Note: This version includes a number of efficiency improvements specifically relating to RAM consumption over long periods of gameplay. However, it is entirely possible that we've accidentally introduced some crashes into the game with some of these, so swim at your own risk, so to speak. Your help in finding any crashes that may be hidden in there is greatly appreciated, though we are not aware of any at present from our own testing.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! Please note that current betas can only be successfully applied to version
3.060 of the game or later (if you later wish to revert to the official version for any reason, you can download the full raw files from the above link to do so).
To create your own manual beta patch, simply download these two files:
1.
Current Beta Director Xml File.
2.
Current Beta Zip File.
If you try to open that zip file, it 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 3.087:(Cumulative release notes since 3.060 are attached at the bottom)
-------------------
-Somewhat reduced memory footprint of foreground objects (including shots, ships, junk, etc, though shots are already pooled):
- "list of ships assisting me" and "list of ships guarding me" and "which control groups am I in" are now initialized only when needed, rather than for every foreground object
- removed a code structure that allowed runtime flexibility of which auto-targeting target-prioritization function was used, since it wasn't being used anymore and added some memory overhead
- AI should now obey rough per-planet ship caps for heavy beam cannons, so concentrated clumps of them should be pretty rare (but still possible).
- Modified a calculation in the AIThread that was causing the allocation of a very large number of temporary fixed-point-math variables during heavy combat.
- Implemented a cap on the number of "reusable objects" maintained for each non-ship type of foreground object (includes shots, junk, explosion pieces, smoke particles, etc), to prevent a memory-leak like behavior due to the size of the objects and the fact that being in the reusable pool excludes them from garbage collection.
- Implemented an auto-explore mode, mapped to the A+E+X key combination (can cancel the mode via the END key, like other modes). This mode is only relevant when the show-unexplored-planets option is off, and causes the ship to randomly pick one of the shortest paths to an unexplored planet and try to go there.
CHANGES TO PAST PRERELEASES
=======
-fixed an unintended behavior in one of the custom data structures used for aggregate targeting where it was maintaining references to objects previously removed from the structure and thus preventing garbage collection to some degree.
