AI War 2 News

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#3.000_Begin_The_Onslaught

This is a fairly small one, mainly focused on last minute tweaks and fixes. The version number is certainly significant, though: we've reached 3.0! This is the final build before the new Zenith Onslaught DLC arrives, along with the Titan Edition, in a few minutes.

I'll have more to say in a bit about those, but for now have you seen the gigantic (sort of secret) release notes history for ZO? https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Zenith_Onslaught_Patch_Notes

Those are huge! This actual 3.0 patch might be small on its own, but it's the culmination of years of work.

I'm sure to be superseded by 3.001 later today, or tomorrow at the latest, heh. We're always in motion. And we're so excited that more people will be able to experience the new Zenith Factions, Cruisers, and all of that new goodness so soon! (Also we are excited about the prospect of being able to operate in the black instead of in the red, if we're honest. There's a lot to be excited about right now).

Enjoy!

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#2.999_DLC_Eve

(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.)

Lots of last minute fixes and tweaks, a lot of them the sort of thing where we went "how did none of our testers find this?" But Democracy and some others ran a long game last night and found a whole crop of new bugs, so those got squashed.

Speaking of bugs, a not-so-new bug from the last few weeks has been making multiplayer just miserable for the clients, and I could not figure it out for the life of me. After chasing it for a long time, and getting lots of reports that I couldn't replicate, I was finally able to replicate it. Once it was replicatable, its days were numbered. It turned out to be three complex bugs in one, but they're all fixed now and so the client experience is a lot more sane. No more disappearing fleets and units.

On the DLC2 front -- hey, that launches in about 11.5 hours from now! -- there's some really cool new additions as well, with some last minute new controls to allow you more control over targeting crashing nomad planets or zenith miners. These are semi-wildcard type aspects of DLC2 when you enable them, so the ability to use hacking points to turn them to your advantage (rather than having no choice but to fight and defeat them if they were unfavorable to you) adds a lot of new strategic options for advanced players in particular. For casual play, it still adds options, but it probably won't be game-deciding at that level.

SirLimbo's mods got some updates as well, and Tzarro helped us find a ton of typos that are now fixed, most in the base game. Oh! There's two new fun cheat codes for DLC2. One to get all Zeus's cruisers, and the other to spawn a Miner Probe.

Titan Edition and DLC2 arrive super soon. Enjoy!

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#2.910_Onslaught_Approaching

(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.)

First up, check out Strategic Sage's video showcasing some of the new DLC2 stuff coming Tuesday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZXIckolnhM There's a followup video there as well on his channel, I believe.

Today I've been mainly working on finishing up the new art subsystem, which lets us now do things like this (this is in-game footage from DLC2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XaVNQ04KlE

This version sees some more DLC2 art integrations even beyond that, plus some balance changes and bugfixes to DLC and the base game, plus some nontrivial mod updates. It's late and I'm super tired or I would write more, but things are coming together really well. Excited to have more folks finally experiencing the Zenith factions after a full YEAR of development on Badger's part with them.

Enjoy!

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#2.909_The_Hunt_Intensifies

(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.)

Okay, another "wow a lot of stuff" build for you.

First up, the hunter (and some other factions that use fireteams) have gotten way smarter thanks to Badger (after commentary by Strategic Sage). Also they happened to get way more efficient on the background threads when he did that work, too, so double bonus.

There's a whole new graphical subsystem in place that I've added, which allows for particle effects and all sorts of crazy things, and I'm already putting that to use in the base game as well as DLC2. You'll notice that AI Warp Gates and similar now look way cooler.

Lots of bugs were fixed, and in terms of multiplayer I did a huge "code hardening" pass to preemptively deal with a lot of potential issues there. This doesn't deal with the "client explodes every 8 seconds" bug, but I plan to hit that before the end of Monday. This other set of fixes took about 6 hours today and was also pretty important.

DLC2 got various new features, like the ability to steer crashing nomads into targets of your choice. Lots of balance and updated quickstarts, too. Another new cruiser that you can hack for, this time from alien sources rather than human.

Also the AMU mod (and thus Kaizer's Marauders) now has its serialization fixed, so no more broken savegames involving that mod. Thanks to NR SirLimbo for being on top of that.

Enjoy!

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#2.906_Journaling_Along

(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.)

Wow there's a lot in here! And I am super duper tired, so I'm not sure I can do it justice. DLC2 continues to get massive updates based on feedback. And there's a ton of journal updates thanks to donblas and Tzarro for people who are running into new situations that might be challenging for them.

In DLC2, multiple Zenith Architrave factions will only get into civil war with one another if you enable that option. Those wars can be... uh... challenging to work around for a new player. So having that optional is definitely nice.

There are a variety of bugfixes, and I've also been working on some major new visual components for the game as well as specific new stuff for DLC2. Expect to see new warp gates and so forth (visually) tomorrow. You can also check out the non-animated version on the watch_chris_art subsection of our discord channel, although it also has a lot of DLC2 spoilers.

Also a number of mod updates in here.

No multiplayer updates yet. There are a couple of known issues that are serious and which make playing MP an exercise in frustration for the client right now. I'm having to juggle multiple things, so will hopefully have that resolved over the weekend or on Monday by the latest. Balancing that around the needs of the trailer work and related things is really tough.

Multiplayer is going to continue to see weekly updates, and continue to make rapid improvements (this past week or two has been a backslide in stability as I chased the ghosts problem), but it looks unlikely to be ready to call final on the 18th. We're going to stick with accurate names. Right now it's beta, and rapidly getting better. We'll call it done when it is.