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Chris here! By any sane metric I can think of, AI War 2 shouldn't exist. And yet it's more than I ever imagined it could be.
When we first set out to make this game three years ago, it was far less ambitious. Even that was going to be really hard. Somehow, in the process of falling down the stairs over and over again during this period, we wound up with a game that seems to be superior to the original.
This game shouldn't exist, but it does, and I'm both proud and stunned.
It's been quite a saga, if you've followed along all this time. All that extra time paid off!
At this point we have what fans have nearly-universally hailed as a worthy successor to the original classic. We still have plenty more to do prior to 1.0 in Q2 of 2019, but the game is ready to play now and we hope you'll come enjoy it and give us further feedback.
Pick up the game now for 10% off!
Be sure to stop by and wishlist AI War 2 to be notified when it launches into Early Access. You can read about the most recent update, plus a lot of planned upcoming updates, here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/573410/announcements/detail/1732082664630714967 Hopefully now you can see why we haven't pushed this game into Early Access yet. We're really wanting this to come out of the gate as something that we can be proud of and that you can be excited about, without us needing to go through a lot of revisions to basic mechanics after that point. It should be all content additions and bugfixing and refinement after we hit Early Access, hopefully. At any rate, it's been a really fun ride recently with out kickstarter backers, who have their hands on the game already (they sure ought to -- it's been almost two years!). Despite the long road, this is really coming together. Thanks for reading! Chris
You can read all about that here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/573410/announcements/detail/1699429118241526351 Be sure to pop by and wishlist the game, too!
There's a sequel on the way! You can wishlist it here to be notified when it arrives in Early Access in July.
We've uploaded a teaser trailer and listed a coming soon store page for AI War 2 (don't forget to wishlist)! To celebrate, all AI War classic products are on sale with deep discounts -- get AI War's base game or Collection bundle for 80% off, plus individual DLC for $1 each through May 5th.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iyi-ZEiPow
This project has been in the works since 2016, and thanks to a kickstarter and a ton of support from all those alpha and beta testers, we're finally closing in on that ever-elusive Early Access point. After we hit EA in July, we hope to have an even wider array of testers, and then we'll be ready for a highly-polished 1.0 in October of this year.
Be sure to go in and wishlist it (and get anyone you know to do the same) if you have any interest in this, because otherwise you might miss those two release notifications when they do arrive. We can't wait to see you in there -- and for now, the massive original game, which we now refer to as AI War Classic, has hundreds of hours waiting for you. :)
Chris here! Quick announcement about another title, but lots of AI War 2 notes further down, so read on! AI War 2 is coming together nicely to launch early this year, but we've also had a "volunteer brigade" working on something on the side: the first expansion pack for our rogue-lite shooter Starward Rogue -- Starward Rogue: AuGMENTED.
Developed by the "Arcen Extended" team, which is comprised of former contractors and modders from the community, the expansion has been nearly 2 years in the making, and adds a boatload of new content, including new mechs, new enemies, new items, new bosses and much more. These folks have absolutely been pouring time and love into this project, but it hasn't been a diversion from AI War 2 for Keith, Blue, or me.
Its probably one of the biggest expansions we have ever released for any title, and something we are very proud of.
The base game of Starward Rogue was something that people always loved to play, but got lost in the shuffle of the early 2016 market. This expansion hopefully gets 2018 off on the right foot for Arcen as we lead into our big project for the year AI War 2!
With that in mind
Chris here! Quick announcement about another title, but lots of AI War 2 notes further down, so read on! AI War 2 is coming together nicely to launch early this year, but we've also had a "volunteer brigade" working on something on the side: the first expansion pack for our rogue-lite shooter Starward Rogue -- Starward Rogue: AuGMENTED.
Developed by the "Arcen Extended" team, which is comprised of former contractors and modders from the community, the expansion has been nearly 2 years in the making, and adds a boatload of new content, including new mechs, new enemies, new items, new bosses and much more. These folks have absolutely been pouring time and love into this project, but it hasn't been a diversion from AI War 2 for Keith, Blue, or me.
