Sunday, June 23, 2013

Skyward Collapse Reviews, AI War 7.0 Coverage and Other Press/Videos

2013 has been nuts. It's crazy to look back at what we've been able to do in the past six months (especially if you're aware of our previous track record): launching A Valley Without Wind 2, Shattered Haven, Skyward Collapse and AI War: Vengeance of the Machine between February and June. Quite a schedule!

 The team's not about to slow down either, with new expansions for Skyward Collapse and AI War due out before the end of the year. Perhaps even more exciting, we've begun development of our seventh game: Bionic Dues. We'll have more on this one soon, what it's all about and when/where it can be played.

 Feel free to stop by the forums if you want to get involved with any of these titles, or just want to follow along with what we're up to. Also, just a reminder that it's last call for the AI War franchise sale on our store, GamersGate and Steam (sale ends tomorrow morning).

 Chris Park On Tour (with a dash of Keith)
Bias Bear: [Podcast] Arcen Games: Gamers Are Intelligent
Playfire: Q&A Session with Arcen Games!
Select Start Media: Skyward Collapse (8.5/10)
Linkters: Skyward Collapse Review
Blistered Thumbs: Skyward Collapse Review (8/10)
Universal Gaming Reviews: Skyward Collapse Overview and Review (8/10)
Gameverse: Review: Skyward Collapse
You Are Journalism: Skyward Collapse (German)
ComboCaster: Skyward Collapse Review (Portuguese) (8/10)
SugarFreeGamer: Skyward Collapse – A Conflict Of Balance
IndieStatik: Impressions: Skyward Collapse

 Other Skyward Collapse Press
GamesArk: Skywards Collapse of Arcen Games available on Steam (Italian)
GameConnect: Arcen Games' Skyward Collapse now available for PC/Mac
Skyward Collapse listed under Games Pressure's Popular PC Strategy Games

 AI War Four Year Anniversary Coverage
Gameranx: AI War: Fleet Command - The Four Year Financial Climb
Blue's News: Ships Ahoy - AI War: Vengeance Of The Machine
VG247: AI War fifth expansion out now, four year anniversary edition available
Indie Game Reviewer: AI War Launches 4-Year Anniversary Edition, New Vengeance Expansion
Invision: AI War 4 Year Anniversary Celebration on Steam
Gert Lush Gaming: AI War Four Year Anniversary Edition And Vengeance Of The Machine Now Available
Gamer's Hell: AI War: Vengeance of the Machine Released and Trailer
Pixel Perfect Gaming: AI War: Anniversary Edition – Now Available on Steam

General Video Coverage
Strategy Gaming World- AI War: Vengeance of the Machine
Poolitzer LP: AI War: Fleet Command (19 Parts) (German)
Poolitzer LP: Skyward Collapse (9 Parts) (German)
Button Mash: Meroka Plays A Valley Without Wind 2 (17 Parts)
Eddiember: A Valley Without Wind (10 Parts)
King's Shattered Haven (6 Parts)
Gambell Ventures: Tidalis
LostScarf: Sunday Special - IndieRoyale Arclight Bundle
GameDeciderTV: Skyward Collapse - First Looks
Sledge is worse than AI [AI War: Fleet Command]
Angelo Teodorak: A Valley Without Wind 2 (Portuguese)
Brazouck: AI War: Fleet Command (3 Parts) (French)
James Allen: Skyward Collapse Gameplay Impressions
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Friday, June 21, 2013

Skyward Collapse 1.013 "Godly Gods" Released!

This one fixes the resource drops not working in the last couple of versions.  Even more substantially, it majorly increases both the health and the attack power of gods.  Those guys aren't such pushovers anymore!

There's lots more in the hopper in terms of free updates, and we're still steadily working away on the first expansion (Nihon no Mura) as well.  But it's been a busy couple of days on a lot of fronts, and I haven't quite had time to do enough to actually push anything but this into the codebase yet.

More to come soon, though.  Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the  in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game.  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.
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Valley 2 Official 1.007 "Thorns In The Sink" Released!

This one tweaks a tiny bit more balance relating to the Thorncerer and the blast spells. 

