This one contains the last new content that was part of the original promise in the Ancient Shadows expansion, namely the last "main" nebula scenario (which is where I got the release name, it's pretty intense) and the largest champion hull size. There's still other things I may add over the next few weeks (modular fortress versions of some champion modules, some more active-use abilities for the champions, maybe more scenarios, etc), but that's it for the publicly released features list when we opened up preorders. I've still got to close up the loophole that allows duplicate scenarios within one game, but I'm waiting until I'm sure all the scenarios for 6.0 are defined before doing that.
Fixed a few bugs too, but was focused on the scenario so not much else got done. More of the usual smaller-but-more-numerous-changes updates to come soon :)
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.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Monday, September 24, 2012
AI War Beta 5.085-5.086 "Shady Carriers" Released!
This one is probably the second-to-last update containing new Ancient Shadows content (though additional scenarios beyond the next may be added between now and release, time permitting). It adds two new scenarios for seeding in the nebulae.
There's also a significant rebalance of AI guardians and AI carriers (what happens when you blow up a carrier, at least). I suspect the result with both will be a bit too much on the easy side, but I think the new situation for both is a lot more consistent (guardians had wildly different dps from each other, previously, and carrier pops were a multidimensional pinata), so we can work up from here as necessary.
And it's got a number of miscellaneous bugfixes and changes, like usual.
Update: 5.086 hotfix is out to fix a bug in 5.085 that would give a bunch of stuff to each champion upon loading the game (here I was thinking that simply turning off the test branch was sufficient, but noooo, I had to have a bug in part of that that could trigger anyway).
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.
There's also a significant rebalance of AI guardians and AI carriers (what happens when you blow up a carrier, at least). I suspect the result with both will be a bit too much on the easy side, but I think the new situation for both is a lot more consistent (guardians had wildly different dps from each other, previously, and carrier pops were a multidimensional pinata), so we can work up from here as necessary.
And it's got a number of miscellaneous bugfixes and changes, like usual.
Update: 5.086 hotfix is out to fix a bug in 5.085 that would give a bunch of stuff to each champion upon loading the game (here I was thinking that simply turning off the test branch was sufficient, but noooo, I had to have a bug in part of that that could trigger anyway).
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.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
AI War Beta 5.084 "Diplomatic Incident" Released!
This one continues our process of finishing up the last new content for the Ancient Shadows expansion, and adds another scenario that can seed in a nebula. There are a few old friend/foes/friendly-foes in there, hence the title of this release.
Several balance changes, particularly to the bring the Dark Spire minor faction back into some semblance of sanity (they're supposed to destabilize the situation, not destabilize your computer), and playtesting shows good results there.
The Zenith Reprocessor now has a bit more "character", now being something of a sneaky raider (i.e. "dude, where's my car?").
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.
Several balance changes, particularly to the bring the Dark Spire minor faction back into some semblance of sanity (they're supposed to destabilize the situation, not destabilize your computer), and playtesting shows good results there.
The Zenith Reprocessor now has a bit more "character", now being something of a sneaky raider (i.e. "dude, where's my car?").
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.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
AI War Beta 5.083 "Core Values" Released!
This one is a relatively small release, for us, but the impact on the endgame should be... interesting. It's the last of the non-champion-related new content for Ancient Shadows and adds 3 new Core Guard Posts that the AI can use its "brutal" picks on when populating an AI homeworld's defenses during mapgen. They're all beatable, but they'll take a chunk out of your fleet(s) first. Balance feedback is welcome, as always.
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.
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.
Saturday, September 15, 2012
AI War Beta 5.080-5.082 "Bonus Round" Released!
This one adds the last three bonus ship types of the Ancient Shadows expansion:
The Youngling Firefly is sort of a mix between the youngling idea, the zenith viral shredder, and a bugzapper. Basically it's an ok fighter that does an AOE explosion when it dies, but that aoe explosion gets stronger based on how much damage it did during its lifetime.
The Saboteur is sort of like flipping the firefly idea around: instead of blowing up when it dies, it makes the stuff it shoots cause an AOE explosion when those victims die. General theme thus far: make stuff blow up.
The Spire Corvette is the first "bonus starship" in the game, and is built from the starship constructor mainly because it is modular and needs its own buy-menu-tab, which the starship mechanic is better setup to support than the space-dock-ship mechanic. Anyway, these are straight-up combat starships, but with half the cap of the Spire Starship so they can be more individually awesome (beware though, your accountant will probably have a heart attack on the higher-mark ones). A selection of modules is available from the start, but the higher-mark versions piggyback on existing research much like the fallen-spire modules, neinzul enclave drones, and modular fortress modules.
This release also has several bugfixes and balance changes, some of them pretty important.
Update: 5.081 hotfix is out to fix some important bug and balance issues in 5.080, and make a number of other changes/fixes that should hopefully improve things overall.
Update: 5.082 hotfix is out to fix a nasty one in 5.081 that could cause basically all buy menus to be empty. Whoops.
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.
