Arcen Games News Has Moved!: 2012

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

A Valley Without Wind 2 Early-Access Beta Out on Steam for PC/Mac

The Valley 2 Beta has arrived, and is now available on Steam for both PC and Mac. Those who purchase the title will receive instant access to the latest beta build, as well as a free copy of the original A Valley Without Wind.

The bundle deal also works the other way around, so anyone who purchases (or has purchased) the first game, gets the sequel for free. On top of all that, the package is 60% off for a limited time during Steam's Holiday Sale. That's like, two games for the price of less than half of one! Or something!

Valley 2 can also be pre-ordered directly through the Arcen Store, with the same package deal attached to the purchase.

Questions? Comments? Ideas? Just feeling a bit lonely? Stop by the the Valley 2 forums and jump in on discussions with both players and developers.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Steam Autumn Sale: All Arcen Titles 40-75% Off

Steam's Autumn Sale is underway, and our entire catalog has been significantly discounted for the duration of the event. The individual discounts are as follows:

The offerings end on November 26th, so be sure to take advantage before then!

New Press and Video

Idle Thumbs Podcast -- Checking In With Arcen

No Continues! Podcast -- Shattered Haven Discussion @ 40:00

Let's Play AI War COOP Series

Strategy Gaming World AI War: Ancient Shadows Video

AI War - The Final Push

A Valley Without Wind Let's Play Series

Iscriviti Plays A Valley Without Wind

Daniel tries to review AVWW

A Valley without Wind - First FreeFall Mission

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

AI War Beta 6.007-6.009 "Burying The Hatchet" Released!

This one brings back the human-ally component of the Roaming Enclaves minor faction, with a huge overhaul of its control logic.

Long ago the Roaming Enclaves minor faction could spawn human-ally variants in addition to the currently-possible AI-ally and enemy-to-all variants. But they weren't very bright, and tended to get killed a lot despite many changes to make them survive better. Eventually they listened to the human players saying that the enclaves were stupidly suicidal and made a very wise decision for their own survival: they left the galaxy.

But apparently wisdom is shortlived, because they're back now. Only smarter. I hope. At least, if nearly two solid days of work on their new AI wasn't enough to make them at least tolerable to their human allies, they're going away for good ;)

One thing to note is that their default behavior is pretty conservative, but there are a few experimental "chat directives" (explained in the patch notes, and shortly to be in the commands list I'm sure) you can give them that include more aggressive behavior. Whether or not it's a good idea to have this kind of (very high level, indirect) influence over a minor faction is still up in the air, so those may go away. We'll see :)

We've also fixed some bugs and made some balance changes. There's a fairly important change to command station rebuilding behavior, and something to make logistics station upgrades more worth it.

Update: 6.008 hotfix to fix null exception bug that could happen in some cases in the ally-enclave logic.

Update: 6.009 hotfix to fix a really longstanding (probably pre-5.0) but rare desync-on-load bug. Kinda funny it popped up just now, but hey.

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, November 13, 2012

AI War Beta 6.006 "The Pain Train" Released!

This one completely re-imagines Astro Trains. The trains had really fallen out of player favor a while ago, so we shuffled them off to be an AI Plot until we could think of a more interesting approach. That day has come.

The release notes have the details, but some highlights:

* Astro Trains are now a variable-intensity plot like Hybrids. So 0/10 is "off", 4/10 is "normal", 1/10 is "trivial", and 10/10 is "game-dominating".

* Trains will never be a direct threat in and of themselves (except the nuke train, but that only shows up if you crank the plot intensity all the way up to 10, and then only very rarely), but the support effects the provide (generally just on their current planet) will range from annoying to devastating. And since the trains travel in bigger groups on higher intensities, it can really stack up.

* The really nasty trains are much less invincible than the others, but even those will be hard to kill. You can influence where the trains go by killing off train stations.

* The cargo trains are totally harmless in and of themselves, but their deliveries make progress toward a construction project for the AI (it'll alert you as that gets past 50%).

In summary, you probably won't want to turn these on unless you want more pain in your game, but since that's a significant portion of our audience here you go :) It's also good for folks who want to see how well their impenetrable defenses can hold up under extreme conditions, particularly on the higher intensities.

Trains aside, this patch also addresses a longstanding player desire for an easier way to search for ships (player and AI): there are now two "custom" galaxy display modes that let you pick the target type from a dropdown. Further, while this dropdown is expanded you can type part of the name of what you want to search for and it will narrow the dropdown down to items that contain the text. This incremental-search approach is now also used by the select-target dropdown on the reference tab of the stats window.

There are also some important bugfixes, and some balance changes.

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.

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

AI War Beta 6.005 "Burning The Candle At Both Ends" Released!

This one answers the results of our three recent polls on which units most need rebalancing (in both directions, for player and/or AI).

Congratulations (and changes) thus go out to: the Tackle Drone Launcher, "Mysterious" Colony Ship (nebula unit), Zenith Bombard, Teleport Raider, Infiltrator, Superfortress, Zenith Power Generator, and Champion Drone Bays. Racking up that much infamy isn't easy, so give them a hand folks.

