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Dec 21, 2012

Arcen Games Winter Steam sale: 40-75% off!

AI War: Fleet Command - Josh "Spikey00" Y.

Dec 21, 2012

Arcen Games Winter Steam sale: 40-75% off!

AI War: Fleet Command - Josh "Spikey00" Y.

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AI War and all its expansions up to Ancient Machines are 75% off ($4.24 USD for Alien Bundle), with the latter expansion being 40% off at $2.99 USD. Experience the uber hype and GOTY gameplay (in our honest opinion)! Now includes 100% more disco jump-roping in the AI core homeworlds!

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A Valley Without Wind, our sidescrolling procedurally-generated adventure platformer is being reworked and refined into AVWW2 which will be free for everyone who purchased AVWW1. It's on sale for 60% off at $5.99USD, or $17.99USD for a four-pack. Multiplayer coop gameplay, 2-8 players and beyond possible.

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Tidalis, our casual block-based puzzle game is also on sale for 75% off for $1.24 USD. Lengthy adventure campaign which can fully be played in networked or splitscreen multiplayer coop, different game styles from action to peaceful zen, a diverse variety of blocks and mechanics, brainteaser levels, and competitive PVP or skirmish against the AI. Great music too!

Nov 22, 2012

AI War Autumn Sale! 40% Ancient Shadows, 75% everything else

AI War: Fleet Command - Josh "Spikey00" Y.

Nov 22, 2012

AI War Autumn Sale! 40% Ancient Shadows, 75% everything else

AI War: Fleet Command - Josh "Spikey00" Y.

Nov 20, 2012

AI War Beta 6.007 - friendly roaming enclave rework, fixes

AI War: Fleet Command - Josh "Spikey00" Y.

<a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_features.php"/><img src="http://arcengames.com/img/side_aiwar.png"</img></a>
AI War <a href"http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400">Steam community hub</a>
AI War <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AIWarFleetCommand">Facebook page</a>
Arcen Games' <a href="https://www.facebook.com/arcengames">Facebook page</a>
Tidalis <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Tidalis">Facebook page</a>
A Valley Without Wind <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Valley-Without-Wind/164979970229916">Facebook page</a>
Our <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php">community forums</a>
Report bugs and suggestions on <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/">MantisBT</a>
<a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_irc.php">AI War web IRC</a> / irc.appliedirc.com / #aiwar
<a href="http://arcengames.blogspot.ca/2012/11/ai-war-beta-6007-burying-hatchet.html">Please see the original post here</a>
<a href="http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Current_Post-6.000_Beta#Prerelease_6.007_Burying_The_Hatchet">Changelog may be found here</a>

This one brings back the human-ally component of the Roaming Enclaves minor faction, with a huge overhaul of its control logic.

Long ago the Roaming Enclaves minor faction could spawn human-ally variants in addition to the currently-possible AI-ally and enemy-to-all variants. But they weren't very bright, and tended to get killed a lot despite many changes to make them survive better. Eventually they listened to the human players saying that the enclaves were stupidly suicidal and made a very wise decision for their own survival: they left the galaxy.

But apparently wisdom is shortlived, because they're back now. Only smarter. I hope. At least, if nearly two solid days of work on their new AI wasn't enough to make them at least tolerable to their human allies, they're going away for good ;)

One thing to note is that their default behavior is pretty conservative, but there are a few experimental "chat directives" (explained in the patch notes, and shortly to be in the commands list I'm sure) you can give them that include more aggressive behavior. Whether or not it's a good idea to have this kind of (very high level, indirect) influence over a minor faction is still up in the air, so those may go away. We'll see :)

We've also fixed some bugs and made some balance changes. There's a fairly important change to command station rebuilding behavior, and something to make logistics station upgrades more worth it.

If you are looking for people to play AI War with, give the latest <a href="http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400/discussions/0/882962698518931451/">AI War Meetup Sortie Fall 2012</a> a look!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 6.000 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 6.000 or later, you can download that <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_buy.php">here.</a>

Nov 20, 2012

AI War Beta 6.007 - friendly roaming enclave rework, fixes

AI War: Fleet Command - Josh "Spikey00" Y.

AI War <a href"http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400">Steam community hub[/url]
AI War Facebook page
Arcen Games' Facebook page
Tidalis Facebook page
A Valley Without Wind Facebook page
Our community forums
Report bugs and suggestions on MantisBT
AI War web IRC / irc.appliedirc.com / #aiwar
Please see the original post here
Changelog may be found here

This one brings back the human-ally component of the Roaming Enclaves minor faction, with a huge overhaul of its control logic.

