AI War Beta 3.712 Released -- Multiplayer Lobby!

Now that we're nearing the end of our "early beta" period for the AI War 4.0 work, it appears that twice-daily is our new release schedule for a bit. This week is basically the last of our "big overhaul" timeframe for AI War 4.0, and then next week is going to be all about polish, polish, polish.

A few secondary things, like the updates to the last tutorials, the high scoreboards, and the achievements lists, will also not happen until next week -- but at this stage, the game is getting very close to being fully functional in terms of gameplay and the in-game HUD, menus, and interface itself.  There are still a number of gameplay changes and interface additions coming this week, of course, but the road ahead is much shorter than the road behind.

So.  This new version 3.712 is a great one, because it includes a functional multiplayer lobby for the first time since the AI War 4.0 betas have been around.  There are also some other fixes and in-game tweaks, my favorite of which is the re-implentation of the resource bar tooltips.  Those tooltips include a lot of handy information and breakdowns that are useful in any game (it's hugely useful being able to check your allies' resource flows, the current AI Progress Floor, etc).

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 3.701 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 3.701 or later, you can download the installer for 3.711 here.

AI War 3.711 Windows Installer -- With Music Included

At long last, here's an updated installer for the Unity version of AI War.  This is the 3.711 version of the game, and also includes all the new music that we just today released as a zip file download for those already with the Unity beta versions of AI War installed.  A Mac OSX installer is coming really soon, hopefully today.

Enjoy!

AI War Beta 3.711 Released, Remaster/CoN Music Released!

This release is just a bugfix version that resolves some important issues (including a crash bug in the prior release).  There will be another release tonight with actual new stuff.

However, today is already exciting because the long-awaited release of the remastered music -- and the new Children of Neinzul tracks -- is today!  We haven't managed to put together a new installer yet, and some folks with the game already installed just wanted a zip archive anyway, so that's what we've done.  Download the music bundle zip file here, and simply unpack it (with directories intact) into your game folder.  Pablo has really outdone himself with this one, and we're very excited to be able to share it with folks at last!
 
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 3.701 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 3.701 or later, you can download the installer for 3.711 here.

AI War Beta 3.710 Released

Second release in one day!  This release has a ton of good stuff.  There are a bunch more performance improvements (and tools for gauging your performance), the force fields have been updated and look awesome, more of the context menu is now in place, and the rest of the new "niche images" to tell the various ships-with-same-far-zoom-icons apart from one another where needed. 

Also, the hybrids and some of the other similar new ships won't be 20x too large and dangerous any longer, which we're sure will be a hit. ;)

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 3.701 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 3.701 or later, you can download that here.

AI War Beta 3.709 Released

This one is just a small release, overall, with some key bugfixes to the last version.  That said, however, there is a new implementation of the context menu, which we know a lot of people have been waiting for -- so yay!  There's also a couple of smaller balance tweaks in there.

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 3.701 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 3.701 or later, you can download that here.

AI War Beta 3.708, "The Salve," Released

I don't know why these prerelease names keep coming to me, but I imagine they won't keep up.  If the last release was the sledge hammer, where we burst through a bunch of walls and floors and started remodeling, this release is continuing the remodeling work -- and, even more importantly, healing some of those rips and holes from the last release, hence the name.

Notable stuff:

• There's a bunch of key bugfixes and tweaks in there, including the ability to build command stations again (kind of hard to play for long without that, but that was the most severe of the bugs found in 3.707).
• Wow did the economy get an overhaul.  The overall cap was raised from 600k to 999k, and command stations and harvesters all give you way more metal and crystal.  You'll need it.
• A bunch of stuff is now (sim and regular) framerate independent, so that more of the graphics continue to move in realtime even when you use a faster or a slower performance profile.  Ships and shots and other things that are part of the simulation itself are just going to have to look jerky when you use a really slow performance profile -- there's no way around it -- but there's no reason that explosions, starfields, etc, can't be nicely animated during that time.
• Speaking of, the ship movement now scales better (so your ships don't zip around on insane, and don't crawl along on extremely low).
• And a blanket 10 move speed has been added to all ships, too, which makes the really slow ships feel less sluggish.  Always a plus.
• The Neinzul Hybrids were growing at something like 20x the intended rate in the last release, which led to murder within minutes.  It's safe to go back in the water now. :)
• Oh yeah, and the ship cap scale setting now actually applies to the AI as well as to you.  We forgot to handle that in the last release.
• Also, the attack power of all ships has been scaled up, so that combat isn't sluggish like it was in the last release (thanks to downed reload times, largely).
• And, last but not least, the first of the new "niche icons" to replace the old "niche text" have been added.  So you can tell metal/crystal manufactories apart again from far zoom, and selecting all your engineers from the planetary summary no longer selects cleanup drones or rebuilders, for example.

