Beta 2.772 Wormhole Hotfix
New beta build with hotfix is out: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.772_Wormhole_Hotfix
You can now use wormholes again!
You can now use wormholes again!
AI War 2 News
Beta 2.771 Critical Performance Mass
New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.771_Critical_Performance_Mass
You need to use the current_beta branch on Steam or GOG to play this one. If you have trouble with it, there is a most_recent_stable_beta, now, too.
Ugh, that last version had all sorts of performance problems and was quite a hash. It turns out that most of it was relating to the ConcurrentPool<> that I added, and remarked at the time might be problematic. It turns out it was... VERY problematic. A lot more problems than I was originally attributing to it were actually just related to that (such as having 70,000 stale shots in one person's save).
In the process of investigating a couple of huge saves that were running slowly, I wound up actually making some more performance improvements above baseline that we had had, and some saves that were only running at 80% speed because of some useless background chatter now run at full speed.
This version also includes a couple more multiplayer fixes, including (hopefully) getting LiteNetLib to work again, and also preventing some MP client errors from several mod factions.
Hopefully this is nice and stable so I can focus on art tomorrow.
Enjoy!
You need to use the current_beta branch on Steam or GOG to play this one. If you have trouble with it, there is a most_recent_stable_beta, now, too.
Ugh, that last version had all sorts of performance problems and was quite a hash. It turns out that most of it was relating to the ConcurrentPool<> that I added, and remarked at the time might be problematic. It turns out it was... VERY problematic. A lot more problems than I was originally attributing to it were actually just related to that (such as having 70,000 stale shots in one person's save).
In the process of investigating a couple of huge saves that were running slowly, I wound up actually making some more performance improvements above baseline that we had had, and some saves that were only running at 80% speed because of some useless background chatter now run at full speed.
This version also includes a couple more multiplayer fixes, including (hopefully) getting LiteNetLib to work again, and also preventing some MP client errors from several mod factions.
Hopefully this is nice and stable so I can focus on art tomorrow.
Enjoy!
Beta 2.770 Multiplayer Metal
New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.770_Multiplayer_Metal
You need to use the current_beta branch on Steam or GOG to play this one. If you have trouble with it, there is a most_recent_stable_beta, now, too.
This one has a ton of bugfixes to multiplayer, and also a huge number of fixes to Metal on OSX, and Vulkan for Linux. I haven't tested the latter lately, but it should be doing much better (though there's always OpenGL). On OSX, Metal is vastly more performant when it comes to how textures are used in RAM and consequently VRAM, so getting that in tip-top shape was a priority.
I also managed to shave off another 600 MB of RAM usage in general between the base game ships and the DLC1 ships and a few last bits of the main game body. This makes the game load faster, and also will make a lot of scenes higher-performance if you have a GPU with low amounts of VRAM in particular. This also makes more room for the influx of new content in DLC2, but not at the sake of quality; things are just more optimized now.
But wait! So much more! Marauders got a ton of buffs and tweaks from CRCGamer. Lots of corvettes got balance refinements from him also. Coilbeams should no longer deal 100x too much damage to secondary targets thanks to ArnaudB. Forcefields have gotten a bit of a nerf at baseline, but actually get more powerful at very high levels so that they are still useful when the Fallen Spire and similar are around. Command Station balance and energy usage has been tuned quite a bit as well, with these changes to cmd and ffs being an ArnaudB project aimed to making more viable playstyles with them.
Badger fixed the bug with multi-AI games having too few Praetorian Guards (that an oops by me), and ships with ff harmonics can now use wormholes under ffs. Oh, and there was a memory leak in shots that SirLimbo found, and I got that fixed up today. It was a major performance drain.
More soon!
You need to use the current_beta branch on Steam or GOG to play this one. If you have trouble with it, there is a most_recent_stable_beta, now, too.
This one has a ton of bugfixes to multiplayer, and also a huge number of fixes to Metal on OSX, and Vulkan for Linux. I haven't tested the latter lately, but it should be doing much better (though there's always OpenGL). On OSX, Metal is vastly more performant when it comes to how textures are used in RAM and consequently VRAM, so getting that in tip-top shape was a priority.
I also managed to shave off another 600 MB of RAM usage in general between the base game ships and the DLC1 ships and a few last bits of the main game body. This makes the game load faster, and also will make a lot of scenes higher-performance if you have a GPU with low amounts of VRAM in particular. This also makes more room for the influx of new content in DLC2, but not at the sake of quality; things are just more optimized now.
But wait! So much more! Marauders got a ton of buffs and tweaks from CRCGamer. Lots of corvettes got balance refinements from him also. Coilbeams should no longer deal 100x too much damage to secondary targets thanks to ArnaudB. Forcefields have gotten a bit of a nerf at baseline, but actually get more powerful at very high levels so that they are still useful when the Fallen Spire and similar are around. Command Station balance and energy usage has been tuned quite a bit as well, with these changes to cmd and ffs being an ArnaudB project aimed to making more viable playstyles with them.
Badger fixed the bug with multi-AI games having too few Praetorian Guards (that an oops by me), and ships with ff harmonics can now use wormholes under ffs. Oh, and there was a memory leak in shots that SirLimbo found, and I got that fixed up today. It was a major performance drain.
More soon!
Beta 2.768 RAM Reduction
New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.768_RAM_Reduction
You need to use the current_beta branch on Steam or GOG to play this one. If you have trouble with it, there is a most_recent_stable_beta, now, too.
This one has even more buffs to frigates, and it also makes the vanilla Marauders quite a bit more buff. Thanks to CRCGamer for orchestrating both of those.
