AI War: Ancient Shadows Teaser / Q&A

[tigersfan]

I can't say what the anchor feature is, Keith would kill me. But, I do think that it's ok to confirm that it's not FB integration (or integration with any site), nor is it a RMAH.

I'll also say that I got a run down the other day of what Keith is planning, and I'm quite excited about it. I suspect you guys will be too.

[x4000]

Meanwhile, I'm taking a few days off AVWW in the wake of 1.2 to work on backporting some stuff from AVWW to AI War, and also to work on some more of the art for the new expansion.

[Mánagarmr]

Meanwhile, I'm taking a few days off AVWW in the wake of 1.2 to work on backporting some stuff from AVWW to AI War, and also to work on some more of the art for the new expansion.

Ooh, this alone sounds fairly awesome.

[x4000]

Meanwhile, I'm taking a few days off AVWW in the wake of 1.2 to work on backporting some stuff from AVWW to AI War, and also to work on some more of the art for the new expansion.

Ooh, this alone sounds fairly awesome.

And that's just free stuff as part of "AI War 6.0."

[BobTheJanitor]

AI Command Stations will now drop crafting gems when killed, you heard it here first!

My guesses for the expansion, based on the highest rated mantis suggestions or things that have garnered a lot of discussion in the past (along with some personal bias towards things I want to see) would be: New planet types with various effects... This is kind of a gimme, it's been the highest rated suggestion for like a year or so now. And also the in-game IRC client, because it is high on the list but also because I just really really want it. And possibly also the optional permadeath mode since it's made it pretty high on the vote list and doesn't seem like it would take much wrangling to get it into the game (and also it would be optional, oh please don't tell me again how much you don't like the idea, no one would force you to use it!) And then of course the obvious new map styles, new fleet ships, etc. etc.

If I get any of these right, I demand one cookie. I will also accept an IOU.

[Wingflier]

The permadeath/save and exit mode seems like a given. They've already implemented it into AVWW, I'd be shocked if they didn't bring it to AI War.

[Coppermantis]

The current "anchor features" are planned to probably be a scenario editor as well as "environmental effects" like asteroid belts, nebulae, comet showers, etc -- but even that is not yet for sure

I know it's not for sure, but that doesn't stop me from hoping.

[x4000]

I can say that we won't be doing a scenario editor, and the permadeath mode is unlikely because I can't think of a way to do that easily.  AVWW is able to work that way because its files are big and fragmented (tens of thousands of files) and players tinkering with those is hard.  Whereas here, the savegame model is pretty easily copied in the file system and not fragmented at all, which causes problems.

The only way I could think of to do that sort of mechanic would be to keep track of the map IDs you have lost on in your settings.dat file, encrypted, and then just refuse to load any savegames that you have lost on with that.  Or, if you prefer, keep track of the last saved second on each one as well, and even prevent loading of older savegames so that there's no savescumming if you enable this optional feature.  Next time you start a new game from the lobby with the map seed, then it would reset things.

That said, then you could get at your existing savegames and savescum if you wanted to circumvent it (and you could just turn this feature off anyhow), so I don't really see what it adds.

[keith.lamothe]

Historically speaking permadeath options don't include protection against the player messing with the filesystem.  So all the game has to do is not autosave and immediately quit back to the main menu after any manual save (edit: and delete the manual save file immediately after loading it)

[x4000]

Historically speaking permadeath options don't include protection against the player messing with the filesystem.  So all the game has to do is not autosave and immediately quit back to the main menu after any manual save (edit: and delete the manual save file immediately after loading it)

If you have a model in mind for that, then go for it.

[Diazo]

* Diazo looks at his save game folder.

Hmm, so you'll delete all 75 saves from my last game? I never over write saves while a game is in progress.

I'm also never going to enable hardcore so.....

D.

[keith.lamothe]

Historically speaking permadeath options don't include protection against the player messing with the filesystem.  So all the game has to do is not autosave and immediately quit back to the main menu after any manual save (edit: and delete the manual save file immediately after loading it)

If you have a model in mind for that, then go for it.