The Youngling Firefly is sort of a mix between the youngling idea, the zenith viral shredder, and a bugzapper. Basically it's an ok fighter that does an AOE explosion when it dies, but that aoe explosion gets stronger based on how much damage it did during its lifetime.
The Saboteur is sort of like flipping the firefly idea around: instead of blowing up when it dies, it makes the stuff it shoots cause an AOE explosion when those victims die. General theme thus far: make stuff blow up.
The Spire Corvette is the first "bonus starship" in the game, and is built from the starship constructor mainly because it is modular and needs its own buy-menu-tab, which the starship mechanic is better setup to support than the space-dock-ship mechanic. Anyway, these are straight-up combat starships, but with half the cap of the Spire Starship so they can be more individually awesome (beware though, your accountant will probably have a heart attack on the higher-mark ones). A selection of modules is available from the start, but the higher-mark versions piggyback on existing research much like the fallen-spire modules, neinzul enclave drones, and modular fortress modules.
This release also has several bugfixes and balance changes, some of them pretty important.
Update: 5.081 hotfix is out to fix some important bug and balance issues in 5.080, and make a number of other changes/fixes that should hopefully improve things overall.
Update: 5.082 hotfix is out to fix a nasty one in 5.081 that could cause basically all buy menus to be empty. Whoops.
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.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Back Home After A Fun And Busy PAX
The emotional roller coaster that is exhibiting at PAX is behind us for the second time this year. I was able to snap/dig up a handful of photos at the event showing the Indie Megabooth crew, our indie dev talk, the Arcen station, and one shot of me looking particularly frowny (think that was near the end of day two, so I may have been unconscious). Wish I had taken more, but it's such a frantic weekend I'm glad to have gathered what I did.
The Megabooth (exhibitors pictured) felt like a smashing success. The attendees bought into the wide variety of games and developer-run booths, and honestly there wasn't anything on the show floor that compared. Lots of great comments and compliments on the effort as a whole and our own specific games as well.
Showing A Valley Without Wind and Shattered Haven was a blast too. People had heard of Valley and/or Arcen a lot more than I was accustomed to, which was awesome. Shattered Haven was a surprise for both myself and attendees, as we weren't totally sure if we could ready a demo by that Friday morning. We managed to pull it off along with officially announcing the game, and those who asked got to check out the PAX-exclusive build.
Most enjoyed playing the games, and they seemed intrigued by all the developments taking place in the coming months for both titles as well as AI War.
PAX Indie Interviews
In my limited spare time I worked to get several video interviews of attending indies with the help of my friend and Arcen's trailer maker Kevin Harland behind the camera. I think we have some 16 or so in the can, with about a quarter edited and uploaded so far. I've highlighted our chat with Andy Schatz about his top-down heist game Monaco on IGM. It's one of the more anticipated indies in recent memories, and finally it's about done and ready for release.
AVWW Beta Keys Now Register On Steam
I believe this was semi-announced, not fully. So just to pass on the good news again: your A Valley Without Wind beta key will now register on Steam. That goes for keys purchased from other stores for the official release as well. We're very happy to be able to finally deliver on this promise, albeit very tardily. We really appreciate everyone sticking with us on it.
Beyond that it's been a pretty quiet period for the game in general, but trust me when I say things are going to get loud for it very soon.
Games Coverage/Videos
It's been a long time since I last updated, so there's quite a few links to pass on. Enough that I separated them out into a few categories in fact. I also included some links to developers I got to spend time with over the weekend. These guys are fantastic and so are their games.
General Megabooth Coverage
Kotaku -- Sweet Mother Of Pearl, There’ll Be A Lot Of Indie Games At PAX This Year
Destructoid -- Here are the games of the PAX Prime Indie Megabooth
Joystiq -- Indie Megabooth site up now for PAX Prime
Polygon -- Indie Megabooth brings 30 devs and more than 30 games to PAX Prime
IndieGames.com -- Indie Megabooth Occupies Pax Prime 2012
Indie Game Magazine -- PAX Prime: Indie Mega Booth Announcement
XBLA Fans -- Indie Mega Booth returns for PAX Prime with 30+ games
Hit Reset -- There Will Be Lots Of Indie Games At Pax Prime
We Got This Covered -- Indie Megabooth PAX Prime Roster Revealed
Other Megabooth Developers You Ought To Follow
Young Horses (Octodad)
Dejobaan Games (Drunken Robot Pornography, Drop That Beat Like An Ugly Baby)
Radial Games (Monster Loves You)
Broken Rules (Chasing Aurora)
Vlambeer (Super Crate Box and Luftrausers)
Ska Studios (Charlie Murder, The Dishwasher Series)
General Arcen Games Coverage
Full Nova Zero -- PAX Prime Preview: Indie Developer Arcen Games
IndieGames.com -- Trailer: Shattered Haven (Arcen Games)
VG247 -- Shattered Haven teaser trailer reveals a pixelated zombie apocalypse
Blue's News -- Shattered Haven Announced
Gamers Haven -- Shattered Haven teaser trailer
Weaboos With Controllers -- PAX Prime 2012: Shattered Haven is not your typical zombie game
Weaboos With Controllers -- PAX Prime 2012: A Valley Without Wind is procedurally awesome
Violent Gamer -- A.I. War: Ancient Shadows Expansion
YouTube Videos/Clips Of Our Games
Gaming With Cloud8745 Episode 1: Tidalis [Let's Play]
FrozenCereal's A Valley Without Wind Let's Play (3 Parts)
Shisno's A Valley Without Wind Let's Play (4 Parts)
Elite Effect Gaming -- Turbo Plays A Valley Without Wind (8 Parts)
Dwarro Games -- A Little Look At A Valley Without Wind Part 1 and Part 2
SoldierJens -- A Valley Without Wind [Let's Play]
NoNeedToBeHuman -- A Valley Without Wind - Level 1 Boss Tower Mission
A Valley Without Wind Demo [Let's Play] (Hungarian)
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
AI War Beta 5.077-5.079 "Cap Tectonics" Released!