This build also sees the removal of Fleet Capacity Extenders, as they have been super overpowered in the beta. This also removes High Capacity Transports, but replaces those with a very intriguing new High Energy Transport. The new transport option provides the first major new way to get energy in quite a while, and in this case it's a ton of energy in exchange for a decent pile of hacking points (60). Please see the release notes for detailed rationale on both, but this in general should make the game substantially more balanced (players have been enjoying some very OP combinations for a bit now).
This version is also retiring support for OpenGL on OSX: nobody needs it, and it turns out that it actually does run much worse. Metal is now the sole graphics framework that we provide for OSX, which basically what Apple prefers anyhow. On my old 2011 macbook that is FAR below minimum specs for running the game, the changes in this build take me from "so laggy I can barely move the mouse properly" to "smooth as butter with models off" again.
Another big win on the technical front? Without reducing visual quality in a way that would be visible, we've massively optimized our RAM usage. The total savings are around 700MB of RAM usage removed now, which also makes the game load that much faster, too. If you have been watching our youtube channel or the watch_chris_art discord channel, then you also saw I painted the first DLC2 unit today. It's a relatively small Zenith unit, called the Hersir (pictured below). My new art pipeline is ready!
You need to use the current_beta branch on Steam or GOG to play this one. If you have trouble with it, there is a most_recent_stable_beta, now, too.
This one has even more buffs to frigates, and it also makes the vanilla Marauders quite a bit more buff. Thanks to CRCGamer for orchestrating both of those.
This build also sees the removal of Fleet Capacity Extenders, as they have been super overpowered in the beta. This also removes High Capacity Transports, but replaces those with a very intriguing new High Energy Transport. The new transport option provides the first major new way to get energy in quite a while, and in this case it's a ton of energy in exchange for a decent pile of hacking points (60). Please see the release notes for detailed rationale on both, but this in general should make the game substantially more balanced (players have been enjoying some very OP combinations for a bit now).
This version is also retiring support for OpenGL on OSX: nobody needs it, and it turns out that it actually does run much worse. Metal is now the sole graphics framework that we provide for OSX, which basically what Apple prefers anyhow. On my old 2011 macbook that is FAR below minimum specs for running the game, the changes in this build take me from "so laggy I can barely move the mouse properly" to "smooth as butter with models off" again.
Another big win on the technical front? Without reducing visual quality in a way that would be visible, we've massively optimized our RAM usage. The total savings are around 700MB of RAM usage removed now, which also makes the game load that much faster, too. If you have been watching our youtube channel or the watch_chris_art discord channel, then you also saw I painted the first DLC2 unit today. It's a relatively small Zenith unit, called the Hersir (pictured below). My new art pipeline is ready!
Beta 2.766 Huge Multiplayer Speed Boost
New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.766_Huge_Multiplayer_Speed_Boost
You need to use the current_beta branch on Steam or GOG to play this one. If you have trouble with it, there is a most_recent_stable_beta, now, too.
This one introduces a new mod that lets you basically just have nothing but frigates, and it includes some more buffs to frigates in general.
After that, there's a really huge speed boost to multiplayer networking, most notably if you are on Steam (but also present on GOG and elsewhere). The Steam networking was actually the most used, but also the most laggy, so now it has caught up to the others and they have all leapt forward.
The short explanation is that there are many ways to interact with Steam's networking (four main ones), and the primary one that I chose turned out to be suboptimal for our particular use case. One of the nice things about running a beta. I switched from their "connection oriented" multiplayer model to their entirely-separate peer-to-peer model, and the results are staggeringly better. I am temporarily leaving the connection oriented steam multiplayer in as an option, but I'll probably comment out its xml entry if everyone is having good success on P2P.
The second part of the explanation is that -- partly now due to this shift -- we are able to run with multiple parallel data channels, rather than having a single lane for all data. If you imagine this like a highway, this shifts from being two lanes to being eight lanes -- with literal fast lanes that are all that is needed to keep the game moving. The slower traffic can take its time and it doesn't hurt anything.
If this solves the bulk of the lag that people are seeing -- and it should -- then this may mean that multiplayer is very very close to being full production ready. I'll wait until May to call that final, and fix bugs that pop up in the meantime. But it's feeling SO smooth. Enjoy!
You need to use the current_beta branch on Steam or GOG to play this one. If you have trouble with it, there is a most_recent_stable_beta, now, too.
This one introduces a new mod that lets you basically just have nothing but frigates, and it includes some more buffs to frigates in general.
After that, there's a really huge speed boost to multiplayer networking, most notably if you are on Steam (but also present on GOG and elsewhere). The Steam networking was actually the most used, but also the most laggy, so now it has caught up to the others and they have all leapt forward.
The short explanation is that there are many ways to interact with Steam's networking (four main ones), and the primary one that I chose turned out to be suboptimal for our particular use case. One of the nice things about running a beta. I switched from their "connection oriented" multiplayer model to their entirely-separate peer-to-peer model, and the results are staggeringly better. I am temporarily leaving the connection oriented steam multiplayer in as an option, but I'll probably comment out its xml entry if everyone is having good success on P2P.
The second part of the explanation is that -- partly now due to this shift -- we are able to run with multiple parallel data channels, rather than having a single lane for all data. If you imagine this like a highway, this shifts from being two lanes to being eight lanes -- with literal fast lanes that are all that is needed to keep the game moving. The slower traffic can take its time and it doesn't hurt anything.
If this solves the bulk of the lag that people are seeing -- and it should -- then this may mean that multiplayer is very very close to being full production ready. I'll wait until May to call that final, and fix bugs that pop up in the meantime. But it's feeling SO smooth. Enjoy!