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 3.141:(Cumulative release notes since 3.120 are here
http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Current_Beta)
-------------------
* Fixed bug where shift-right-click in alternate galaxy layout view was moving the planet (which is supposed to just be shift-left-click).
* Removed duplicate menu item from galaxy layout context menu.
* Fixed conflict when holding z+x and right-clicking to issue other orders (previously this would open the context menu); now if z is being held, x+right-click does not open the context menu.
* Fixed hang bug that happened when generating a 120-planet spokes (or potentially tree) map with some seeds. In those cases it will now fail to place all 120 planets, but not by much, and the game won't hang.
* Added "Paint Attack" item to ships-selected context menu, it brings up a secondary menu:
o "Set Area", click this, then click and drag on the play area to draw a rectangle around the targets you want to attack.
o "Group Move", if you want your ships to use group move (in case you don't know, this means "move at speed of slowest unit in group").
o "Fire While Moving/Stop To Engage(Attack Move)/Chase Enemies (Free Roaming Defender)", if you wish, click this to toggle between "normal" move, attack move, and frd.
o "Queued Move", if you want the paint attack order to be queued up after existing commands already queued.
o "Execute" executes the order (only does something if the area was set, of course); note that this does not close the context menu, so you can use it with the Queued Move toggle to, for example, issue successive paint-attack orders for the area around each guard post on an AI planet, and just let the ships go about their business if they're not likely to encounter effective resistance.
o "Cancel" closes the context menu without issuing any additional orders (any ones already issued via "Execute" have already been issued and will not be canceled by this).
o FYI, this command will never result in an attack order against a target that requires a direct right-click attack (command station, warp gate, that sort of thing)
o FYI, when you're using this you're basically saying "kill these targets, I don't care what order", but each ship sorts the target list separately according to normal autotargeting rules and thus is fairly efficient about shooting things it's good against first (the focus fire control nodes also apply here).
* Moved Auto Explore command from A+E+X key combination to the x+right-click context menu (only when you have selected ships and at least one is a scout).
* Auto Explore now functions in the absence of unexplored planets (either you've explored them all or you started with all explored), and applies similar auto-pathing logic to unscouted or not-scouted-recently planets (preferring the unscouted, then the not-scouted-for-5-hours, then the not-scouted-for-1-hour, etc).
* Auto Exploring scouts no longer try to evade after exiting a wormhole, instead they should shortly pick a new exploration/scouting destination and get moving that way.
* Difficulties 8, 9, and 10 were supposed to be getting 1 extra wave per difficulty level, but were only getting 1 extra wave overall. This was a longstanding bug, and was a big contributor to why waves seemed undersized in difficulties 9 and 10 compared to other parts of the game. Fixed.
* Moved "Select Modules" context menu item into new "Selection" Submenu.
* Added "Select Percentage By Type" item to "Selection" context menu:
o Use left and right click to increase and decrease (respectively) the "Percent To Retain" (note that the max is 90% and the min is 10%)
o Click "Execute" to actually apply the narrowing, and your selection will = (Percent To Retain) * (current number of each ship type).
o This basically substitutes for the "L" and "Shift+L" key combinations, but those have not (yet) been removed from usage.
* The AIs will now actually build the new Flak Turrets.
* Fixed a couple of potential desyncs.
