If you're playing a prior prerelease version of 1.006, please update to this version if you don't mind. I'd love to have any feedback that comes on this release. It is quite well tested overall at this point, but as you'll see this prerelease also does introduce some new AI rules along with all the other tweaks and such in there. So I'd love for as many people as possible to have a go at this one before I do an official release of it sometime tomorrow (Wednesday). Aside from any needed bugfixes to this, this is the final version that will become 1.006.Here's the latest prerelease:
http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1006K.zipThat version is an upgrade from version 1.005, so you have to already have 1.005 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 1.006J:
(Cumulative release notes since 1.005 are attached at the bottom)
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-A display filter button has been added to the galaxy map under the display modes button. This lets players filter to All (default), My, Allied, or My And Allied for the relevant counts in the display modes button.
-There should now be no chance of the game using hotkeys while the in-game text chat window is up.
-The harvester build buttons now show up as red when no more harvesters of that type can be built at the current planet.
-X+0-9 now works as a shortcut for selecting the constructors in a control group (which are not selected by the normal 0-9 presses). This also works with double and triple taps of 0-9.
-Ships that have been firing at the same target for more than 15 seconds will now look around for a better target every 15 seconds, just in case smaller stuff has snuck up on them. This generally only comes up when attacking large targets like force fields or fortresses. Ships that have been explicitly given a target will not use this logic, only ships that auto-chose a large target.
-The "Play Music While Paused" option in the settings screen has now become "Play Music And Don't Dim Screen While Paused," and is part of a new "Turn-Based Strategy Style Settings" section of the pause menu.
-There is a new "Use TBS-Friendly Pause" option (default to on) in the settings window. With this new mode, the game keeps processing turns and animations while paused, making for full ability to issue and reissue any commands. However, the timer, resources, ship movement, and ship attacks are all paused as normal. This should be helpful for all players, but especially those who want a TBS-style of play. This mode will need to be turned off when sending data for desyncs.
-Flares have been recoded under the hood to better work with TBS-friendly pauses.
-The game now shows the pause message in the upper left for galaxy view, so that it is not obstructing any of the planets.
-The in-game graphs now include values for score, the number of technologies unlocked, number of planets held, and mark v ships.
-Vampire Claws and Core Demon Hands now move around 4x faster than before, thus greatly increasing their combat value (which has still been too low until now).
-Sniper turrets are now able to fire through force fields.
-ExoShields were still drawing their lines to their protected units after being scrapped. Fixed.
-Previously it was possible that, when the toolbar for the window was shown, the bottom of tooltips in the lobby could be cut off. Fixed.
-The color of the icons in the intel summary are now handled more accurately.
-When the game window does not have focus, the tip windows are no longer shown, since that was commonly causing a high degree of flicker. The display of tooltips is also now a bit more efficient when moving the mouse a lot, hopefully reducing flicker in general.
-Contextual information is now popped up about each ship type that is hovered over in the lobby's galaxy map.
-Snipers should now have a stronger preference to not fire at ships under force fields. Ships in general should also now generally pick ships that aren't under force fields whenever possible to do so.
-The actual underlying types of random AIs are now revealed when the players lose or win (the name of the AI players change to reflect their underlying types).
-The Score button now flashes when the game is over, to remind players that they can look at their final stats and graphs.
