AI War 1.011 Released (Free DLC & Player Suggestions)

Arcen Games is pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet Command version 1.011. You can download a trial version of the game, as well as purchase a license key to unlock the full version. If you already have the game or demo installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the game to get the latest patch.  
More Free DLC:
- Several art upgrades -- much more to come in future releases.
- Starships now have various bonuses against force fields, and have munitions booster ability.
- AI wave logic updated: the relative size of the wave now depends partly on the time since the last wave.
- AI players now periodically send devastating cross-planet attacks on difficulty 5 and up.
- All turret health has been greatly increased.
- The network command logic has been completely redone, and is now significantly more efficient.
- Collision logic improved and sped up, and ships no longer bunch up so much when moving in large groups.
- Greatly improved ship types: eyebots, shield bearers, deflector drones, anti-armor ships.
- The build buttons and tech buttons are now organized into columns as well as rows, making for much easier management.
- AI reinforcement and tactical logic has been made more intelligent in several ways.
- Force fields are now larger, but shrink in size as they take damage.
- The minimum system requirements have been lowered thanks to all the recent performance improvements.
- Fixed issue with the AI thread stalling out in some very specific late-game circumstances.
- Various other bugfixes.

The above list is just a sampling, however, so be sure to check out the full release notes to see everything (attached at the end of this post). More free DLC to hit in a week or so. Enjoy!

AI War Comes To GamersGate!

AI War is now available for purchase through the GamersGate platform. Here is the direct link to the game. GamersGate is a leading digital distribution platform, with great features such as user reviews and ratings of games, and no DRM or outside software required. Be sure to check them out!

Thoughts on Piracy and DRM

ABSTRACT
DRM stinks, but so does piracy.  This article was sparked by a (thankfully fraudulent) report that AI War was being massively pirated, and it's a thoughtful look at issues of both piracy and DRM, and why the latter isn't the answer to the former.

Thoughts on Piracy and DRM

On Goals: For Love or For Money

ABSTRACT
So why does this Chris Park guy make games, anyway?  A lot of people have recently been making comments to the effect that "it's clearly a labor of love, he's not expecting to get rich off of this."  So this sparked an article exploring the various motivations of love and money, and why one is so closely related to the other in many cases.

On Goals: For Love or For Money

CaptainD's PC Gaming Blog: First Thoughts On AI War

If you've been looking for a challenging, detailed RTS that will fill your strategy needs for a long time, and particularly if you have a few friends who would want to join you in your battle against the AI, then this could very well be what you've been looking for.
- CaptainD, CaptainD's PC Gaming Blog: First Thoughts

The Wargamer Review of AI War

 On the surface, AI War seems to be a traditional real-time strategy, not unlike its similar space-based cousin, Sins of a Solar Empire, with large numbers of units across huge, mostly empty, maps. However, this assumption would largely be inaccurate. Instead, AI War is a rather novel blend of RTS, tower defense, grand strategy, and, strangely Warcraft III “creep crawling.”

- Christopher Beck, The Wargamer

UK Gamer Interview with Chris Park about AI War

UK Gamer interviews Chris Park, the developer of AI War, about design decisions made in the game, promotion methods for indie developers, and the future of AI War and Arcen Games.

Read The Interview

Designing Emergent AI, Part 4: Asymmetrical Goals

ABSTRACT
Continuing the series of articles about the AI in AI War.  Discusses the controversial asymmetrical nature of the AI goals versus the player goals.  Discusses the drawbacks, compares this approach to the approaches used in other games, and looks at why this approach is viewed as being semantically "fair" by most players.

Designing Emergent AI, Part 4: Asymmetrical Goals

techZing 10 - AI War

"Justin and Jason talk with Christopher Park, founder of Arcen Games and developer of a space-based RTS game called AI War: Fleet Command, about how he was able to release a sophisticated computer game in under seven months and create a formidable artificial intelligence in only a matter of weeks. The discussion also covers the marketing of an independent game, cooperative game play, multi-threading, optimizing .NET, LINQ, GPUs, SlimDX and the future of artificial intelligence."

Listen to this podcast on techZing!

AI War 1.010 Released (Free DLC & Player Suggestions)

Arcen Games is pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet Command version 1.010. You can download a trial version of the game, as well as purchase a license key to unlock the full version. If you already have the game or demo installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the game to get the latest patch.  
More Free DLC: Two new ships, the MLRS Turret III (shown right), and the Tachyon Missile, have been added. The new turret provides new high-level defensive options, while the missile reveals for 30 seconds all ships on the planet at which it detonates.


