Frankenstein (sort of) lives: AI War Unity porting work

[x4000]

edit: now AI war runs more efficently, is there any chance more of the unit icons can be made directional? the resistance ships and marauder dagger frigate icons rotate with ship direction like starships... it would be cool to have all fleet ship icons like that

That was never a performance limitation. It's simply that when rotated, it becomes harder to tell the icons apart. And, a bit, that it can make them look a bit worse. We use that to differentiate starships, marauders, warheads, and a couple of other ships, but I don't think it would be positive to do it for all ships.

[Trurl]

Yeah, this is pretty exciting. I can't wait to try out the new engine.

[x4000]

Just some forewarning: there are still rough and incomplete patches in the interface of the unity version -- it's not yet the complete ai war experience. But it's sooo much further along than I'd expected it to be at initial beta. A big part of that is that there are few noncritical parts of the game, so there was little we could leave out. But, it's basically just some HUD and menus (and their related options) that are missing or not yet fully pretty, etc. But it's really coming along, and we need playtesting feedback, so here we are. By the time this is finished, I think this is going to be the preferred version of ai war by a longshot. I've been working on this long enough now that I certainly can't bring myself to play the old one anymore.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, it'll be complete enough to play with, but a big part of what we'll be looking for initially is does-it-crash, does-it-desync, does-it-slow-down-to-a-crawl, and (assuming there's a mac build initially) does-it-die-on-a-mac   Once the foundational stability is known (which I don't think will take long), the rest shouldn't be too hard.

[Trurl]

I'm a software developer, so I know that beta versions can be rough. I fully expect it to crash on startup, format my hard drive, and steal my wife. But it's still exciting.  

I have a Mac Book Pro, so I'm curious to see how it runs under Mac OS X as well.

[Jesterman]

so its today? :'D (dying in anticipation)

[x4000]

It's today.

Probably not for another 8-12 hours or so, but today.

[Jesterman]

Honestly, you should, once it is complete and out of beta, even though cash is really getting tight, if you somehow get it near the front page of steam again, i know the graphic whores will just snap it up.

Admittedly, though I've had the game now for aaages and i love it dearly, the first time i saw it, i didn't give it thought due to its presentation. Something tells me the new look and performance, if advertised, will rake in some good money for you and your company.

(this is just a thought/opinion. dont hate if I'm a dummy D:)

[x4000]

That's just the sort of thing we hope to do, and part of why so much effort has gone into the visuals with this release.

[Spikey00]

MY BODY IS READY
COME TO PAPA, 4.0!

[Mánagarmr]

Gimme!!!

[Mánagarmr]

Damnit! Have to go to bed. Work tomorrow! *cries*

[Zenchess]

* constantly hits refresh *

[keith.lamothe]

It won't be any-moment-now, but we're working

The installer has not yet been built, and that takes a while to upload to the distribution servers, etc.  We will endeavor to keep y'all informed

[x4000]

About an hour and a half to two hours out now...

Maybe three at absolute max if something goes wrong.