AI War 2
Beta 3.900 Modular Ships / Ship Loadouts
Not a lot exciting in this one... I mean, there are modular ships / ship loadouts now, but it's not like that's the most-requested feature or anything.
Right! So, modular ships -- actually, quite exciting indeed. There are a few more pieces I still need to add to those, and we need actual data for many of the ships (actual modules, etc), but the core framework is there now, and it works well. I've been mentally rehearsing this code for like two years, so in the end it went a lot more smoothly than I was expecting.
At the moment the only modular ships are the Fallen Spire ones, which now blend over the Spire Railgun Shop mod's weaponry into the main game as modules. Thanks to Lord of Nothing for the designs in that mod, and for allowing us to fold in his work as modules and retire his mod. It's really nice to see all the spirecraft not just having coilbeams. Of course, we'll be adding more! In terms of the spire area, and otherwise.
DLC3 balance has been seeing a ton of updates and improvement today in this build, too, thanks to the hard work by Zeus and Badger. There's really quite a lot in there.
There's a few notable bugfixes, including some to mods in general, and to wormhole invasions acting a bit off.
There are also more updates to the Splintering Spire faction/scenario, with lots of hard work by StarKelp in that area. It's still locked to only DLC3 testers for the moment, but that should end soon.
In general the expectation is that we'll be coming out of beta in this coming week.
More to come soon.
Enjoy!
Beta 3.807 Spire And Neinzul
This one has many exciting things! The most exciting new thing in this one is the Splintering Spire, which is a new DLC1 group of factions that is presently in preview. It should see a wider release within the next week, but right now we're just seeking feedback on it from DLC3 testers. So please give it a try! StarKelp has been doing awesome work with that.
Secondly, there's a lot of balance updates, mostly to DLC3 but a bit to DLC1, thanks to Zeus, and a number of fixes from Badger. The necromancer and elderlings have seen a lot of good balance here.
Lastly, there's a solid set of bugfixes in here, including some beam weapon math fixes from NR SirLimbo. Also a few nullref and other protection fixes thanks to Badger.
More to come soon.
Enjoy!
Beta 3.805 Bolstering Spire
This one has a metric ton of art, a lot of which is focused on the spire, in both the base game and DLC1. Some of the rest is focused on the neinzul in DLC1 and DLC3. In general just making things look better, and adding new art for some of the new units that are coming to DLC1 as it expands shortly.
The Fallen Spire and Spire Infused Empires both work better than ever, and also are more clear, thanks to Badger. In particular, the bolstering mechanics are a lot more clear, and you get your third fleet when you are supposed to, rather than super late. Also more journal entries and other general help text.
On the bugfix front, there's more related to MP, and a few related to SP, again largely thanks to Badger.
There's also a shift with golems knocking smaller units out of the way, including your own units. Let me know how that feels; if it seems off, then I'll disable that except for giant things like the devourer golem.
There are several new spire factions coming to DLC1 in the near future, and those are drawing closer to creation thanks to StarKelp: Chromatic Spire, Gray Spire (both of which are dyson spheres), and then the Spire Shattering faction which sees... them at war including with the zenith dyson sphere, and also some dark spire involvement in a new and exciting way from the base game. I'm also going to be adding a Chromatic Spire Horror small faction in DLC1, because I had a series of cool ideas and some art that was cool that I made by accident while trying to make something else, and so it seemed like a good fit. It is a small faction, but should be neat.
In general there are now a lot more spire factions in this game: rather than just "regular" and "imperial" (which looked the same) and dark spire, we now have regular spire, imperial spire (which are visually distinct now), gray spire, dark spire, and chromatic spire. The chromatic are new in AI War 2 (all of the others had at least some presence in the original AI War), and they're by far the meanest and to some extent scariest out of them. They've been really fun to work on visually.
More to come soon.
Enjoy!
Beta 3.804 Bug Smooshing
This one is pretty much entirely bugfixes, and some major performance improvements as well. Hopefully multiplayer will be running even more smoothly, although there are still a couple of known issues that I need a bit more data for, or to test myself.
Badger and StarKelp were both on fire today, fixing all sorts of things, and I got a lot done as well.
Towards the evening I started working some on some revised spire graphics to improve the visuals in DLC1 a bit, and also to make room for the new spire factions and their units that are coming to DLC1. I'm not quite there yet on it, but the early stages are promising.
More to come soon.
Enjoy!
Beta 3.803 Encyclopedia Madness
When I originally set out to make the encyclopedia, I thought it would be about a half day of work. I also had in mind something relatively smaller. The end result took a solid day and a half, but is absolutely huge and really packed with features. I think I'm pretty much done with this for now, aside from a few tweaks I'll put in a while later. For now, this lets you sort and filter by all sorts of metrics, including several at once. This is also something that modders can easily extend. In-game it gives you extra information related to what factions actually have (that you can see), and what you can hack for or build but have not, and so on.
Tooltips also have improved a fair bit in terms of their placement so they are generally less in the way, and dropdowns behave much better (opening taller, and centering on the selected item when opening, rather than the top of the list). Lots of great quality of life improvements, there!