Long ago the Roaming Enclaves minor faction could spawn human-ally variants in addition to the currently-possible AI-ally and enemy-to-all variants. But they weren't very bright, and tended to get killed a lot despite many changes to make them survive better. Eventually they listened to the human players saying that the enclaves were stupidly suicidal and made a very wise decision for their own survival: they left the galaxy.

But apparently wisdom is shortlived, because they're back now. Only smarter. I hope. At least, if nearly two solid days of work on their new AI wasn't enough to make them at least tolerable to their human allies, they're going away for good ;)

One thing to note is that their default behavior is pretty conservative, but there are a few experimental "chat directives" (explained in the patch notes, and shortly to be in the commands list I'm sure) you can give them that include more aggressive behavior. Whether or not it's a good idea to have this kind of (very high level, indirect) influence over a minor faction is still up in the air, so those may go away. We'll see :)

We've also fixed some bugs and made some balance changes. There's a fairly important change to command station rebuilding behavior, and something to make logistics station upgrades more worth it.

If you are looking for people to play AI War with, give the latest AI War Meetup Sortie Fall 2012 a look!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 6.000 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 6.000 or later, you can download that here.

Nov 14, 2012

AI War Beta 6.006 - astro train rework, custom search in galaxy view, balances and fixes

AI War: Fleet Command - Josh "Spikey00" Y.

<a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_features.php"/><img src="http://arcengames.com/img/side_aiwar.png"</img></a>
AI War <a href"http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400">Steam community hub</a>
AI War <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AIWarFleetCommand">Facebook page</a>
Arcen Games' <a href="https://www.facebook.com/arcengames">Facebook page</a>
Tidalis <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Tidalis">Facebook page</a>
A Valley Without Wind <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Valley-Without-Wind/164979970229916">Facebook page</a>
Our <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php">community forums</a>
Report bugs and suggestions on <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/">MantisBT</a>
<a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_irc.php">AI War web IRC</a> / irc.appliedirc.com / #aiwar
<a href="http://arcengames.blogspot.ca/2012/11/ai-war-beta-6006-pain-train-released.html">Please see the original post here</a>
<a href="http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Current_Post-6.000_Beta#Prerelease_6.006_The_Pain_Train">Changelog may be found here</a>

This one completely re-imagines Astro Trains. The trains had really fallen out of player favor a while ago, so we shuffled them off to be an AI Plot until we could think of a more interesting approach. That day has come.

The release notes have the details, but some highlights:

* Astro Trains are now a variable-intensity plot like Hybrids. So 0/10 is "off", 4/10 is "normal", 1/10 is "trivial", and 10/10 is "game-dominating".

* Trains will never be a direct threat in and of themselves (except the nuke train, but that only shows up if you crank the plot intensity all the way up to 10, and then only very rarely), but the support effects the provide (generally just on their current planet) will range from annoying to devastating. And since the trains travel in bigger groups on higher intensities, it can really stack up.

* The really nasty trains are much less invincible than the others, but even those will be hard to kill. You can influence where the trains go by killing off train stations.

* The cargo trains are totally harmless in and of themselves, but their deliveries make progress toward a construction project for the AI (it'll alert you as that gets past 50%).

In summary, you probably won't want to turn these on unless you want more pain in your game, but since that's a significant portion of our audience here you go :) It's also good for folks who want to see how well their impenetrable defenses can hold up under extreme conditions, particularly on the higher intensities.

Trains aside, this patch also addresses a longstanding player desire for an easier way to search for ships (player and AI): there are now two "custom" galaxy display modes that let you pick the target type from a dropdown. Further, while this dropdown is expanded you can type part of the name of what you want to search for and it will narrow the dropdown down to items that contain the text. This incremental-search approach is now also used by the select-target dropdown on the reference tab of the stats window.

There are also some important bugfixes, and some balance changes.

If you are looking for people to play AI War with, give the latest <a href="http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400/discussions/0/882962698518931451/">AI War Meetup Sortie Fall 2012</a> a look!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 6.000 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 6.000 or later, you can download that <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_buy.php">here.</a>

Nov 14, 2012

AI War Beta 6.006 - astro train rework, custom search in galaxy view, balances and fixes

AI War: Fleet Command - Josh "Spikey00" Y.

