Prerelease 1.014B (Balance, tabs in settings, better nebulas, new perf options)

[x4000]

This is a mildly experimental version of the game.  Savegames from this are not backwards-compatible, so if you find that you have to revert to an older version then you can just open the save file in a text editor, and change the first line to say 1.013 instead of 1.014B -- easy as that.

The Latest prerelease is now out: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1014B.zip

That version is an upgrade from version 1.013, so you have to already have 1.013 (or greater) 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 1.014A:
(Cumulative release notes since 1.013 are attached at the bottom)

-------------------

-The metal and crystal costs of anti-armor ships, infiltrators, space planes, teleport raiders have been largely equalized, resulting in similar total costs to before but much faster build times for them.

-Laser gatlings now cost a lot more than before, but also have 2x as much health and 4x as much attack strength as before.

-The cost of raiders has been doubled, but they also now have 4x as much health as before.

-The cost of fighters has been doubled, but they also now have 4x as much health as before.

-The descriptions of the following ships were out of date and have now been improved: counter-missile turrets, scouts II and III, permamines, eyebots, shield bearers, anti-armor.

-The settings and lobby pages are now tab-based, which allows for more options but at the same time making them seem simpler for new players (less overall to look at at once).

-The handicap and color dropdowns no longer show for empty player slots in the lobby, thus slightly reducing the visual clutter on this screen.

-The costs of light starships and scout starships have been dramatically reduced.

-The bonuses of eyebots against heavy defenses and force fields were previously too high.  Fixed.

-The attack strength of lightning turrets has been heavily nerfed.

-Armor Ships now have a strong bonus against turrets.

-The time box has been removed, and the timer has been moved to the left of the screen directly under the planet name.

-The resources background bar now scales across the entire top of the screen, making it easier to read the planet name and the AI Progress numbers, too.

-The backgroud nebula algorithm has been completely reworked, and the images used for the nebula parts are now half the size (and twice the clarity) of before, with twice as many of them used, which makes for better nebula shapes than before.

-5-layer parallax scrolling is now used in the background nebulas to give the illusion of volumetric nebulas.  They also use a different sort of additive blending that gives a better visual look to them.

-Planets are now better centered in the planetary area, rather than drifing northwest.

-The old settings option for caching starfield backgrounds has been removed, as it is no longer relevant now that starfield backgrounds are being dynamically built.

-A large number of new options have been added to the graphics tab of the settings screen, with the ability to disable many of the new graphical effects (and older effects that are not new), to ensure the game can still run at a reasonable speed on (much) older graphics cards.

-The graphics for the energy reactors have been made more energy-like, to make it more obvious what their function is.

-A mark III energy reactor has been added.  It produces double the amount of energy of a mark II energy reactor, but at 3x the cost.  The efficiency of these goes down by 80% for each one built beyond the first on a planet.

-Previously, the placement-mode window was not showing for build buttons above the lowest build button row.  Fixed.

-In recent releases, cutlasses and vampires have been utterly braindead and unable to attack.  Fixed.


NEW ART - Philippe Chabot
--------------
Ships - Energy Reactor I, II, and III

[Revenantus]

Liking the new nebulae! Especially the parallax scrolling effect, great job there.

The new generator sprites are also particularly good - nice work, Phil. Utilizing a consistent design for each is much better in a thematic sense. However, I'm not sure they should have the energy icon shown above them. Partly because no other building has an icon indicating its function, but also because I saw it and immediately had a SimCity flash-back, "No! Why doesn't that building have any power?!?".

The new tabs have created some real scope for menu growth, though they're looking a tad bare right now - hopefully there'll be some new options implemented soon to fill it all out a bit.

