The latest beta is available via the Updates window in version 3.000 or greater of the game. Just open the game and you can quickly download the prerelease through the updates tab. If you don't yet have 3.000 or greater, you can download 3.000
here. This prerelease version is compatible with any vendor's version of the game -- Steam, Impulse, whatever.
Note: If you have bug reports related to this release,
please log them in the
bug reports subforum with one bug per topic. It makes things infinitely easier for us. Thanks!
Looking for a Patch That Can Be Manually-Installed?Because of the time involved in creating multiple versions of each patch, we only create manually-installable patches for official versions of the game, not each beta prerelease. But, if you're running version 3.022 of the game or higher, you can easily crete your own manually-installable beta patch! If you don't yet have 3.022, but do have 3.000 or greater, you can download a simple zip containing the files of 3.022
here. Simply unpack those on top of your existing files in your AI War folder, and voila -- you're on 3.022.
To create your own manual beta patch, you'll want to go
here. This folder contains all of the beta updates. You just need whatever the most recent one is at the time (probably the same version number as this post). Download that zip file, which if you try to open will say it's corrupt -- that's okay, it's not really a zip file. Next download the updated
Director.Xml file from that folder. Finally create a new zip file on your computer, and put both the director and the fake-zip-file inside it. Call your outer zip file something that starts with Beta and ends with an extension of .zip. Beta.zip will work just fine, or you can name it after the specific version number if you want to hang onto it. And that's it! Now you have your very own manually-installable package of the AI War beta version of your choice, which you can install by simply selecting via your Updates window in the game.
What's new since 3.030:(Cumulative release notes since 3.000 are attached at the bottom)
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-Riot Control Tazer module now uses a special sound effect from I-KP.
-Added "Don't Overwrite Previous Autosaves" checkbox to Settings -> Game menu. With this option checked, autosave file names will use the format Autosave_YYYY_MM_DD_hh_mm_ss.sav and thus will not overwrite each other (unless you somehow trigger multiple autosaves in the same second).
-Fixed an inaccuracy and a type in the Interplanetary Munitions Booster description.
-The calculation of "which forcefield is protecting me" for each ship is now much more likely to pick the "outer" forcefield of a set of forcefields where one completely encapsulates another. This makes incoming fire less likely to visually "penetrate" the outer field to damage the inner. Will not do much better in cases where the forcefields overlap but one is not contained within the other.
-updated descriptions for Remains objects to not wrap in odd places.
-Previously SpiderIVs did the same engine damage as SpiderIIIs despite having a much lower cap, whereas SpiderIIIs had a significant better engine damage than SpiderIIs (and IIs than Is), so changed SpiderIVs to fire 3 shots instead of 1, maintaining a decent progression of effectiveness. To compensate a bit, SpiderIV energy cost doubled from 30 to 60.
CHANGES TO PAST PRERELEASES
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-Previously when in far zoom with Icon Grouping on you would see a "cloaked enemy ship" message when mousing over a fully cloaked enemy ship. Previously this had been fixed, but came up again with still further changes. Fixed again.
-Previously the Game Command Pooling was releasing both AI and local player commands into the local player pool, causing it to grow without bound until an OutOfMemoryException occurred, fixed to release AI game commands back into the AI pool (albeit a bit more complicated than that to prevent yet more synchronization bugs).
-Attack Range display (Z key) now includes the ranges of the modules of any of the ships having their ranges drawn.
-Ship-based forcefield (Riot starship's forcefield generator using I-KP's graphics) now does not use the same transparent blending as normal forcefields, to prevent the washed out look.
-Modules now draw immediately after their parent ship, rather than possibly before it (and not showing up) or after it and before some other ship (thus making the other ship appear to fly between the ship and its modules).
-Previously using the middle-mouse-button scroll feature while in ship placement mode would make the screen jump in an unhelpful manner; fixed to behave the same as when not in ship placement mode.
-Another balancing pass on the Riot Control Starship's engine damage: ship cap from 5 to 4, total engine damage reduced about 65% to bring it into the ballpark of building SpiderIIs to cap. Also, machine gun range changed from 14000 to 11000, shotgun range changed from 12500 to 9000 (main gun is still 3000, laser 20000, and tazer 4000).
Updated in 3.036:-Fixed a crash in 3.035, as well as the issue that was causing oddness in the AI (like wrong reinforcements) in 3.034 and up.
Updated in 3.037:-Fixed what was effectively a memory leak for the game host in 3.036.
Updated in 3.038:-Previously, the game would crash if it was missing any of the images used by its GDI components. Fixed.
-Previously, if an expansion folder existed, it would treat the expansion as installed. This could lead to problems with the beta for people without the real expansion installed. Fixed so that it now only treats an expansion as installed if the Version.txt file exists inside the expansion folder. (This was the cause of the game crashing on startup in 3.037 for players without the expansion installed.)
