AI War Beta 3.903, "The Performer," Released!

Lots of performance improvements in this one.  Also, the last two stats tabs have been ported, and the new Children of Neinzul music track will actually play (whoops that it wasn't before).  These are tiny release notes compared to our usual, but it's actually been an enormously busy, stressful day.  Lots of preparations with distributors, I've been working on the trailers and the website pages for the games, Keith was working on deep memory performance stuff all day...  Busy day, but a good one.

Tomorrow the new trailers should be out, and then I'll finally be working on updating the last two tutorials in the game.  Then the credits/story needs to go on the main menu, the "tip of the day" thing needs to go on the main menu, and then... that's it!  We'll be feature-complete as far as version 4.0 of the game is concerned.  Anything not on that list (like, notably, the in-game graphs and the rest of the context menu) is not going to be until post-4.0.  The rest of our time leading up until Wednesday will be spent on documentation, the wiki, bugfixes, balance fixes, and last bits of polish -- that non-feature stuff that's in Mantis, basically.

Once 4.0 is out the door on Wednesday, we're going to be launching straight into... another short-term project. ;)  Stay tuned!

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 windows installer for 3.711, or the OSX installer for 3.712. Once you do an in-game update, they'll both be on the latest version, despite starting at slightly different versions.

AI War 4.0 and Children of Neinzul Coming on the 27th.

We'd been thinking we were going to release on the 25th, this coming Monday, but we need a couple of extra days.  Aside from one OSX crash all is well -- very well -- with the betas, but we still have a lot of last-minute stuff to prepare, and our distribution partners need time to get the stuff online, too.  So, mark your calendars for Wednesday instead of Monday!

AI War Beta 3.902 Released!

This one mainly fixes a bug in the last one that was causing savegames to all be 0 bytes.  Yikes.  We rushed this fix out as soon as we'd realized, thanks for your patience.

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 windows installer for 3.711, or the OSX installer for 3.712. Once you do an in-game update, they'll both be on the latest version, despite starting at slightly different versions.

AI War Beta 3.901 Released!

This version re-implements more of the statistics window tabs, hopefully fixes the too-low-ship-caps thing, fixes a couple of other exceptions and bugs, nerfs the Zenith Polarizer, and improves memory allocation a bit more.  The memory allocation thing in particular changed a few thousand of lines of code scattered throughout the program, so please do keep an eye out for wonkiness in the next couple of days.  So far it seems good, though, and the improvement to RAM use was worth the smaller risk of new bugs at this stage.

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 windows installer for 3.711, or the OSX installer for 3.712. Once you do an in-game update, they'll both be on the latest version, despite starting at slightly different versions.

AI War Beta 3.900, "Taunts In Your General Direction," Released!

This release is smaller on the surface than usual, but it still packs a punch. The biggest thing fixed here is that now the AI Taunts are once again functioning.  On OSX, this is a pretty critical fix, as it was apparently deadlocking the game when trying to taunt on that side (or after 25 taunts, possibly).  So this release really fixes up the stability on the OSX side in a major way.

There are also a number of other more minor fixes and changes, and -- more importantly -- the balance for ion cannons now scales with the ship scale.  This should make things much easier for players playing on lower ship scales when they run into a bunch of ion cannons!

We also got Steamworks integration in and working, but it's not in a fashion that can be publicly used yet.  Monday, though!

At this stage, we're getting very close to being release-level quality.  There are comparably few major issues open at the moment, and we're still working through those.  But, for the next day or so it's going to be a bit slower on that because I'm going to be working on the storefront text, trailer, screenshots, tutorials, manual, and wiki, getting those ready for 4.0.  Busy times!  But it's really rewarding to see how this is all finally coming together.

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 windows installer for 3.711, or the OSX installer for 3.712. Once you do an in-game update, they'll both be on the latest version, despite starting at slightly different versions.

AI War Beta 3.801, "Lobby Revisitation," Released!

This release has a lot of miscellaneous stuff in it, but there is particular attention paid to the lobby in there.  Specifically, all of the known lobby bugs should be resolved as of this release -- including that squirrely one where settings weren't really taking, etc.

Also in this one:

• Unique graphics for the avenger and hybrid hives, and upgraded graphics for the Neinzul Enclave Starships.
• Multiplayer chat improvements.
• Various balance fixes.
• Expansion logos on the main screen to show which expansions you have installed and available.

The Avenger

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 windows installer for 3.711, or the OSX installer for 3.712. Once you do an in-game update, they'll both be on the latest version, despite starting at slightly different versions.

AI War Beta 3.800, "The Refinery," Released!

