This AI is awesome.

[liq3]

Alright, so some more crazy antics from the AI in a recent game.

Had a whole bunch of cruisers sitting near my home station. There was also a bunch of enemy cloaked ships somewhere, good 200 at least. And a wave of bombers heading towards home station. I quickly checked my defense, only to find out those cloaked ships were etherjets, and that they were making off with my cruisers in the opposite direction! I quickly ordered a flagship on a nearby planet to return home for defense. Thanks to some fancy trickery with repairing a shield I managed to wear the bombers down and survive!

[nullspace]

Thanks to some fancy trickery with repairing a shield I managed to wear the bombers down and survive!

Etherjets like to drag away my repairing engineers.   

[eRe4s3r]

Thats better than them dragging away your science stations right through a wormhole to a IV core world.

I lost (blah ,p) today and saw several interesting antics of the AI as well - first of for the first time i saw what powerful strategy the ai has been given with retreats - i had about 200 infiltrators retreating after they shredded my defenses (i moved my fleet in, which luckily was right next door) but the next attack had double that amount and this time i lost my home command station before i even knew what hit me.

Also i had seen several ships retreating and coming back with support on my border worlds, it seems the ai is very good at judging when its pointless to stay. Needless to say this is the first and last time i play on a 20 planet map - Those are too confined and it seems the ai has even an advantage when its close and cuddly.

So yes, the ai is awesome... if you like loosing to it! The ai is EVIL, thats what it is ;p

[Inglonias]

They like destroying my bombers first if they have force fields in a system. I've even politely asked them to stop! What don't they understand about "Will you please stop destroying my bombers? I need to take down these force fields."?

[Echo35]

Thanks to some fancy trickery with repairing a shield I managed to wear the bombers down and survive!

Etherjets like to drag away my repairing engineers.   

I love Etherjets when they're on my side. I ragequit when they aren't

[x4000]

Thanks to some fancy trickery with repairing a shield I managed to wear the bombers down and survive!

Etherjets like to drag away my repairing engineers.   

I love Etherjets when they're on my side. I ragequit when they aren't

I remember the day when I thought of the AI tactics for EtherJets, and programmed that in -- that was a happy day.   I was so pleased to then see the reactions of my alpha testers, who of course had no idea of the existence or real purpose of this ship, much like any new player.  We're playing along, and then some EtherJets come wandering in and grab their ships, and my uncle in particular was just like "Oh my god!  What's going on, they just grabbed my science lab and... where are they going!?"  That was a fun day of testing, mwahaha.

If you can't guess, I like being the DM whenever I play pen and paper RPGs, or games like Hero Quest or Descent: Journeys In The Dark.  My favorite thing to do is to push the heroes right to the brink of losing, and then see if they'll tip over on their own without my directly pushing them.  I think that came across here a bit, depending on the difficulty level.   

[Haagenti II]

The dragging was nasty. The dragging to an SF Post was sickly evil.

[x4000]

The dragging was nasty. The dragging to an SF Post was sickly evil.

Well, they had to go somewhere.

[Inglonias]

I haven't seen Etherjets yet. I hope to god that I do. X4000: Tell the AI to STOP KILLING MY GODDAMN BOMBERS WITH SNIPER TURRETS!

[x4000]

I haven't seen Etherjets yet. I hope to god that I do. X4000: Tell the AI to STOP KILLING MY GODDAMN BOMBERS WITH SNIPER TURRETS!

On the plus side, that works for you in reverse.

[Garrett]

Hello x4000.

I wasn't sure about the game when I bought it. I was basicly just in dire need of distraction.
Now that I have played 10+ hours (Alone, though), I have something to say.


This game, or masterpiece is a one-man project, right?
One does not get that idea by playing the game.

What you have done by yourself is amazing. I don't know exactly how much time and energy you put into this, but it must have been alot.
The AI is the finest I've ever seen, and it constantly surprises me.
I love games like Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander, Pax Imperia - They are on a true strategic level, not on a tactical level like most RTS. I guess I'm quite good at them as well. I can't claim that I can beat any A.I, but I know perfectly well why I'm beaten if I do lose.
There are no surprises.

This... is different.

This is the one (strategy) game where I never feel safe.
No matter how strong my defense is, no matter how many ships I have, the A.I will -always- find a counter against it. It will always find a weak spot, a way trough.

I can be safe against the strongest ships in the game, and they will just send thousands of infiltrators just to destroy my economy.
It's mind-boggling. The A.I feels like it's really -thinking-.

x4000, or whatever your real name may be, you have done the finest job on any A.I in the history of games, at least in my opinion.
Not to forget that the rest of the game feels complete as well. The graphics are not 'on par with Crysis', but I always had a weakness for well done 'oldschool' graphics, and the units/structures look just like that. It complements the feel of the game.

Also, the music. It's great. It's oldschool. It brings back memories. Amazing.

Congratulations.

And of course, I will support you with buying the expansion, and spreading the word as well.

[x4000]

Thanks Garrett, that's much appreciated. 

I'm glad you're enjoying the AI to that degree, it's one of my favorite parts, too.  For AI War, I'm the only designer and programmer on the game (I'm Chris Park, by the way), but the music is composed by Pablo Vega, and the art that you see in 2.0 is largely by Daniel Cook, Philippe Chabot, or Hans-Martin Portmann.

If you're curious about the team, you can see here:  http://www.arcengames.com/about.php

And if you're curious about the art and how all that came to be, that's here:  http://christophermpark.blogspot.com/2009/10/free-graphics-for-indie-developers.html

Of course, even when I was working solo, I had my RTS playgroup (my alpha testers) to help with testing and they contributed a lot of ideas and critical feedback.  Then I had a larger team of beta testers, most notably featuring Lars Bull (Fiskbit here on the forums), who later joined the team to help with forum moderation, support, localization readiness, etc.  And then after release of the initial game, the player community has just been amazing and full of awesome suggestions and ideas, which I've been implementing over the 5 months since the game originally came out.  Calvin Southwood (Revenantus here) was one of the very prolific players with suggestions and ideas, and joined the team to help also with forum moderation and support, and to create the very nice user manual that you see in 2.0, among some other things.

So even with a "one man" project a game like this is never something that just takes one person even if it did start out that way.  But the AI and programming are my own innovations, so I'm quite pleased with how that in particular has turned out.

Thanks again for your support, and I'm glad you're enjoying the game!

[Garrett]

Well the only people that wouldn't be able to enjoy this game are brain-dead numb-nuts that only strive for their next 10-Killstreak achievement forever being stuck in their nutshell of fun but not intelligent shooters, flinging immature insults at each other like apes fling poo.

Oh, did I say that out loud?  

Whoops. Watched too much Zero Punctation.

Hey, I enjoy CoD4, Duke Nukem 3D and will enjoy CoD6, but I just need my strategy games to encourage brain activity.
Ah well, you get what I'm saying.


Games are like music. You can stick to one genre, and it's fine if you don't like every genre, but shunning every other genre besides the one you like the best will just make you miss out on alot of great stuff.



Thanks for the link, now I know who's doing what.
Looks like you're one great team. You accomplished something.
Hope your sales are going well. You and your team deserve to be paid.

[x4000]

Thanks, Garrett -- things are going pretty well for us with the recent 2.0 release and so forth.  I might even be able to quit the day job, come to that.

[Garrett]

Thanks, Garrett -- things are going pretty well for us with the recent 2.0 release and so forth.  I might even be able to quit the day job, come to that.

Now that would be excellent. Kind of the thing most of us dream of.
Hope it keeps on going well. Less time at your job means more time for A.I, so it's good for both sides.