Things that Tidalis has that AI War Does Not (Yet) -- Updated 5/26/2010

[superking]

no, it sounds great  

Tidalis isnt really my cup of tea, but AI War is, in my oppinion, the most promising RTS game to date. The AI, the unit targetting, the focus on reducing micromanagement are revolutionary- I have great faith in Acren Games

I would like to help AI war development in any way I can- I'm no programmer, so all I can really contribute is concept and spritework (although I would very much like to get my hands on the base unit/weapon files in order to test out unit concepts myself  ) but if you ever require either it would be my pleasure to lend a hand

[x4000]

Many thanks!

EDIT: To expand on that, we aren't actively looking for more design staff at the moment, volunteer or otherwise, simply because of the complexity involved in adding more folks, etc. If things go well with Tidalis I do plan to bring Keith on fulltime and then make two other hires -- folks already selected for those roles. One of them is a designer who would be working on stuff other than AI War, but I don't I'll have him help much with AI War.

One challenge with adding a pure designer for AI War Is it was built for programmers, not designers. To tweak any of the stats for ships, etc, you have to edit the source code. Which is something we did a bit differently on Tidalis where needed so that Lars could tweak design elements without having to program. Ironic, since he's now at Google as a pretty hardcore type of programmer.

But, I digress. I appreciate the offer, and you never know it might come up at some point, but at the moment I keep a pretty tight oversight on AI War design, and having team growth is always a management challenge at odds with my ability to get my own non-managerial work done. I really do appreciate the offer, though.  

[superking]

no worries   to clarify, I only meant voluntary work, but I appreciate that probably entails more managerial time on your part than my contribution is really worth buisness-wise

[x4000]

I knew what you meant -- and I is appreciated, and your contributions via the forums are really appreciated. It's just a challenge for me, with team size, etc, as you noted.

[Burnstreet]

I am looking forward to the switch, sound like many nice things are to come.

Only problem I have with that. Is for instance we use skype atm. Skype unfortunately deals with a minor network blip by dropping the call outright. And for some strange reason, skype is the only VOIP I can find that allows constant-on talk without holding down a button--or hoping that the code recognizes when you start talking. The latter of which doesn't work for one of my friends, the software just doesn't like his voice. And especially with AI wars hotkey saturation, a hold to talk key is a bit unreasonable. Not to mention ackward while trying to actually do something.
XD I do suppose its a bit of a request though.

In Teamspeak 3 you can activate permanent sending (in addition to push-to-talk and voice activation)

I would assume most of the work is done via repositories/online.

There is no reason why 2 coders and artist/sound guys would need to sit even in the same country nowadays. For anything more advanced theres web-cams, emails, forum and chat ;p

Incorrect. There is one thing you can only do when being near each other: Going outside for smoke breaks together.
These smoke breaks have been some of the most productive minutes of my whole work time.

And sharing a beer or 2 via webcam is also not as nice...

[eRe4s3r]

Artists tend to be anti-social creatures, creativity is a fickle beast after all. And usually when an artist has an inspiration, he locks the doors and wants total peace. Nothing breaks inspiration faster than a silly conversation.

[zebramatt]

Call me crazy but I'm still holding out for multi-monitor support on Unity, some day...

[x4000]

Call me crazy but I'm still holding out for multi-monitor support on Unity, some day...

Indeed, would be really nice.

[deMangler]

Very much looking forward to being able to play AIWar under linux.
My hardware just couldn't handle the big battles along with a VM.
It is a great game and I would love to start playing it again.

dM

[x4000]

We're very much looking forward to the linux support being better, too.  Hopefully at some point Unity will even announce full direct linux support (rather than it just happening to work so well under WINE).  That would be the best, for sure...

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, the Unity folks have said that they want to do a linux port of the player and intend to do it, but don't have any definite plans/timelines at this point.  Basically Unity just compiles all your stuff into a c/c++ app and they'd have to port their lower-level c/c++ code to run on linux.  Doable, but time-consuming.

[getter77]

Yet another voice in support of the Unity move---that'll be the generation of AI War I eventually play!

Given the incredibly high level of engine competition brewing, I'd reckon it far more likely that there will be "surprise" windfalls to reap versus drawbacks for all of the Arcen projects in the mix.  It is in the Unity3D's team, which they grew substantially in order to have more potent capabilities, best interest to blow the doors off as best they can now that the spotlight is shining on them far brighter than at any time these past few years.

[cranphin]

WOW!

This sounds like it's going to be all kinds of awesome, especially in the hands of the devoted AI wars guy(s)
I'm very impressed you're willing to make such a big change to better the game too

I do hope it works out well, I know how things like this can end up harder then expected, I do develop software myself

Also, I've got two friends who have the game but can't/won't play since:
- One is a Mac addict, solved
- One broke his .NET, solved

When's the Beta gonna be ?

Bring out some more DLC so I can give you some more money

[x4000]

Thanks for your support! Hopefully this will be to beta by the start of August, but it just depends on how much trouble we run into with the porting. Fingers crossed!

[keith.lamothe]

Oh yea, the Unity engine could really give us a good thrashing for daring to port this... but I think we'll win