We also incorporated new far-zoom icons for LotS, like we did with Ancient Shadows a couple versions ago. Thanks again to long-time community member HitmanN for those.

Speaking of ship icons, the planetary summary sidebar's been changed to render those in a manner more consistent with the rest of the game. Previously they were losing some clarity, and I think they look better now.

We also fixed a few bugs in this one, including one that basically broke the Doom Accelerator modules in the last couple releases. Oops! Well, taken care of now.

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.

Monday, October 29, 2012

AI War Beta 6.003-6.004 "Fortress-size It" Released!

This one greatly expands the module variety available to modular fortress owners in champion games. Every module that can be unlocked on a champion now has a mod-fort equivalent (fortress modules only go up to MkIII though). The pre-existing mod-fort modules are still unlocked via their related turret/starship/etc research, but the newly added ones are unlocked when any player-controlled champion in the game has unlocked them.

Speaking of champions, the "you must be within 20000 range of the dying unit to get XP for it" rule has been removed: you still have to be on the same planet, but the fine details don't matter. Hopefully this will reduce the field of OCD behaviors slightly ;) Overall it wasn't a big deal since most XP comes from winning nebulae (and everyone gets that), but it should please some players.

And speaking of modules: AI-controlled Spire Corvettes will now be much scarier because we fixed a bug that was keeping their modules at MkI. Watch out for the high-mark ones.

Speaking of Spire stuff, the Shard-recovery chases in Fallen Spire have been revised again to not be so intense early on (where you don't have very far to go anyway) but still have the full force (or more) of the recent speed increases in the later stages (where you'll be more prepared).

The Ancient Shadows bonus ship far-zoom icons (i.e. the representation you see almost all the time) have been redone by long-time community member HitmanN. Same with the Spire champion far-zoom icons. They look [i]much[/i] better, in my opinion :)

Fixed a basically-since-forever bug where Defender mode would sometimes not launch waves. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it happened when you rolled both AIs as types that don't send waves. Computers think they're cute like that, doing what we say and not what we mean.

Special Forces now "breed" much more slowly, but have a higher possible population (both the rate and the cap scale up during the game with AIP, etc). It's been amusing to see the "intergalactic sentry eye" effect as it's been called, but not actually the intention there ;)

And a few other changes.

Update: 6.004 hotfix to fix bug in the last version that changed the color of your ships in the planetary summary.

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, October 25, 2012

AI War Beta 6.002 "Better Than A Stick In The Eye" Released!

This one finally gets around to adding some more AI Eye variants to round finish response to the Eye winning a community poll back before the beta of Ancient Shadows. There are several new devious toys in there, providing varying degrees of "I do not want to make this angry, ever". Also, the AI homeworlds now get versions of eyes with a few important special characteristics (though their main functions are no more powerful than normal eyes).

The Deepstrike-response mechanic has also been overhauled, and should now be harder to just brush off for a few cases where it wasn't particularly threatening.

Rounding out the release are a few bugfixes and balance changes, and a couple new surprises for avid knowledge-raiders.

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.

Shattered Haven Playable Tomorrow at GameCity

Monday, October 22, 2012

AI War Beta 6.001 "There's Always At Least One" Released!

This one is mostly a bunch of bugfixes to deal with things that made it into the 6.0 official. None of them really critical, though the scapegoat bug (i.e. the AI finds a way to counter the Martyr) was pretty hilarious, and these are good to get fixed in any event.

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.

Friday, October 19, 2012

AI War 6.0 and Ancient Shadows Expansion Materialize on Steam

All AI War products on sale until October 26th to celebrate launch.

Arcen Games is pleased to announce the launch of AI War 6.0 along with the game’s fourth expansion Ancient Shadows, available now on Steam.

Among several other content additions, Ancient Shadows brings Champions into the fray. These behemoths can be upgraded, gain EXP, and lend powerful aid to your main forces. They also possess a unique power that allows them to explore entirely new parts of the galaxy where the AI cannot reach.

Splinter factions dwell in those backwater nebulae. Some are hiding. Some are plotting. Some have gone totally insane. It is there, in the shadows, that your champion can find relics from the ancient race which constructed it. What power awaits? And at what cost?

Along with the aforementioned modular fortresses, Ancient Shadows packs in 9 new bonus ship classes, 2 new AI types, 2 new map types, and a whopping 98 minutes of new music by AI War’s composer Pablo Vega as well. For the full list of features, please see the Ancient Shadows page on the game’s wiki.

The new content also significantly expands the co-op friendliness of AI War by allowing new or novice players to jump in and control a subset of the main player’s units – whether it be a portion of the fleet or the champion itself (or both).

Coupled with the expansion is the latest version of the base game: AI War 6.0. The sheer volume of 6.0's changes defies summation, but some of the high points include a rewiring of some of the core mechanics such as the ability to hack the AI, a redone Energy system, variable difficulty levels for several minor factions and AI plots, redone starfield backgrounds, a substantially “smarter” AI, improvements to balance, substantially reduced RAM usage of the game (great for when playing with really huge numbers of ships in particular), and a whole lot more.

Most, if not every single one, of the aforementioned items has our community’s prints all over them. AI War simply wouldn’t be where it is today without its players.