It’s probably one of the biggest expansions we have ever released for any title, and something we are very proud of.
The base game of Starward Rogue was something that people always loved to play, but got lost in the shuffle of the early 2016 market. This expansion hopefully gets 2018 off on the right foot for Arcen as we lead into our big project for the year – AI War 2!
With that in mind…
Um... wow? Folks are absolutely amazing in their support, and I'm just agog at this. I'm going to be out most of the weekend, but I just wanted to say thanks in advance if we hit any stretch goals before Monday. At the moment we seem likely to hit the stretch goal for new music sooner than later.
So, other stuff -- first I'd like to share one new video with you:
So just what is this "AI War" thing, and why should you be excited about it?
Hopefully the kickstarter campaign page answers that question, in a general sense at least. ;) But prior to launching this campaign I was working on this video, and I finally finished editing it today (with Pablo's help cleaning up some unfortunately peaky audio because my mic gain was off), so I thought I'd share it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IluP7KEx0xk
If you're wanting to explain to someone first what this game is, then why it's frickin awesome, maybe this video will help. Or maybe I'm just longwinded -- 9 minutes is pretty concise for a game like this, though. :)
First Stretch Goal: Soundtrack!
So... right! We're funded. :) Now we're working on the first stretch goal off our list:
Up Next
Next week I expect to release a video actually showing combat, and some other cool visual effects, and we'll show you more of the GUI, and Pablo has a video for you, and Keith has some written updates...
Busy times, in the best sense. :)
I'm personally not going to be around much this weekend because I'm both trying to have a better work/life balance in general and also we're celebrating my mom's birthday, but I'll be back in force on Monday. I'll peek in some over the weekend, of course, and I imagine Keith will be around some Saturday off and on. But just so you don't wonder where we are if we're quieter than usual.
Thanks again for all your support!
Best,
Chris
Um... wow? Folks are absolutely amazing in their support, and I'm just agog at this. I'm going to be out most of the weekend, but I just wanted to say thanks in advance if we hit any stretch goals before Monday. At the moment we seem likely to hit the stretch goal for new music sooner than later.
So, other stuff -- first I'd like to share one new video with you:
So just what is this "AI War" thing, and why should you be excited about it?
Hopefully the kickstarter campaign page answers that question, in a general sense at least. ;) But prior to launching this campaign I was working on this video, and I finally finished editing it today (with Pablo's help cleaning up some unfortunately peaky audio because my mic gain was off), so I thought I'd share it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IluP7KEx0xk
If you're wanting to explain to someone first what this game is, then why it's frickin awesome, maybe this video will help. Or maybe I'm just longwinded -- 9 minutes is pretty concise for a game like this, though. :)
First Stretch Goal: Soundtrack!
So... right! We're funded. :) Now we're working on the first stretch goal off our list:
Up Next
Next week I expect to release a video actually showing combat, and some other cool visual effects, and we'll show you more of the GUI, and Pablo has a video for you, and Keith has some written updates...
Busy times, in the best sense. :)
I'm personally not going to be around much this weekend because I'm both trying to have a better work/life balance in general and also we're celebrating my mom's birthday, but I'll be back in force on Monday. I'll peek in some over the weekend, of course, and I imagine Keith will be around some Saturday off and on. But just so you don't wonder where we are if we're quieter than usual.
Thanks again for all your support!