It also puts in some automatic re-syncing during multiplayer after each turn is advanced, after each time an NPC order is given, and after each time morale is lost due to a death.  Desyncs were not common at all with the game, but recently one group of players were finding some sort of consistent cache of them.  This automatic re-syncing should prevent central desyncs of all sorts (knock on wood), and is quite similar to something along these lines that we did for Skyward Collapse.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the  in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game.  If you have the beta on Steam, it will automatically update for you.  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 the standalone game, you can download that here.  If you already own the first game, just use your existing license key to unlock the sequel for free!
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Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Skyward Collapse 1.012 "Just Bonuses All The Way Down" Released!

This one has a number of bugfixes, tweaks, and refinements.  Nothing grandly exciting in the main, but the fixes to certain mythological and god tokens not working in the prior version is obviously welcome.

One big thing here is that bandit units dying now gives you points.  This makes it a lot easier to get points in circumstances where you are having to fight more bandits than the opposing faction, which sometimes happens.  In other words, your ability to generate points is not quite so hampered by circumstance.  This also leads to higher scores in general, so the score gates have been increased by 15% to compensate for that.

There was also previously some confusing logic regarding when units could and could not pick up bonus tokens.  This was confusing enough that it seemed like an error even to veteran players, though the units were actually working just as they were supposed to.  This restriction has now been removed so that units can super-stack bonuses a lot more.  This makes them act in a way that will be immediately more clear to players of all skill levels... and in terms of this affecting balance, it's only going to make things harder, not easier, since a super-stacked unit is rarely a good thing. ;)

There are also now scroll/panning speed sliders!  That is sure to be quite welcome. :)

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the  in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game.  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.
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Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Valley 2 Official 1.006 "Five Tier Rejuvenation" Released!

This one addresses the balance between some of the mage classes; in particular, focusing on those at Tier 5.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the  in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game.  If you have the beta on Steam, it will automatically update for you.  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 the standalone game, you can download that here.  If you already own the first game, just use your existing license key to unlock the sequel for free!
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AI War Four Year Anniversary Edition and Vengeance of the Machine Now Available

Franchise Sale celebrates AI War 7.0 launch on Steam, GamersGate and the Arcen Store


Arcen Games is excited to announce the launch of AI War 7.0, its latest expansion Vengeance of the Machine, and the new AI War Four Year Anniversary Edition – all available now and on sale at major discounts across various digital storefronts.

AI War: Vengeance of the Machine adds a host of new features to an immersive indie strategy title already bursting in base game and expansion content. Additions include several new AI types, map styles, bonus ship types, optional AI plots, and much more.

We thought we’d finally outsmarted the AI... we were wrong!


About AI War: Vengeance of the Machine
The AI's gotten kind of upset. Somewhere along the way it decided you puny humans need more interesting ways to lose (or win, if you're one of those people, but who are we to judge). Vengeance of the Machine offers new tools to the player (like Core Turret Controllers) and a new frontal-confrontation victory condition (Showdown Devices), but focuses on enhancing the already-incredible variety of your main opponent: the AI. The possibilities grow exponentially with the addition of the new "Dual Type AI" system (ever wonder what a single AI player would be like with Thief AND Speed-Racer? Find out!), AI Planetary Subcommanders, and Dire Guardians. They say the best stories revolve around an awesome villain, and this expansion takes AI War's villainy to new heights.

Key Features
  • 8 new AI types, from the honorable "Chivalric" which refuses to harass your Advanced Factories and other irreplaceables to the bleedingly-hard "Vicious Exotic" which eschews normal waves in favor of hammering you with massive Exogalactic Attacks.
  • 2 new Map styles: Wheel and Honeycomb.
  • 6 new Bonus Ship Types, from the modular Protector Starship to the hilarious "space dock artillery cannon" Neinzul Railpod.
  • 2 new optional AI Plots: Hunter (which brings the AI's Special Forces from strong to nightmarish) and Shark.
  • 5 new Core Guard Posts to defend the AI homeworlds.
  • 7 new Guardian types to add variety to the AI's heavier units.
  • 28 new achievements.
  • More awesome music from Pablo Vega!

