Important: This update contains some experimental new targeting code. We'd love your help finding any issues that might be there with it, but just fair warning. Best bet is to keep the old copy of your AIWar.exe in case you want to revert, not that we think there's anything that seriously wrong with the targeting.
The latest beta is available via the Updates window in version 3.060 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 3.060 or greater, you can download 3.060
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 you can easily create your own manually-installable beta patch!
To create your own manual beta patch, you'll want to download the latest
Beta Director Xml File. Then you need whatever the most recent patchis at the time (the same version number as this post, at a url such as
http://aiwar.s3.amazonaws.com/updates/Beta/3.0.8.0.zip, as a sample). 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. 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. Please note that "Beta" in the filename is case-sensitive.
What's new since 3.060:(Cumulative release notes since 3.060 are attached at the bottom)
-------------------
-Added system for aggregate targeting, if a ship is near enough to a ship of the same type that is owned by the same player and has already computed its target list, it just uses that list instead of computing its own. Currently this is used mainly to speed up the rate at which large groups of ships get their target lists (particularly noticeable on loading a game), but we could shift this to a cpu savings if it seems necessary.
-Added "Sniper Focus Fire" control node that makes units with infinite range (sniper turrets, snipers, etc) use an alternate autotargetting behavior to focus on maximizing rapid enemy casualties.
-Added "Non-Sniper Focus Fire" control node that makes non-sniper units use an alternate autotargetting behavior to focus on maximizing rapid enemy casualties. This behavior was developed for sniper units, so use with caution.
-All forcefield creating units are now listed as immune to tractor beams (anything under a forcefield is already immune to tractors, but it doesn't show in the tooltip).
-AI self-building units now temporarily suspend construction if damaged, to make it less likely that overkill-prevention will result in the AI ship not being destroyed. This construction-suspension rule does not currently apply to non-AI ships.
-Fixed some inaccuracies/omissions in Riot module descriptions.