To mark the releases, a new trailer has just been launched for the game. We highly recommend giving it a look as it’s the first one in AI War’s four year history that we believe actually nails the overall feel of it.

AI War: Ancient Shadows will be offered at $4.99 regularly, with a 10% discount bringing it down to $4.49 through the next week. AI War itself, its first three expansions, and the Alien bundle containing both the base game and trio of expansions are also on sale during the launch period at a stout 75% discount.

About AI War

AI War is a one-of-a-kind strategy game that plays like an RTS but feels like a 4X. With tower defense and grand strategy bits, too. You'll be wanting the demo to really know what we mean, there's nothing else on the market remotely like this.

More specifically, this is a game that you can either play solo, or in 2-8 player co-op. You always play against a pair of AIs, and you can configure an enormous amount of things about the experience. The AI is very excellent, and also an entirely unique concept. The longer you play, the more the AI will impress you, which is kind of backwards from most strategy games, right? We named this "AI War" for a reason.

"You are outgunned. You are massively outnumbered. You must win." These are your orders.

About Arcen Games

Arcen Games entered the PC indie scene in 2009 with their cult classic AI War: Fleet Command, which was named the 40th best-reviewed PC game of the year by MetaCritic. Their second year was a busy one, seeing the release of The Zenith Remnant, the first full expansion for AI War; Tidalis, an innovative block-based puzzle with casual appeal and hardcore depth; and Children of Neinzul, a micro-expansion for AI War with all profits benefiting the Child's Play charity, of which Arcen is a platinum sponsor.

AI War's third and largest expansion Light of the Spire marked Arcen's first release of 2011, with the rest of the company's focus being devoted to their most massive project yet: A Valley Without Wind, which released in 2012. The remainder of 2012 is a another busy time for the team, as they ready AI War's fourth expansion Ancient Shadows, A Valley Without Wind 2, and their recently announced top-down survival game Shattered Haven for release over the coming months.

Originally a one-man shop, Arcen Games has grown to have half a dozen part-time or fulltime contributors to its various titles. For all the latest news, media coverage, and some of our other musings, follow us on our developer and individual game pages on Reddit, Google+, Facebook, and Twitter; as well as Arcen lead Chris Park's Games By Design blog.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

AI War Beta 5.096-5.097 "Release Candidates 1-2" Released!

This one is the first release-candidate for our 6.0 release. In other words: this _is_ 6.0 (aside from the new Ancient Shadows music, that comes Friday) unless we get a report of a critical bug that must be fixed before the official release.

This one adds 25 champion-related achievements, fixes a bunch of unit description-text errors, and adds unique images for mkII through mkV of most champion module lines (thanks to HitmanN, again, for all the champion-module art!).

There's also fixes to a few bugs that came to my attention since the last release, and a balance change to the champion-nemesis thing from the previous release.

Update: 5.097 hotfix (i.e. Release Candidate 2) is out to fix a bug in the last version that caused the available-modules buttons to not show on the ship-design screen at all. There's always got to be something, I suppose.

Enjoy! And let us know if you find any problems!

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.

AI War Beta 5.095 "Apply Core Sanding Machine" Released!

This one is VERY near the end of our polishing the game to get it ready for 6.0. I still have some achievements to add, a bunch of text fixes to make, and a couple other not-really-game-logic things to change, but other than that, we're there. Unless there's something horribly broken in this version; so let us know if you find something! In my testing it's working rather well.

Several champion-related enhancements are in this one, specifically:

- It's now much easier to update your champion to use newly unlocked higher-mark versions of the modules it's already using.

- If the players have champions, the AI now gets some special "nemesis champions". The bulk of that work was stolen shamelessly from the Heroic AI type, but combined with the (also shamelessly appropriated) Strategic Reserve logic to produce something very different without adding much complexity to the code (kind of important right now). The end result is some fairly nasty guards on the AI homeworld to prevent an easy assassination by well-built player champions. You can still do that kind of assassination, but you'll either need to bring in some really heavy guns in addition to your champion or raise AIP enough that the AI is (thematically speaking) putting its resources into other ways to kill you and doesn't have as much to spare on its nemesis fleet.

- The costs of mkIV and mkV module upgrades have been reduced so that you can max out more module lines in the endgame, and thus have more flexibility in what you use.

- Nebulae will no longer spawn duplicate scenarios if there's nothing left to spawn in them, since they just don't make sense if they happen more than once. Many maps don't have more than 9 nebulae anyway, but if you do those extra ones will just be empty (until/unless we define more scenarios, that is). But if you really want those additional scenarios there's a chat-line command (non-cheat) to re-enable the old behavior. It's mainly for you beta players who got used to it ;)

And there's a few other changes in there, all in the notes.

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, October 16, 2012

AI War Beta 5.094 "Apply MkIV Sanding Machine" Released!

This one is near the end of our polishing the game to get it ready for 6.0. There's one more chunk of changes I want to get in before calling it a release candidate.

So this one's basically bugfixes and some balance, including many smaller suggestions from our players that I hadn't gotten to until just now. Please hammer away on it and tell us if anything breaks.

