AI War Beta 5.009, "Desync II: The Resyncing," Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2011/03/ai-war-beta-5009-desync-ii-resyncing.html

This one fixes yet another desync that Fleet and Tssbackus were the sole folks to be able to find.  Turns out you had to save your game under just the right circumstances in the middle of a big battle to get this one, which not many people presumably do, hence the rarity.

This release also includes some stronger desync detection methods based on a simple hash method on the clients and host, to make desyncs quicker to find and easier to reproduce.  Hopefully that was the last desync for a while, though!

And lastly, this sharply nerfs the health of a lot of the spire core shield generators that the AI has, which I'm sure many people will be quite happy about.  Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 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 4.000 or later, you can download that here.

[zoutzakje]

cool, I'll try out the nerfed spire core shields right away.
thanks for the update =)

[zebramatt]

I had a save game in the previous beta version (Spire_301.sav attached) with two incoming counter attack waves to Yigen in the bottom left.

I upgraded to the latest beta and those counter attack waves are now both going to . Save game Spire_301_CounterWhere.sav.

Any idea why that's happened?

[x4000]

No idea -- nothing of that sort was changed. I am guessing that's not related to the version change, but is something that would have happened on loading the save in the old version, too. As to why THAT would happen, I again have no idea, it must be some sort of bug.

[zebramatt]

Actually, I think I've clocked it - it seems to be related to replacing command stations with incoming waves on the planet.

[x4000]

Ah, that would do it!

[zebramatt]

Incidentally, I'm getting a crash every time I cool switch out of AI War when running dual monitors.

No crash when doing the same thing on exactly the same setup bar the second monitor.

[x4000]

Hmm, that's a new error to me.  Oddly, it's something that is inside a try/catch block, so it shouldn't be throwing an error in the first place.  It's a timeout when it's trying to get a lock on something.

Are you running 64bit windows by any chance?  This may be a certain bug in windows surfacing preventing the catching up unhandled exceptions under certain circumstances.  If you think that might be the case, you might want this hotfix from microsoft, that would let those get caught appropriately:  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/976038

[zebramatt]

I am not running 64bit Windows, no.

Good old 32bit XP here!

[x4000]

Hmm, that is really odd then!  It really shouldn't be able to die there, because any errors are being caught.  Something in mono or windows seems to be being naughty, anyway.

[Buttons840]

You planning more changes?  Why not push the blade spawner fix?

When do you expect it will be released?

[x4000]

Yep, more changes planned. But I've been really sucked in to some avww stuff, and Keith has been sick, and so on, so we're running slow on ai war because it's already in such a good state at the moment. Should have a new batch of changes next week.

[TechSY730]

You planning more changes?  Why not push the blade spawner fix?

When do you expect it will be released?

I'm sad that the blade spawner fix hasn't pushed the priority of getting a release out up a bit. It REALLY hurts balance for the poor souls who get hit by this bug.
Though you might want to look into Spire stealth battleships possible ignoring caps as well before you push out a new update (see http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=3195). It would nice to see per planet and per guard post ship caps working. Ever since those mechanics were introduced, I don't think there has been a single version that didn't have some sort of bug preventing them from working properly.  
Until this mechanic is solid, the AI unlocking low ship cap ships will break balance A LOT.

EDIT: Oh, Keith is sick... That would explain how slow things have been this week. I hope he gets better! Now I feel like sort of a jerk. 

[Zhaine]

A new AI plot. . . Poison dev!

Get well soon Keith

[x4000]

New one: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,8555.0.html