Follow AI War on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and IndieDB for the latest updates regarding the game. 

If you’re a member of the press and are interested in review copies and/or additional assets, please email arcengames[at]gmail[dot]com .


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 saw the release of The Zenith Remnant, the first two full expansions for AI War; as well as Tidalis, an innovative block-based puzzle with casual appeal and hardcore depth.

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 end of 2012/start of 2013 has been another busy time for the team, with AI War's fourth expansion Ancient Shadows launching, A Valley Without Wind 2 hitting 1.0, and Shattered Haven's releasing as well. The studio just launched its latest title, turn-based strategic god game Skyward Collapse, this past May and now turns its attention to adding new content to both AI War and Skyward Collapse 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. The team is also proud to be a platinum sponsor of the Child’s Play charity. For all the latest news, coverage and other musings, visit us on our website, Twitter and Facebook; as well as Arcen founder Chris Park's Games By Design blog.
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Monday, June 17, 2013

AI War Official 7.0 Released!

This one is 7.0! And only 7.0! I literally only changed the version number! Why am I shouting like this were a TF2 Update!

Anyway, 7.0 is out in patch form now, and we're working behind the scenes on installers and some other stuff you can probably guess at.

Update: 7.001 released to fix a bug with the fix to the scrapping-lightning-torpedoes-for-money exploit, and a few other things.

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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Sunday, June 16, 2013

AI War Beta 6.050 "Release Candidate 3" Released!

This one is the third release candidate, and is 7.0, unless some fairly critical bug or other such issue comes to our attention over the rest of the weekend.

Actually the changes in this were not for critical issues, but there were a couple very simple (as in just changing a couple boolean flags) changes that make the Zenith Hydra Head spawnable work a lot more sensibly. I used to be able to leave well enough alone, so I blame Chris's example.

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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Saturday, June 15, 2013

AI War Beta 6.049 "Release Candidate 2" Released!

This one is the second release candidate, and is 7.0, unless some fairly critical bug or other such issue comes to our attention over the rest of the weekend.

The main thing was to fix a bug that could let the Special Forces attack your planets (by choosing one of them as a "staging point", heh).

Also fixed a couple exploits, one old, one new.

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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Friday, June 14, 2013

Skyward Collapse 1.010-1.011 "Self Immolation" Released!

This one is super exciting to me.  I'm really short on time, though, so I'll have to make my notes brief.  Here are my three favorite things about this release:

1. The left sidebar has new icons that are a lot easier to visually parse in terms of remember which thing does what.  Even I would get confused from time to time about the red swoosh versus the blue swoosh and which was which.  Now it's way more obvious what is what thanks to using characters and graphics from Nick's comic.

Apologies to those of you who will have to re-learn the sidebar icons and thus feel disoriented for a short while.  But I fall into that same group with you, and after just a day I'm feeling perfectly acclimated to the new icons, to be honest.  Hope you'll like them also!

2. Random maps! As in, the starting state of each of the existing map types is now random. :)  I'm super surprised about how big of a difference this makes to the feel of the early game.

3. A new path to victory!  Armageddon lets you basically end the game early, but in a fiery ball of death.  Well, okay, not fiery: in a bandit-laden ball of death.  This is a really exciting thing because previously the only path to victory was surviving to the very last turn.  But once you've met your victory conditions, if you are in a very strong position that is not an interesting proposition.  So this lets you test just how strong your position is, heh, and either end victoriously early or go out in a blaze of glory.  Or, you know... buried under a hundred bandits.

There's other good stuff here, too.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: Naturally, because it's Father's Day weekend, I introduced a major bug into the game right before the weekend. ;)  Fixed now in 1.011, so the zombie units and tokens are no more.

This is a standard update that you can download through the  in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game.  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.
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AI War Beta 6.048 "Release Candidate 1" Released!

This one is 7.0, unless some fairly critical bug or other such issue comes to our attention over the weekend.

Naturally not much is changed in this particular patch itself (wanting to avoid changing stuff, odd as that may sound from Arcen), but we did add 7 new taunts. Most were inspired by this thread so thanks to the community for that. And to Pablo for applying very strange effects to his voice again.

