AI War 2 v0.782 Released! "Viewport Visibility"

[x4000]

Release notes here.

(Singing) I can see clearly now, the HUD is small...

Right!  I'm very excited about this one, it has a lot of long-desired pieces of polish in it.  And some bits that were not long-desired, but are exciting all the same.

• The settings menu is better organized, and doesn't have any more non-functional bits in it.


• The camera controls, in terms of how sensitive each bit is, can properly be configured again.


• Tooltips can be sized in general, so that their text is not so huge if you're on a huge monitor.


• Same with the sidebar!  And the top bar!  And notifications!  The whole HUD, really!


• The default size of most HUD elements and tooltips is somewhere around 80% as large now as it used to be, since most people felt it was too large.  But now you can configure them!


• Rather than having one monolithic "GUI Scale," which really is a bit nonspecific, there are four or five key areas you can size independently.


• And you can now scale the icons of ships!  They're also smaller by default, now.  Same with the wormhole names.


• You can actually skip drawing the 3D models of ships entirely, if you want to -- for instance if you're on a right potato of a GPU.  The game is fully playable in a just-icons fashion, if you wish.


• Tooltips now SAY LESS, aside from being better-sized.  This is a huge thing I've been wanting to do for a month or so.  By default, they no longer explain game rules or give extra-comprehensive stats on every aspect of a ship.


• However, you can now hold Ctrl to see the full tooltips that you've been having up until now.  Or you can toggle those to always be the full tooltips, if you like.  But frankly the abbreviated ones are a lot easier to work with.


• Most of this stuff, so far, basically makes it so that you can see the main view a lot better, without the HUD and icons crowding you out.


• We also fixed a bunch of bugs and clarified some things that were unclear.


• And improved the tutorial a bit, particularly with some mis-spellings.


• There are also a couple of more difficult quick starts now available, thanks to Puffin.


• And your starships won't be getting murdered by ion cannons anymore. :)

More to come soon!

Problem With The Latest Build?

If you right-click the game in Steam and choose properties, then go to the Betas tab of the window that pops up, you'll see a variety of options.  You can always choose most_recent_stable from that build to get what is essentially one-build-back.  Or two builds back if the last build had a known problem, etc.  Essentially it's a way to keep yourself off the very bleeding edge of updates, if you so desire.

The Usual Reminders

Quick reminder of our new Steam Developer Page.  If you follow us there, you'll be notified about any game releases we do.

Also: Would you mind leaving a Steam review for some/any of our games?  It doesn't have to be much more detailed than a thumbs up, but if you like a game we made and want more people to find it, that's how you make it happen.  Reviews make a material difference, and like most indies, we could really use the support.

Enjoy!

Chris

[TheVampire100]

Okay, i have to say, the new settings menu looks amazing, it looks now like a menu from a real game and not some tech demo stuff thrown together.
I didn't say so but I really didn't like the settings menu before. It was too complicated, looked more like code-jungle than anything and didn't fit the rest of the game.
This looks so much better.

I also like that the idea of simplified tooltips with a hotkey to show all of it was implemented. This was suggested by multiple people, including myself, to simplify the experience and make the menu look less "cluttered".
I think however you could hide more of it. For an example, Fusion Reaction, the ability of Bombers and Assault Starships, can be reduced to the keyword plus the percentage they pierce through personal shields.
I think we should bring all key words for special abilities in line with this, so the big text box under the stats gets reduced as much as possible. When I look at something liek V-Wings it still is a lot to swallow. Multi Shots could for an example be shortened, it is enough to know that the ship can hit two targets. I don't need the full flavour text for that unless I don't know what Multi Shot is/does.

Overall I'm impressed how much the game has changed by now over the first versions we could play.

[x4000]

Thank you!!  Glad you're liking all that.

And yeah, I hear you on the old settings menu, heh.

And definitely agreed on hiding even more stuff in the tooltips.  Here's for the next version:

* Various pieces of the tooltips have now gotten abbreviated versions since that was a hit:
** AOE damage, beam weapons, multi shot and multi beam, engine slowing and engine stun, paralyzers, shield overdriving, ion damage, the various death effects, melee weapons, weapon jammers, and fusion reactions.
** It's amazing how much more legible this is for when you already know the rules of the mechanics and just want to see what this particular ship does.  As with before, holding Ctrl gives you the un-abbreviated full descriptions.