AI War <a href"http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400">Steam community hub[/url]
AI War Facebook page
Arcen Games' Facebook page
Tidalis Facebook page
A Valley Without Wind Facebook page
Our community forums
Report bugs and suggestions on MantisBT
AI War web IRC / irc.appliedirc.com / #aiwar
Please see the original post here
Changelog may be found here

This one completely re-imagines Astro Trains. The trains had really fallen out of player favor a while ago, so we shuffled them off to be an AI Plot until we could think of a more interesting approach. That day has come.

The release notes have the details, but some highlights:

* Astro Trains are now a variable-intensity plot like Hybrids. So 0/10 is "off", 4/10 is "normal", 1/10 is "trivial", and 10/10 is "game-dominating".

* Trains will never be a direct threat in and of themselves (except the nuke train, but that only shows up if you crank the plot intensity all the way up to 10, and then only very rarely), but the support effects the provide (generally just on their current planet) will range from annoying to devastating. And since the trains travel in bigger groups on higher intensities, it can really stack up.

* The really nasty trains are much less invincible than the others, but even those will be hard to kill. You can influence where the trains go by killing off train stations.

* The cargo trains are totally harmless in and of themselves, but their deliveries make progress toward a construction project for the AI (it'll alert you as that gets past 50%).

In summary, you probably won't want to turn these on unless you want more pain in your game, but since that's a significant portion of our audience here you go :) It's also good for folks who want to see how well their impenetrable defenses can hold up under extreme conditions, particularly on the higher intensities.

Trains aside, this patch also addresses a longstanding player desire for an easier way to search for ships (player and AI): there are now two "custom" galaxy display modes that let you pick the target type from a dropdown. Further, while this dropdown is expanded you can type part of the name of what you want to search for and it will narrow the dropdown down to items that contain the text. This incremental-search approach is now also used by the select-target dropdown on the reference tab of the stats window.

There are also some important bugfixes, and some balance changes.

If you are looking for people to play AI War with, give the latest AI War Meetup Sortie Fall 2012 a look!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 6.000 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 6.000 or later, you can download that here.

Nov 1, 2012

AI War Beta 6.005 - many balance changes, redone art assets for far-zoom icons

AI War: Fleet Command - Josh "Spikey00" Y.

<a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_features.php"/><img src="http://arcengames.com/img/side_aiwar.png"</img></a>
AI War <a href"http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400">Steam community hub</a>
AI War <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AIWarFleetCommand">Facebook page</a>
Arcen Games' <a href="https://www.facebook.com/arcengames">Facebook page</a>
Tidalis <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Tidalis">Facebook page</a>
A Valley Without Wind <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Valley-Without-Wind/164979970229916">Facebook page</a>
Our <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php">community forums</a>
Report bugs and suggestions on <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/">MantisBT</a>
<a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_irc.php">AI War web IRC</a> / irc.appliedirc.com / #aiwar
<a href="http://arcengames.blogspot.ca/2012/10/ai-war-beta-6005-burning-candle-at-both.html">Please see the original post here</a>
<a href="http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Current_Post-6.000_Beta#Prerelease_6.005_Burning_The_Candle_At_Both_Ends">Changelog may be found here</a>

This one answers the results of our three recent polls on which units most need rebalancing (in both directions, for player and/or AI).

Congratulations (and changes) thus go out to: the Tackle Drone Launcher, "Mysterious" Colony Ship (nebula unit), Zenith Bombard, Teleport Raider, Infiltrator, Superfortress, Zenith Power Generator, and Champion Drone Bays. Racking up that much infamy isn't easy, so give them a hand folks.

We also incorporated new far-zoom icons for LotS, like we did with Ancient Shadows a couple versions ago. Thanks again to long-time community member HitmanN for those.

Speaking of ship icons, the planetary summary sidebar's been changed to render those in a manner more consistent with the rest of the game. Previously they were losing some clarity, and I think they look better now.

We also fixed a few bugs in this one, including one that basically broke the Doom Accelerator modules in the last couple releases. Oops! Well, taken care of now.

If you are looking for people to play AI War with, give the latest <a href="http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400/discussions/0/882962698518931451/">AI War Meetup Sortie Fall 2012</a> a look!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 6.000 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 6.000 or later, you can download that <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_buy.php">here.</a>

Nov 1, 2012

AI War Beta 6.005 - many balance changes, redone art assets for far-zoom icons

AI War: Fleet Command - Josh "Spikey00" Y.

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