Best,
Chris
Good grief! People are awesome. I didn't mean to update folks here "late," but the new campaign for AI War 2has already reached half of its (admittedly much more modest) funding goal. https://youtu.be/CPrhD-_SNpo I've already written a first update post that has a large Q&A based on early questions. Apologies that the video above is just a teaser-style one, but one of the Q&A topics (way at the bottom) touches on the reasons for that. Basically perfectionism on my part, I guess. This is a very different project from the one that we were pitching in the first kickstarter, but I'm really excited about it. Keith has written up a new design documentthat explains what is planned. There's another document that compares the new vision for the sequel to the original AI War, for those wanting to see that comparison. One of the last updates to the original campaign does probably the most concise job of outlining the differences between the two campaigns, the changing roles of Keith and myself, and the current configuration (so to speak) of Arcen. Anyhow! Hope to see you around soon. :) Best, Chris
Good grief! People are awesome. I didn't mean to update folks here "late," but the new campaign for AI War 2 has already reached half of its (admittedly much more modest) funding goal. https://youtu.be/CPrhD-_SNpo I've already written a first update post that has a large Q&A based on early questions. Apologies that the video above is just a teaser-style one, but one of the Q&A topics (way at the bottom) touches on the reasons for that. Basically perfectionism on my part, I guess. This is a very different project from the one that we were pitching in the first kickstarter, but I'm really excited about it. Keith has written up a new design document that explains what is planned. There's another document that compares the new vision for the sequel to the original AI War, for those wanting to see that comparison. One of the last updates to the original campaign does probably the most concise job of outlining the differences between the two campaigns, the changing roles of Keith and myself, and the current configuration (so to speak) of Arcen. Anyhow! Hope to see you around soon. :) Best, Chris
FINALLY a sequel. Please stop by our kickstarter campaign -- we're counting on folks like you to make this bigger, better, clearer sequel a reality.
You might hate kickstarter, and I hate preorders, but I hope you'll love this project on its own merits. The original AI War is something that RPS called one of the best strategy games ever made, and which is widely regarded as having some of the best and most interesting AI ever seen in a game.
FINALLY a sequel. Please stop by our kickstarter campaign -- we're counting on folks like you to make this bigger, better, clearer sequel a reality.
You might hate kickstarter, and I hate preorders, but I hope you'll love this project on its own merits. The original AI War is something that RPS called one of the best strategy games ever made, and which is widely regarded as having some of the best and most interesting AI ever seen in a game.
Chris here. I'm going to keep this brief and try not to be annoying! First up: if you didn't already know, we're running a kickstarter for the sequel to AI War, and that's a pretty big deal to us. If you have not already, please consider signing up for the Headtalker campaign for AI War II. The true power of this thing has only really become apparent to me today, and it's pretty awesome. Briefly:
Chris here. I'm going to keep this brief and try not to be annoying! First up: if you didn't already know, we're running a kickstarter for the sequel to AI War, and that's a pretty big deal to us. If you have not already, please consider signing up for the Headtalker campaign for AI War II. The true power of this thing has only really become apparent to me today, and it's pretty awesome. Briefly:
Bugfixes and an AI War II kickstarter notice on the main menu. The release notes cover the details, and we hope that you enjoy those fixes. :) We also hope you'll stop by the campaign for AI War II and see if you think it's worth your time and/or money. We are having an exceedingly hard time reaching our existing players for AI War Classic -- of which we need only about 3% to actually back the kickstarter -- and as such, our kickstarter is stalling. We have a variety of ways in which we're working on pulling out of the stall, but by far the best option is getting the message out to people who would directly be interested. Hopefully that includes you if you're reading this, but please also spread the word to other players you know who might have missed this! Best, Chris Park Founder and Lead Designer, Arcen Games
Just a very quick note to point you to this link. We won't normally bug you with every little thing, but we wanted to give you a chance to get in any questions you might have if reddit is your bag. Obviously you can ask us anything in general, but it's nice to have an event for it, too!
