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 3.140:(Cumulative release notes since 3.120 are here
http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Current_Beta)
-------------------
* Balancing changes to Flak Turret: doubled explosion radius, reduced range by 1500 across the board, reduced metal/crystal cost to about 1/3rd of what it was, much more effective against fighters, has roughly 2x as much health and about 3x higher dps in general.
* First implementation of x+right-click context menu.
* Moved arc-move from shift-Q-right-click to an "Arc Move" item in the X+right-click context menu when you have selected ships. This new implementation of the arc move interface allows setting:
o The radius (which is just the length of the center-to-point-on-circle line).
o The number of degrees of arc (so 360 for a circle, 180 for a half circle, 90 for a quarter-circle, etc); for this one left click the line to increase the angle by 30 degrees, right click the line to decrease by 30 degrees.
o The central point of the arc on the circle (which is just the endpoint of the center-to-point-on-circle line).
o Whether the arc is filled in.
o Whether the move is group/attack/frd and/or queued.
* Moved Switch-galaxy-layout-being-viewed controls from Alt+A+# to X+right-click context menu on galaxy map.
* Fixed bug where floating displays from a previous game were showing after loading/starting another game.
* Added "Select Ship Modules" item to X+right-click context menu when your selection contains modules or ships with modules. Note that the game does not indicate module selection if you are in far-zoom, this will be revisited later now that there is a reliable way of selecting them in far-zoom.
* Added "Special Move" item to X+right-click context menu (when you have ships selected, on planet view) that acts as a "normal" (non-arc) move order, allowing setting of group/formation/attack/frd/queued flags via mouse rather than the various (and sometimes obscure) key combinations. Please note that the old key combinations for these DO still work (unlike other functions which are no longer on the keyboard at all).
* Added "Stop" item to X+right-click context menu (when you have ships selected, on planet view) that emulates the "end" key command that cancels all standing commands, formation (if you're on sticky formations, those don't clear with normal moves), etc. Again, the keyboard key still works for this one.
* Alternate Galaxy Layout alt-click logic now uses a base radius of 40 instead of 20, to reduce planet info overlap.
* Alternate Galaxy Layout which-layout-you-are-viewing info line moved from bottom left to top right.
* Added support for use of "any" as the second parameter of the spawn-immediate-wave cheat, so "warp in the clowns,any,1" will send in a wave of any, but will use the 1 size modifier instead of whatever the AI Progress would dictate at the time. Note that the impact of the size parameter is very different in the "any" case than if you specify an actual ship type; generally it results in much larger numbers (so you probably want to start with using "1" as the size parameter, and work up from there).
