AI War Beta 5.096-5.097 "Release Candidates 1-2" Released!

[LordSloth]

Quick report from co-op test...

No major problems starting a game with a player lacking an expansion, seemed to be fine. There was something about a pink square of spire frigates or somesuch when I had the expansion enabled, but it refused to let me start the game, and it went just fine when I turned the missing expansion off in the lobby.

I through in-game chat I  was able to talk LT through the process of recreating the line place issues. It's nothing of a 6.0 priority, but the behavior is very very telling of some math behind the scenes that I'm not quite healthy or witty enough to visualize at the moment. But consistently reproducible with consistently manipulatable degrees of error highly indicative of x and y axis and geometry and whatnot.

Then we restarted and had fun.

[LaughingThesaurus]

The pink square was me not having the expansion installed. There was some kind of bonus ship that was an available selection that I was able to see the stats of in a really weird way, but I couldn't see the sprite of the ship. The sprite was just a square. I also saw one of the AIs listed as "None Selected", but it was a random AI I guess when the game started. It was a Bully.
The line place issues were reproduced by me to his instructions, and I took lots of pictures of everything.

And then we had fun in what I guess is a relatively casual game of AI War with lots of special force chaos surprising me and all kinds of stuff I wasn't used to or expecting and apparently I get lots of big guns which obviously the person who's more confused gets big guns. Good thing there's no such thing as friendly fire.

Anyway, here's the lobby picture since that probably wouldn't be a bug report picture.

[keith.lamothe]

Thanks for testing the expansion/co-op thing, the behavior makes sense and it did the main thing (letting the join-game action work, but not the start-game action) right   Not sure what to do about the pink square, as it probably shouldn't auto-disable the missing-for-someone expansions, etc.

[Draco18s]

Thanks for testing the expansion/co-op thing, the behavior makes sense and it did the main thing (letting the join-game action work, but not the start-game action) right   Not sure what to do about the pink square, as it probably shouldn't auto-disable the missing-for-someone expansions, etc.

Could you include the sprites inside the core game, so that it can at least pull the visual assets needed for the lobby in these situations?

[keith.lamothe]

FYI, 6.000 is out in patch form now; no game changes, just credits.  Chris said no need for a blog/forum post (various announcements are already coming/out on 6.0/AS) but I figured I'd drop a note here so anyone wondering why the version number changed would know why

[TechSY730]

FYI, 6.000 is out in patch form now; no game changes, just credits.  Chris said no need for a blog/forum post (various announcements are already coming/out on 6.0/AS) but I figured I'd drop a note here so anyone wondering why the version number changed would know why

I'll post this again once the 6.000 release post comes out, but I would like to say:
I think this is the best major release so far in the Unity engine era. Things feel balanced (there are some hiccups, but far less than most other games I have seen, and nothing that really hampers the overall feel of the game). The mechanics feel well thought out. How the mechanics (including, and especially, the optional ones) interact in amazing ways that also feel well thought out and don't disrupt balance. The AI feels difficult and punishing, but not overly so to the point of hurting fun or being unreasonable (at 6-8 at least, the "balance goal"). No massive, game breaking, "fun breaking" bugs (except maybe those annoying UI bugs, though from what I am gathering, it seems more of them are caused by Wine than by the game itself, so I only have myself to blame ) And the new backgrounds are amazing (though I did turn down the brightness of them some).

All in all. Awesome work!


And that wasn't even covering Ancient Shadows' content.

[Kronic]

Well spoken Tech.

Well done on the release guys - I imagine you'll be looking forward to a well deserved short break soon? :3

[x4000]

Thanks very much!

All the kudos go to Keith during this period.   No short breaks for us, though -- we've still got Shattered Haven and Valley 2 going strong.  Having only two major projects inwork at once, rather than 3, will be something of a relief though!

[Kronic]

Man. "Only two major projects". You make it sound so easy.

[x4000]

Oh, it's definitely not that!  But it's a relief to get it down that low, at least.

[Draco18s]

Does...does this mean it's time for an AI War - Current Post-6.000 Beta wiki page?
Apparently so.

[KDR_11k]

I've heard the joke that:
In C++ code, when you ring the doorbell the toilet flushes.
In C++ server code, when you ring the doorbell a toilet flushes in India.

At work I'm dealing with a Java server that is roughly at that level except the customer demands that when you press the door bell on a full moon it makes a toilet flush in India and if you do it while looking slightly shifty it flushes a urinal in China instead. And in practice if you ring five times it makes the sink throw up.

[keith.lamothe]

Does...does this mean it's time for an AI War - Current Post-6.000 Beta wiki page?
Apparently so.

I was about to say that it doesn't surprise me that you'd find that page before I did, but then I checked the author column and realized you weren't TechSY730.  So just a fluke for you, I guess

[TechSY730]

Does...does this mean it's time for an AI War - Current Post-6.000 Beta wiki page?
Apparently so.

I was about to say that it doesn't surprise me that you'd find that page before I did, but then I checked the author column and realized you weren't TechSY730.  So just a fluke for you, I guess

Actually, I found that page before it was posted here, I just didn't comment on it yet.

Oh wait, I need to sign up for notifications on it. (Done)

[keith.lamothe]

Good to know you're still on your game.