One notable change is that champion respawn is no longer completely free; it now requires a small amount of capacitor charge to happen and completely discharges the capacitor. The end result is that "dying" twice in row (or once, after totally draining the capacitor on abilities) will cause about a 20 second delay before respawning again.

It's been a long road since 5.0, and even since the start of the Ancient Shadows beta, but we're almost there.

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, October 13, 2012

AI War Beta 5.093 "Apply MkIII Sanding Machine" Released!

This one continues the process of polishing the game up for the 6.0 official release. Bugfixes and balance, basically, but it's pretty important stuff.

Most significantly, the nebula scenarios have been adjusted in a few ways that should make them more enjoyable, and perhaps a bit easier. You can now get repair and module-construction-assistance from allied large starbases (the ones with "large" in their name). Also, The scaling (with champion count, scenario win count, and largest champion hull size) in base-vs-base scenarios is now a bit less intense due to being additively applied instead of multiplicatively, and now applies to allies as well as enemies (just less-so).

As previously mentioned, the official release date for Ancient Shadows is the 19th, which is next Friday. So we're really just in bugfix/balance/polish (and fixing up the tutorial) mode on AIW right now, so please do let us know if you find something wrong :)

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, October 9, 2012

AI War Beta 5.091-5.092 "Apply MkII Sanding Machine" Released!

This one contains several relatively small changes. Some are important fixes, some are just polishing up for the official release.

Perhaps most significantly, military command stations have been reworked into a substantially more powerful unit in their own right. Their actual contribution to a main-chokepoint defense isn't much changed (which is to say, it's still really powerful thanks to the planetary munitions boost), but their ability to hold off small attacks on otherwise unsupported planets is much better. Combined with the new miniforts, you can defend a satellite world fairly well without devoting any global turret or fleet cap to it. Even that will still crumple pretty fast under anything like a serious AI assualt, however, which is how it should be.

Many players have been asking for another warp gate to move newly-built player-controlled "nebula ships" to a better starting position, and this release ties those production facilties into the starship constructor warp gate since the ships are basically just (sometimes smallish) starships built from a different tech base. I could also just add a dedicated new gate type if this doesn't work out but wasn't sure having it on the buy menu sometimes and not other times would work right given the nature of the circumstances you'd need one.

Also, a fairly nasty bug involving the CTRLS window thinking you were discarding changes by opening it has been fixed. Those of you bedeviled by it can enjoy the game again now ;)

Update: 5.092 hotfix is out to fix a couple nasty bugs in the last version. One caused unhandled errors when a CPA launched, the other prevented group-move from working when giving an order to move to another planet. There's also some important changes to nebula seeding in there that I think will help overall.

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, October 6, 2012

AI War Beta 5.090 "Fish Or Cut Bait" Released!

This one continues addressing issues that were a high priority (for the timeframe of the upcoming official version) for our community in this poll. This time:

The #1 request was that free threat not camp on a wormhole forever if the planet on the other side was too strong for it to consider attacking. Fish or cut bait, the saying goes. Now a ship that's still alive 30 minutes after being freed will switch to an alternate "threat fleet" behavior and coordinate with other such ships. The behavior is somewhat similar to the special forces behavior except that it's primarily offensive in nature, looking for an opening where it can do something other than park on a wormhole.

The #2 request was to do something about the vast challenge-disparity between defending at a single chokepoint and defending multiple ingress points. A single chokepoint will probably always be easier to defend, and that's fine, but the difference was larger than it needed to be. So now the max time the AI can wait between waves (and thus how large those waves are) goes down somewhat with multiple ingress points (max effect at 4+ target planets).

The other side of that issue was the frustration of trying to have "satellite" worlds on high-difficulty games. Basically you had two choices: pull turret and/or mobile cap from your main defenses to cover the "islands", or accept that the islands would die when tripped over by a few wayward AI ships. And pulling stuff from your main defenses could be... contraindicated by the difficulty level. So we've added a new "Mini-Fortress" unit that has a small per-planet cap but no global cap. So defending your satellite worlds with miniforts does cost metal, crystal, and energy but it doesn't pull any potential unit-cap away from your main defenses.

There are several other items from the poll that we hope to get to soon, but those were the highest priority ones, and most of the rest of the time that went into this release was used on fixing a laundry list of bug and balance issues. Some of them are fairly important; for one, I think several of you will appreciate units no longer moving slightly when given an attack order against something already in range (thus no longer resetting any ability/reload counters on fortreses, zenith siege engines, etc).

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.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

AI War Beta 5.089 "Apply Sanding Machine" Released!

This one addresses a number of issues that were a high priority (for the timeframe of the upcoming official version) for our community in this poll. Specifically:

Engineer logic for picking what targets to assist first. Mostly this relates to repair order, but also somewhat to build-assistance. Let us know how it feels now, and what else would improve the default logic.