Enjoy!

AI War Beta 3.707, "The Sledge Hammer," Released

We normally aren't in the habit of naming our beta releases -- they come too frequently, and generally have too little individually to warrant such a thing.  However, this particular release is an exception.  We basically took a sledge hammer to a goodly number of parts of the game (kitchen, dining room, you know), and have been remodeling those parts.

The result is something which has better performance in general, and which has new "Performance Profiles" to meet the demands of a wider variety of machines.  This was the chief goal of this release.  The default profile is High, which mirrors what the older versions of AI War used (Average was what the last few releases, and some players were feeling this was too choppy). But also, this release includes:

• New internal handling for the economy in general, fixing a number of bugs.
• Repair costs are now based off a fraction of the ship's actual construction costs, rather than being mysterious per-second numbers.
• A good number of units have been rebalanced, some pretty heavily.
• The AI no longer uses turrets at all, preferring mobile ships instead.  
• There will be some upcoming new "Guardians" in the next couple of releases that will take the place of tractor beams and tachyon beams and such in the hands of the AI, but right now those are lacking -- makes it easier to scout and such in this release than usual, but that will be temporary.
• Speaking of turrets, the ship caps for turrets with the human players have been reduced by 5x, while the costs and health, firepower, and other positive attributes have been increased 5x.  We noticed that players were typically only building turrets in groups of 5, anyway, so we just collapsed them into smaller units to make them easier to manage and to boost performance.  Plus, a single mark III tractor beam turret can hold 240 enemy units, which is just really cool.
• There is now a Unit Cap Scale that allows players to choose from Low, Medium, and High.  The old default is High, but the new default is Medium, which has lower caps for many ships but with them being higher-powered.  This is a huge performance boost, but also gives players with beefy machines the options for the higher if they prefer.
• Speaking of unit caps, while overall those are lower, the mark III, IV, and V unit caps are a lot higher compared to what they were.  So you can have a higher percentage of higher-mark ships, which is great.

Known issues with this one (from the new stuff):

• The movement speed of ships isn't yet scaling properly in the performance profiles other than Average or High.
• The animations for explosions, etc, are only correct in the High performance profile at the moment.
• When you're zoomed very far in, but not quite all the way, the health bars will shoot way off the side of the screen.
• The new counterparts for replacing the functionality of some turrets (particularly tachyon and tractor) aren't yet in place, so that makes things temporarily a bit easier for you.  Hooray!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 3.701 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 3.701 or later, you can download that here.

AI War Beta 3.704 and 3.705 Released.

A new version of the full installer, with all the full music tracks for Children of Neinzul plus the new/remastered tracks for AI War and The Zenith Remnant, will be forthcoming soon.  However, that takes a while to upload and prepare, and in the meantime we have a non-music-bearing patch that you can download of the awesome new 3.705 update.  Notable new stuff in this one:

• Minimap!  And not just the old one that we used to have, which was of marginal utility (because it was so small), and always in the way.  Hold T to see the new one, or your middle mouse button.
• No more control nodes!  Oh, the angst of an engineer without his control node.  But, the new system is better, and can be accessed through a handy new Ctrl button at the bottom of the screen.
• Objectives screen!  That was actually there a bit in 3.703, but it's loads better now.  Just go into the Stats screen and click the Objectives tab.  It's a lot more informative and instructive, while at the same time not revealing data you haven't scouted for.
• The in-HUD buttons and the planetary summary are both now vastly more efficient, and in the case of the buttons, vastly more readable.  This makes a huge difference.
• Some more fixes/improvements to the game timing (it was running fast before).
• That shot rotation bug is fixed (the one where shots moving up and left looked funny).
• Various internal performance improvements to try to keep memory usage down, especially across multiple sessions that don't close the application.
• The wave/reinforcement multipliers are now visible as an alert at the top of the screen when present.  No more confusion when you have a x27 wave modifier from your three golems!
• The 3.705 version adds on some fixes to the button text centering, and to the lobby.