Wow what a whirlwind of a few days! If I haven't responded to your message yet, I really apologize and will do so as soon as possible. I'm caught up on the kickstarter messages and comments themselves, but I'm behind on Steam and the Arcen forums. Funding Is Starting Strong! Our kickstarter for AI War II has now passed 10% funding within its first 30 hours, which seems like it bodes well. But the graph for every game is different, and so we're not going to sit idle just because of a strong start. We can still use all the help that we can get in spreading the word on social media, other sites that would be interested in this sort of game, and of course via gaming news. Reddit AMA Tomorrow Speaking of! Tomorrow we're going to be doing another AMA on /r/Games/. It will start at 11am EST, but if you're going to be late feel free to still ask questions -- I'm on reddit every day anyway (not during work!). So what else is new? Well, we've updated the video for the kickstarter to be a little better (it was already pretty killer). If you've already seen it, it mainly just adds a bit of extra visual and sound effect punch and clarity in a few places, and then a bit of extra music at the end (sneak peek of a vocal track from Stars Beyond Reach, actually). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLtDdZRq4Bk New Backer Tier! Our $100 and $300 tiers sold out incredibly quickly, and we're trying to figure out how to handle that -- providing rewards at those levels that you folks will enjoy, but that don't break us in the implementation/fulfillment phases. Thanks for bearing with us! In the meantime, we've added a new $400 tier: SPACE ARCHAEOLOGIST. As a Space Archaeologist you get the following benefits shared by all Neinzul Backers: - Named prominently in the credits as a Neinzul Backer - Neinzul Backer badge on Arcen forums. - 5 backer-exclusive AI War II digital wallpapers - Write your own “message in a bottle” that will be discoverable in-game (subject to approval) - Two copies of the game in private alpha - Name an in-game planet n addition, and EXCLUSIVE to the Space Archaeologist, you get to: -Work with Blue to design a mysterious alien artifact, then collaborate with Jack to write what we know about them (subject to approval) Initially controlled by the AI, alien artifacts are variants on the resource-generating derelicts scattered across the galaxy. Capturing an artifact earns you a one time Science bonus, and ongoing attempts to study them sometimes "glitch out", and generate allied ships! These ships aren't pushovers, and while you can't control them, you don't have to pay for them either. The AI won't be happy about losing the artifacts however, and will destroy them rather than let you keep them. Space Archaeologists will individually work with Blue to design their own artifact, and then work with Jack to explain what we know about it. That might be where it's from or how it was found, secrets of its construction or how it's been used. With this tier you'll be adding one more secret to the Arcenverse, so don't explain too much! Soundtrack Now Included In All $100+ Tiers! So many of you asked for this that we worked it out and are now going to be providing high-quality mp3, FLAC, and wav file versions of the AI War II OST for anyone who pledges at least $100. This will include the entire soundtrack, including any stretch goals or other bonus tracks commissioned, so when exactly you get each piece may be staggered a bit. This was a belated addition due to popular demand, and kickstarter doesn't allow us to change the description of backer tiers after someone has pledged at that level (definitely for the best as a general policy), so we've had to make note of it in the campaign FAQ and in the rewards section (not the sidebar). If you've read this far, here's a special reward. ;) This is Pablo's reorchestrated and remastered version of the original AI War title theme. Just like Arcen itself, he's come a really long way since 2009, and I continue to be really stunned and impressed with the work he's doing lately. https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/287038354 Other Changes To The Campaign! People have been making all sorts of great suggestions.
We're finally almost there! If you want a sneak preview of what the campaign looks like (minus some of the graphics and the video), here's a link. Please feel free to offer us feedback on it, and if you want to be notified when the campaign starts on Monday, you can either click the button right on that page, or you can email us at arcengames at gmail dot com and we'll shoot you an email instead.
If you're in the press and you're going to be writing ONE article about this, please wait until Monday. ;) Otherwise we're obviously grateful for any coverage we can get. But we almost didn't post this note today just for fear of that sort of too-early posting.
What else is up?
Well, the AI War II forums continue to be full of awesome discussion. The design document for the game complete enough for us to have a finalized budget, and for you to make an informed decision, although there are still a few areas that we're going to be polishing into next week.
Talk to you soon! For now I need to get back to making that video...
Chris
Click here for the official forum topic on this post.