Well, the release notes for this one are immense. I mean, really really immense.  At the risk of seeming terse, I'm just largely going to point you to those, because the fixes and tweaks are all over the place and I'm running really short on time, anyway.  But, some of the most exciting points:

• Lots of refinements to the galaxy map and other parts of the interface.
• The guardians scale much better based on the AI difficulty levels.  The prior sole way these functioned is now considered difficulty 8, for the very hardcore subset.  Rejoice, rejoice! ;)
• Some other bugs that made things too hard also were fixed.
• The achievements and the high scores windows are now in place.
• A new music track for the base game, called "The Next Chapter," is now in.  That's the last one for 4.0!
• For those who had been fussing about starfield density, this release should be pleasing.
• A variety of bugfixes, including making sure flak isn't a death squad.
• Making mouse wheel zoom function again for people with really low sensitivity mouse wheels.

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 windows installer for 3.711, or the OSX installer for 3.712. Once you do an in-game update, they'll both be on the latest version, despite starting at slightly different versions.

AI War Beta 3.719, "And There Was Much Rejoicing," Released!

Today's release is perhaps the biggest bugfix release we've had by far.  The three biggest issues on people's minds are all now fixed: the "Network host initialization error," the "Access Denied: Could Not Get Cursor Position" error, and the clunky-feeling (compared to the SlimDX version) zooming.  We also fixed some bugs from the prior version where a few directly-placed structures couldn't be built.  Huge day!

As if that wasn't enough, there are a number of eagerly-sought balance shifts relating to starships, hybrids, guardians, and anti-starships.  The balance there should be more refined and more fun to play with.

I'd planned on having this release out 6+ hours ago, but these zooming issues literally took me all day, and a few hours last night.  What a time sink, but the result was worth it: the scrolling feels better than it ever has in the past, and if you don't like it you can customize it much more closely to your tastes than in the past.  We're hoping to be able to blow through the relevant items out of the remaining 225 open issues (and whatever else crops up and is relevant) much faster in the next couple of days, but Keith's extensive work on the crash errors and mine on the zoom handling were time well spent, I think.  We're suddenly much closer to release-level quality.

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 windows installer for 3.711, or the OSX installer for 3.712. Once you do an in-game update, they'll both be on the latest version, despite starting at slightly different versions.

AI War Beta 3.718, "Humanity's Bruised Ego," Released!

Today's release is a major one.  Really, really gigantic.  Not because it adds any new ships or features, but because it really polishes the balance and difficulty -- including fixing some nasty bugs -- to such a heavy degree.  Let's see, where to even begin:

In the prior version, the economy costs weren't working properly, repair costs and times were often 10x too high, and so forth.  This made players feel like they were poorer than they should have, rather constantly, and was a huge issue for enjoyment.  I suppose that's what we get for introducing such a brand-new economic model under the hood (to enable the performance profiles) a couple of releases back. But now all seems to be well here.

The next really gigantic issue fixed in this version is that of the balance with scouting.  See, AI ships were deserting their guard posts to chase after scouts, which we'd never intended -- and they were breaking out of special forces mode, too, which was also unintended.  This led to situations where you were perfectly safe in the last release if you just sat at your planet (well, aside from occasional waves), but as soon as you started scouting you were likely to be swarmed by high-level ships and brutally murdered.

This led to some folks in the forums thinking that this was the new intended difficulty (and alternately despairing or rejoicing), but that's totally not the intent.  Amusingly, some people felt it was too hard only until they "got the hang of it" and were able to survive on their home planet for more than 30 minutes.  It was totally too hard even then, folks -- the risk of loss in the early game is supposed to be minuscule, and you should be able to take a planet or three in the first hour with very little trouble.  But that hour is important, as you're setting yourself up for later in the game, and the mid-game is harder or easier based on those early decisions you make.

A number of other balance shifts are in this version, in support of that.  There are no more guardians on planets adjacent to the player home, for instance -- gives folks a little more time to expand easily, and starting next to a mark IV world isn't so much extra harder now.  We also did a lot of rebalancing in general, making starships less durable, rebalancing fleet ships all over the place, making harvesters more durable, etc.

Also -- and you'll love this -- now you start with a bunch of mark I turrets and starships unlocked.  It's a real smorgasbord, and lets people experiment with a variety of turrets and starships without having to spend knowledge to do so.  Then if they find something they like, they can invest with confidence in the higher-mark levels of them.  This also helps with the balance against guardians and starships significantly, as the siege starship is pretty crucial to have against some of them.