We also fixed a couple important "conflicting AI" issues that only applied to Hybrids and to exo-ships that were either leaders or had lost their leader. So somewhat limited in scope but now those units "dance" a lot less.

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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Thursday, June 13, 2013

AI War Beta 6.047 "Activating Vengeful Sanding Machine MkIII" Released!

This one is almost the last polish for the upcoming 7.0/VotM official release. Notable changes include:

1) Updated the tutorial. I went through them all in the process, but if some of you could do a run through the four tutorials in 6.047 (or whatever the current version is at the time) as a sanity check and let me know how it goes, I'd appreciate it.

2) Told the mapgen initial seeding logic to take it a bit easier on the planets that start next to a human homeworld. Traditionally our position has been that you get what the RNG gives you with those (aside from a -1 tech level rule and a no-guardians rule, etc) but with the since-6.0 buffs to guard posts, guardians, starships, etc, etc... well, honestly, "the very first time I step out my front door" is not generally when people want to die horribly in AI War. They prefer to die horribly a couple planets away. We aim to annihilateplease! And the RNG still gets quite a bit of free rein with them.

3) Fixed Line Place. It was being pretty amusingly broken before because I had forgotten some rather important differences between "value" and "absolute value" in a particular code branch.

4) Answered the recent buff polls. Interestingly it was all base-game and TZR ships. Some of those ships hurt a lot more now, I suspect.

5) Added a "Batch Auto-Explore" per-control-group toggle. No one asked for this (recently, at least), but while working on point 1 above I remembered how incredibly lazy I can be about manually telling a full batch of scouts "I don't care where you go but if you're still on this planet in 5 seconds you're target practice!".

There's several other bugfix/balance-related things in there as well.

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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Valley 2 Official 1.005 "Fear Of Bats" Released!

This one addresses one and only one balance issue: shadow bats outside of The Deep, particularly on harder difficulties.  These guys really could make the overlord's keep unwinnable in certain circumstances.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the  in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game.  If you have the beta on Steam, it will automatically update for you.  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 the standalone game, you can download that here.  If you already own the first game, just use your existing license key to unlock the sequel for free!
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Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Shattered Haven 1.012 "Flying High" Released!

This one is just a couple of minor tweaks and fixes that mostly affect bonus content after the game has already been won.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the  in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game.  When you  launch the game, hit the big "Play" button and then you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.
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Skyward Collapse 1.008-1.009 "Massive Bigness" Released!

This one has... quite a lot going on, as you can no doubt surmise from my tongue-in-cheek title for it.  Though the title isn't really an exaggeration, either.  This release has five groups of new features that would each be considered a pretty substantial change on its own, and then a myriad of other smaller awesome stuff.

It's been almost two freaking weeks since our last update, crazy as that might sound to people who know Arcen.  So no wonder this is giant.

TLDR of the rest of this post: it's a good idea to read the release notes on this one, although even if you don't most things will become pretty clear pretty soon in the game itself.  Anyhow, the groups of new things:

Group 1: Scoring System Improvements
Before, the score was linear.  You had a goal for score in each of the three ages, and things gave you a fixed amount of points no matter what point in the game you were in, and that was that.  This was all well and good... except that it meant you could "work ahead" on the goal for one age while still in the prior age.  The problem there was that this could make the Age of Gods a lot less tense if you did well in the earlier ages.

The new system makes the score gates and the score granted from each action go up 3x in the second age, and 8x in the third age.  This means that most of the points for the score gate of the Age of Gods now have to actually be generated in that age.

Offsetting this a bit is a new change where the deaths of your higher-level units (those that have been upgraded) are now worth more than those of level 1 units.  So this helps makes your scramble in the third age less than it otherwise would be.  It might also make the gate for the earlier ages too easy, but we'll see and will adjust as needed.

Group 2: Eleven New Unique Human Units For Bandits
Eleven new units!  Holy smokes, right?  All of the bandit human units are now completely unique to the bandits, and this makes them able to be a lot more specialized in playing against the player.