There are also some pretty key multiplayer fixes in this build, and some other multiplayer tracing elements that should help find the last of the canary issues if we still have more (I think we do, but I think they're reducing in severity at least).
The new faction stuff from StarKelp is also coming along well, so if you're a tester on that then there's lots of new good stuff. That will be properly announced coming up later this week when it's ready for everyone.
More to come soon.
Enjoy!
Beta 3.802 New Challengers Approach
This is another big one. First off, it has a ton of bugfixes, including substantial improvements to multiplayer yet again.
The encyclopedia has seen a first round of updates, but there's more that needs doing. You'll notice some empty dropdowns and textboxes along the bottom, which I'll be filling in tomorrow or soon.
Challenger mode (the mode that is a step down from Expert but a step up from Humanity Ascendant) has seen a lot of updates, and all three of the new modes are now pretty close to final. Challenger is probably going to be my preferred way of playing now, personally, although the advanced players I expect will mostly live on Expert. And of course there's Strategic Sage cackling away over on Deathwish. The tooltips for these all do a better job of explaining what they are now, but expect more changes in that area soon.
If you're a DLC3 tester, you'll find a new faction in there which is actually from DLC1, but temporarily locked to the DLC3 testers until we get a bit more testing done on it, and the art. Expect a wider release to everyone who has DLC1 later this week, with details coming then. But if you have a DLC3 test key, please do give us feedback!
More to come soon.
Enjoy!
Beta 3.801 Load Estimates And Unit Encyclopedia
Another really huge one!
There's a new unit called the Ultimate Fortress that you'll run into out in the galaxy if you have the galaxy option turned on, are playing on difficulty 8 or higher, or are playing on expert mode. Zeus outdid himself with this terrifying thing, which also shows off some features from DLC3 (this is a base game unit).
In the lobby, and in the escape menu, there is now a "CPU load estimator" that gives you an estimate of how heavy the game you are running (or planning to run) will be. This lets you tailor your scenario to the sort of computer you have, and since it breaks down why it is heavier or lighter, and updates as you make changes, you can also tune your scenario to get the load that fits your machine while still having the maximum number of features and factions that you want. There are many more details on this in the release notes, but this is a really exciting thing.
Another exciting item is the new Unit Encyclopedia -- folks have been asking for this for ages, and it's finally here! It needs a bit more work right now with some of the categorization of some units, and it doesn't have any lore entries yet, but the vast majority of it is there and is working great. One cool thing is that this automatically adapts to mods, and modders can even extend it, so this isn't just an official-content feature.
Lastly, a number of bugs were fixed, as usual.
More to come soon.
Enjoy!
Beta 3.800 That Expert Has A Deathwish!
This one is huge, considering it's the second one of the day. And the first one had the giant Spire Infused Empire in it!
This one doesn't quite complete Expert Mode, but it's getting darn close at the point. Other than some UI bits, and some stuff for the fallen spire / spire infused route, this handles all of the wishlist items for that mode, although there is more testing and I'm sure discussion needed.
This also includes some deathwish items, although they also may need testing and/or revisions. Deathwish is the extra-expert mode specifically for Strategic Sage and whoever he can convince to jump down that dark hole with him. :)
DLC3 continues to get more balance adjustments, and the Necromancer flagships now have far cooler names.
Oh, and bugfixes! Wow, there's a lot of good ones in here. The sidebar and the galaxy map should both now behave fully, and the galaxy map performs a ton better, too. The "Find Unit" mechanic was entirely busted since I added time-slicing to the galaxy map, and I have a feeling that wasn't all. At any rate, it's all good now, as I switched to multithreading instead of time-slicing.
And a few exceptions are solved, among a few other glitches. Definitely an exciting time, and it feels like we're quite close to exiting beta finally, though I don't want to jinx it.
More to come soon.
Enjoy!
Beta 3.799 Spire Infusion
On the one hand, this is a hotfix because it fixes a stupid bug of mine that broke map generation in the last build (my bad).
On the other hand, this is a pretty exciting build, because it adds the final planned player type to the game: the Spire Infused Empire, part of DLC1. Essentially, a number of people have wanted to play the Fallen Spire campaign, but not have all that business with chasing relics and such. The general feedback is simply wanting to control the big spire ships and do the big battles in more open war, but minus the questing and story bits. That's what the Spire-Infused Empire provides: a spire city right from the start, and the ability to build more simply by taking certain numbers of planets.
It's a way to quickly and dramatically get into open war with the AI, and it pairs well with a lot of other factions. You can't use it and Fallen Spire at the same time (as they are two twists on the exact same thing), but you can pair it with necromancers in DLC3, or giant Zenith factions in DLC2, or scary bois like the Dark Spire in the base game. Major thank-you to Badger for taking this off my plate and implementing it.
More to come soon.
Enjoy!
Beta 3.798 Reliability
This one is all about the bugfixes, for the most part. The most serious issues that exist should be resolved now. Hopefully this makes multiplayer even more playable.
This also includes some new features for DLC1, although they are only behind a cheat code right now. Those will be coming out in actual direct gameplay over the next week or so. What's the feature? Why, the return of warheads! A fan favorite from the first game.
Lost Humans also got some updates, and there is a balance update that should make macrophage a lot more active.
More to come soon.
Enjoy!