Rebuilder logic has also been redone. Prioritization wasn't really a problem here, but a number of changes over the years had resulted in a fairly pants-on-head behavior for these. Basically each rebuilder could rebuild something once every ten seconds, but most players couldn't tell because a pile of 20 would all try to rebuild the same one. One rebuilder would succeed, the rest would wait a second or two until they could retarget. And then retarget all onto the same one. And one would succeed... and so on. The recharge time paled in comparison to the "waiting in line" time. Also, FRD rebuilders tended to "yoyo" back and forth between targets and their FRD point. Now they're much better at spreading out across the available target remains, and will yoyo much less frequently. Partly this is because their recharge time is now 1 second. That may be more of a buff than intended, please let us know if it makes things too easy (probably not) or what else would improve their logic.

Fabricators and Advanced Factories will now avoid seeding near wormholes, much like human home command stations. The longstanding bug of always-2-spider-V-fabs has also been fixed, and in general fabs are more likely to be Core fabs, since there are more different types of those to go around variety-wise.

Another one that's been very popular for a long time: teleporting units now use their normal engines (which have been upgraded somewhat, for the ones that used to be glacially slow) when given a group-move order. This is one I didn't even think could be done and thus didn't feel a lot of motivation to deal with, but it showing up towards the top of both the mantis votes and the 6.0 poll helped there ;)

Please keep the feedback coming, the official 6.0 release isn't very far away and we want it to be as solid as possible.

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.

Monday, October 1, 2012

AI War Beta 5.088 "Strategic Reserve" Released!

This one deals with several longstanding requests that have been at the top of the mantis voting for a while:

1) Now the game will tell you what the local time is, and how much real time you've actually spent in that particular game, when you mouseover the in-game clock. Note: the "how much real time you've actually spent in that particular game" timer will only be correct for game started in this version or later, as it doesn't know how much real time has elapsed in older saves.

2) It's now possible to have auto-FRD on but still have some units ignore it, by using the new per-control-group controls on the CTRLS window. You can also have it only auto-FRD those control groups you designate, if you prefer a more targeted use of the feature. It also allows more granular use of the Auto-Kite behavior, since some people have asked for that.

3) The shard seeding in the Fallen Spire campaign no longer pays attention to how much territory you've conquered. Generally this makes things easier, but from the feedback I've been seeing other recent changes should more than make up for any decrease in that part of the challenge, since it hasn't been the really killer part of it anyway.

Also, not from the mantis voting but from more recent feedback, we've added another tool to the AI's arsenal: the strategic reserve. This functions mainly as a homeworld defense force but is less susceptible to baiting than other defensive mechanics. In general this should help prevent cases where it feels like the homeworld is underdefended, but without piling tons of ships on it all game. Balance feedback is, of course, welcome.

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

AI War Beta 5.087 "Brawl Royale" Released!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

AI War Beta 5.074-5.075 "Focused Forces" Released!

This one includes some key enhancements to the base game we wanted to get in with enough testing time left before 6.0.

Players have been telling us for a while that the AI's Special Forces units were basically... irrelevant. They used to be far more significant but many changes over the years have resulted in a mechanic that just doesn't make a lot of difference in most games. So we rewired it.

Now the galaxy's AI Special Forces will act as a sort of defensive response force, pushing back whenever you attack a planet the AI cares about (which is not all of them). In testing this produced a pretty cool feeling of maneuver and counter-maneuver, but as always we'll really see if it works out when the players get their hands on it. I think it's a step in the right direction, at least.

Speaking of AI defense, here's another thing the players have been asking for: now each AI planet picks three typs of ships to "focus" on when spawning reinforcements. In one sense this reduces the distinct number of ships you're likely to encounter in large numbers in the midgame (in the early game they still start with the same distribution as before), but actually increases the gameplay variety as each planet's mix will be different.

Mere balance changes seem mundane compared to mechanics changes like the above, but there are some pretty important ones to starships and the triangle: The six "combat" starship lines have been given another balance pass. K costs are now more in line with what you're getting, notably. And the fighter is now faster than the bomber was (and the bomber slightly slower) and has more of a role on the attack due to several guardians being switched to hull types that are vulnerable to the fighter. All in all, none of the balance changes are earthshaking, but they're one more step in the right direction.

The release has a couple bugfixes, as well.

Update: 5.075 hotfix is out to fix an array-index-out-of-bounds error in what I did to the AI reinforcements logic. Also made the focused-reinforcements logic apply to initial ship seeding, which should make at least one player happy.

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, August 28, 2012

AI War Beta 5.072-5.073 "A Revised Experience" Released!

This one adds another nebula scenario that the game can pick to throw at you. "Throw" is somewhat literal, as you will see. Also added some more champion toys to the potential-scenario-reward toybox, and the last modular fortress (Zenith), for your AI-smashing pleasure.

More important than another scenario (though that is cool) are several important changes to the champion experience:
1) Nebula faction ships are now more focused on their jobs (as they see them, you may disagree).
2) Hull-sizes and hull-races are now granted such that you never have a larger hull of one race than another, so the choice of what hull to use is much more a matter of what you prefer than how the dice rolled.
3) XP gain is now way less based on what you kill in the nebulae (which was encouraging farming) and more based on how well you do in the scenarios.

And there's some other changes and fixes, as usual. All in the notes :)

Update: 5.073 hotfix is out to fix the zenith modular fortress trying to use the wrong far zoom icon.

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.

