AI War 2 News

New build! Wow it's been a while, so this is huge. https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#Beta_3.500_Data_Integrity_And_Game_Tech_Upgrades

This one is on the beta branch! In Steam, you will need to select current_beta to see it. On GOG Galaxy, you'll need to select Beta. In the game you should then see 3.500 as the version.

On Steam, there is a most_recent_stable_beta if you have problems with this one and need to fall back to 3.313 as the previous beta.

So what's going on with this release? Well... a lot!

1. We've upgraded the version of the unity engine that we're using by a lot of versions, and so now we have native M1/Silicon support for macs, as well as better support for OSX and Linux in general. Also also, it's probable that the bug with Radeon cards on OSX in Metal is fixed.

2. I made a ton of improvements visually and performance-wise to the main menu yet again, so that runs better than ever even on very low-end machines.

3. There have been a number of UI performance improvements in general. Visually nothing is different much.

4. Random bugfixes, but really only a handful of them in the main.

5. A HUGE architecture rework when it comes to how data is loaded and pooled. It turns out that we were having a ton of memory leaking out in various ways, and I've now pretty much entirely put a stop to that. Thanks to Daniexpert for bringing this to my attention. This particular thing is so overwhelmingly large in how much of the game that it touches that there may be some lingering bugs that are unknown, and there are a handful of fairly minor known issues listed in the release notes, too.

6. There are now anti-memory-leak tools for modders and faction developers to be able to monitor their own stuff, too. So far just by watching at the OS level, it doesn't look like much is leaking there at the moment, if anything, but it's nice to have.

7. The memory leak work, which was extensive, also doubles as a helper for multiplayer client integrity checking. I haven't gotten into that yet, but it's going to be very useful for getting the last of the MP oddities out of the way.

Known issues? Sure:
- Centering is off when going into the lobby usually the first time.
- Notifications at the top of the screen flicker at the moment.
- Mods: Chrysalis Devourer and Kaizer's Marauders are probably re-broken despite SirLimbo just fixing them a bit ago.
- Mods: The Reprocessors mod is likely broken until it gets a code update.
- All other other mods should be working fine from what we can tell.

- Unknown factor: not sure if we are clearing playeraccounts the proper amount, in multiplayer in particular. Will need testing by me.
- Unknown factor: who knows what else is wrong. This has been a tectonic shift for the game. But those are the known issues, at least.
- Unknown factor: It is probably going to be important to check that things like the Zenith Miner Mining, and any other units with particle effects (Zenith Miner Probe, etc) all are properly working and not getting stale, too.
- Unknown factor: Same deal with some of the special effects, like lightning blasts and such. Those haven't been tested yet, and are at a minor risk of having the same problem, although the code review looks good so far.

This has been an absolute slog and a ton of work, but I'm really pleased with how much more responsive the game is, and all the new power and capabilities. This is one of those items that wasn't on my radar at all, but I'm glad I was able to put in the time and get it improved. Now let's just have fingers crossed that we don't run into too many regression bugs over the next days and weeks.

More to come soon.
Enjoy!

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#Beta_3.313_Input.2C_Selection.2C_And_Flagships

This one is on the beta branch! In Steam, you will need to select current_beta to see it. On GOG Galaxy, you'll need to select Beta. In the game you should then see 3.313 as the version.

For now, we're going to leave 3.309 as the main non-beta version for everyone. These new builds are killer, and bring a lot to the table, but are buggy in the short term because I had to change so much, and I can't remotely find every edge case when making such large changes.

This one changes the input system around a lot in a low level way, so it should feel a lot better.

This one also makes HUGE changes where you can suddenly select anything and everything -- enemy units, neutral things, etc. You can pause neutral units before you would even be capturing them. It also hides cloaked enemy units even from your sidebar.

Stationary flagship mode is a really useful (but harder to get used to from the start) mode, and it has a "punch through" key of Z that lets you issue orders to a flagship in that mode. Now you can hold Z to give ignored-by-the-flagship orders to fleets NOT in stationary flagship mode. So you can use it either way, which is handy.

A laundry list of bugfixes in here, although there are still some issues with engineers that I'm aware of, and drones don't build, and a few other things. It should be plenty playable in the main, but there's some stuff that will need attention for sure.