Two of the new units in particular stand out in that regard: the siege drill and the field mechanik.  These are able to burrow paths through mountains and build bridges over lakes, respectively.  This solves the cheese of just putting up mountains and lakes as a too-easy defense against bandits and the other side and so forth.  Once these bandit units come by, then any other unit can follow after; and you can't just replace or smite away the tiles they left behind, either.

However, this doesn't just nerf the cheese strategy away: it actually makes it a valid one.  Now you can build progressive rings of mountains if you want; starting with just one, and then building more as you are losing inner rings.  You an also be sure to kill those drills and mechaniks early in order to prevent them getting through your defenses at all.  And you can also "bless" the tiles to return them to an un-messed-with state using the new souls resource (see group 5, below).

In other words, what was previously a cheese strategy now becomes a real strategy with back-and-forth pull between you and the bandits.

The rest of the bandits are less spectacular, but they provide some welcome different art from the main factions, as well as a better balance in general.  In other words, because they are specific to the bandits, you're getting a better-tuned mix of types of units rather than when it was pulling from the much larger pool from all the factions.

Group 3: Limited Unit Stacking
The main thing here is that siege units can stack with one regular unit that it is allied with.  This lets siege units pass regular units, and vice-versa.  This is huge!  This prevents traffic jams with siege units, and makes things like trojan horses and battering rams way more effective.

The secondary thing here is that if two units are stacked in general, they will move to the sides so that you can see them both.  Thus if somehow two units are sharing a tile in some other way (they are not supposed to be able to do that, though), then at least it won't look wrong.

Group 4: Unit Leveling-Related Improvements
First of all, on-map visuals of telling if a unit has been leveled up or not are now in place.  This is a really big deal in terms of telling how the battle is playing out, and if your guys are a match for the opposing force, etc.  Previously you had to do a lot of tooltip hovering to figure this out.

Secondly, mythological creatures you place are no longer auto-leveled up in the latter two ages.  This was making them way too powerful compared to their human counterparts.  Previously there was confusion as to why your minotaur would get trashed by a bandit minotaur in a later age, but now with showing the levels of units that's no longer a potential concern.

The other big thing here is that now the upgrade-unit direct action costs you zero AP.  This means that there is not an opportunity cost in terms of actions take in order to upgrade units -- that's important.  There is only a resource cost.  This in turn will help to keep late-game resource stores from getting stupidly huge, which is a big plus.

A small but important thing has also been added to the tooltips for the unit-upgrade action and some other direct actions: a note that you can hold shift to do multiple upgrades (or the other actions) at a time.  This works with any action or unit/tile placement off the left sidebar, but a lot of people didn't know that!

Group 5: New Soul Imprints Resource
I'm excited about this one, as it not only is useful now but adds some new flexibility for later additions.

Anyhow, there's this new resource called Soul Imprints. The only way to collect this is by having your human units or buildings die.  Each time one does, you get one soul in return for your faction.

Souls show up in your right sidebar and so forth just like any other raw resource.  Right now there are only two abilities that use souls, but we may well add others later that do.  That's what I meant about being excited for future additions with this.  It's a whole new style of resource collection.

Anyway, the first of the new abilities you have is called Bless Tile.  This is a powerful (but expensive in soul imprints) way to turn certain undesirable tiles back into something that you can build on again.  You can get rid of onyx, lake bridges, mountain tunnels, and former building ruins (provided those ruins are in a town that is still alive, not out in the wilderness somewhere).  The strategic options this opens up are nontrivial, but also are strongly constrained by how much death (or lack of death) there has been among your human populace.

The second new ability is called Convert Unit, and it's even more expensive.  It causes any enemy unit to decide to join your faction, though, which is really useful.  This lets you correct or adjust all kinds of things... but only pretty infrequently.  It's another tool in your belt, but it's more of an ace in the hole than something you're doing constantly.

And when things get rough, of course we all want aces in the hole!  The tricky thing is knowing when and where to spend those soul imprints, and if you can afford to bless some tiles or if you really need to hang onto them for doing a unit conversion. :)

Miscellany
There's a bunch of other stuff, too.

