Space Combat Merit Badge

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, I haven't seen any slowdown when playing my steam version either.  Has anyone else seen that?  Steam's stuff is really quite lightweight at runtime in my experience.  Of course, if steam (the client, not AI War or any part of it) were running and taking a lot of memory and you didn't have an abundance of memory to go around, that could slow down AIW a fair bit due to page faults.

[Nalgas]

I haven't actually tried running the non-Steam version to compare.  I'd check right now if I weren't too lazy to switch it to windowed mode or didn't hate windowed mode so much (I consider it unplayable that way, doubly so on a tiny laptop screen).  Or if the OS X version responded to cmd-tab so I could actually switch out of the game and check that way.  That's probably my biggest annoyance with the Mac version.  Seems to run plenty fast, even with the really ghetto Mac Steam client (seriously, the Windows one running in VirtualBox is twice as good/half as flaky, when it should be worse just by definition) running, though.  Heh.

[Zair]

As far as I can tell, the Steam download will actually run just fine without Steam anyhow. I can launch the game directly or through Steam; the latter will throw the extra 'Steamworks Enabled' line in the upper-left corner while the former won't even try to launch Steam first if it isn't already running.

Disclaimer: machine is running Windows 7 64-bit, in case it matters in any way.

[Nalgas]

As far as I can tell, the Steam download will actually run just fine without Steam anyhow. I can launch the game directly or through Steam; the latter will throw the extra 'Steamworks Enabled' line in the upper-left corner while the former won't even try to launch Steam first if it isn't already running.

Disclaimer: machine is running Windows 7 64-bit, in case it matters in any way.

Yup.  That's intentional and should work with any version of the game on any OS.  You can even copy the serial number from your Steam copy and enter it into a copy you install downloaded straight from here (or wherever else), and everything should work the same as always, aside from the lack of Steam.

[Zair]

Nifty stuff. Steam is convenient, but it isn't absolutely essential.

Haven't noticed any performance difference between playing with Steamworks active or not, either.

[cupogoodness]

Is there a special map that gets unlocked with this, or is it the expansion itself that gets unlocked for the prize?  It says map underneath it, but the way it reads is that you get the expansion for the prize.

It's just TZR; I think Valve wanted to stick to a really small set of category names ("Map", "Gear", etc) for that.  I think it's not particularly clear myself but it's their call on how they want to present it.  Overall the site looks pretty nice.

Yeah, I was a little confused as to why they said "Map" and not something else, but it is the best category there. It's an expansion, and adds to the base game much like a map would, only with about 200 more ships, so it seems like a better deal

I've been participating in the event as much as I've had time to, and from what I can tell TZR expansion is one of, if not the best prize available (at least in terms of amount of content you get per 3 raffle tickets.)

[MoogleGunner]

On the topic of steam, I've been hoping for some sort of "gift set" on AI War for a while, since the game becomes exponentially more fun the more people you have.  Any chances of that on steam or the Arcen store at some point? I'd certainly be willing to get 5 or so licenses at once.

[keith.lamothe]

On the topic of steam, I've been hoping for some sort of "gift set" on AI War for a while, since the game becomes exponentially more fun the more people you have.  Any chances of that on steam or the Arcen store at some point? I'd certainly be willing to get 5 or so licenses at once.

That can be iffy in terms of distributor agreements; I haven't read ours (Chris handles that side of things) but in some cases that could be construed as allowing another distribution outlet to undersell them with a lower unit price, and thus they could just lower the unit price of the single-unit SKU to match the effective rate represented by the multiple-unit deal on the other portal.

It does seem like a good thing to pursue, in general, but there's enough snags that it's not in any current plans.

[Echo35]

On the topic of steam, I've been hoping for some sort of "gift set" on AI War for a while, since the game becomes exponentially more fun the more people you have.  Any chances of that on steam or the Arcen store at some point? I'd certainly be willing to get 5 or so licenses at once.

That can be iffy in terms of distributor agreements; I haven't read ours (Chris handles that side of things) but in some cases that could be construed as allowing another distribution outlet to undersell them with a lower unit price, and thus they could just lower the unit price of the single-unit SKU to match the effective rate represented by the multiple-unit deal on the other portal.

It does seem like a good thing to pursue, in general, but there's enough snags that it's not in any current plans.

Just buy your friends the Alien Bundle. It's on sale right now anyway

[zebramatt]

Wow, some of those achievements are depressing. 66% of players have never played a game for an hour, 81% never played for 5 hours... Though I guess that's bound to happen with any game that has cheap digital sales.

That's also just steam players.

That's me for 80% of the games I own on Steam. The other 20%, in which AI war is included, exponentially outweigh those in playtime, however.

I've had Magicka sitting on this computer for months and only just realised yesterday, upon attempting to fire it up for the first time, that my graphics card is not supported!

[Nalgas]

I've had Magicka sitting on this computer for months and only just realised yesterday, upon attempting to fire it up for the first time, that my graphics card is not supported!

I was going to ask if you're trying to play it on your toaster or something, because in-game it sure doesn't look like it would need all that much, but checking the requirements it apparently does.  Who knew?  I'm quite surprised to see an 8800 listed as the minimum when it looks like the kind of thing that would've run happily at 1920x1440 on my old 8600 back in the day.

I totally do the "buy games, don't play for several months" thing all the time, too, though.  Stupid sales.  Eventually I get almost caught up, and then there's another one.  Heh.

[keith.lamothe]

On the topic of steam, I've been hoping for some sort of "gift set" on AI War for a while, since the game becomes exponentially more fun the more people you have.  Any chances of that on steam or the Arcen store at some point? I'd certainly be willing to get 5 or so licenses at once.

For about the next 23 hours you can get the full set for 4.49 on steam; in other words an 85% discount.  That means you can get 5 copies for about 75% of what one copy would have cost you at list price

[@B0FH]

On the summer sale ticket... who called it first?

* @B0FH gifts copies

[x4000]

Not asking for a confirmation on anything either way, but there seems to be a new (to me at least) achievement that sounds quite summery... "Heat Wave Brown Out" - net balance of 300,000 energy.  The suspicious folks like me sense an incoming golden prize ticket in the near future :p

On the summer sale ticket... who called it first?

* @B0FH gifts copies

I had to ignore you before, but now I can respond and say how right on the money you were -- and boy did you find that fast!  Good eye there.

[@B0FH]

Not asking for a confirmation on anything either way, but there seems to be a new (to me at least) achievement that sounds quite summery... "Heat Wave Brown Out" - net balance of 300,000 energy.  The suspicious folks like me sense an incoming golden prize ticket in the near future :p

On the summer sale ticket... who called it first?

* @B0FH gifts copies

I had to ignore you before, but now I can respond and say how right on the money you were -- and boy did you find that fast!  Good eye there.

Fully understand, tis why I didn't pester   Am really glad you guys are getting a fair bit of exposuree in this sale - hoping it pays off well for you!