Lots of stuff has been happening on the AI War II forums in general, and a lot of news in the dev diary section in particular. Once the kickstarter for the game launches -- later this week -- we'll be sharing more through our blog and social media. It's been an intensive process so far in the forums, though, with folks contributing 2,470 post on 180 topics in a matter of just a couple of weeks. Here's the first video of the game: https://youtu.be/uLtDdZRq4Bk The kickstarter for AI War II is coming up in the next week! If you want to be notified of it by email, please send a note to arcengames at gmail dot com and we'll be happy to. Our forums have a ton of information about what's going on and how you can contribute (non-financially) prior to the kickstarter if you wish to. And our public design document is huge and still growing. The latter will be finished up (for purposes of v1.0 specs) within the next 3 days. I'll be around on the forums plenty in the coming days, or I'll hopefully catch you later this week when we launch the Kickstarter! -Chris
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNXmzaUAQsU Pablo getting prepped for the newly reorchestrated AI War II theme. The kickstarter for this sequel to AI War Classic is launching in the next 1-3 weeks.
This is only the beginning. The first 36 pages of the AI War II design document are in place. I'm sure that folks on the forums will have a lot of commentary already about this. I'm going to be out over the weekend, just to warn you, but I wanted to leave this with you to peruse before I left.
The largest segment so far is detailing the technical advancements of the sequel (most of which are already in place). It's actually kind of insane to see how far things have come from where we left AI War "Classic" in 2014. It was already quite long in the tooth by our standards then, being very rooted in a 2009-based code architecture that had been remodeled enough times that we couldn't really go further with that.
Squads
This document does start by going into the rationale behind ship squads, which are a change with major performance-boosting ramifications and that should be able to yield an increased feeling of giant space battles more along the lines of the pre-Unity battles in AI War Classic. Feelings in this particular area may run a little strong since it is a pretty big shift (although familiar to many RTS games), so there's a lot of math and explanations there to hopefully make it clear just how freaking awesome this change is and why you should be happy about it.
The TLDR is that it will make your game run more smoothly even while we are able to do more complex things.
Multi-Part, But Not Modular Ships
This is the first example of something that is being changed that will have an impact on a lot of units in the game. Based on discussions with players on the forum, we should basically have the best of what modular ships offered before (the multi-part bit), but without the fiddly interface for customizing them during the game.
Of course, given the moddable nature of the new game, you can customize ships to your heart's content anyway. And there are space platforms that are a thing that have been designed but not yet written up, and those will also scratch that same itch...
Other Bits
There are a lot of other sections of the document that are just stubs for now, and they will be filled in next week. First of all focusing on the largest structural changes, since those require the most discussion with players. Then moving into smaller and smaller topics until we have a document that we feel is complete and correct.
Kickstarter
Depending on how long it takes us to reach that "complete and correct" status with the design document, and how long some of our prototypes for a few things in the new game take, we will be heading to kickstarter with this in 2-4 weeks. The game already has a remarkably complete base in terms of the multithreading, the networking (minus transport layer), and so on. The status of items are noted in the document above, and quite a lot of the trickiest things are already in the "complete" camp.
That said, there's still a ton to do, so it's not like the game is going to be rolling into early access tomorrow. But the goal is for us to be able to show you the vision for what this is (visually and otherwise), concretely show you what is planned (design document), and give you an accurate timeline for completion (with appropriate buffer).
If you're interested in hearing about the kickstarter when it goes live, you can always email us at arcengames at gmail dot com.
I'll see you all Monday!
Chris
Click here for the official forum thread on this post.
[url=http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_features.php]
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It has been a long while since the last update, as the developers have been fully focused on pushing Stars Beyond Reach to release for July, but there's a bundle for the AI War collection over at BundleStars that includes the following:
- Base game
Expansions:
- Zenith Remnant
- Children of Neinzul
- Light of the Spire
- Ancient Machines
- Vengeance of the Machine
- Destroyer of Worlds
The sale lasts for a little over seven days from this posting, and for only $2.99 USD.
ːKissAssː
The Winter 2014 AI War Sortie Bulletin topic at the community hub is a place to find other players.
