Prerelease/Expans 2.001Q (3 ship classes, .NET 2.0, font+, balance+, planet gfx)

[x4000]

.NET 2.0? Awesome. I will try WINE ASAP.

I look forward to hearing if it works any better!

[damador]

   at System.Number.StringToNumber(String str, NumberStyles options, NumberBuffer& number, NumberFormatInfo info, Boolean parseDecimal)

Thanks for reporting this, but without some context I am not sure exactly what is going on here.  If you've just applied the patch and it threw this error, then your error is this:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,2530.0.html  Basically, for whatever reason your unpacking of the zip file did not preserve the directory structure; simply unpacking it again with the built-in windows zip tools, or using something like 7-zip, etc, will fix it.

played on N yesterday - updated to P and error starts appear

i even did celan reisntalation of 2.0 and preqesities - all works - installing the P version cause error - i have .net 2.0 SP2 and 3.5 SP2 installed

[x4000]

   at System.Number.StringToNumber(String str, NumberStyles options, NumberBuffer& number, NumberFormatInfo info, Boolean parseDecimal)

Thanks for reporting this, but without some context I am not sure exactly what is going on here.  If you've just applied the patch and it threw this error, then your error is this:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,2530.0.html  Basically, for whatever reason your unpacking of the zip file did not preserve the directory structure; simply unpacking it again with the built-in windows zip tools, or using something like 7-zip, etc, will fix it.

played on N yesterday - updated to P and error starts appear

i even did celan reisntalation of 2.0 and preqesities - all works - installing the P version cause error - i have .net 2.0 SP2 and 3.5 SP2 installed

What language is your version of windows?

[damador]

english but with polish settings in control panel (currency time etc - XP SP3)

[damador]

bingo - changing all to english US make game working

[x4000]

english but with polish settings in control panel (currency time etc - XP SP3)

Okay, I think that the currency, time, etc, settings are what is causing the problem here -- thanks for reporting that.  I'll try to have that fixed in a Q version shortly.  Thanks!

[x4000]

1) Bombers are vastly outclassed by beam frigates (which i love)
- Because of range
- Because of HP
- Because of damage

And, because beam frigates don't have a distance penalty against tractor turrets (which bombers can't destroy at all)

2) Beam Frigates can trick forcefields! when you have things inside and outside shields but something OUTSIDE is shot at, the buildings/ships INSIDE can still take damage from the area effect - which when its your MK3 power gen, is very very annoying

6) The early game combo MK2 Cruisers and MK2 Beam Frigates is *GOD LIKE* and the bombs are super awesome

Version Q, which will be out in a few minutes, addresses the balance of beam frigates, which I agree were overpowered, and also adjusts how it deals with force fields for them.

3) The new font makes small numbers (in the build bar) (like 8 or 1040 or 2x) nearly unreadable
as well as HOME (for example) basically all small text is unreadable

Some of these were definitely on the small side, thanks for mentioning it.  I've increased the sizes on those in version Q, which will bre out shortly.

4) The fancy new loading screen actually displays fine all the time now, awesome
- Because stuff is loading visibility, load time appears shorter (nicely done ;p)

Really?  That's fascinating that this works now, I have changed nothing.  I think that this is working better because of the switchover to .NET 2.0, or at least that's my guess.

5) The colony ship has a very excessive white out when in damaged (the smoke is blended wrong to begin with ;p)

-------

x4000 when you are done with unit coding and all that are you still considering revising some effects (especially the smoke/sparks/missile trails)

When you have some free time coding wise it might be interesting to experiment with glow/overglow sprites applied over some effects (explosions/shots) - also the way the beam frigate shoots atm could still become a lot fancier ;p

But i don't want to bother you with more "effect fluff" suggestions until the expansion is pretty much finished ;p

Well, depending on how much time is left, I'll probably revisit the effects at least a bit.  I saw your excellent-looking posts about them, but I just haven't had time to experiment with that yet.  Hopefully will have some time in early January, shortly before release.  As for the Beam Frigate shots I don't know what you have in mind, at the moment it's about as fancy as I can think to make it for now.

[x4000]

The new cloaked planet graphics make it possible to tell if a planet has a planetary cloaker without scouting.

Great catch, that is now fixed.

Also, I have mixed feelings about the current font. The space between some letters is really questionable (too many letters can touch. Look at MANAGER in COMMUNITY MANAGER, in particular, or DESIGN in PROGRAMMING AND DESIGN), and the amount of space between words or after punctuation can be way too small, sometimes making several words look like just one long string of characters. There's also an awful lot of space after f's, which makes it look like it's its own word, separated from the following letters. I'm getting used to it, but my initial reaction is that readability has gone down a bit with this font because of spacing.

Well, this is just the sort of thing that I can edit when need be, and that I was looking for feedback on.  It's not really a problem with the overall font design itself, so much as it needing some tweaks around the edges, I think.  The upcoming version Q has a number of tweaks to it based on your notes, but let me know if you see more you'd like to have made.

[x4000]

The latest prerelease is available at http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar2001Q.zip

Updates in version Q:

-A more descriptive error message is now thrown when a font size could not be properly parsed by the game engine.

-Command station cores are now selectable via the B hotkey.

-Beam weapons now interact properly with force fields.  A beam that cuts across many ships in under a forcefield will hurt the forcefield more, but will no longer erroneously hurt the ships under the forcefield.

-The attack power of beam frigates has been halved.

-Beam Frigates now have a mild attack penalty against starships, a middling attack penalty against command stations, and a heavy penalty against heavy defenses and force fields.

-The attack power of beam frigates is now adjusted properly for each ship that it hits with its beam.

-The ship cap of beam frigates has been reduced a bit more, given their power.

-Ship bonuses/penalties against command stations also now apply to command station cores.

-The sizes of the fonts used have been improved some from version O and P.

-In versions O and P, the cloaked planet graphic could be used to tell if a planet had a planetary cloaker on it without scouting.  Fixed.

-In version P, non-American number format settings on the OS could cause the game to crash.  This should now be fixed.

[damador]

-In version P, non-American number format settings on the OS could cause the game to crash.  This should now be fixed.


confirmed

[Lancefighter]

Right so, a question; Can I apply this directly onto the steam version, or will I need to install a non-steam version.. Or will steam automatically update?

[x4000]

-In version P, non-American number format settings on the OS could cause the game to crash.  This should now be fixed.


confirmed

Excellent!

[x4000]

Right so, a question; Can I apply this directly onto the steam version, or will I need to install a non-steam version.. Or will steam automatically update?

please see items 5 and 6 above in the FAQ of the original post. This is something you can use with the steam version, with some caveats. Steam will have the updates when they are officially released later this month.

[damador]

Right so, a question; Can I apply this directly onto the steam version, or will I need to install a non-steam version.. Or will steam automatically update?

or you can dig up the serial from steam and go to the AI website download retail version with serial from steam no more troubles

[Lancefighter]

Right so, a question; Can I apply this directly onto the steam version, or will I need to install a non-steam version.. Or will steam automatically update?

or you can dig up the serial from steam and go to the AI website download retail version with serial from steam no more troubles

thats assuming that I have an issue with steam. On the contrary, I love steam. Besides the fact that its awesome, its also a DRM I understand. Not the mention the whole steam community bit..
Anyway, i actually did download the release version from this website, but as stated, I like steam too much, and so I never got around to installing it.

Now, an actual question in this post; I know that steam has issues with changing the exe file or associated files (for instance, you cannot use the beta patches for x3:terran conflict because of this). However, the exe file in the update .zip I downloaded and the one in the steam directory are different sizes..
Can someone confirm that all I need to do is paste over all of the steam files?