Possible Bug with Wave Behavior on OSX - Resolved

[FilthyLee]

Hey there,

I've been getting back to AIWar lately, and found myself amazed how well it runs on my laptop. However, theres a rather odd and not insignificant difference in how attacking waves behave, compared to the PC version.

Instead of entering the target system, AI waves pile up on the other side of the wormhole, and some (usually larger) ships zap back and forth between the wormhole and the AI guard post, apparently blocking the wormhole for the rest of their fleet. Occasionally one or two ships will get through, but the fleets just keep growing if I dont go in and clear the mess up. The fleet usually doesnt follow me back through if I attack and retreat.

This occurs on both version 5.000 and 5.020 with no change in behavior whatsoever, and doesn't occur on PC at all. Checking "Cross Planet Waves" makes no difference either.

If this is a known issue I'm sorry for reposting it, but I couldnt find anything on the first couple pages of this section or Mantis.

Thanks!

edit: Screens

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21573370/screenshots/aiwar1.png
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21573370/screenshots/aiwar2.png

[x4000]

Welcome back!

This is actually quite valid for the AI to do, and they'll do it frequently on both platforms -- game logic is literally identical code between platforms, by the way, so this sort of thing really can't vary (otherwise there would be major desyncs anytime people played multiplayer between platforms).

To your actual core note, the AI ships are stalking you -- that's a new behavior that was added sometime in the 4.0 to 5.0 time period.  Rather than just impaling themselves on your fleet, they'll hang out until they sense you are vulnerable, then go in for the kill.  If you want to kill them first, you'll have to go after them in their own territory.  The big ships aren't blocking anything, they are probably just having trouble finding a place to settle down since there are so many smaller ships.

On the PC side, you might have had a lower difficulty setting (which affects AI behavior), or the planet in question might simply not have been as well defended, or something of that nature.  That's all I can really think of; but this should be happening on both platforms if your planet is sufficiently well defended and the difficulty is sufficiently high.

Hope that helps!

[FilthyLee]

Thanks for the quick response!

I had a hunch it may actually be a feature, but I've never seen it on PC before and the large ships doing their dance looked somewhat suspicious, so I began to doubt it

While I'm here though, I have one more question - is it possible to change the game data directory? The options interface seems to suggest it is, but I cant interact with the path field. It'd be amazingly convenient if this could be used to share savegames between different machines via dropbox!

Thanks!

[x4000]

My pleasure!

In terms of changing the game data directory, unfortunately that can't be changed -- the reason it's a textbox is so that you can easily copy it to the clipboard.  That's been something that has been requested, but it's a slightly nontrivial feature so it hasn't been done yet.  I would also add that dropbox and similar tend to cause problems with things like autosave, since dropbox has a habit of locking files it's uploading, making the game fail when it tries to overwrite the file.  Less of an issue with AI War in the main, but was a big problem with AVWW.

[FilthyLee]

That explains, thanks.

Might have to set up a manual sync between the respective folders one day, but right now I'm enjoying playing an actual game anywhere else but on my desk way too much

For that purpose though, am I right assuming that what you said about game logic being identical on both platforms also applies to how the contents of the game data folder are handled? As in, if I were to sync these two folders manually, would everything work out the way its supposed to?

[x4000]

Glad you're enjoying it.

Regarding the sync... everything in the RuntimeData folders can be synced back and forth properly.  However, the actual location of where the game logic dlls are stored are two different places simply because of the differences in platform -- the DLLs are identical, but on windows they go into AIWar_Data/Managed while on OSX they go into AIWar.app/Contents/Data/Managed.  So if you wanted to sync everything including version updates, then you'd need to set those two folders as being equivalent to one another, as well as the two RuntimeData folders, and you'd be all set.

[FilthyLee]

Shiny, that about covers every tech related question I can think of right now.

Thanks for your time! (and for an awesome game \o/ )

[x4000]

My pleasure!  Thanks for your support as well.