Prerelease 3.091 (Golem buffs, efficiency improvements, square formation move)

[x4000]

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 3.090:
(Cumulative release notes since 3.060 are attached at the bottom)

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

-Several improvements relating to the efficiency of fixed-int math.

-Cursed Golems now have 8x more health, but lose health at the same equivalent speed as before (meaning more health lost per second.  Their +1 AIP per X health value has also been increased by 8x.

-Botnet Golems now have 4x more health.  Their +1 AIP per X health value has also been increased by 4x.

-Hive Golems now have 2x more health.  Their +1 AIP per X health value has also been increased by 2x.

-Regenerator Golems now have 2x more health.  Their +1 AIP per X health value has also been increased by 2x.

-Black Widow Golems now have 2x more health.  Their +1 AIP per X health value has also been increased by 2x.

-overhaul of auto-target performance throttling to prioritize the issuing of target lists to aggregate targeting leaders, and the copying of those lists to the "followers".

-converted comma delimited string building from string to stringbuilder in making object number lists in move, formation-move, arc-move, wormhole, and attack commands; this drastically reduces the memory and time requirements of giving those orders to large groups of ships.

-implemented default square-formation move for move sets over 300 ships to avoid large performance hits due to collision-check-based pre-emptive destination displacement (between this and the previous change, a 10,000 ship move order that used to cause a 20+ second delay now causes less than a second of delay).

-Fixed an extremely rare crash bug relating to unit construction if cleanup drones or remains rebuilders were assigned to assist an in-progress building (given that they have no powers of assistance it now just does nothing).

CHANGES TO PAST PRERELEASES
=======

-sanity checks on avenger immunities

[Blahness]

Attacking now takes less than a second with 10,000 (10645 to be exact) ships, moving has no noticable delay, and... well, generally, I feel like I need to increase my scope to truly stress-test this code.

Brb building 20k ships.

That, combined with the much needed (and perfect, from my testing so far) buffs to the golems, makes this a win/win update.  Thanks, overlord x4000! =P

Also: Aww, but it was fun seeing the avenger sit there flashing for a couple hours. =P

[x4000]

Don't thank me -- those are Keith updates, aside from the fixed int stuff and golem changes.  I'm quite glad to see those changes, too!

[Blahness]

Ah, well, thank you Keith! =P

Also, the square formation looks much more awesome than the weird spiral thing that was going on before.  Makes it a lot easier to segment fleets visually, especially since they all line up perfectly.

It does make simply moving over my enemies to kill them a bit more difficult, though, since the edges are further away than when they dispersed in the previous code.  Totally worth the improved efficiency though =P

For those who don't like/want to get/can't see the patch, here's how fleets look.

10k ships before:


10k ships after:

[drum]

i kinda liked the organic feel of the clusters, but if it means better performance i'll gladly take the square of doom!

[@B0FH]

I'd also like to confirm the lack of a soundcard no longer crashes the game on startup - thank you C & K!

[x4000]

I'd also like to confirm the lack of a soundcard no longer crashes the game on startup - thank you C & K!

Wonderful! Glad to hear it, and glad to help!

[superking]

what, that square looks horrible! the clusters are pretty! nooOOooOoo

seriously though, asthetically that square looks really bad. I use clustering to construct fleet formations so the munitions + shieldboosters are all in range of everything. that big square would stop that and also looks fugly.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, as I wrote the square-placement thing I figured we'd want to change that to a more nuanced shape like a filled-in circle or something.  The tricky part is that computing all those circle points is a non-trivial amount of non-trivial trig calls, and the whole point of the change was to save processor cycles.

But rest assured that I'm not planning to leave the borg squares as the default behavior (though I'll keep the code around for when I finally get around to context menus and shape-move)

[Ozymandiaz]

nice update. Golems getting a boost and getting less AIP. Think I amgonna use em a bit more now

the old cluster looks better I agree, but I eagerly await the final result

[Spikey00]

Will have to test the square formation--seems like a good performance gain from what I am hearing despite its fantastic aesthetic appeal.

[triggerman602]

my game is running a little slow when i try to move a large quantity of units.

i built 33000 units and when i order them all my game slows a little.

any suggestions?

[keith.lamothe]

Suggestions? Select them, press tab, and right-click an AI homeworld.  Check back in an hour.

By the way, just how long a delay do you get when giving a move order to that group?

[triggerman602]

its about a 2 second delay until i hear the boop and my borg cube starts to move.

[keith.lamothe]

Well, that's a lot better than it was, would have been about a minute on my machine in 3.090.  But I'll try to test it with 30k ships later, just to see if there's anything unnecessarily taking up time.  It's quite possible that the sheer scale of the operation is going to have a perceptible time lag of some sort.

I'd be interested in seeing what an avenger would do to that formation...