More to come soon, as this shakes out and we find all the bugs and grind those into paste.
Enjoy!

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#3.312_Hotfix

This one is just a hotfix for a boneheaded compile chain error that slipped in at the last moment before I did the release last night. Sorry about that! This also has a few other random fixes and improvements in there from Badger and Zweihand, since they were already ready to go when I made the hotfix.

More to come soon!

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#3.311_Engineer_Multitasking

(Reminder that if you have trouble with the build, you can always go into betas and choose most_recent_stable to go one build back. This is how I sleep at night after making some major changes.)

This one continues the improvements from the beta build I put out yesterday, which is rewriting a huge amount of how engineers make their decisions and how they go about their work in general. For one thing, did you know that engineers can do a bunch of things at once? Specifically, they can repair something, build something, and boost a factory all at the same time if they are in range of them all. This is not new, but it only ever drew one assistance line.

Now you can properly see all that sort of thing, and the lines themselves are more attractive and informative about the state of metal flows going to each thing. There are also slightly different line colors and styles for things like assisting construction of a structure versus boosting a factory versus doing a repair (before these were all identical).

The line visuals are more efficient on the GPU/CPU AND prettier now in general, which also includes tractor beams and a few other unrelated lasers and such.

Also, in terms of multiplayer, or assisting NPC factions, the math is finally settling down into something that is very close to correct. There's more things that I need to fix up with this, but it's demonstrably better than two releases ago, so I'm taking this back out of beta. Tomorrow I hope to finalize all the rest of this, but it will partly depend on feedback and what folks notice that might still be a bit off.

More to come soon.
Enjoy!

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#Beta_3.310_Engineering_Intelligence_Injection

This one is on the beta branch! In Steam, you will need to select current_beta to see it. On GOG Galaxy, you'll need to select Beta. In the game you should then see 3.310 as the version.

If you have a chance, please do try this new beta version, and pay careful attention to your economy and your engineers and repair, etc. There are still some known issues with engineers (getting indecisive at times, choosing not-the-optimal-order-I-say-in-the-release-notes to do things in), but I think that they're still actually more functional than the prior version. And I'm not aware of any other bugs right now that are new.

However, as with any version that changes so many things (this serious changed a LOT, and I still have more to do next build to get those last known things fixed), there is the chance for something to be dramatically wrong with it. Hence a beta that is possibly just going to last a day or so. If your economy is correct and not getting eaten by things improperly, then I'll be happy; that's honestly my main worry, because I changed so much there.

So what's up with this build in general?

1. Network privacy settings if you play by IP and are streaming and want to hide that from your screen.

2. Fix a bug that was causing slowdown by spamming the error log in the prior build.

3. Completely re-code most of the engineering logic, and a lot of how assistance from engineers is applied to things they are building or boosting, etc.
- Previously in MP, the person receiving help from your engineer paid for it instead of you. Some help you were! ;) Now you pay for it properly, as expected.
- Way more options on being able to help out allies in MP and even SP.
- Ability to boost factories in general in MP, or build things for allies.
- Fix to engineers running off to strange corners of the gravity well (and possibly same fix for melee units).
- New injection of intelligence in engineer priorities for what to build first, etc. (This doesn't work fully yet, but all the other new features do.)
- Engineers no longer move in small jumps to get to their target. They go there much more quickly and smoothly.

4. Bit of data savings, and several minor performance improvements.

5. Fix to the bug from the last few months where a lot of ship-to-ship lines were not drawn, AND a fix to them sometimes hanging around TOO long.

Feedback is really welcome, and I hope to get the rest of the remaining issues with these tomorrow, along with some other bugs and improvements. If you're curious how some of these longstanding engineers could last so long... well, check out my last playthrough, where I show myself playing the first two hours (gametime) of the game. Notice my use of engineers? Essentially, whatever was auto-created I let happen, and I ignored them beyond that. It's part of my general playstyle that I rarely have the extra metal to spare, and I play on accelerated time, so engineers just put me in the Drain economy state more often than not. It's a very strange thing not to play with engineers much, but I don't, and so I was completely blind to how prevalent this stuff was. Sorry about that!

More to come soon.
Enjoy!