Note: This prerelease is intended for both customers of the expansion AND customers of the base game. Please see below for details.Important: This new version introduces a brand new savegame format that is way more efficient, and which should do even better for people first syncing into large multiplayer games over slower broadband connections. This has been pretty well tested, and seems to be bug-free. However, with something of this size, just bear in mind that it takes beta trials before it is likely to be 100% bug-free. This is the first beta version with the new savegame format, so make sure and don't overwrite your existing savegames just in case -- and I would suggest testing your new savegames before you go too far with them, just to make sure everything is okay with them (nothing worse than having to redo hours of playtime, right? So better safe than sorry). Please report any errors you find, and I'll correct them asap for the next version (not that that will save any lost data from this version, so again, keep backups). Hopefully this warning is completely unneeded and everything will be fine, but with a change like this it deserves some caveats. This is your fair warning!The latest prerelease is available at
http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar2001ZE.zipThat version is an upgrade from version 2.000, so you have to already have 2.000 (or greater) installed. Just unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else). Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.
Expansion F.A.Q. Answers:1. If you have the base game, and install this, you will go into trial mode of the expansion. Feel free to explore the expansion that way, but if you want to go back to full mode without buying the expansion, simply go into Settings, Expansions, and turn off the expansion.
2. All upcoming prereleases for the next few months (until the expansion fully releases) will have a mix of both expansion and non-expansion content. If you just want the latest non-expansion content, see #1.
3. If you want to preorder the expansion (and get your full license key), see
this page. It's $9.99 USD (or equivalent), and requires a valid copy of the base game to play.
4. If you want to know all about the expansion in general, see that same page.
5. PLEASE NOTE: The new ships for the expansion are extremely preliminary at this stage. They are fully functional when added, but they are not well balanced at all just yet. The balance takes time, playtesting, and a fuller view of more of the ships. So certain expansion ships are currently underpowered, while others are overpowered. Your feedback on this is extremely valuable, as this is something we are adjusting at present based on community feedback as well as our own testing, but we don't expect to have things even close to perfectly tuned until sometime in December. Our first priority is to get everything working and implemented, while honing the balance as much as possible, then to really heavily polish the balance once all the ships are in place. Just FYI!
6. If you want to update an old savegame to the expansion, simply type "cmd:activate expansion 1" (without quotes). This includes enabling the expansion ship classes, as well as enabling golems and other new capturables, although the population of those capturables is likely to be different from what it would have been if the expansion had been turned on from the start of the campaign given the same seed and other settings. There is no way to disable the expansion for an existing game, however, so be sure not to save over your existing file if you want to go back to the non-expansion version of the game.
Steam/Impulse/GamersGate/Direct2Drive/etc F.A.Q. Answers:1. This prerelease version is compatible with any other version of the game -- Steam, Impulse, whatever.
2. If you use this with your Steam copy of the game, however, you will be asked to enter your AI War CD key (which Steam provides, but normally you do not have to enter), and also the integration with Steamworks leaderboards and achievements will be disabled by default.
New: To enable steamworks integration with the beta versions, simply run the game with the command line argument "steam" (no quotes). If you put the argument in correctly, you'll then see your Steam interface pop up correctly.
3. If you have preordered through Impulse, you should now have access to your beta key (as of 12/9). They also provide direct beta downloads through their Impulse Client.
4. Steam will carry the expansion later on, and will have (probably beta-less) preorders, but they don't yet have that online.
5. GamersGate is also currently offering the expansion on preorder, and you do get a beta key, but you'll have to download the beta versions from our forums here.
6. Direct2Drive will be offering the expansion on preorder in a manner very similar to GamersGate, but they are not doing so quite yet.
What's new since 2.001ZA:(Cumulative release notes since 2.000 are attached at the bottom)
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-Improvements have been made to the targeting behavior of groups of melee ships.
-New Hive Golem (expansion only): Large, slow transport that automatically fills over time with up to 500 small wasp ships. When the wasps are unloaded, they will automatically spread out and attack enemy ships on the current planet; they cannot be directly controlled, cannot leave the current planet, and lose health slowly over 3 minutes.
-More about wasps: Very fast and nasty melee ship -- loses health over a 3 minute period, then self-destructs. Created inside Hive Golems, when these are unloaded they are uncontrollable but will viciously attack the enemy on the current planet. Players cannot give direct orders to the wasps.
-Two new cheats have been added for spawning broken or fully-functional versions of the new hive golem: busted and the hegemon, and the hegemon. These only work when the first expansion is enabled for the current game.
-The savegame format has been drastically updated to a format that is now more compact. Average size savings are between 14% to 42%, with the average being around 20%. This not only makes savegames smaller, but also makes it that much faster to connect/sync multiplayer games. This new format will be even more advantageous as the game continues to develop, preventing the savegames from getting ever larger.
Changes from prior prereleases.
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-Fixed several bugs with the regen rates on new units.
-Beam weapons and grenades no longer strike units that are still fading in, or units that the player would not automatically attack.
(This actually has not been well tested yet. Feedback is welcome.)-Fixed several bugs with the interactions of exploding ships and/or beam weapons with forcefields.
(This actually has not been well tested yet. Feedback is welcome.)-Fixed a bug where beam weapons and exploding ships could not damage non-auto-attackable targets that they were directly assigned.
(This actually has not been well tested yet. Feedback is welcome.)-Mines and mine remains can no longer be protected by force fields or other counter-shooters (they don't need it, and it keeps CPU usage as low as possible).
-In past prereleases, all of the astro train variants made up approximately 1/4 of the total trains in the galaxy. Now, regular astro trains make up 5/14 of the total, turret trains make up 5/14 of the total, booster trains make up 3/14 of the total, and regenerator trains make up 1/14 of the total. This should make the new, more difficult trains a lot less overpowering. Note that this will not affect existing savegames, only new campaigns that are started.
Changes in ZC:-A new method is now being used for line/circle intersection tests. This method is a bit more of an approximation, but it runs very much faster and also isn't prone to overflow errors. This fixes errors that had previously been in place with beam weapons (making them hit many targets they should not have been hitting), as well as making the galaxy maps generate more quickly.
-There is now a command line argument "steam" that can be used to force the game to launch in steamworks-enabled mode. This is useful for Steam players who want to use the game in full steamworks-enabled mode.
-Fixed a crash bug relating to beam/explosion weapons in the last prerelease.
Changes in ZD:-The health of advanced factories has been increased 4x to make them not quite so brittle and hard to defend.
-The health of bombers have been doubled.
-Ships that are resurrected thanks to an AI regenerator are now warped to a random other AI planet, rather than being sent to the regenerator on the current planet. This makes threat go up, and those ships will returned to fight again at some point in the future, but it is no longer so overly deadly as it was in prior prereleases.
-Circles of any sort were not being drawn in the last prerelease. Fixed.
-There was a bug with the wave names not showing properly in all cases in the last prerelease. Fixed.
-The radar jammer icon was missing in past prereleases. Fixed.
-The attack power of beam starships has been tripled.
-The health of decoy drones have been thirded, but the human players can now build 3x as many of them. The experimentalist AI type (the only type that builds decoys) will build the same amount as before.
-Acid Sprayers are now 10x weaker against all non-zenith ships.
-Previously, expansion ships were showing in the planetary summary when F1 was pressed when the expansion was disabled. Fixed.
Changes in ZE:-The attack recharge on all sentinel frigates except mark IIIs was previously set too low by error. Fixed.
-The EMP mine buy icon was missing. Fixed.
-Fixed a crash bug with the explosion targeting.