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 3.701 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 3.701 or later, you can download that here.

The Reticule: Chris Park On Finances and Games

"Chris Park is the wonderfully open and honest chap who heads up indie studio Arcen Games, he has been extremely open about the financial troubles the company has been going through recently, excellently detailed here on PC Gamer.  I knew I had to talk to him about everything that was going on both financially and in regards to current and future games from Arcen."
Click here for the full interview

AI War Beta 3.703 Released.

Lots and lots of good stuff in this one.  To whit:

• Some of the not-yet-ported galaxy map controls have now been ported.
• New options for unloading transports have been created (people have wanted that for a while)
• The tutorials are now back in place and the first two have been updated content-wise.
• A bunch of the keybindings have been tweaked and now have in-game descriptions.
• Multiplayer for existing savegames should definitely now work.
• Other various bugfixes are in and items have been ported.
• And... my personal favorite: that issue with the orthographic camera that was leading to blurriness on many monitors is now fixed, at long last.  Thank goodness -- the game is so much crisper now.

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 3.701 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 3.701 or later, you can download that here.

Update On Children Of Neinzul Donations For Child's Play

It's that time again!  As of September 31st, 2010, we have so far raised and donated $1090.38 for the Child's Play charity via sales of our Children of Neinzul micro-expansion for AI War -- and that's just with preorders! We look to be well on our way to hitting our goal of $14,000.00 for the year at this rate (for those who are skeptical, typically sales of an expansion after release are vastly higher than just from preorders, so it's not a linear thing). We'll post monthly updates on how we're doing towards our goal, so check back!

More About AI War: Children of Neinzul and Child's Play
When you purchase AI War: Children Of Neinzul, you're not only getting an exciting new expansion, you're also supporting an important cause. Arcen Games has partnered with the Child's Play charity, pledging 100% of the profits from sale of Children of Neinzul (excepting any taxes and distributor fees) to helping sick kids in need.

The staff at Arcen has long admired the work done by Child's Play, and we're very excited to finally be able to contribute in a substantial manner. Our goal is to raise $14,000.00 USD for Child's Play in 2010, but even after 2010 all of the proceeds from this micro-expansion will continue to be donated to the charity.

At the moment, this micro-expansion is only available directly through the Arcen Online Store ($3.99 USD), which gets you full access to the beta.  However, at the time of official release (expected to be mid-October at the moment) we expect it to be available through all of the major distributors that currently carry AI War; those we've spoken to about it are as excited about it as we are.

AI War Beta 3.702 Released.

Lots of bugfixes and balance tweaks in this one.  Also a number of performance improvements, especially to cutting out the lag in the lobby from the last few releases.  A few GUI tweaks also made it in, hopefully making the interface easier than ever to visually parse and use.  Enjoy!

P.S. -- This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 3.701 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 3.701 or later, you can download that here.

Punchbag Artists

In this recent article at Resolution Magazine, Joel Goodwin discusses the effect of destructive criticism on game developers.  Yours truly is one of a handful of developers quoted in there a couple of times, which is cool, but it's a rather important article regardless of my ties to it.  In the end, I think Gabe Newell had the most interesting points to make (I never though of it that way), but I enjoyed reading how all the developers quoted deal with the abusive comments that are endemic to publishing anything on the Internet.  Definitely worth a read!

AI War Beta 3.701 Released!

Hot off the heels of the recent 3.700 beta of the new AI War 4 comes this new bugfix-laden version.  Seriously, that's a lot of release notes for it having been the weekend!  Predictably, there were a number of issues with the prior beta version, and this new beta resolves most of the serious reports; this new version will play much better.

The updater in the prior version works just fine, but a number of the issues in the prior version were with the installer itself, so I've opted to just do another installer and start fresh from 3.701.  You can download 3.701 here.

