Prerelease 1.005I now available.

[x4000]

(1.005H was a very minor release noted in the 1.005G thread.)

Here's the latest prerelease:  http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1005I.zip 

This is the last of the prereleases for today -- been a busy one!

That version is an upgrade from version 1.004, so you have to already have 1.004 installed. Just unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else). Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.

What's new since 1.005G:

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-Ship types that were on a planet, but no longer are, now show up as white in the planetary summary for 60 seconds (you can hover over them to find the last time they were seen on the current planet).  This is useful for knowing what ships popped in and then out of a planet if they were destroyed very quickly, and it is also useful for keeping the planetary summary items from bouncing around too much when there is a lot of traffic in and out.

-Previously, hover tips did not function when the game was paused.  Fixed.

-On larger screen resolutions, the planetary summary now gets taller.

-In past versions, non-resource ships were sometimes incorrectly being shown as resource-type blips on the minimap.  Fixed.

-Pressing the hotkeys to switch between Galaxy Display Modes was not updating the "Current Mode" text in the hovertip for the Galaxy Display button.  Fixed.

-The Score screen now expands to make use of widescreen monitors.

-Counter-Negative-Energy Turrets have been added as a new turret at command stations.  These protect against the shots from Astro Trains and Munitions boosters (the former of which may be absolutely vital in some games on higher difficulties if you want to have self-sustaining defenses at highly traveled wormholes).

-Engineers now use 400 knowledge instead of 50.

-Mobile Repair stations are a new unlockable ship type under the DEF tab of your command stations.  These heal any ships that come within their range simultaneously.  Later releases will likely see extensions to this base ability.

-Ships will now avoid firing at targets under force fields unless there are no better targets outside force fields (except for ships like infiltrators, which can fire through force fields anyway, and so disregard this).

-The way that cutlasses and vampires react to being shot while pursuing another target should now be a bit better (they should no longer have a chance of just stopping dead).

[x4000]

bump

[Blam Stokel]

Awesome, I haven't had a chance to test out the force field thing targeting yet, but there is one strange problem - when I order my ships to attack a special forces outpost they automatically move to within its firing range and get slaughtered.
This is the case even for cruisers which have a range clearly far greater than the outpost. I don't know what could possibly be causing this because the passive targeting on ships still works on it so if you sit cruisers at range they will still fire. It's just the direct attack order issued by right clicking on the station that causes this bizarre behavior.

I can't wait to give those repair ships a try, it's probably easier than dragging 10 engineers around everywhere

[freykin]

Blam, I was experiencing this with cruisers earlier today and I figured it out from something said in another thread.  If you order your ships to attack, they close to a range where they have a good chance to hit.  While your cruisers can hit the base at a long range, their chance to hit is much higher if they close to a range where it's able to hit them.  So they move closer, which ends up being too close to avoid fire.  My solution was to hold back if I could afford the time it took with them farther away, or to throw a screen of fighters at the base while the cruisers did their work.

The counter negative energy turrets and the repair station both sound awesome.  I can't wait to try them out in a game against the train A.I. type/types.

[Blam Stokel]

oh ok thanks, I was unaware whether that was intentional or not, I knew that the chance to hit was different at different ranges but I thought that the ai engaged at max range no matter what. That could be a nice command to have - an attack and hold position order

[netWilk]

Blam, I was experiencing this with cruisers earlier today and I figured it out from something said in another thread.  If you order your ships to attack, they close to a range where they have a good chance to hit.  While your cruisers can hit the base at a long range, their chance to hit is much higher if they close to a range where it's able to hit them.  So they move closer, which ends up being too close to avoid fire.  My solution was to hold back if I could afford the time it took with them farther away, or to throw a screen of fighters at the base while the cruisers did their work.

Perhaps we could get a command (say B + right click) to perform a stand off attack (ie. attack at maximum range).  This could help with taking down those pesky long ranged outposts/force fields.

[x4000]

Hey guys,

Regarding cruisers, etc, getting too close to their targets -- they are only supposed to go into range to the point where they have a 90% chance of hitting their targets, which for cruisers is very far away.  The shifts to the targeting logic in the past release might have messed that up a bit; I'll post the current prerelease in a little while, since it doesn't seem to have that issue (I made a couple of other targeting tweaks which I think fixed this).