[Darkreaver1980]

Amazing new backgrounds! I also like the power reactor sprites. But just one thing is anoying me big time. These crapy powersign above the generators  

I also like the new colors + backgrounds on the numbers (top screen). The wohle interface looks alot more professional, well done

But somehow the starship costs are messed up BIG time.

light starship costs 3000/5000 and it has 375.000 hp + 1800 attack

Flagship costs 24.000/64.000 and it has 750.000 + 7600 attack

There is NO way that i would buy any other starships now beside the light starship. I could get allmost 10 light starships for the price of one Flagship. Hell, i dont think i would even get any of the other starships if they would cost half of the current price  

Either give the flagship/other starships more simultaneous shots/higher hp or lower the price big time. Because the other ones are just ineffecient for the high price. Keep in mind that fighters are alot better now and fighters are the main enemys of a starship, this means starships are alot weaker now, its just crazy to pay that much for one. I realy vote for new starship prices. Give all Starships that price reduction please  

i would set the flagship price to 12.000/25.000 and give them a real shield. 150.000 hitpoint shield for the flagship, fast recharge. I wonder why starships doent have real shields yet, because theyre big enought to have a full shield matrix .

[dumpsterKEEPER]

A few thoughts after spending some time with 1.014B:

I really like the new 3D nebulas! They adds a lot of depth to the starfield behind the planets. I'm looking forward to the rest of the planet graphics being added so the level of detail always matches 

The new generator graphics are very nice as well. Personally, I like the power icons above them. I like the way it ties them into the resources at the top of the screen to make their function immediately apparent. Particularly if that design is carried out across all the new structure graphics, I could see that making it easier to skim a crowded planet and quickly pick out specific types of buildings.

I like the new tabbed interface with all the room it provides for future options. I did notice that on the game settings pane, the "Items In Green Can Improve Performance" disappears partly behind the "Items In Red Can Reduce Performance" label (this has actually been true for several releases now). In addition, the Back button on that screen is now hidden behind the second label. It's still clickable, but occluded.

Overall, it's looking very nice! I'm hoping to have more time to spend with it this weekend.

[Revenantus]

The new generator graphics are very nice as well. Personally, I like the power icons above them. I like the way it ties them into the resources at the top of the screen to make their function immediately apparent. Particularly if that design is carried out across all the new structure graphics, I could see that making it easier to skim a crowded planet and quickly pick out specific types of buildings.

A 'Hide Resource Icons On Structures' option on the settings menu would placate me.

[dumpsterKEEPER]

The new generator graphics are very nice as well. Personally, I like the power icons above them. I like the way it ties them into the resources at the top of the screen to make their function immediately apparent. Particularly if that design is carried out across all the new structure graphics, I could see that making it easier to skim a crowded planet and quickly pick out specific types of buildings.

A 'Hide Resource Icons On Structures' option on the settings menu would placate me.

I had thought about that, and it could definitely be a nice option particularly if more structures have the resource icons added to them. I could see this being a polarizing feature among the player base

[Admiral]

This is a mildly experimental version of the game.  Savegames from this are not backwards-compatible, so if you find that you have to revert to an older version then you can just open the save file in a text editor, and change the first line to say 1.013 instead of 1.014B -- easy as that.

I think you mean to say that they are backwards-compatible, not not, if indeed all you need to do is change that line as you mention.

(How does that work with the new Energy building?)

Cheers!

[Admiral]

-The attack strength of lightning turrets has been heavily nerfed.

I laughed when I read this.

A change in design made by the designer is not a "nerf," in my opinion.

A "nerf" is a player's opinion of a change in design that he feels bad about (and generally implies one that reduces some power or ability).

So, what this really should read from a "release note/designer" perspective is:

-The attack strength of lightning turrets has been reduced by 80% for balance

Or, whatever the percentage is. I recall the 80% figure from another thread.

Cheers!

[x4000]

Liking the new nebulae! Especially the parallax scrolling effect, great job there.

Thanks!  Phil suggested those changes, and I programmed them in.  His work with actually increasing the quality of the component images for the nebulae is still yet to come, so I really look forward to that.

The new generator sprites are also particularly good - nice work, Phil. Utilizing a consistent design for each is much better in a thematic sense. However, I'm not sure they should have the energy icon shown above them. Partly because no other building has an icon indicating its function, but also because I saw it and immediately had a SimCity flash-back, "No! Why doesn't that building have any power?!?".

Yeah, you know what -- I had that same flashback.  It was my suggestion to have the floating icon, but it turns out it was not a very good one.  It's removed in the next version.

The new tabs have created some real scope for menu growth, though they're looking a tad bare right now - hopefully there'll be some new options implemented soon to fill it all out a bit.

