AI War Official 7.0 Released!

[DakaSha]

is this not available on gamestop...?

Unfortunately no, Gamestop has opted not to continue their relationship with Arcen any further, aside from servicing past releases.  I don't particularly know why, although it sounds like they pared down their list of indies significantly.

Uhm.. Then how exactly am I supposed to get the expansion, seeing that steam wont accept my license keys and apparently has no intention of doing anything about it?

[x4000]

is this not available on gamestop...?

Unfortunately no, Gamestop has opted not to continue their relationship with Arcen any further, aside from servicing past releases.  I don't particularly know why, although it sounds like they pared down their list of indies significantly.

Uhm.. Then how exactly am I supposed to get the expansion, seeing that steam wont accept my license keys and apparently has no intention of doing anything about it?

Email us at arcengames at gmail dot com with some form of proof of purchase, and we'll get you set up.  I need to request some new batches of Steam keys for these purposes actually, but as soon as we have those we'll be able to get you set up.

[DakaSha]

is this not available on gamestop...?

Unfortunately no, Gamestop has opted not to continue their relationship with Arcen any further, aside from servicing past releases.  I don't particularly know why, although it sounds like they pared down their list of indies significantly.

Uhm.. Then how exactly am I supposed to get the expansion, seeing that steam wont accept my license keys and apparently has no intention of doing anything about it?

Email us at arcengames at gmail dot com with some form of proof of purchase, and we'll get you set up.  I need to request some new batches of Steam keys for these purposes actually, but as soon as we have those we'll be able to get you set up.

Alright I'll try that. Thanks

[x4000]

You bet.  Incidentally, CD key registration is working so poorly with our games onto Steam thanks to pirates that we're probably going to stop doing that and just hand out Steam keys to those who want them, instead.  We may just start including those in the direct-sale packages in general, not sure.  Trying to minimize frustration and extra work on the part of everyone here, heh; those stinking pirates registering keygenned keys really made a hash of what was previously a nice and easy system, so we're having to kind of rethink things. (Took us long enough, eh?)

[TechSY730]

Yea, it's one of the downsides of liscense key verification. If they figure out what algorithm you use and your key, you are kind of out of luck. You can't really change either without breaking backwards compatibility (aka, previously legitimate keys becoming invalid), so you can't really stop them from generating their own.

Hmm, I wonder if anyone has done work into public-private key liscensing, so that the key needed to generate new keys recognized by the product is never in the exe itself, even if the exe has the key needed to verify whether a key is valid. Though I can see downsides in this approach as well.

[x4000]

Hmm, I wonder if anyone has done work into public-private key liscensing, so that the key needed to generate new keys recognized by the product is never in the exe itself, even if the exe has the key needed to verify whether a key is valid. Though I can see downsides in this approach as well.

I would argue that's what Steam keys are... or at least in terms of being for all intents and purposes the same effect.  If the generator is separate and you have to phone home to check if a key is valid, then that's very safe but also requires internet access.  If a program can tell on its own if a key is valid, then that can be reverse engineered (as here), and thus cracked.  You can try to obscure the code for it, but there's only so much of that that can be done in order to really prevent cracking.

At the end of the day we didn't even try that hard with the Arcen CD keys because I always knew it was futile.  What was not foreseen (and did not happen until several years in) was people keygenning and then registering those keys on steam.  Pirates are going to pirate, and there's nothing I can do about that.  But pirates blocking real customers?  Yeah, that's a different ball of wax.

[DakaSha]

It's also typical and messed up of gamestop for that matter.

Not that it wasn't to be expected once they bought impulse

[x4000]

I can't really comment on that.

But I can say that back in 2009 AI War was absolutely ripping up the sales charts on Impulse, and that's one thing that led to some reviews and to it being on Steam eventually.  One factor in many.  A lot of indie developers didn't really see Impulse as that big of an earner for them, but AI War was right in the wheelhouse for Stardock's kind of games (space strategy fans were abundant).  Since AI War was already becoming well-liked, it did really well there, repeatedly making it into their top 5 bestselling titles during small discount promotions.

2010 and after was a bit less fortuitous with them, but we still made solid income.  A lot less with titles that weren't space-strategy related, of course, but still respectable.  All in all they were our #2 earning portal for a long time.  After a certain point, that was no longer remotely the case.  Now it's GamersGate that holds the #2 spot for us (they had always been #3 prior to that).  Some other partners we've made recently are also strong sellers, but they're just too new to us for me to really slot them in any sort of order.  Still, it's really nice to have some new very strong partners.