Friday, August 24, 2012

AVWW Post-Release 1.207 "Double Lightning" Released!

This one is the next in our series of adding a new spell and other new tweaks each week while the game is undergoing its art revamp for the next few months.

There are really a lot of good things in this one. For one, the new spell is just made of awesomesauce: it's easily my favorite spell ever, just for the visual effect alone. But it's also really fun to catch multiple enemies in your cloud of lightning when you can. zebramatt suggested the idea as a fire spell, but since other players were pointing out the lack of air-element spells I thought this one would do well to fit both needs at once.

Next up we have yet another 100 rooms thanks to Benmiff. He. Is. A. Machine. It's no question now that well over half of the room maps in the game are now created by him; it might be closer to 2/3 of them now, I'm not sure. And we had hundreds to start with!

The name "double lightning" for the post comes about because of Lightning Storm (the new spell mentioned above) plus lot of heavy changes to Lightning Rocket. Mainly it now moves way faster and drains the mana faster also. That makes it sort of like a super mega jump, rather than a slow ride upwards. Boy oh boy, is that fun. Ulrox really had a great idea with those changes, it's almost like a new spell.

Next up are a variety of bugfixes and balance tweaks, the majority of which seem to either involve Pyrrhic or Misery or both. Huge thanks to both of them, and all the other players involved as well. The gift-giving interface is now way less hard to find as part of these changes, and perhaps what might be the most significant change of this release despite all the great stuff above:

The percentages of what seeds in stash rooms is now vastly improved. The little pointless bits of shards, and the extra enchant-charge containers (both of which can be found elsewhere plenty easily) no longer seed. The overall density of the good items has more than doubled as part of these changes

More to come next week. Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 0.500 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 0.500 or later, you can download that here.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

AI War Beta 5.070 "The Once And Fortress King" Released!

This one adds two new bonus ship types: the Zenith Reprocessor, and the much-anticipated Zenith Siege Engine. The latter has to stay immobile for 15 seconds before firing, but it hits like a truck once it does. A truck loaded with plasma torpedoes, that is.

Another long-requested change, from the top of the mantis voting page: the Clusters map type. In a way, it organizes the galaxy into 2 to 6 smaller units, each of which only has a few connections to other clusters.

The name of this release, however, comes from the new AI Type: the Fortress King. Fortress Baron not enough for you? Well, here you go. There's a small mercy included: AI planets bordering your homeworld (unless they're somehow AI homeworlds) will only have the normal command stations. All the other Fortress King planets will have mammoth modular fortresses (that eat bombers for breakfast) that function as command stations. Each one rolls its modular armament separately from a set of templates, so it adds a bit of variety to how your fleet will be (repeatedly) eaten.

Several other fixes and changes, as usual. I'd intended to get the next nebula scenario into this release but I'm probably going to need to divert to helping Chris with a particular subsystem of Shattered Haven, so I wanted to get this into player hands now rather than later :)

Update: 5.071 hotfix is out to fix several bugs with the Fortress King AI type. Also fixed some other issues and packed in some further changes to CPAs and some funny business involving barracks.

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.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Arcen Games Heading To PAX Prime With Indie Mega Booth

We had a lot of fun exhibiting at PAX East earlier this year in Boston. So much so we decided we just couldn't pass up the chance to do the same at PAX Prime next week in Seattle. So if you're attending, keep an open spot in your schedule to stop by! (Or even better, give us a heads-up ahead of time* to ensure I haven't run off to lunch.)

We'll be one of the 30 developers making up the incredibly amazing Indie Mega Booth (just look at all those notable developers and good games). We got to know a lot of these guys at PAX East, and we're excited to be a part of the massive collection of indie game exhibitors this time around. Specifically, I'll be located in booth #868 sharing space with the awesome folks of 24 Caret Games--developers of PS3 title Retro/Grade which just arrived this week on PSN.

As noted in the trailer below, A Valley Without Wind will be playable. There may be some new artwork stuff to showoff there as well. I'll be chatting up the Ancient Shadows expansion with those who want to talk about it, but I doubt anyone would get much out of a short floor demo for a game like AI War. We're also planning some giveaways of our titles both on-sight and online; plus we may have something else to debut. Not sure yet, we'll see.

On top of that, I'll be heading up the 'Open Development for Indies: Why Cooperative Trumps Competitive' panel with a handful of other indie devs in the Serpent Theater, 3:00 PM on Sunday (September 2nd). If you're interested in indie development at all, or if you just want to say hi, make sure not to miss us in the afternoon during the final day of the conference.

If you want updates on what we and all the other devs in the mega booth are up to, or if you just want to support us all in general, the Indie Mega Booth Facebook and Twitter stuff is a go.

9 days and counting!