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Report bugs and suggestions on MantisBT
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Most of Arcen's titles are on promotion over at GamersGate with heavy discounts; you can find them all with this search term! GamersGate does provide serials that can be registered on the Steam platform too, and as usual with games by Arcen, they can also be ran standalone.
Thanks to Vivisector 9999 for the heads up. ː8bitheartː
AI War 2014 Collection (up to Vengeance of the Machine): $3.40 USD
AI War: $2.00
Any single expansion: $1.00
Children of Neinzul: $0.40
Skyward Collapse Collection: $1.40
Bionic Dues: $2.00
Shattered Haven: $2.00
A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 and soundtrack: $4.00
The *NEW* Winter 2014 AI War Sortie Bulletin topic at the community hub is a place to find other players.
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Our community forums
Report bugs and suggestions on MantisBT
AI War web IRC / irc.appliedirc.com / #aiwar
Changelog may be found here
This update fixes the "fatal error in gc" problem introduced from last night's 8.020 update which implemented asynchronous disk calls for users with multiple network adapters afflicted with slow loading speed.
The *NEW* Winter 2014 AI War Sortie Bulletin topic at the community hub is a place to find other players.
AI War Facebook page
Arcen Games' Facebook page
Our community forums
Report bugs and suggestions on MantisBT
AI War web IRC / irc.appliedirc.com / #aiwar
Games Republic has various discounts on our games. I believe it's only for today!
AI War Collection 2014: $3.39 USD
Skyward Collapse Complete: $1.39
BIonic Dues: $2.49
The Last Federation: $6.79
A Valley Without Wind 1&2: $3.74
Tidalis: $1.24
Shattered Haven: $2.49
Sea worms are the best!
The *NEW* Winter 2014 AI War Sortie Bulletin topic at the community hub is a place to find other players.
AI War Facebook page
Arcen Games' Facebook page
Our community forums
Report bugs and suggestions on MantisBT
AI War web IRC / irc.appliedirc.com / #aiwar
The old Winter 2013 topic was due for a refresh, so a new bulletin topic for finding others to play with has been create. Leave a post with the required information, and add those who've already posted to hopefully get a game going.
The *NEW* Winter 2014 AI War Sortie Bulletin topic at the community hub is a place to find other players.
AI War Facebook page
Arcen Games' Facebook page
Tidalis Facebook page
A Valley Without Wind Facebook page
Our community forums
Report bugs and suggestions on MantisBT
AI War web IRC / irc.appliedirc.com / #aiwar
Bringing you brief news on a new Green Light bundle that contains AI War Fleet Command, Bionic Dues, Skyward Collapse, Tidalis, A Valley Without Wind, and A Valley Without Wind 2. All for $2.49 USD; please note that it only provides the base game for AI War.
AI War Facebook page
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Report bugs and suggestions on MantisBT
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Please see the original post here
Wanted to drop a quick note that all of our releases are now available on the IndieGameStand storefront. To celebrate, we’re running a week-long promotion with the site carrying the following discounts:
* AI War Collection (2014) — 75% off, $4.25 USD
* Tidalis — 80% off, $0.99 USD
* A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 Dual Pack — 80% off, $2.99 USD
* Shattered Haven — 85% off, $1.49 USD
* Skyward Collapse Complete Edition — 80% off, $1.39 USD
* Bionic Dues — 80% off, $1.99 USD
* The Last Federation — 50% off, $9.99 USD
Sale ends Tuesday, November 4th. Shattered Haven is also available as part of BundleStars’ Halloween-themed Carnage Bundle — offering 10 horror/zombie Steam games for $2.99.
The Winter 2013 AI War Sortie Bulletin topic at the community hub is a place to find other players.
AI War Facebook page
Arcen Games' Facebook page
Tidalis Facebook page
A Valley Without Wind Facebook page
Our community forums
Report bugs and suggestions on MantisBT
AI War web IRC / irc.appliedirc.com / #aiwar
GamersGate is currently having an 80% off sale for AI War and all its DLCs; the entire pack is only $3.30 USD, whereas individual DLCs are at $1.00 (Neinzul is $0.40). Cheapest it has been for a long while, so be sure to seize it before it ends in 16 hours. All keys are compatible with Steam.