This release also contains another large batch of improvements, tweaks, and extensions based on player suggestions.  Here are some of the highlights:
- Players can now select more than one home planet when starting the game.
- Energy Reactor efficiency now drops if you cluster too many of them on the same planet.
- Missile Silos and Missiles are now much less expensive, but missile detonation always comes with at least a minor AI Progress increase.
- Screen position, unit selection, and zoom are now remembered when switching back and forth between planets.
- Right-clicking the planetary summary now cycles through ships, making them easier to find.
- Most ships that are non-repairable now have a self-regen ability (including force fields and fortresses).
- Munitions Booster range has been increased, but they now only work while not moving.
- The attack range of Spiders has been greatly increased, making them more dangerous.
- The protection range of all force fields is now larger.
- Teleporting ships can now travel through wormholes, but certain ships are now immune to their attacks.
- Fighters are now more resistant to cruiser shots, making them much more formidable.
- Mark III Engineers now have teleporting in addition to their existing other abilities.
- Several new hotkeys, including "Stop Units" (End) and several unit selection filters (N+0-5, N+8, N+9) .
- Fixed a bug relating to all AI planets on every map having Mark III force fields, rather than variable levels.
- Several bugfixes relating to space tugs.
- Various other bugfixes.
The above list is just a sampling, however, so be sure to check out the full release notes to see everything (attached at the end of this post). It's vacation season around here, so the next batch of free DLC won't be hitting for another two or three weeks -- but we've got some great stuff planned, so stay tuned. After that break, we'll be back to our regular weekly schedule. Enjoy!

AI War 1.009 Released (Free DLC & Player Suggestions)

Arcen Games is pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet Command version 1.009. You can download a trial version of the game, as well as purchase a license key to unlock the full version. If you already have the game or demo installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the game to get the latest patch.
 
More Free DLC: In addition to a new Mark III engineer being added, mobile repair station can now build five different variants of space tug, which are very fast ships with tractor beams that can automatically bring ships back to the nearest mobile repair station for healing, then send the ships back into the fray.

This release also contains another large batch of improvements, tweaks, and extensions based on player suggestions.  Here are some of the highlights:
- New ship counts when dragging selection boxes over ship.
- New Team Income display in Galaxy Map Intel Summary.
- New Z+A key combo allows seeing selected ship ranges at mouse cursor.
- F1 key now shows all ship types in planetary summary.
- There is now a visual and auditory warning when any of your command stations are attacked.
- The game now supports cheats.  See the ArcenWiki for a full listing.
- The AI is much more deadly with how it sends its freed ships through wormholes.
- Health bars are now colorized, and now there is an option to show them even in far zoom.
- New ship:  Mark III engineers
- New ships: Mobile Repair Stations can now build 5 different kinds of Space Tug for combat repairs.
- Several efficiency improvements have been added for how the host deals with the AI thread.
- It is now possible to keep playing after a victory/loss, just without score increases.
- If a music stream gets corrupted, it will no longer crash the game.
- Fixed a bug in the prior release with long-range shots aimed at force fields missing.
- The last uses of floating point math have been removed, which helps to avoid desyncs.
- Various other bugfixes.

The above list is just a sampling, however, so be sure to check out the full release notes to see everything (attached at the end of this post).  More free DLC will be heading your way next week. Enjoy!

AI War 1.008 Released (Free DLC & Player Suggestions)

Arcen Games is pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet Command version 1.008. You can download a trial version of the game, as well as purchase a license key to unlock the full version. If you already have the game or demo installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the game to get the latest patch.  
More Free DLC: The primary upgrade in this release is improvements to the AI and how the players can interact with them.  Planets on the galaxy map now show up as red (as seen below left) when the AI is likely to reinforce at them.  This helps the human players avoid tipping their hand too soon and causing key AI planets to reinforce too heavily.

Additionally, AI players will now reinforce their wormholes much like the human players tend to do.  This makes deep raiding much more difficult and interesting, and requires many new tactics.  In response to this, the human scouts are now much upgraded -- they all now include Cloaking, and most also now have a Cloaking Booster ability (as seen below right) that makes them even more effective in groups.

