Prerelease/Expans 2.001ZJ (9 Control Nodes, Transports+, Fixes, AI Logic+)

[Spikey00]

Confirmed as well.
(Pictures uploaded to forum via during your post will auto thumbnail.)
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EA failed CNC4 by making it the last game of the Tiberium series, and especially by employing a new type of gameplay from no where upon the last game--breaking the traditional base-building.  RA3 was a step under with its cartoon approach and unique gameplay, but Twilight is too much for me.  Looks too much like Warhammer/Company of Heroes.

[Echo35]

I've seen that top and bottom border appear in zoom-out since first playing so assumed it was just a 'feature'.

Can't find it now but I posted about this quite a while ago. According to Chris, it's supposed to be like that.

EDIT: Hah! Who would have thunk, the Search feature lets you narrow down by user?

http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,1694.0.html

[Shardz]

Oh, wow! OK, I'm not alone then and not going completely insane, so that's good to know! I didn't really notice it before until I took two nights off (and several patches later) and loaded it up again and saw the planet hanging over that black border. I suppose it would be futile to debate this issue as it was part of the initial design overall. I guess we can have our own little opinions about it, but at least I now know it's supposed to be like that. Thanks for responses, guys! 

[x4000]

Okay, catching up on my list of things here.

HellishFiend, thanks for the great suggestions, I have moved them to here so that I can keep track of them:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,2866.0.html  For stuff that isn't super-brief for me to change, I prefer comments be made in the bug reports forum or similar so that I can have them on my general priority list (otherwise stuff gets lost, or I'm constantly chasing bugs as they are reported and never getting any new features done).  Anyway, no big thing -- thanks for taking the time to put it together!

raptor331, some sort of allied AI is possible, but probably not until the second expansion.  It's a nontrivial feature, and there simply isn't time at the moment.

Regarding the Black Border at the top and bottom with the planet, that's definitely the intended artistic effect.  It's just an "artsy" way to do it, which I had explicitly coded in.  I think the effect makes it look almost like a novel cover or something at very far zoom, which is a neat effect.

Lastly, Baleur, glad you're liking the control nodes so well, and that all of the automation is going over so well.  Something many people may not know is that V+Right-click was one of the earliest player suggestions made (previously I just had attack-move mode), and I was blown away by it, too.  Control nodes were my idea, as were some of the other automation things (fast starts, etc), but players have suggested equal or more such improvements over the genre standards.  One of the real benefits of having such an active community that is able to provide input into the game development; hopefully it will lead to similar features in other RTS games (really, I hope other RTS games steal a lot of the ideas in AI War, as it's unlikely to hurt my sales by the time they actually release their products, and it would be nice to see the genre as a whole step forward with these things).  Certainly any developer is "standing on the shoulders of giants" in any case, there are a lot of clear SupCom inspirations in AI War, and a lot of inspirations in SupCom from games that came before it, and on and on.  Anyway, glad those are a hit.

[HellishFiend]

HellishFiend, thanks for the great suggestions, I have moved them to here so that I can keep track of them:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,2866.0.html  For stuff that isn't super-brief for me to change, I prefer comments be made in the bug reports forum or similar so that I can have them on my general priority list (otherwise stuff gets lost, or I'm constantly chasing bugs as they are reported and never getting any new features done).  Anyway, no big thing -- thanks for taking the time to put it together!

You're welcome! I was all too happy to take the time to make that report, since the team control node is a feature essentially designed for players like me and my friend, who mostly play the game together as opposed to solo, and trust each other enough to grant that kind of control. If there is anything else I can do to help beyond making reports in the bug report forum, just let me know! I'm happy to help.

[x4000]

Much appreciated! Testing and suggestions and bug reports are the main things I need at the moment, I think. 

[HellishFiend]

No problem - you can count on my friend and I to be testing out things in co-op games, and I'll make reports as we go along. We update to the latest prerelease every time we play.

[x4000]

New version now out, with the last of the player-controllable golems (though there are 2-3 more golems that only the Zenith Aliens use which are coming very soon): http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,2869.new.html#new

[Baleur]

-New Control Node: Auto-Rebuild Harvesters.  Automatically rebuilds metal and crystal harvesters on all planets you control. Replacement harvesters will only be built if there are fewer than 100 mobile enemy ships on the planet.

This kinda baffles me. Why would anyone NOT want that? Hence, why not just enable this without the need to build a control node? Then the question arises, why not just have all harvesters always auto-build without any action from the player?