The Final AI War Expansion

[Elestan]

Modules are, or should be, rendered in different places based on what slot they're in.  But having two "small" shield modules makes them both render in the same place.

Just a guess, but I suspect this is because the shield needs to center on the generator, so if they were not atop each other, you'd get multiple overlapping shield bubbles not quite centered on the ship.  Which would actually look kind of cool, but might cause some other problems.

[vincenth13]

I would support the hell out of that and probably buy copies up to the current price of AAA games (90$ currently where I live).

I would also like to ask if it would be possible to update the engine to a 64 bits one with this as , as far as I remember, most, if not all of the crashes I have suffered while playing this game have been caused by out of memory errors (on PC's that have 8 and 16 gigs of ram respectively).

Anyway, I really wish this comes to fruition and wishes the best to you as you are probably my favorite game company ( although you still have a few contenders to dislodge to gain the permanent title).


An update on the idea of a sequel/remaster would also be really appreciated since you don't seem to have posted in this thread since 2015.

[x4000]

No progress on this in a while, but it's next on our list on the strategy side (aka Keith) after SBR.

[Pumpkin]

The harder is to wait.

Speaking of that, may you ask Keith to post some report on his work? I don't ask a daily dev blog, but some updates every now and then (maybe once a month) would be very appreciated.

It's a shame to me because I'm so impatient about SBR and AIW2, but we get only updates on SR and RR, in which I'm only moderately interested.

(Meanwhile, I channel my frustration in a wiki revamp rampage.)

[keith.lamothe]

Speaking of that, may you ask Keith to post some report on his work? I don't ask a daily dev blog, but some updates every now and then (maybe once a month) would be very appreciated.

Regular status updates are difficult, life's been nuts for a while. But in general for SBR I've worked through a number of alternate designs with a few testers and am now working on a heavily adjacency-based citybuilding model (only caring about stuff 1 tile away, but you can have a tier 3 building that boosts a tier 2 building which in turn boosts a tier 1 building, and the boost on the tier 2 impacts its boost to the tier 1, etc) and tying much of the combat and diplomatic decision-making into how you build your city.

[Aklyon]

(Meanwhile, I channel my frustration in a wiki revamp rampage.)

Arcen wiki can do with a revamp every so often anyway!

[Pumpkin]

Speaking of that, may you ask Keith to post some report on his work? I don't ask a daily dev blog, but some updates every now and then (maybe once a month) would be very appreciated.

Regular status updates are difficult, life's been nuts for a while. But in general for SBR I've worked through a number of alternate designs with a few testers and am now working on a heavily adjacency-based citybuilding model (only caring about stuff 1 tile away, but you can have a tier 3 building that boosts a tier 2 building which in turn boosts a tier 1 building, and the boost on the tier 2 impacts its boost to the tier 1, etc) and tying much of the combat and diplomatic decision-making into how you build your city.

Oh hey! What a lovely surprise! If I knew I just had to ask, I would have asked earlier. Thanks a lot. I hope we would have some more insights like that; regular status updates aren't required, but some nuggets here and there help soothing impatience.

[WolfWhiteFire]

Well, a new AI War with mod support and many improvements sounds great, though considering that The Last Federation and Stars Beyond Reach are in the same universe though far away, might it make sense to eventually allow some of the races from them to join the party? If it is placed far in the future from AI War, the other games are far in the past, or if there is long ranged wormholes it could make sense. Maybe they could be added as minor or major factions in an expansion.

[Yavaun]

Just for the sake of argument, how would you feel if:

1. We released a new version of the game called AI War Reborn or similar, charging probably $20 for it.
2. We drastically upgraded the underlying engine, had copious mod support from the ground up in that, did new art, and so on.
3. We built as many of the features from all the AI War expansions as possible into that, although minus things that nobody really likes anyway (Defender mode).
4. We started with something that is really simplistic but with mod support, and then during an alpha where you guys are involved, built things back up so that you're not left out of the process until the last second.
5. We then leave the original AI War alone, period, and AI War Reborn becomes the new AI War experience that any expansions go to, and that players can focus any modding efforts on, etc.

The reasons for this are numerous:
1. Doing the sort of modding support that would be useful at all would require pretty much a complete rewrite of the game engine to do, to be honest.
2. We now have experience with exactly that sort of thing in some of our more recent work -- you would not BELIEVE how mod-friendly Starward Rogue is, for instance.
3. We've had 4+ years of engine improvements since the original AI War, and people are going to be seriously frustrated if they try to work on the older version of the engine (I sure would be), so the upgrade to a newer engine would be good all around.
4. We'd be able to ease some of the performance woes that people are likely to introduce in mods by using some more multithreading, probably.
5. We could also upgrade the network library.
6. And so on.

Basically I like what you're talking about, but what you're talking about is a completely different game from the one that exists now.  I'm not saying that the above will happen for sure, but it is something we've talked about internally.  I'm curious to take your temperature on that since you guys brought it up.

I would say this is something I would enjoy a hounred millions times more than an actual sequel.
A sequel is always a new game. I don't want a new game! This game is already by far the best RTS in existence and the only way to go from here would be to improve it further - not to derail it. Not sure what I can say to convince you that this announcement would be more exciting than winning the lottery but you guys simple have to do this!

Pretty please!

[x4000]

Basically: "hands off the game itself, you dolts, but yes please on the interface, graphics, network, and all that jazz?"

[Yavaun]

I wouldn't put it that way but basically yes

I don't mean to say you aren't competent enough to produce a good sequel despite the common trend with game sequels but... all that jazz ontop of what AI wars already is would create some sort of super ultimate spire dreadnought version of the game that a sequel can't reach. There are definitely content additions and gameplay shifts that I'd love to see but even there -instead of replacing core gameplay aspects with them - they'd be so much better as !optionial! DLC or mod based minor factions.

For exmaple, I'm sure not everyone would want to play with ships that let's say are focused on active abilities and level ups kinda like capital ships in SINS. So why make them an integral part of the new game when you can just keep the old game and make it one the houndreds of options?
Other changes like a better ship formation system, mod support, etc can be applied to both a sequel and a rework so there is nothing to be gained here.

I simply don't see the plus side of having a sequel instead of a rework.

[x4000]

Right, I gotcha.

In terms of a good sequel, to some extent I see that as being like the difference between Age of Empires 1 and 2, or Empire Earth 1 and 2.  Overall the sequel was a refinement of the original and a needed reimagining of a few bits in order to achieve said refinement.  But any reimagining was aimed at making the original experience better, rather than trying to reinvent things like AOE3 or EE3 did.

[Mánagarmr]

Aside from the obtuse interface, awkward networking and the somewhat dated graphics, there really isn't much wrong with AI War. Changing too much may well just kill it.

[x4000]

Don't forget performance.

[Pumpkin]

Don't forget performance.

And modability! Don't forget modability!