This gets asked every so often, so I wanted to make clear. As recently noted,
the porting of AI War to Unity 3D is now under way, and most new additions to the game are a bit on hold until we get the first beta versions of the Unity-ported AI War out publicly. Please see that other post for the (many) details you might want on that score.
To answer the core question that is the subject of this post, though, I should note that there are three upcoming phases coming up:
Phase I: AI War Unity in Private Alpha, AI War 3.189 or Later as Latest Stable Beta, AI War 3.120 as Official
Phase II: AI War Unity in Early/Semi-Stable Public Beta, AI War 3.189 or Later as Latest Stable Beta, AI War 3.120 as Official
Phase III: AI War Unity in Beta, AI War 3.120 as Official
Phase IV: AI War Unity as Official
Phase IAt the time of this writing, we're currently in phase I. During this phase, we're doing very few updates to the 3.189 SlimDX-based versions of AI War, but if we run into any critical bugs or critical balance issues, we'll release small fixes as patches. Most people will either be playing the 3.189-ish SlimDX versions, or the 3.120 Official version, depending on their preferences, and the Unity version is unavailable to the public.
During this time, most of our work will be on private updates to the AI War Unity Alpha, to all be cumulatively released at the end of this phase. This phase ends when the first public beta of AI War Unity comes out.
Phase IIWe hope to hit this phase by mid-September, but we'll just see how it really goes. The AI War Unity beta will be installable via an all-new installer, and won't include any music whatsoever, but will include everything else for both expansions and the base game.
During this phase, we'll keep doing any critical bug or balance fixes in patches for the SlimDX version, as we expect that many people will want to keep their SlimDX-based beta versions installed as a safety measure for when they run into potential showstoppers in the early Unity versions. But we hope many people will also play with the Unity betas to help us get rid of those early issues. We'll also be packing in more new goodies during this phase, as we have been in the last few weeks, but only in the AI War Unity version, so there's going to be a double incentive there.
During this time, most of our work will be on public updates to the AI War Unity Public Betas, to be released several times a week (occasionally several times a day, I'm sure) via a brand-new Tidalis-like updater process. This phase ends when the AI War Unity version has been demonstrated as being so stable that there's not any more point to having split beta versions. Hopefully within about two weeks after the first public beta of AI War Unity.
Phase IIIWe hope to hit this phase by the start of October, but we'll just see. During this phase, which will last at least two weeks (but longer if it has to), we won't be supporting the SlimDX betas at all. You can still use them if you like, but most bug reports or technical support requests will be first answered with "have you updated to the AI War Unity beta?" Not in a mean way, that's just where all the latest updates are, and any line numbers from bug reports from the SlimDX versions won't be of any use to us any longer, unfortunately, because the platforms are so different.
During this phase we won't be doing many content updates to the game, because we're going to be aiming simply to get the stability and balance as perfect as we reasonably can, so that we can do the official AI War 4.0 release. This is basically the "polish" phase.
Phase IVWe hope to hit this phase by the middle of October, but once again, we'll see. This will mark the official launch of AI War on Mac OSX, of Children of Neinzul in general, and of AI War 4.0 in general. After this release, all support for all of the prior SlimDX-based versions of AI War will be ending. You're free to use them if you're inclined to, but any bug reports from them will be completely useless, and our first suggestion if you have a problem will be to upgrade to AI War 4.0 or greater (it's a free upgrade for all customers of the base game, just to be clear!).
At the time that AI War 4.0 comes out, that's when the soundtrack for CoN will finally be released, and when the remastered soundtracks for AI War and TZR will also be coming out.
After that release, then of course the regular beta/official cycle will continue, but just purely on the Unity 3D platform, and using the new Tidalis-style updater process.
Hope that clears up any questions, but if there are more, please let us know!