The Winter 2013 AI War Sortie Bulletin topic at the community hub is a place to find other players.
This one is another performance update, this time on the CPU and RAM sides. The munitions boosters were the big culprit here, but there are other more minor effects beyond that. Enjoy! This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here. Click here for the official forum thread for this update.
This one is relatively small update with a couple of bugfixes. The main thing here is some fixes to flickering in the far zoom icon display that people were noticing in recent versions, as well as what is likely a performance improvement for most people on that front, too. Enjoy! This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here. Click here for the official forum thread for this update.
This one is the culmination of a couple of weeks of no-joke improvements to performance. Not only is the underlying timing for frames completely rewritten and improved, but the all-new sprite batching for our engine's render pipeline is now in place, too. Just what does this mean to you, as a player? Well, even on fast machines there were previously some times where you'd get stuttering and slowness that wasn't warranted, based on heavy CPU load. That is now pretty much a thing of the past, and even really large battles run much faster. Additionally, really huge battles would previously tank pretty much everyone's graphics cards because it was just trying to render so darn much. Now it's incredibly efficient by comparison! This is something that I've been wanting for a long time, so seeing how awesome the game runs now is really very satisfying. Enjoy! This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here. Click here for the official forum thread for this update.
This one is our second post-8.0 update. It's another intentionally small one, as we're trying to wait and see if there are any serious things that crop up before going through other kinds of bugfixing or balancing. In this particular case, some people experience slow loading times per image on their specific machine setup. This is apparently something to do with the WWW class in the unity engine, and strikes only some machines for the people that even experience (aka their high-powered desktop suffers from it, but their lesser laptop runs like a dream). In order to mitigate/remove the effect of this, there are some new options and default behaviors that help with loading concurrency. That way you don't wind up having to wait for things to load sequentially, all that time gets set next to itself. It's an unfortunate bug in the underlying unity engine, but this should really help to keep the problem to an absolute minimum impact for those few who are affected. Update: 8.003 fixes a bug preventing the display of shots and explosions in the prior version, as well as making the max loading threads slider clearer and easier to use. Enjoy! This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.
This one is our first post-8.0 update. It's an intentionally small one, as we're trying to wait and see if there are any serious things that crop up before going through other kinds of bugfixing or balancing. In this particular case, some of the Unity 3D engine upgrades that we did between versions 7.0 and 8.0 may have led to some incompatibility with certain older drivers or graphics cards, thanks to the game erroneously trying to force 2X antialiasing on. The way that fullscreen mode was working on OSX was also incorrect, but now all of the above match how our other later games (The Last Federation, etc) work. There were some people who strangely could run TLF but could not run AI War, while running on the same engine version, so hopefully this fixes that for them. It's tricky, though, because it's an incredibly minor subset of people on some very specific older hardware. Fingers crossed for them! Enjoy! This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you are using Steam, you can simply restart Steam in order to force it to update immediately.