Here's the latest coverage coming in, mostly from the AVWW Steam sale (now concluded) and art update:

Joystiq -- A Valley Without Wind's impending art revamp in version 1.3, sale now

VG247 -- A Valley Without Wind 50% off on Steam, headed for graphical overhaul

Co-Optimus -- A Valley Without Wind On Sale at 50% Off

Blue's News -- A Valley Without Wind Art Upgrade Coming

PCGamersN -- A Valley Without Wind patch 1.206 “Watery Warp” released

DealSpwn -- A Valley Without Wind Getting Massive Art Overhaul

TheBitBag -- A Valley Without Wind 50% off on Steam, major graphic overhaul incoming

GameZone -- A Valley Without Wind getting graphical redesign

HardReset -- A Valley Without Wind Review

DealSpwn -- AI War Ancient Shadows DLC Enters Public Beta

Forum User Hartmann -- Let's Play A Valley Without Wind! (A Gainax Production)

*That goes for both press and attendees. If you happen to be media and are interested in our Indie Mega Booth press kit, head here.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

AI War Beta 5.068-5.069 "Old Enmity Reclaimed" Released!

This one adds another scenario that can be seeded in a nebula. The usual goes with it: more champion hulls and module lines are possible as rewards. There's also a couple new abilities that can be unlocked through nebula rewards.

A few important balance changes were made to recently-added stuff: Tackle Drone Launchers got nerfed heavily. Scapegoats got something of a nerf, but the higher-mark versions now actually deliver more of their unique utility than the first mark, rather than less.

Also added keybinds to make champion direct-ability-use easier, now that it's a thing. Basically Ctrl+Q to use your first ability, Ctrl+W to use your second, and so on, though you can only get 2 on any one champion right now. If you prefer the Q,W,E,R (without holding Ctrl) method, you can change the binding and it will only apply when you have a single champion selected so it won't interfere with the normal zoom-functions of those keys at any other time.

There's also a few other miscellaneous changes and fixes, as usual.

Update: 5.069 hotfix is out to fix a bug where only the most-recently-added scenario was being seeded in nebulae. What do you mean, "did you leave testing code in, Keith?" Have I ever done such a thing? ... um, yea. Anyway, a few other important fixes in there (like preventing minor-faction ships with plasma-siege shots from "helpfully" killing forcefield-protected AI command stations for you) and a long-needed buff to CPAs on higher difficulties, though we probably aren't done on that front.

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, August 18, 2012

AI War Beta 5.064-5.066 "Abilities Unlocked" Released!

This one adds two more bonus ship types for the Ancient Shadows expansion: the Neinzul Scapegoat and the Spire Railcluster. The Scapegoat has a one-shot version of the Regenerator Golem's ability (only works on fleet ships) and I expect to hear tales of absurd exploits and thus have to nerf it, but have fun figuring them out ;) The Railcluster isn't as unique as the Scapegoat or the others added thus far for AS (the medic frigate and the tackle drone launcher) but in another way it is unique: it's the first "Spire fleet ship" that's purely oriented towards straight-up combat. It shreds little stuff particularly.

If you play versus the new "Heroic" AI Type, expect to see some now-familiar toys getting thrown back in your face. The AI's champions are much simpler than human ones (no nebula travel, XP gain, etc) but they come with nasty modules (from a randomly picked template, for variety) and should spice things up a bit.

Speaking of champions, I'd meant to have another scenario ready for this release but other champion-related issues took priority. Specifically:

The interface for managing the modules has been pretty schizophrenic with both the normal build-queue method and the specialized "ship design window" method because the champion's situation is so unique. So now it just directs you to the ship-design-window method for champions, with a settings toggle for getting the old build-queue method back if you really want it. Feedback on this would be quite welcome.

Further, the interface for spending unlock points was... unwieldy. So now the ship design tab doesn't try to do any of that, and that function is now performed by the "Champion Unlocks" tab of the same window. Personally I think it looks pretty nice, but it is still a user interface designed by an engineer, so your mileage may vary ;)

Finally, another tab has been added to the normal HUD you see when you have a champion selected: in addition to the "MODS" tab (which used to hold the build queue stuff and now is just a shortcut to ship-design) you now have an "ABILITY" tab. You'll only see one ability there right now (a neinzul champion gets a different one) but the idea is that they spend a newly-added champion resource: Shadow charge. It was part of the original design but I'd gone back and forth on whether it really made sense to have directly-triggered abilities in this game. Since then player feedback has made it clear that it really would help make the champions feel more interesting to use, so here we go.

Oh, and there's several bugfixes and balance changes, but you probably already guessed that from previous releases :)

Update: 5.065 hotfix is out to fix a bug where Shadow Charge was accumulating without cap, and a few nasty UI bugs with the ship-design tab. Also revised the bomber-drone balance change.

Update: 5.066 hotfix is out to fix a UI bug when trying to open another player's champion in ship-design. Would generally only come up in singleplyer games with multiple champions, but it's pretty annoying in that case.

Update: 5.067 hotfix is out to fix a bug where nebulae past the third or fourth were not generating scenarios, and a few other bugfix/balance changes.

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, August 16, 2012

Steam Daily Deal: A Valley Without Wind 50% Off Today Only

On the heels of A Valley Without Wind's latest post-release beta update Steam is offering the game at 50% off today only as a Daily Deal. Meaning you can pickup both the individual game and/or the four-pack for half the price!

If you've been out of the loop for a bit, AVWW is undergoing a major art rework that will be offered later this year as a free update for all owners of the game. So if you've been on the fence, now's a great chance to dive in on the cheap; especially when you couple the upcoming overhaul with the improvements/additions already made from 1.0 to 1.2.