One challenge we've faced in the last couple of days is how to distribute all these soon-to-be-daily beta updates without breaking the bank on bandwidth; another challenge was how to deal with the influx of bug reports and suggestions in an organized fashion.  People kept giving us walls of text with unrelated thoughts all clumped into one topic, and our bug reports forum wasn't really cutting it in general lately, anyway.  Nor the suggestions forums, either.

So, to solve this problem, we turned to Mantis BugTracker, and have a new Arcen Games Bug Track tool.  Some helpful souls have been helping us to migrate the old bug reports and the old suggestions.  That's a pretty gargantuan task, though, because there are probably over a thousand topics relating to suggestions.  If anyone has any spare time and you don't mind spending a few moments even moving just one or two topics over and filing them properly, that would be a huge help to us.

Even more helpful?  Please log any future bug reports or suggestions in the new tool.  It makes it easy for you to search to see if someone else has already suggested/reported the same thing, and it makes it easy for us to manage the flow and our own workload, as well as communicating to you roughly what's in progress, what's planned, etc.

Anyway, so this new beta is mostly bugfixes, but there are a number of smallish balance tweaks and similar in there, too.  Check out those release notes for more info.  Enjoy!

AI War 4 Beta 3.700 Released!

Well!  It's been a long time since we've done a beta release.  About a month, which around here is just absolutely ages.  The porting of AI War to the new engine has been... intense.  No more so than we knew it would be, but that's still quite a challenge.

That said, we've been busy adding new stuff.  That ginormous wiki page just chronicles what is different from the most recent pre-4.0 beta (which also had a ton of changes, incidentally), rather than detailing all of the nitty-gritty porting work.  See the following link for a list of known issues, which includes features that simply haven't been integrated into the beta yet.  If that list seems long, it's not -- we'll have the bulk of that knocked out in the next week, or at least that's the plan.

So what all is new?  Well, the graphics, for one thing.  All the shots, explosions, special effects, menus and HUD, fonts, and starfield backgrounds have been massively upgraded -- well, really, completely replaced -- and the combined effect is pretty incredible.  There are still some work-in-progress parts to the menus and HUD in particular, but the net effect is pretty amazing; we've gotten so used to this that it's hard to contemplate using the older version at all.

Beyond the graphics (which look best in motion, by far), the list is diverse and lengthy.  We heartily refer you to the release notes.

This Is An Early Beta
That's an important point.  There are features missing, and there are known bugs.  And a lot of it hasn't been tested all that well just yet, as it's so hot-off-the-presses.  In other words:

• If you're looking for the latest beta for general gameplay, you still want to be using version 3.189, the latest SlimDX-based beta.
• If you just want to see what all the AI War 4.0 fuss is about, or you're excited about the new features and trying them out early, or you'd like to help us test, that's what this early beta is for.

If you fall into that second camp: thanks in advance!  We need the help of folks like you, to make sure no serious issues slip past into the official 4.0 release.  If you find something that's not already on our known issues list, please report it as a bug in our bug tracker, not in the forums.

We don't want to warn anyone off of the 3.700 beta -- it's a pretty incredible bit of work, if we do say so ourselves, and a substantial upgrade from 3.189 -- but we'd absolutely hate for someone's first experience with AI War to be with the 3.700 version, because it's significantly rougher around the edges and less polished than is our custom even for betas.

All right, all right, enough already.  Here's the download link.  Enjoy!

P.S. -- Make sure that you take note of the "AI War Pre-4.0 Settings Importer" application that you'll find in your start menu.  The importer allows you to import pre-4.0 settings files into the new 4.0 version. Unfortunately, the new versions of AI War can't directly read the legacy settings files because of a bug in the Mono framework (regarding deserializing generic collections, if you're curious).  Our settings importer tool also moves across savegame files as a convenience, although there is no compatibility issue with them.

P.P.S. -- Also, today's beta is just for windows.  Not to slight the people who've been waiting on the OSX version, but we were doing good just to get this one out, and it's already 2am at that.  We also want to make sure we get the tutorials in there before we do any OSX-based version, as we have a sneaky feeling that some people will make the 4.0 betas their first experience with the game despite our admonitions not to do so.  Hey, when you only have the one option on your platform... we can relate.

P.P.S. -- The forum discussion on this release is here.