Yes, this is phase one of several.  Although, with the primary map seed tab it is bare on purpose because I want it to look less overwhelming to newbies.  I don't plan on ever packing the tabs quite to the degree they were before if I can help it, just to keep everything less visually overwhelming.

[x4000]

Amazing new backgrounds! I also like the power reactor sprites. But just one thing is anoying me big time. These crapy powersign above the generators  

I also like the new colors + backgrounds on the numbers (top screen). The wohle interface looks alot more professional, well done

Glad you like it!   And the powersigns are going away.

But somehow the starship costs are messed up BIG time.

You have an excellent point, somehow when I lowered the cost of the light starship I did not think of this.  I've decided to majorly buff the health of the other starships (see notes in the upcoming release), because I think that's the thing that will most differentiate them.  Having the light starships is still cool because they fill a good niche of low-power strength, but the others are a lot more formidable.

[x4000]

I really like the new 3D nebulas! They adds a lot of depth to the starfield behind the planets. I'm looking forward to the rest of the planet graphics being added so the level of detail always matches 

Glad you like them, too.  The rest of the planets are the very next item on Phil's list, now that the energy reactors are done.  The planets are pretty time consuming though, since they are so high-res, so that still will take a while.

Personally, I like the power icons above them. I like the way it ties them into the resources at the top of the screen to make their function immediately apparent.

This was my original thought as well, but the similarity to the simcity no-power warning is just too much.  We might try to integrate the symbol onto the body of the structure itself at some point.  I want to have some visual indicators in there of the function of each building, as you say.

I like the new tabbed interface with all the room it provides for future options. I did notice that on the game settings pane, the "Items In Green Can Improve Performance" disappears partly behind the "Items In Red Can Reduce Performance" label (this has actually been true for several releases now). In addition, the Back button on that screen is now hidden behind the second label. It's still clickable, but occluded.

Do you have a higher DPI setting in windows?  That's what usually causes this.  I'll need to do something to resolve it, though.  Added to my list:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,720.0.html

Overall, it's looking very nice! I'm hoping to have more time to spend with it this weekend.

Great!

[x4000]

The new generator graphics are very nice as well. Personally, I like the power icons above them. I like the way it ties them into the resources at the top of the screen to make their function immediately apparent. Particularly if that design is carried out across all the new structure graphics, I could see that making it easier to skim a crowded planet and quickly pick out specific types of buildings.

A 'Hide Resource Icons On Structures' option on the settings menu would placate me.

Unfortunately, the resource icon was built right into the main sprite itself -- having two images for that is a waste of texture usage on the GPU.  We'll figure out another tactic for this, though.

[x4000]

This is a mildly experimental version of the game.  Savegames from this are not backwards-compatible, so if you find that you have to revert to an older version then you can just open the save file in a text editor, and change the first line to say 1.013 instead of 1.014B -- easy as that.

I think you mean to say that they are backwards-compatible, not not, if indeed all you need to do is change that line as you mention.

I meant it how I said it, but I think the wording is unclear.  Basically, the versions are not inherently backwards-compatible.  So if you try to load a newer savegame in an older version, it will fail.  But if you go and change the internal version number, you can override that without consequence.

(How does that work with the new Energy building?)

Well, almost without consequence.  If you built some of these, I don't know what would happen if you then tried to load it in an older version.  Probably a crash.

[x4000]

-The attack strength of lightning turrets has been heavily nerfed.

I laughed when I read this.

A change in design made by the designer is not a "nerf," in my opinion.

A "nerf" is a player's opinion of a change in design that he feels bad about (and generally implies one that reduces some power or ability).

So, what this really should read from a "release note/designer" perspective is:

-The attack strength of lightning turrets has been reduced by 80% for balance

Or, whatever the percentage is. I recall the 80% figure from another thread.

Cheers!

Well, someone always gets kind of annoyed with any balance change (usually because someone was exploiting it).  My uncle, who is one of my alpha testers, is particularly prone to that.  So I sort of half-jokingly refer to any balance changes that decrease the power of some unit as a nerf, and consequently call anything I increase a buff.  Language mutation at work.

[x4000]

New version already:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,722.msg4229.html