AI War Beta 7.048-7.061 "Because It Was Going Too Smoothly" Released!

[keith.lamothe]

(Crossposted from this blog post)

This one is a break from your (ir)regularly-scheduled bugfixes and polish to bring you a large engine upgrade and native-linux support.  NOTE: as of this writing distribution of the linux build is still being worked out.

We'd been planning to release 8.0/DoW during the week of August 4th and then wait until a week or so after 8.0 to start the beta cycle on that upgrade, but the engine-upgrade/linux-porting has gone better and faster than expected for our other titles (including older ones like Tidalis and AVWW1).  So instead we're bumping the release to the week of August 18th to allow a couple weeks of extra testing.

If you survive the bugs, please report them :)

By the way, this includes our new cross-platform updater (the old one did not support linux), so the update process will look somewhat different after this particular version.  It will be faster, too.

The new ships from Destroyer of Worlds have had their far-zoom icons updated, thanks to community member HitmanN.

The tutorial's been updated for 8.0, and now includes a section on Hacking.

And there's also a goodly chunk of balance changes and bugfixes.  Including actually getting Line Place working correctly.  Really!  I think.

Update: 7.050 to fix several issues with sounds playing very loudly and distortedly and with images not loading on linux.

Update: 7.051 to fix an issue in the prior version that prevented OSX from loading the game.

Update: 7.052 to make the textboxes work, and improve the sound effects stacking issue even further.

Update: 7.053 out to hotfix a few new-expansion-specific issues with the game requesting images at the wrong path in a case-sensitive file system.  Penguins are very literal creatures, and want everything in black and white.

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.

[CodeMichael]

linux!linux!linux!  /deep breath   eeeeeeeeeEEEEE

This message brought to you by my inner 5-year-old.  Thank you thank you thank you!

[Fleet Unity]

Just wondering not sure if you seen this before but the minor faction warheads still have the standard human description on them they used to say something like this before the warhead change. "This particular warhead belongs to a minor faction and does not cause AIP on death" or something like that just checking if they are suppose to still say that?

[keith.lamothe]

linux!linux!linux!  /deep breath   eeeeeeeeeEEEEE

This message brought to you by my inner 5-year-old.  Thank you thank you thank you!

Thanks go to Chris on this one, he's the one soldiering through that part

He's still working on the distribution of the native-linux build, but it's looking like it will be out tonight or tomorrow.

The support's there for it, at least


@Fleet Unity: Sorry, I'd meant to take a look the last time you mentioned the warhead description thing; will make a note.

[Aklyon]

I can't tell if thats a prophetic title or a hilarious one, considering the game involved.

[keith.lamothe]

I can't tell if thats a prophetic title or a hilarious one, considering the game involved.

If you ever have to ask if I'm being prophetic or being hilarious, the answer is always "being a smartass"

[Fleet Unity]

linux!linux!linux!  /deep breath   eeeeeeeeeEEEEE

This message brought to you by my inner 5-year-old.  Thank you thank you thank you!

Thanks go to Chris on this one, he's the one soldiering through that part

He's still working on the distribution of the native-linux build, but it's looking like it will be out tonight or tomorrow.

The support's there for it, at least


@Fleet Unity: Sorry, I'd meant to take a look the last time you mentioned the warhead description thing; will make a note.

Ok thanks just wanted to make sure you saw that last time because I remember you saying you wanted to know of any text change that may have been needed.

Also not sure if this is a bug but the neinzul rocket silos never go off alert when the planet goes back to not being alerted either by a warp jammer or when your military ships leave the system. Even when it says "AI unaware of your presence reinforcement is unlikely" they will still launch after they get enough build points, after they were put on alert once.

[TechSY730]

Linux support. LINUX SUPPORT!

HELL YES! HELL *BLEEP*ING YES!

(Picture of me in a ridiculous art style riding a botnet golem or spire dreadnought or something)


In any case, Chris, I know you don't post to the main AI War forum often (I still see you around in like the tech support forum though), but if you see this, thank you so much for this.

And you too Keith. Even if Chris is doing most of the porting testing and fixing, your work on this game is very much appreciated overall too.

[Fleet Unity]

Has anyone else noticed the music stops playing after the first "track" is done in game at first I thought I had the music disabled but I do not it just stops playing.

Edit: on the debug menu it says in game music spike 1.

Edit2: Tried it in a new game same thing also it just says the name of the last track played.

Edit3: If you disable music and re enable it the next track plays.

Edit4: It only goes to the next track once even after enabling it, I tried this on pause and un pause.

[Aklyon]

Sounds like a bug.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, we ran into the music-stops-after-first-track problem when developing Bionic.  Chris solved it then so I've asked him to solve it again

Oddly enough it was just setting it to loop.  Which is precisely what we don't want it to do, but it produced the desired results.

[TechSY730]

Has anyone else noticed the music stops playing after the first "track" is done in game at first I thought I had the music disabled but I do not it just stops playing.

See version name.


In more seriousness, if you do a giant guts ripping like porting to a new engine version, a ton of supporting engine algorithms (loading and playing of art/sound assets, UI, etc), and the only thing that really broke was the new music system isn't autoplaying the next track, that is pretty impressive.

Of course, it is still too early to tell if that was the only thing that was introduced by this.


I most certainly will check this out once the Linux binary gets distributed (how will we be able to tell when that is done?). I know it might take a while for that to get onto Steam, but I can always download it from the site direct, and when Steam realizes there is now a Linux version, then I can just have it verify on top of that existing installation (a trick I have used on several games that have later gotten released on steam, symlinks help with this

[Fleet Unity]

Yea, we ran into the music-stops-after-first-track problem when developing Bionic.  Chris solved it then so I've asked him to solve it again

Oddly enough it was just setting it to loop.  Which is precisely what we don't want it to do, but it produced the desired results.

Ok thanks.

[Sounds]

It might be just my imagination, but I just booted it up on my mac, and it seems to be running a bit faster. Has something been further optimised or am I living the dream now? 

[Aklyon]

It might be just my imagination, but I just booted it up on my mac, and it seems to be running a bit faster. Has something been further optimised or am I living the dream now? 

Unity update probably affected your mac.