Not a big priority of mine, just mentioning that it's not a huge furball because no one really expects the program to defend its file regimen from all comers

[BobTheJanitor]

I don't really see what it adds.

Let me just quote myself from the mantis page.

I'll give one more shot to helping those who don't understand the point:

Think of it as the difference between playing a game of poker for M&Ms and playing a game of poker with real money on the table. The way the game is played does not change at all. But everything you think and feel about the game changes completely. It's an entirely new dynamic. Choices have real consequences.

Or a different way: Put a ladder on the ground and walk across it without touching the ground. Easy, right? Now put that ladder across an alleyway, 20 stories up between two buildings and walk across it. Nothing has changed one bit about the process of balancing and getting from one end to the other. But I guarantee you will feel very differently about it.

Now in these scenarios if you do it the safe easy way and 'pretend' that you're doing it the hard way, do you think that's the same thing? On the safe ground, you have the option of getting back up when you slip off the ladder. With 'pretend' permadeath, you have the option of reverting to a save when you fail. You can act like it's not there, but it's never going to be the same.

I'm not sure how exactly I ended up being the apologist for the concept, though. I just thought it was a neat idea that can be very exciting for those who are interested in it. But the opposition popped up saying 'it makes no difference' or 'just delete your own save' and I kept feeling like I had to defend the idea.

And yeah, there's no reason to be extremely crafty about protecting the saves. I would even expect the game to continue auto-saving regularly in order to prevent power outages or PC crashes from eating your game. (each autosave overwriting the previous one, of course) But in permadeath mode, make the functions for 'quit game' and 'save game' become the same button. And write that save over the autosave. And put in a trigger to save instantly if the human home command station is destroyed. Ta-da, you have hardcore permadeath mode. Traditionally, permadeath in roguelike games can be gotten around with hardly any cleverness. You can ctrl+alt+del and end the game before it saves after you make a bad mistake. You could probably go in and fiddle with the save file if you were so inclined. It's a bit of an honor system, but just having the framework there to play in that mode would definitely make some people very happy.

[Ozymandiaz]

Looking forward to this!

Will of course preorder this right away as I have done with all the other AI War expansions, can't wait to test the beta

Well, I have to say, it's nice to see such enthusiasm already.   I had been a bit worried that folks were saturated enough with content and would be less interested in more.  Glad to see that's not the case!

No other game has yet to beat AI War in playing against an AI, and even more content giving even more options is awesome

[Toranth]

When Will The Expansion Be Coming Out?
In all likelihood, October.

Hurray!  I have a date for when I can make you take my money!
Of course, you all realize that come October 1st, you'll be subjected to an endless stream of "Is it ready yet?" posts?

Historically speaking permadeath options don't include protection against the player messing with the filesystem.  So all the game has to do is not autosave and immediately quit back to the main menu after any manual save (edit: and delete the manual save file immediately after loading it)

Well, if you wish to prevent file system fiddling, as it was said yesterday, that's fairly simple.  Whenever a new game is started, generate a new encryption key.  Whenever a save is made, encrypt it with the key generated for that game.  When the game is lost, delete the key from your central "active games" repository, which would make it impossible to decrypt any copies of the saved games that may have been created.
Of course, that leaves your central repository vulnerable to external modification, so it would need to be encrypted as well. 
To prevent the repository from being copied and restored, you could re-encrypt the repository with a different key each time, using a generated key based upon a seed, randomly generated during the initial AI War installation.  This does potentially leave open attacks based on the nth-save/n-th seed pairing, though.
This still leaves you vulnerable to people backing up and restoring the entire AI War installation, so you'd need to secretly install an invisible rootkit service that would prevent access to the repository except through authorized programs.
Of course, that could be gotten around if the user installs AI War into a Virtual Machine, and restores to a previous snapshot when a game is lost.
In that case, I'm afraid the user wins.  (Wins what?  At this point, I'm not sure)

In which case, it all comes back to the very beginning - If the user is really determined, they could just turn off permadeath mode.  Thus, I'm not sure why any real effort would need to go into creating a perfect permadeath mode to begin with.