- Military commandments now work properly again.
- The filters on the sidebar now work as a pop-out rather than cycling through.
- A new filter on the sidebar lets you see just tokens, which is really useful.
- Beacons now let you mark places on the map for talking with allies or for later recall.
- The marsh graphics are now way more attractive and not repetitive.
- And various other things!

Skyward Collapse: Nihon no mura
All of the updates in this release are part of what we are working toward for our big 2.0 version of Skyward Collapse.  This one 1.008 version takes us a ton of leaps and bounds toward 2.0, actually, but there's still more to come.  All free updates, and definitely exciting stuff.

Alongside the free updates, we're working on the first paid expansion for the game, as well.  This will be called Skyward Collapse: Nihon no mura.  It adds a new Japanese faction, as well as hamlets.

The Japanese faction is really exciting because they work so differently from a fundamental premise.  They have fewer human units, but more mythological ones.  Their gods have no direct powers and don't stand around passively, but instead wander around causing trouble -- and summoning mythological creatures unique to them.  Rather than three powers per god, it's three unique creatures.  Very different from the Norse and Greeks!

The design for hamlets is still ongoing, but I'm really excited about how this will extend the game into a civilian direction that can be played alongside the main military showdown.  Lots of things on this still need to be fleshed out, and then lots of playtesting needs to happen before those ideas are truly honed.  But we're expecting to hit public beta for the expansion in July, and then do our full 2.0 release alongside the expansion in early August.

UPDATE: As with any release of this scale, I guess we can't escape a few bugs that went unnoticed.  The 1.009 fix is out now for the ones reported.  Sorry about that!

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the  in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game.  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.
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AI War Beta 6.046 "Activating Vengeful Sanding Machine MkII " Released!

This one is another heap of polish as we near the 7.0/VotM official release.

Zenith Hydras, one of the new VotM ships, were significantly reworked. Before they were a solid combat ship, but ultimately not very interesting. Now they spawn extra heads (as separate ships) after taking a certain amount of damage. The heads are short-lived but add a substantial amount of DPS compared to just the main unit.

The Objectives tab of the Stats window received several hours of work to improve its existing listings and add a ton more.

And there's a bunch of balance and bugfix stuff, 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.
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Monday, June 10, 2013

AI War Beta 6.044-6.045 "So That's What A Vines Map Looks Like" Released!

This one is a relatively small release but it addresses one of our longest-standing player requests: automated map untangling!

If you've ever seen the Vines, Spokes, or Tree map types you've probably noticed that it's pretty hard to read them. There tend to be a lot of planets connected to planets on the other side of the map, etc. Just looks like a big scramble. Well, in the past we've basically advised either to use the manual map-untangling or just play on different map types (those 3 were added in the first expansion, the base game maps are easier to read, and every expansion since the first has added only map types which are inherently much easier to read). Automatic map untangling is a hard problem.

And we haven't really solved it, but applying Force-directed graph drawing methods (specifically adapting this C# implementation) we're able to dramatically improve those map types.

Of course, the algorithm can take multiple seconds to run even on fast machines, so it isn't being run automatically during map gen even for those particularly-tangled types. But there's a nicely-convenient "Untangle Map" button in the lobby (just under the big "New Map Seed" button) that you can click to start the process. It even shows you the untangling in progress, which is pretty entertaining.

Here's some examples:

Vines (Before)


Vines (After)


Spokes (Before)


Spokes (After)


This release also replaces the new title screen with a somewhat dimmer version (we can't easily dim just that middle point, but hopefully this works better) and added a settings toggle to let you control whether you see the new title screen or the old one.

We also removed that little "throw 3 fighters out at the beginning of each wave" trick of the AIs because, while it was an effective tactic, it was trivial for the player to negate with a little micro. Since that micro gets pretty annoying to have to do every time (if you want to avoid massive alpha-soak against your aoe turrets or distraction of your FRD forces during counter-waves) we've simply removed it. Doesn't mean some kind of initial-pulse won't come back later, but we'd want it to be less of a "the solution is obvious, non-variable, but annoying to execute" situation.

Update: 6.045 released to add a few other things we did today, notably some new cheats/commands and refining the background planet selection. Normally would wait until the next release but we're getting kinda close to the official so starting the testing sooner than later isn't a bad thing.