AI War's run from 7.0 to 8.0 took a long break during our development of The Last Federation, but still contained over 60 new releases in 425 days. Thanks to player feedback (some new, some from years ago) the game is now better than ever. Biggest on the radar is the addition of the new "hacking" mechanic which gives the player several abilities which can be extremely useful but also quite risky. Hack wisely, and you can turn defeat into victory. Hack foolishly, and you can turn humanity into hamburger. The idea came out of long discussions with players on improving the relationship between metal and crystal. Those two mechanics had become far too similar, and ultimately the idea of merging them in favor a new radically-different mechanic found a lot of support from the community. "Salvage" is another major new mechanic based on years of community feedback. Basically if you lost your whole fleet in an attack it could take a long time to rebuild but often there wasn't much actual danger. In a game where 8 hours is a "short" campaign, players don't want to be stuck spending real "wall-clock" time without much actual "game" happening. So salvage allows the AI to harvest the remains of your ships lost in its territory to build a "reprisal" force that threatens you after a fleet-wipe, and allows you to harvest the remains of AI ships lost in your territory to accelerate your rebuilding. This led to a somewhat bumpy ride balance-wise but it's shaken out pretty well by now and has significantly improved enjoyment of the game. Champions have also been the subject of quite a bit of player feedback since they were introduced in the fourth expansion. Some people really liked them, some people really did not. One of the biggest issues was how the nebula scenarios (the main way you could improve champions) were so disconnected from the rest of the game. So we've added an optional alternate way to improve your Champion units that's much more aligned with playing normally. There's probably more to be done on this topic, but what's been done thus far has helped. "If anyone beats difficulty 10, that's a bug" is one of our old jokes with the community. Actually, we laugh when we say it but we're not joking. Several players have managed to beat Diff 10 over the years and the refinements to prevent this (without being too heavy-handed) have continued. Several AI improvements were made for 8.0, especially it's pushing an advantage during a large-scale attack. Balance dials have also been cranked to even-more-painful levels, and as of this writing there are no confirmed reports of a "normal" diff 10 win since the last round of related changes. The gauntlet's right there on the ground, folks. Player feedback (and our own devious minds) prompted tons of other changes in 8.0 (counter-attack posts being made optional comes to mind, and many turret caps becoming per-planet), but this account has to stop somewhere. Oh, and let's not forget the engine upgrade and the addition of linux support :) Have fun! (Here's the discussion on the official forums, by the way.) Also, check out our awesome new trailer for version 8.0!
AI War Facebook page
Arcen Games' Facebook page
Tidalis Facebook page
A Valley Without Wind Facebook page
Our community forums
Report bugs and suggestions on MantisBT
AI War web IRC / irc.appliedirc.com / #aiwar
AI War 8.0 and its sixth expansion Destroyer of Worlds arrive August 18th on PC, Mac and Linux. Check out the new trailer we've put together to mark the announcement.
Since there seems to be no way to embed videos in announcement posts anymore, view the beautiful trailer here!
[img=http://www.chatslang.com/images/shortcuts/twitch/admins/kreygasm.png][/img]
The Winter 2013 AI War Sortie Bulletin topic at the community hub is a place to find other players.
AI War Facebook page
Arcen Games' Facebook page
Tidalis Facebook page
A Valley Without Wind Facebook page
Our community forums
Report bugs and suggestions on MantisBT
AI War web IRC / irc.appliedirc.com / #aiwar
Please see the original post here
Changelog may be found here
This one is a break from your (ir)regularly-scheduled bugfixes and polish to bring you a large engine upgrade and native-linux support. NOTE: as of this writing distribution of the linux build is still being worked out.
We’d been planning to release 8.0/DoW during the week of August 4th and then wait until a week or so after 8.0 to start the beta cycle on that upgrade, but the engine-upgrade/linux-porting has gone better and faster than expected for our other titles (including older ones like Tidalis and AVWW1). So instead we’re bumping the release to the week of August 18th to allow a couple weeks of extra testing.
If you survive the bugs, please report them :)
By the way, this includes our new cross-platform updater (the old one did not support linux), so the update process will look somewhat different after this particular version. It will be faster, too.
The new ships from Destroyer of Worlds have had their far-zoom icons updated, thanks to community member HitmanN.
The tutorial’s been updated for 8.0, and now includes a section on Hacking.
And there’s also a goodly chunk of balance changes and bugfixes. Including actually getting Line Place working correctly. Really! I think.
Update: 7.049 to fix a bug where the music would play one track and stop.
Update: 7.050 to fix several issues with sounds playing very loudly and distortedly and with images not loading on linux.
Update: 7.051 to fix an issue in the prior version that prevented OSX from loading the game.
Update: 7.052 to make the textboxes work, and improve the sound effects stacking issue even further.
The Winter 2013 AI War Sortie Bulletin topic at the community hub is a place to find other players.
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 6.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 6.000 or later, you can download that here.
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