In the screenshot above, you may note that you can now see the wormhole guard posts (that's what those new, wicked-looking structures are).  Wormhole guard posts aren't new, and all-in-all they don't even function that differently now, but the main thing that has changed is that you can see them and shoot at them (and they have a tiny little pew pew shot back at you).

This should help to ease a lot of confusion about when and why wormholes are getting reinforcements (guardians and otherwise), and it makes it more clear why there are extra guardians at each wormhole when you're playing against a defensive-type AI (there are more wormhole guard posts, is why). Along with this, there were a couple of bugs with too many guardians spawning at individual guard posts, too.  That's also fixed.

And of course there are a variety of other random fixes and improvements, ranging from stuff with the UI to the fact that there is now only one "settlement" (instead of three) on the human home planets.  Oh, and there's an awesome new Reference tab in the Stats window, which should be very handy.

This is the last week of beta for us, so be sure to keep those bug reports coming!  We want to make sure that this has about the same level of challenge as 3.0, rather than being so hard as it's been lately (or so easy as 3.189 and similar were).  I think we're getting enormously closer to the right balance with this one.  It should be a lot more fun to actually play! ;)

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 windows installer for 3.711, or the OSX installer for 3.712. Once you do an in-game update, they'll both be on the latest version, despite starting at slightly different versions.

AI War Beta 3.717 Released -- AI Carriers!

Today's second release is a substantial one.  The memory-usage improvements that Keith has put in place for the AI thread alone are really significant, as this lets the game skip for garbage collection vastly less often which means that the music/action doesn't skip even every 26 seconds or whatever we were up to before.  That's pretty sweet.

There are also five marks each of two new AI Guardians: Laser and Raider.  These are the last of the AI Guardians that will be in for the 4.0 release, and they both add new flavor to the Guardians and their ability to counterattack you.

Even better, there are now five marks each of new AI Carriers.  Normally when the AI has an excess of units it puts them into a barracks on their planet.  However, if they now have an excess of units and already have a barracks on that planet, they'll instead pop their ships into a carrier and send it toward your homeworlds!  The carrier is feisty on its own, but when it dies all the ships inside it come pouring out.  This is essentially the AI counterpart to the human transports, and -- like the human transports -- the carriers pass through force fields, cross minefields without harm, and are immune to tractor beams.  Tricky!  These naturally only show up in the late game, of course.

There are also new AI Eye units, which basically act as a de-blobbing agent.  If you gang up all your ships into one massive blob and go after a planet with an AI Eye on it (which are more frequent at higher AI difficulties), prepare to be cut down to size.  A lot of the recent changes to the game are really intending to make it more of a guerrilla-style raiding game in most cases, with the AI seeming a more formidable opponent throughout the whole affair.

These new ships represent the last ones that will make it into the 4.0 version (the Hunter/Killers that we'd wanted to get in place will have to wait until after 4.0, though they are partially implemented already -- there's just no time for balancing them properly).  Our official release of 4.0 is a week and a day away (the 25th), and we've got a lot of stuff to fix and balance in the meantime -- actually, before the 21st, where possible, as we have to get our files to the distributors by then.

At the moment, there are a number of fairly severe balance issues with even 3.717, but those are being whittled down and now that the feature-set has stabilized it will be a lot easier to blaze through them.  Admittedly we wish we had a little more time, but our financial situation means that we definitely have to make that cutoff, and so we're determined to do so with our usual commitment to quality.  And development on AI War never stops, so we'll be packing in more new stuff after AI War 4.0, too.  Speaking of, there might just be another expansion waiting in the wings to come out a couple of months from now... more on that later.

This new 3.717 release also includes some new balance changes in favor of the humans, with the guardians getting a bit of a nerf, and the human economy from the home command stations getting a 50% boost.  However, I just got out of a playtesting session and I can definitely say that this doesn't stop the game from being hard even right at the start.  Scouting stirs up AI ships so much that it's basically suicidal at the moment, which we obviously will fix, but more balance is also needed on the guardians and the player arsenal, etc.  A lot of that will be coming tomorrow and Monday, and I'm confident that we can hit something that is pleasantly challenging while not being insta-death.  Keep those bug reports and suggestions coming, folks!  That's been absolutely crucial for us so far.

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 windows installer for 3.711, or the OSX installer for 3.712. Once you do an in-game update, they'll both be on the latest version, despite starting at slightly different versions.

AI War Beta 3.716, "The AI Pacifier," Released!