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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Saturday, June 8, 2013

AI War Beta 6.043 "Controllers Out Of Control" Released!

This one addresses several things but mainly reworks the new expansion's Core Turret Controllers to better achieve their goal: easier distributed defense, and being more of a benefit to distributed defense than chokepoints (not trying to nerf the latter, just trying to not buff them much either).

Basically, the core turrets you can build with the new controllers won't co-exist on the same planet with lower-mark turrets of the same basic type, so you can't stack I+II+III+V turrets on a single planet, but have to choose between I+II+III (if you have II and III unlocked) or V.

On the other side, the controllers now both are more numerous and give more turrets each, and all mkII+ turrets (include core ones) cost way less m+c.

This patch also adds a "decolonize" option for when you want to abandon a planet without triggering the Shark plot (doesn't apply to other consequences of losing a planet) for situations where you're trying to capture something only for a short time (ARS on Dyson planet, etc). It's possible this enables too much cheese, but in general if you think a particular usage is too cheesy you can just not do it; either way, we'll see.

There's also fixes for a few longstanding issues with AI units getting stuck trying to attack radar-dampened units but not wanting to close far enough to actually fire, etc.

Oh, you might also notice the cool new main menu background ;)

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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Friday, June 7, 2013

AI War: Vengeance of the Machine Headlines All-Arcen Indie Royale Arclight Bundle

So some very exciting news today, as we announce the launch of the Arcen-enriched Arclight Bundle -- available now on Indie Royale.

As you can see, with the exception of Skyward Collapse, we packed this one to the brim:


That's five (or 83.3%) of our releases, but did you think we'd stop there? Not if you know Arcen. We're also throwing in all five (or 100%) of AI War's expansions:

Yes, that includes the upcoming Vengeance of the Machine expansion. Playable in beta starting right now for bundle owners. So. Much. Arcen.

Own some, most or all of our games already? No sweat, you can pre-order the bundle individually through our store (but even if you do own a few of our games, may we suggest going with the bundle route for purchasing the expansion and picking up a nice little five-game + four-expansion bonus?)

Still think it's an offer you can refuse? How about Pablo Vega's soundtracks and a Disasterpeace album piled on top for hitting the $8 mark? I rest my case.


The Arclight Bundle is only available for one week (ends June 14), so grab it while you can!
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Wednesday, June 5, 2013

AI War: Vengeance of the Machine Preorders Starting Soon!



AI War: Fleet Command recently celebrated the fourth anniversary of its official 1.0 release. Its official 7.0 release comes later this month. It's been a long, awesome haul and we're still going strong!

But the AI's gotten kind of upset. You might say Stark Raving Mad. Well, maybe not raving, it's really a pretty cool cucumber (preferring cryogenic temperature, actually). But somewhere along the way it decided you puny humans need more interesting ways to lose (or win, if you're one of those people, but who are we to judge).

As a result, the new "Vengeance of the Machine" expansion will officially release alongside version 7.0 of the core game.

Vengeance of the Machine offers new tools (like Core Turret Controllers) and a new frontal-confrontation victory condition (Showdown Devices) to the player, but focuses on enhancing the already-incredible variety of your main opponent: the AI. The possibilities grow exponentially with the addition of the new "Dual Type AI" system (ever wonder what a single AI player would be like with Thief AND Speed-Racer? Find out!), AI Planetary Subcommanders, and Dire Guardians.

Also included:
* 8 new AI types, from the honorable "Chivalric" which refuses to harass your Advanced Factories and other irreplaceables to the bleedingly-hard "Vicious Exotic" which eschews normal waves in favor of hammering you with massive Exogalactic Attacks.
* 2 new Map styles: Wheel (screenshot) and Honeycomb (screenshot).
* 6 new Bonus Ship Types, from the modular Protector Starship to the hilarious "space dock artillery cannon" Neinzul Railpod.
* 2 new optional AI Plots: Hunter (which brings the AI's Special Forces from strong to nightmarish) and Shark.
* 5 new Core Guard Posts to defend the AI homeworlds.
* 7 new Guardian types to add variety to the AI's heavier units.
* More awesome music from Pablo Vega!