[Penthus]

Glad to see you guys are still coming out with expansions for a great game. Is there a rough eta on when we can expect the Steam key to be up for the Royale bundle? Trying to work out if I should wait or repurchase the key on Steam and give the other to a friend so I can play on my day off.

[x4000]

Glad to see you guys are still coming out with expansions for a great game. Is there a rough eta on when we can expect the Steam key to be up for the Royale bundle? Trying to work out if I should wait or repurchase the key on Steam and give the other to a friend so I can play on my day off.

Thanks much!  I wish I could tell you, but I don't really have any idea.  If I had to guess I would say I'd have the keys from Valve sometime tomorrow, but I've been wrong before.  And then it's a matter of how long it will take the IndieRoyale guys to get that added to the accounts on the other side, which I really have no idea about.

Bear in mind you can use your DRM-free version from IndieRoyale and just install that right into your Steam folder to get started playing immediately, Steam key or no.

[relmz32]

Glad to see you guys are still coming out with expansions for a great game. Is there a rough eta on when we can expect the Steam key to be up for the Royale bundle? Trying to work out if I should wait or repurchase the key on Steam and give the other to a friend so I can play on my day off.

Thanks much!  I wish I could tell you, but I don't really have any idea.  If I had to guess I would say I'd have the keys from Valve sometime tomorrow, but I've been wrong before.  And then it's a matter of how long it will take the IndieRoyale guys to get that added to the accounts on the other side, which I really have no idea about.

Bear in mind you can use your DRM-free version from IndieRoyale and just install that right into your Steam folder to get started playing immediately, Steam key or no.

The drm free version of Vengence is no longer up on indie royale. :/

[Panopticon]

Indie Royale can be a little bumpy in these kinds of transitions with their bundles but they always seem to end up doing everyone right. I really love their bundles and the Desura client has really grown on me, to the point I call it The-Other-Steam now. I really love how they whole heartedly support Indie games and studios. They also do a couple of things I wish Steam would adopt, like prompting me that a game has an update with full patch notes instead of just automatically updating. Their Offline mode is far superior too, in that it's completely hassle free in my experience.

I'd love to see them become real competition for Steam.

[Tridus]

I can't really comment on that.

But I can say that back in 2009 AI War was absolutely ripping up the sales charts on Impulse, and that's one thing that led to some reviews and to it being on Steam eventually.  One factor in many.  A lot of indie developers didn't really see Impulse as that big of an earner for them, but AI War was right in the wheelhouse for Stardock's kind of games (space strategy fans were abundant).  Since AI War was already becoming well-liked, it did really well there, repeatedly making it into their top 5 bestselling titles during small discount promotions.

2010 and after was a bit less fortuitous with them, but we still made solid income.  A lot less with titles that weren't space-strategy related, of course, but still respectable.  All in all they were our #2 earning portal for a long time.  After a certain point, that was no longer remotely the case.  Now it's GamersGate that holds the #2 spot for us (they had always been #3 prior to that).  Some other partners we've made recently are also strong sellers, but they're just too new to us for me to really slot them in any sort of order.  Still, it's really nice to have some new very strong partners.

After Stardock sold it and promptly switched to Steam (and their own client for people who already had stuff on Impulse) I think most of those space fans bailed. Since they never really had an answer to Steamworks' feature set and given Gamestop's lack of interest in the non-Civilization PC strategy market, there was just no reason to buy stuff there over somewhere else.

It's kind of bad news for people who had a lot of games there (like me, though I got most of them elsewhere now and only had to buy AI War twice!), but it's how it is. The good news is that while it was big it really helped AI War out, and since then Stardock has used the money from the sale (and ability to focus) to significantly improve the quality of their game development.

[Panopticon]

Not to derail this further from the 7.0 release (congratulations btw, another fantastic milestone in the evolution of AI War), but what's this client for Stardock's games? Last I remember was Frogboy basically saying suck it up and deal with Gamestop now, we don't owe you anything.

[relmz32]

uh, i think somewhere in the recent RCs the 'z' range indicator optimization has been lost. My fleet of 600 ships results in a laggy blue circle when z is pressed. :/

Edit: Oh, and Counter attack posts are not limited to their mark of planets away, a mk 2counter attack post 5 systems away just sent a wave to my homeworld.