Offer ends tomorrow at 10 AM Pacific Time. A PC demo is available on the game's Steam page, while both PC and Mac demos are offered on our website.

AVWW Post-Release 1.206 "Watery Warp" Released!

This one is the next in our series of adding a new spell and other new tweaks each week while the game is undergoing its art revamp for the next few months.

Since I've been working on porting Shattered Haven to the new engine, plus working on getting the AVWW art revamp project off the ground, that's really been quite a time drain for me so far this month. Thus I missed doing an update last week, and we have an extra-awesome one this week instead.

Included here are a new spell scroll, a new guardian power scroll, and some refinements to how you get guardian power scrolls. These are pretty cool, because it makes most of the guardian power scrolls easier to find via secret missions. And both the new guardian power scroll as well as the spell scroll are centered around making it easier for you to cycle out missions that you don't like, to instead get missions that you do like.

There are also changes to make mood gifts for survivors easier to find, and the game is now more explicit about warning you that you'll need to enlist the aid of your survivors to take down the overlord when this is the case. In the past sometimes that could go unnoticed until it was time for the showdown, and then it was tedious to try to get all your survivors updated at once (of course you can just down the citybuilding difficulty if you find yourself in that situation, but better is to have the importance of that activity clearer earlier).

We added another 100 player-made maps, and we also made it so that the "only works during the day/night" modifier for spells is no longer an all-or-nothing affair. Instead it just reduces your spells' effectiveness during the offending period, which should be a lot more palatable.

Lastly, the new spell that was added this week is called Water Dash, and it lets you run at a higher speed in water while also floating upwards in the water. That's a pretty cool addition especially for the ocean areas, since this effectively lets you swim upwards at certain angles rather than having to always use crates or wooden platforms.

More to come next week. Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 0.500 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 0.500 or later, you can download that here.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

AI War Beta 5.061 "Tackled, Medic!" Released!

This one adds the first two bonus ship types of the Ancient Shadows expansion: the Zenith Medic Frigate (from one of RCIX's ideas) and the Tackle Drone Launcher (we invented that pain ourselves). Both boldly fill roles where no fleet ship has filled before. Particularly the "push the enemy's ships around like a jerk" role.

This update also adds a third nebula scenario, another step towards the kind of variety we want for champion "offroad" gameplay. This scenario introduces a second Neinzul splinter faction, but it takes a bit of a backseat to the player in this scenario. 5 more champion hull types have been added, including the next size-step up from what's been available previously. There's also 4 new scenario-unlocked module lines for champions available, all of them at least a bit off the wall.

Oh, beating the new scenario can also unlock the Neinzul version of the Modular Fortress. It's pretty similar to the human one right now, but as fortress-versions of some of the champion modules get implemented there'll be more distinction. There's already a pretty big one: the neinzul fort doesn't have multi-repair, but it does have the MkI Cloaker Starship's ability (no, it doesn't cloak turrets, turrets are immune to cloaking ;) ).

Several bugfixes and a few balance changes round out the update. Notably, MkV Younglings no longer self-attrition, making their fabricators far more useful.

Update: 5.062 hotfix is out include the language file updates I accidentally omitted from 5.061, sorry about that!

Update: 5.063 hotfix is out because tackle drones were doing friendly-fire damage with their explosions. A few other fixes in there 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.

Monday, August 13, 2012

AI War: Ancient Shadows Beta Release Coverage

The AI War: Ancient Shadows beta kicked off this past week, and already we're seeing some great coverage coming in for the expansion. The latest update is out now, offering the first major content release on top of what was initially packed in.

As far as getting the expansion to work with a Steam copy of the base game, you only need to download the installer and point it to the AI War folder in your Steam directory. We've been fielding that question a good amount over the past few days, so thought I'd share that bit of info here. We haven't reached out to Valve yet in regards to bringing Ancient Shadows onto Steam, but plan on it when the expansion is closer to being feature complete.

Here's all the aforementioned coverage that's cropped up over the last few days:

Rock, Paper, Shotgun -- Darkly Devious: AI War Ancient Shadows Expansion

IndieGames.com -- Demo: AI War - Ancient Shadows (Arcen Games)

PCGamer -- AI War Ancient Shadows expansion to add massive modular Champion battleships

The WarGamer -- AI War's expansion Ancient Shadows is now in beta and is available for pre-order

Blue's News -- AI War: Ancient Shadows Beta; Pre-purchases

PCGamesN -- AI Wars [sic]: Ancient Shadows expansion adds modular champion units

Indie Game Magazine -- ‘AI War’s Fourth Expansion Beta Available Now for Pre-Purchase

RTSGuru -- AI War: Ancient Shadows Expansion Coming October, Beta Launches

I-Luv-Games -- AI War Expansion “Ancient Shadows” Beta Pre-Orders Available

Strategy Core -- Out of the Shade

GameSquad -- AI War Ancient Shadows Beta Begins

GamersHell -- AI War: Ancient Shadows Enters Beta and Screens/Demo

Big thanks go out to these folks for taking the time to write about us!