[keith.lamothe]

Chris,

Thanks for iterating so fast, it's really cool to have a chance to test, give feedback, and re-test.  Much less time on my end to test during the week, but still nice.

Tested "I" for a bit and it's looking good, ran into some weirdness though:


I had been alt-tabbing and windows-key-ing (and window-D) out of the AI War window and at one point actually put the machine in standby and came back a few minutes later.  The game kept running fine but I had some input key problems (B, Tab, Enter, Esc, Shift, etc weren't registering at all).

But when I broke out of the window with the windows key again to start typing bug report and came back to the game, the keys started working again.

At another point both my keys and my mouse wheels didn't work, but breaking out and back in fixed it.

Just reporting the weirdness in case you can make sense of it, the workarounds are functional but I imagine there's something behind it worth tracking down particularly if you're pursuing a "complete" windowing of the game.

[x4000]

Thanks for iterating so fast, it's really cool to have a chance to test, give feedback, and re-test.  Much less time on my end to test during the week, but still nice.

Glad you like it!  It really lowers the testing load on me, too, when I can put out a prerelease and get such great feedback from all you guys.  I can't stress how helpful that is.

I had been alt-tabbing and windows-key-ing (and window-D) out of the AI War window and at one point actually put the machine in standby and came back a few minutes later.  The game kept running fine but I had some input key problems (B, Tab, Enter, Esc, Shift, etc weren't registering at all).

But when I broke out of the window with the windows key again to start typing bug report and came back to the game, the keys started working again.

At another point both my keys and my mouse wheels didn't work, but breaking out and back in fixed it.

Just reporting the weirdness in case you can make sense of it, the workarounds are functional but I imagine there's something behind it worth tracking down particularly if you're pursuing a "complete" windowing of the game.

This is most likely a window focus issue.  In other words, the window probably did not have input focus (that's what will prevent the mouse wheel and the buttons from working).  I'll put in some logic in the next release which will hopefully help to refocus the application on click, to hopefully prevent the workaround from being needed.  Thanks for letting me know!

[netWilk]

I had been alt-tabbing and windows-key-ing (and window-D) out of the AI War window and at one point actually put the machine in standby and came back a few minutes later.  The game kept running fine but I had some input key problems (B, Tab, Enter, Esc, Shift, etc weren't registering at all).

But when I broke out of the window with the windows key again to start typing bug report and came back to the game, the keys started working again.

At another point both my keys and my mouse wheels didn't work, but breaking out and back in fixed it.

Just reporting the weirdness in case you can make sense of it, the workarounds are functional but I imagine there's something behind it worth tracking down particularly if you're pursuing a "complete" windowing of the game.

This is most likely a window focus issue.  In other words, the window probably did not have input focus (that's what will prevent the mouse wheel and the buttons from working).  I'll put in some logic in the next release which will hopefully help to refocus the application on click, to hopefully prevent the workaround from being needed.  Thanks for letting me know!

I've seen this sometimes.  When you switch between windows, AI War (or any full screen app for that matter) might register pressing of the control or alt key (for the window swap), but not register releasing it.  So, when you come back to the window, it still thinks the ctrl or alt is down, and any keypress will be treated as such.  Just press alt, ctrl and shift keys and that should clear the "confusion".

[x4000]

I've seen this sometimes.  When you switch between windows, AI War (or any full screen app for that matter) might register pressing of the control or alt key (for the window swap), but not register releasing it.  So, when you come back to the window, it still thinks the ctrl or alt is down, and any keypress will be treated as such.  Just press alt, ctrl and shift keys and that should clear the "confusion".

Ohhh... that makes perfect sense.  I couldn't figure out what it was trying to do.  Hopefully the next release will not do this, or will not do it as much, but if it still does then maybe I can do something to get it out of this mode.  Thanks for the great tip, netWilk!

[x4000]

New version:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php?topic=71.0

[freykin]

Just wanted to say I tested out the counter negative energy turrets and they worked perfectly.

[x4000]

Great!  Thanks!

[Quitch]

Is this the version that's on Impulse update?