A more in-depth look at VotM can be found here.

We've been running a private alpha for VotM with about 30 community members and it's gone very well (huge thanks to the testers!). In the next few days we plan to open preorders for the expansion, and anyone who preorders will get access to the public-beta of VotM. Anyone who preorders directly through us can email us for a steam key once the expansion arrives on Steam later in the month.

We also have a very special announcement to make when preorders actually open, stay tuned!
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AI War Beta 6.042 "Activating Vengeful Sanding Machine" Released!

This one is a whole big pile of polish for 7.0 and the VotM expansion.

Some highlights:

- Working with the ship design screen should be easier with shift-click support for copying a module from one slot to one or more others, and the logic to auto-upgrade your champion designs when you unlock a higher-mark usable module should save a lot of time too.

- You can now set FRD Engineers and FRD Remains Rebuilders separately, and the behavior of "endpoint" redirector posts and multi-planet-FRD (for engineers, rebuilders, and other stuff with "assist" targets) has been improved in general.

- Fixed some bugs interfering with carrier auto-deployment. They should now be much more reliably forthcoming.

- Fixed a bug that was letting the hunter plot spawn way more H/Ks and stuff over time due to packing some away in carriers. Such a curious malfunction, and I'm sure the AI will be very happy to have it fixed. Wouldn't want to overrun the galaxy with a few hundred free Hunter/Killers, after all.

- Fixed a ton of text issues kindly reported by the community. One was actually not just a textual problem: the Sledgehammer AI type has really been effectively "vanilla" for... a really long time :) But it's been given a special of less-frequent-but-heavier waves 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.
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Tuesday, June 4, 2013

AI War Beta 6.041 "Brutalizing Expansion Features" Released!

This one contains the last new content for the expansion (the two new "Brutal-pick" Core Guard Posts) and starts the polish-phase for the expansion and 7.0 in earnest.

The two new Brutal Core Guard posts are the Shredder and the Hunter-Killer Factory. C'mon, H/K, say hi to the audience.

... guess not. Anyway.

The main points from the polish are:

- The Neinzul Combat Carrier is basically gone (except from saves that already had them), with the "Youngling Shrike" type that had been buildable by the NCC becoming the new bonus ship type to fill its place. We've heard some ideas that may work to bring the NCC back later, but there's not time in the expansion's development schedule and honestly the shrike is pretty cool anyway.

- The Lightning Torpedo Frigate is now player-only, so the AI won't be able to pile up 300 of them in its Special Forces and wipe out an essentially infinite number of player ships from the universe (each torpedo only hits 200 targets max... but that's enough, it seems).

- The Protector Starship's counter-modules have been reined in from essentially infinite capability to shut down the most dangerous enemy units in the game. Their newly-finite power is still pretty impressive, though.

- The Showdown Devices minor faction has been majorly rebalanced to not be so punishingly difficult. It may be a little too easy now, but if so we can easy do some judicious ratcheting-it-back-up.

- The Shark Plot has been split into Shark-A and Shark-B because some players really wanted the "non-permanent" part (Shark-B, with the mini-exos and next-CPA buffs) of the AI bonuses without the permanent +AIP component (now in Shark-A).

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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Saturday, June 1, 2013

AI War Beta 6.040 "The Kinder, Gentler Sort Of Core Guard Post" Released!

This one adds the expansion's 3 non-brutal core guard post types. An AI Homeworld gets about 8 core posts in general, and picks a few (from 0 to 3, depending on difficulty and sometimes a little randomness) from the "brutal" list like Core Raid Engine and Core Wrath Lance, and the rest from this entirely innocent, very non-threatening list of core guard posts. Minor sarcasm may have been utilized in the last sentence.

There's also some rebalancing of the expansion's "Lightning Torpedo Frigate" bonus ship type, since that was causing some excessive grief in AI hands. Let us know if this is better, etc, please.

I'm also very glad to report that I think we've finally crushed the last "AI cloaked threat hanging out indefinitely on human planets without doing anything" bug. Basically it was down to just the Zombie ships now, and that's been dealt with. If you see it again, please let me know and please include a save file where I can see it myself.

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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