This one finally implements a change that's been on the table in the forums for a month or so: fleet ship caps no longer go down at higher marks. This will help them be more attractive to human players and more useful for both players and the AI (previously a cap of mkV fleet ships actually had a lower cap-dps than a cap of mkIV fleet ships, for instance). The AI still gets a modifier to wave size to keep the higher-tech waves in check, but it's no longer being applied twice like it was. Also, to keep the tech-level difference from being too sudden in waves, the mixed-tech-level-wave rule from diff 9+ now applies to diff 5+.
Since all that was getting shaken up anyway, we went ahead and normalized the cap of all fleet ships that change with unit-cap-scale to be a multiple of 8. This makes it so playing on Low or Ultra-Low caps doesn't "chop off" any part of the cap when dividing it by 4 or 8. To make this work without changing balance, however, a ton of numbers had to be changed to maintain cap-dps and cap-health (and metal, crystal, and energy costs) compared to the previous version. There's still some balance change, but it's within a pretty narrow margin. And the good news is that while these changes were made the internal math was also made a lot more consistent with how we're actually balancing these things now.
There's also several bugfixes and balance changes, most notably reducing the "zombie apocalypse" potential of the recently-added Dark Spire minor faction. I thought it was entertaining ;)
Update: 5.078 hotfix is out to fix a bug where the AI was ignoring unit-cap-scale when sending waves. Result = hilarity.
Update: 5.079 hotfix is out to fix two nasty bugs, including one that could actually corrupt a savegame. Sorry about that! It was those nasty Dark Spire again *shakes fist*. I knew I was adding something mean to the game with those, but there's been this and the (unintentionally severe) zombie apocalypse a few versions ago, so it would seem I had no idea.
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.
Since all that was getting shaken up anyway, we went ahead and normalized the cap of all fleet ships that change with unit-cap-scale to be a multiple of 8. This makes it so playing on Low or Ultra-Low caps doesn't "chop off" any part of the cap when dividing it by 4 or 8. To make this work without changing balance, however, a ton of numbers had to be changed to maintain cap-dps and cap-health (and metal, crystal, and energy costs) compared to the previous version. There's still some balance change, but it's within a pretty narrow margin. And the good news is that while these changes were made the internal math was also made a lot more consistent with how we're actually balancing these things now.
There's also several bugfixes and balance changes, most notably reducing the "zombie apocalypse" potential of the recently-added Dark Spire minor faction. I thought it was entertaining ;)
Update: 5.078 hotfix is out to fix a bug where the AI was ignoring unit-cap-scale when sending waves. Result = hilarity.
Update: 5.079 hotfix is out to fix two nasty bugs, including one that could actually corrupt a savegame. Sorry about that! It was those nasty Dark Spire again *shakes fist*. I knew I was adding something mean to the game with those, but there's been this and the (unintentionally severe) zombie apocalypse a few versions ago, so it would seem I had no idea.
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.
Saturday, September 1, 2012
AI War Beta 5.076 "Clusters Of Pain" Released!
This one is out tonight instead of Monday because a recent change broke the tutorial.
But it also contains two significant bits of content for the Ancient Shadows expansion: a variant of the Clusters map type with more outlandish intra-cluster arrangement, and a new minor faction: the Dark Spire.
Some of you may be thinking "Hey, I've already run into the Dark Spire in a nebula!". Well, you're right, and there's a degree of overlap here. But this is actually a Minor Faction that can be enabled in the lobby, and doesn't have anything to do with the nebula scenarios or champions. It can be pretty intense, though the balance numbers are only based on preliminary testing and may need substantial adjustment.
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.
But it also contains two significant bits of content for the Ancient Shadows expansion: a variant of the Clusters map type with more outlandish intra-cluster arrangement, and a new minor faction: the Dark Spire.
Some of you may be thinking "Hey, I've already run into the Dark Spire in a nebula!". Well, you're right, and there's a degree of overlap here. But this is actually a Minor Faction that can be enabled in the lobby, and doesn't have anything to do with the nebula scenarios or champions. It can be pretty intense, though the balance numbers are only based on preliminary testing and may need substantial adjustment.
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.
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