 

In addition to the above, this release also contains another large batch of improvements, tweaks, and extensions based on player suggestions.  Here are some of the highlights:
- Capturable ships now are now only captured after a command station is finished being built.
- Parasite costs have increased.
- Waypoints can now be queued in conjunction with wormhole-movement commands.
- Ships can now move between planets in attack-move or free-roaming defender modes.
- Repair Stations and Mark II Engineers have had a range upgrade.
- Cloaked ships will no longer auto-fire at enemy ships unless in attack-move/free-roaming mode.  This helps them maintain invisibility on longer raids.
- New Ship: Wormhole Command Posts are a perma-cloaked ship used by AIs to reinforce their wormholes. Kill the command station to kill these.
- Scouts and EyeBots have been heavily upgraded to deal with the newer wormhole threats; they now all have cloaking, and most have a new Cloaking Booster ability.
- Control group icons are now included in the planetary summary.
- Mark II Science Labs and Missile Silos are now less expensive.
- The range of all tachyon beam emitters is now higher.
- The way the AI reinforces is now tech-level dependent (higher techs get fewer reinforcements).
- Lightning Missiles have been made a bit more durable.
- A new "AI Alert Level" is now shown on the galaxy map intel summaries, showing at which planets the AI is likely to do reinforcements.
- Fixed several fairly rare bugs, including a multiplayer desync relating to attacking forcefields.
- Fixed Astro Trains just hanging out at their stations.
- Fixed a bug with AI players getting new ship types at too fast a rate.
- Fixed a 1.007 bug where too many Advanced Research Stations and Data Centers were being created on maps 80 planets and up.

The above list is just a sampling, however, so be sure to check out the full release notes to see everything (attached at the end of this post).  More free DLC will be heading your way next week. Enjoy!

AI War Soundtrack Now Available Through iTunes!

The soundtrack from AI War has been widely praised, and with good reason. If you can't get enough of the music while playing the game, or you love the music but RTS games just aren't your thing, you're in luck: iTunes is now carrying the original soundtrack (OST) for the game!

 

In the iTunes store, just do a search for either "Pablo Vega" or "AI War: Fleet Command." All of the proceeds from iTunes sales go directly to the composer. He did an awesome job, above and beyond the call of duty for any contractor, and we're really looking forward to bringing him on board as a fulltime staff member if AI War sales continue to be as great as they recently have been. In the meantime, we've left the rights for OST sales with him so that he can promote his incredible work beyond just the gaming community -- we're thrilled to see it now appearing on iTunes.

Weekend Impulse Buy: 25% Off On AI War!

This weekend only, you can get AI War: Fleet Command for 25% off the regular price at Stardock's Impulse store. AI War is already an incredible value, but this is a great chance to get it at an even lower price ($14.99 instead of the usual $19.99).

AI War 1.007 Released (Free DLC & Player Suggestions)

Arcen Games is pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet Command version 1.007. You can download a trial version of the game, as well as purchase a license key to unlock the full version. If you already have the game or demo installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the game to get the latest patch.  
More Free DLC: A new transport ship (shown below) can now be unlocked from the DEF tab of your command stations.  This transport is hugely useful for ferrying your weaker ships past heavy enemy defenses (across minefields, past ion cannons, etc).  Transports can also be used for ferrying teleporting ships between planets (very useful, since teleporting ships were previously locked to their current planet).



In addition to the new ships, this release also contains another large batch of improvements, tweaks, and extensions based on player suggestions.  Here are some of the highlights:
- Music streaming has been improved, which speeds up loading savegames and the game itself.
- Suggested paths between planets are now much better.
- Several AI enhancements.
- Harvester ExoShields have been made more useful.
- Fighters have been rebalanced, making them more useful.
- Several new graph options are now available.
- Overzoom is now an option.
- Efficiency of drawing hundreds or thousands of ship attack ranges is now much better.
- Multiple constructors can now be managed at once (space docks, missile silos, etc).
- It is now possible to issue commands to ships still being built (which they will execute after completion).
- Galaxy maps as small as 10 planets are now supported.
- A new Auto AI Progress option has been added, allowing game pacing to be greatly adjusted.
- Performance in very active games with more than 80,000 ships has been greatly improved.
- Trial players can now play with full retail players for the trial duration (1 hour).
- Waypoints now work better with attack-move mode.

The above list is just a sampling, however, so be sure to check out the full release notes to see everything (attached at the end of this post).  More free DLC will be heading your way next week. Enjoy!