Today's first release is a small one, but filled with critical fixes.  In the prior release, players were lucky if they survived to the 7 minute mark in new games because of some bugs that were causing the threat to skyrocket after the 1 minute mark.  Those are now all fixed, and the game should once again be playable-without-losing-instantly.  Along with that, we also redid the rules for how border aggression works, making it much softer in the early game, while ramping up more heavily in the late game if the players are parading around with massive numbers of ships.

On the other hand, in the last release there were a number of things also holding the AI back for established savegames, which made it too wimpy.  The AI wasn't launching waves, for one thing, but for another the new guardians were a bit tamer than we'd hoped.  These have also been corrected.

There have also been some changes to the costs of a couple of turrets, making them not all suck down crystal so heavily, and those window-order issues and related crashes should largely be fixed now.  Another release will be coming later tonight.  Enjoy!

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 windows installer for 3.711, or the OSX installer for 3.712. Once you do an in-game update, they'll both be on the latest version, despite starting at slightly different versions.

AI War Beta 3.715, "The AI Strikes Back," Released!

At long last, AI Guardians have arrived!  The first 40 of those ships (5 mark levels each of 8 ship classes) are now in, and a couple of them are pictured below.  These are basically overlarge, fairly slow, and fairly powerful ships that guard guard posts and command stations -- until provoked. 

In a lot of respects, they fill the same niche as turrets used to for the AI (the AI no longer gets any turrets, if you're just joining us), with two key differences: a lot more firepower is concentrated into each guardian; and the guardians have the ability to go on the offensive when you make them angry.  That's hugely important, as it makes the counterattack risk from attacking a planet inherently higher.

Also in this release are some key changes to starships, and how the AI uses those.  You'll be seeing at least one starship in every offensive wave now, which is one big difference.  Additionally, the AI is now able to use starships in more than just the "planetary roamer" mode that they normally have been.  This allows for attacks and retreats from starships, without those starships deciding to stick around permanently on the first AI planet they run into.

There are, of course, also a number of bugfixes.  The issue with the high threat right at the start of the game on lower-than-high unit cap scales has been fixed.  Additionally, we fixed the longtime issue of having at least a tiny bit of threat right at the start, simply by funneling those units into special forces during the first 60 seconds of the game.  So not only is the core bug fixed, but there's now a safety value of sorts in place to keep it from happening again.

Also, a lot of the window/dropdown/tooltip height positioning issues have been fixed, with great suffering, by Keith.  The z-indexing model for windows in Unity leaves a lot to be desired, and the documentation of that z-indexing model leaves even more to be desired, but Keith persevered and found a solution at last that seems to resolve all the issues.  He's asked me to relay that any more bug reports relating to window draw order are risking bodily harm. ;)

Oh, and by the way -- the turret caps are higher again.  With the starships and the guardians the way they are now, you'll need them.

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 windows installer for 3.711, or the OSX installer for 3.712. Once you do an in-game update, they'll both be on the latest version, despite starting at slightly different versions.

AI War Beta 3.714 Released!

3.714 is a pretty minor utility release, but has a number of nice fixes in it, such as melee ships that work, buffed starships, and alphabetized hull attack bonuses.  Another, larger, release will be coming later today.

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 windows installer for 3.711, or the OSX installer for 3.712. Once you do an in-game update, they'll both be on the latest version, despite starting at slightly different versions.

AI War Beta 3.713, "The Balance Destroyer," Released!

Okay, maybe the nickname for this release doesn't sound like a good thing, but it so totally is. Like "The Sledge Hammer" before it, this release absolutely rips apart some old parts of the game, and it builds something much better in its place.  This is the last such rip-things-apart release we're going to have before 4.0 hits: it's all rebuilding, fine-tuning, and adding on new stuff from here on out (guardians are coming, I promise!).

The thing that's been ripped apart this time, though, is the combat model. It's a lot of long-requested changes, actually, but we finally figured out a way to do them in a way that would keep the essence of the game while making us and players happy.

 

This new combat model in the game will possibly feel identical to the old one for novice players, but for advanced players is worlds different. Specifically:

• The old notion of shields (not to be confused with force fields) has been removed.  Most novice players didn't even know they existed at all, but they had an immense effect on the game and the way that targeting worked.  Now targeting is: a) simpler; b) not range-dependent; c) not including a random miss-chance component.
• However, there was a bit of interest in parts of the concept of shields.  We've now formalized that into a new Armor concept, which is way simpler than the old shields model, but provides some of the same benefits for ships like Heavy Bombers, etc.
• The game used to have a massive number (over 2,200, actually) of ship-against-ship-type internal bonuses.  You know: rock, paper, scissors, lizard, spock.  And about 40 other elements, literally.  There had been great forums debates about this back in 2009, and possibly even stretching into early 2010, but... well, the short answer is that the time wasn't right and there wasn't a cogent model that met all my criteria.  But now there is!  So these are gone.
• In place of the old ship-vs-ship-type internal bonuses, there is now a set of the following hull types: Scout, Light, Medium, Heavy, Artillery, Neutron, Swarmer, Ulra-Light, Close-Combat, Command-Grade, Refractive, Composite, Turret, Ultra-Heavy, Structural, or Polycrystal.  All ships belong to one of these hull types, and combat ships have some bonuses against approximately 0-5 of these hull types.
• Going along with these changes, the old Strong/Weak Vs display has been removed from the game, for a variety of reasons.  In their place is a new Attack Multipliers display, which shows the bonuses against other hull types.  This is more brief, more effective, and again something a number of players had asked for.

Want more details on all those changes, and the reasoning behind many of them, etc?  See the lengthy release notes, linked above, for all that sort of thing.

But wait!  There is, in fact, quite a bit more to this release.  Aside from a number of eagerly-awaited bugfixes (missing image fixes to the OSX version and the 3.711 windows installer, Zenith Traders that will actually trade with you again, etc), there are a number of other changes.  The main ones:

• Performance.  We figured out some new ways to squeak yet more performance out of the working set of the RAM.  Moving from .NET to Mono was more of a leap than we'd expected, because their garbage collectors are so different, but we're using the Unity profiler and other methods to get this optimized.  It's about as optimized now as it probably will be for 4.0 launch, and it's looking mighty good, even moreso than in 3.712.
• Balance changes: Some of them are related to the whole combat-model-reinvention stuff that was already mentioned, obviously, but others are fundamental changes to how some ships work, or how mechanics such as "AOE damage immunity" function.  In particular, all the cluster bonus/penalty stuff (which wasn't really that fun) has been removed in favor of other mechanics.
• Neinzul Younglings: These have seen a big revamp.  We're definitely soliciting feedback from playtesting with them at this time, too.
• Previously, we sometimes called Mark V ships as "Core" or as "Mark V."  That's been made more consistent, as "Mark V."  As have the related ship names ("Core Predator" is now "Raptor Mark V," for instance).  See the release notes for more details on this, and what is indicated by the few ships that do still have "Core" in their name (mostly the Core Guard Posts).
• The first OSX fixes: I mentioned that the missing images are now in place, but there was also a bug in the last version that was causing the OSX graphics to be slightly-to-very fuzzy.  Fixed!
• And with this version, we can also confirm that the updater is definitely working on OSX just as well as on Windows.  In fact, aside from a handful of OSX-specific issues in our bug tracker, the experience seems pretty identical between the platforms, which is the goal.  We just didn't expect to get there that fast (knock on wood).

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 windows installer for 3.711, or the OSX installer for 3.712. Once you do an in-game update, they'll both be on the latest version, despite starting at slightly different versions.

AI War 3.712 OSX Installer -- First-Ever Public Mac Version Of AI War!

This is an exciting post to get to make.  At long last, we now have an OSX version of AI War.  You can grab it here.  That installer installs an OSX version of AI War that is identical to the Windows version 3.712 that we just released tonight, including all the new and remastered music. 

The OSX version should be able to handle automatic updates exactly in the same fashion that the windows version does, but honestly we haven't had an opportunity to do thorough testing on the OSX version of the updater or the game itself on OSX. What I've seen so far looked flawless (and at a mighty fine framerate, too, on my MacBook Pro), but we haven't yet had our normal army of player testers on the OSX side, obviously.

So with the caveat that there may be some Mac-specific bugs at this stage (though hopefully not), I hope you'll enjoy the new version if you're a Mac enthusiast.  Worst case, we'll be unable to patch the existing install and will have to issue a whole new installer package; worse things have happened, and in the meantime we can definitely use the assistance of the Mac crowd in making sure this thing works well over there.

I delayed this long on releasing the Mac version because I didn't want the first impression of anyone on that platform to be of AI War in an unpolished, buggy state of the earlier betas.  Things are much further along now, but bear in mind that this is still very much a beta product, and not completely finished.  We really appreciate the bug-hunting, suggestions, and general feedback that people offer in these pre-release phases; it makes the final product so much better.

All right, all right, enough: enjoy!

PS -- The license keys for AI War are platform-agnostic.  So if you bought the "windows" version of AI War, you really bought it for both platforms.  Network play, etc, should work between both platforms, as well.  All the same deal as what we did with the Mac version of Tidalis, in other words.