the TS-DDRAW renderer, which improves performance significantly compared to the old Windows 8 fix and also makes it possible to play in full-screen mode. For more information about the Renderer setting, please read the following blog post: Moddb.com
You might also notice that a few options in the Audio section have changed. The next update seperates Red Alert and Tiberian Dawn tank cannon sounds from each other, so that RA tanks use RA cannon sounds and TD tanks use TD cannon sounds. Now you can also customize which game's building crumble sound to use (the sound that is played when a building is destroyed). In testing some people found the RA cannon sounds annoying, so if you prefer the old way of Allied and Soviet tanks using the TD cannon sounds, you still have the option for that.
The next update is going to be the largest single update for DTA 1.12 yet. As such, it naturally also includes a lot of new things in addition to just technical updates. In particular, single player missions are coming back, with some new missions as a bonus. We'll detail our single player missions in a seperate news post when we actually release the update later this week.
If you played The Toxic Diversion in DTA 1.11, you already know that our missions are generally fairly challenging. Unless you're extremely skilled in classic Command & Conquer, you're going to need to save and load the missions a couple of times before you finally manage to beat them. As such, our new client naturally supports loading saved games directly from the external menu; you don't need to start a skirmish game to load a saved game anymore.
We've also changed the name of DTA_Launcher.exe to just DTA.exe. That means that your possible desktop shortcuts aren't going to work anymore; you're going to need to create new ones. We apologize for the inconvenience; we aren't planning of changing the filename again in the future.
The largest update for DTA 1.12 so far, which will be released later this week, contains a lot of other changes in addition to the improved client and single player missions, including ones requested by the community. One such change is that skirmish settings will now be saved. Some CnCNet reliability issues have also been fixed. We'll detail all the significant changes and all our single player missions in a seperate news post when the update is finally released.
Until then, have fun crushing your human and/or artificial opponents both online and in skirmish!
Since DTA and TI use the same launcher (I assume) will TI get most of these changes as well, such as the mission loading thing and the improved options screen, and the renderer?
Also, can you link to a full changelog?
Other then those questions, I don't really have much to say other then quite a few of these changes have long-been waited for/necessary.
(Dunno what else to say...xD)
Yes, like Rampastring mentioned in his linked blog post ( Moddb.com ), most of these Client changes/additions apply to TI as well.
The full change log isn't available yet; it'll be posted when the next update is actually released.