AI War II: Kickstarter launches on Monday!

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Original: http://arcengames.com/ai-war-ii-kickstarter-launches-on-monday/



We're finally almost there!  If you want a sneak preview of what the campaign looks like (minus some of the graphics and the video), here's a link.  Please feel free to offer us feedback on it, and if you want to be notified when the campaign starts on Monday, you can either click the button right on that page, or you can email us at arcengames at gmail dot com and we'll shoot you an email instead.

If you're in the press and you're going to be writing ONE article about this, please wait until Monday. ;)  Otherwise we're obviously grateful for any coverage we can get.  But we almost didn't post this note today just for fear of that sort of too-early posting.

What else is up?

Well, the AI War II forums continue to be full of awesome discussion.  The design document for the game complete enough for us to have a finalized budget, and for you to make an informed decision, although there are still a few areas that we're going to be polishing into next week.

Talk to you soon!  For now I need to get back to making that video...

Chris

[Tridus]

Cool!

The old UI is utilitarian and informative at best and hideously ugly at worst. Understanding certain sub-screens takes tens of hours of experience, which was... not a good way to do things.

I'm not sure it's valuable here to be negative about the original game. "utilitarian and informative" gets the point across just fine, while "hideously ugly" is just being negative. You *can* be negative when analyzing your own game's faults, of course, but this is a sales pitch. Play up what people like about AIWC and play up the stuff you're improving, without resorting to bashing it.

[Aklyon]

Private alpha access in January 2016.

Did you mean 2017, or has there been a super secretest alpha going on for 9 months?

[Cinth]

Private alpha access in January 2016.

Did you mean 2017, or has there been a super secretest alpha going on for 9 months?

Psh.  The super secret pre-pre-pre alpha has been going on since '15. (j/k)

I couldn't find where you saw that. 

[Aklyon]

It was under Budget & Schedule, but I refreshed and its fixed now.

[chemical_art]

I'm not sure it's valuable here to be negative about the original game. "utilitarian and informative" gets the point across just fine, while "hideously ugly" is just being negative. You *can* be negative when analyzing your own game's faults, of course, but this is a sales pitch. Play up what people like about AIWC and play up the stuff you're improving, without resorting to bashing it.

Unless it is humor. Keith describing how the code is an unsafe lumbermill was very funny

[Cinth]

It was under Budget & Schedule, but I refreshed and its fixed now.

It was fixed before I could see it   Though looking for that caught another error. 

[Aklyon]

Another minor typo: The rewards image mentions a 'cannon alien race', the rewards mention a canon one. While I'm sure the AI has a Canon Cannon around here somewhere...you probably meant a canon race there, yeah?

[Cinth]

I'll let Blue know

[Tridus]

I'm not sure it's valuable here to be negative about the original game. "utilitarian and informative" gets the point across just fine, while "hideously ugly" is just being negative. You *can* be negative when analyzing your own game's faults, of course, but this is a sales pitch. Play up what people like about AIWC and play up the stuff you're improving, without resorting to bashing it.

Unless it is humor. Keith describing how the code is an unsafe lumbermill was very funny

Yes, that was pretty great. This one stood out to me as out of place, however.

[Drjones013]

Chris,

Wanted to let you know that this is the first product of yours I've been excited about since Valley-- and I'm greatly encouraged by the idea that you want to keep things conservative in the beginning. Looking forward to contributing to the Kickstarter and getting to name a planet something other than Murdoch (which you should definitely keep because it was the only planet that scores of players could pronounce)!

Perhaps it's not my place to say, because there was a time when I definitely felt like a rabid fan, but I've purchased a number of games since Valley because I believe that you and your group (though diminished somewhat) have an impressive track record of keeping up with the fans-- that having been said, giving everyone laser sharks because LASER SHARKS sometimes isn't the best marketing strategy. I'm seriously hoping that this project gets the company back on track and back producing incredible games.

[PokerChen]

A couple of notes:

- Please try less overuse of "mysterious", and numerously-hyphened phrases. Yes, I'm looking at the Zenith species introduction. The kfinal question also contradicts the expectation that backers should be looking towars playing as different species, and not learning about why/how the Zenith was de-extirpated.

- On modding. I'd suggest not over-selling the fact that you have carrots and onions and courgettes and etc. The point is that you provide XML but not dedicated API (do you?), which are the actual words prospective modders are looking for (or not, if they are DLL masters). Then you can use that to say players can add all these other stuff. Remember, "open and easy to modify" are very relative terms.

- If you plan to do continued reveals throughout the KS period (can you do continued reveals as the pledge climbs?), please note this near the start or end of the KS page. This reminds fence-sitters to come back later.

- Do players get to decide what kind of planet is worthy of their naming rights?

[Draco18s]

[kasnavada]

Modding ain't in the strengths ?

Some remarks:
Typos:

organic development carried out over hal a decade

Wordings:

The old UI is utilitarian and informative at best and hideously ugly at worst.

This part made me feel uneasy. Ugly... I don't think that it is necessary. Actually I'd rework this part below entirely... it's quite negative.

The old UI is utilitarian and informative at best and hideously ugly at worst. Understanding certain sub-screens takes tens of hours of experience, which was... not a good way to do things.
When it comes to the interface itself, we’ve been cleaning that up by eliminating secondary and tertiary information from the first-level screens. The information you need will always be available -- and in very few clicks or button presses -- but it won't take up real estate on your screen until you want or need it.

Font, from that parameter onward the font changed... is that intended ? It looks weird.

Another thing that we want to point out right from the start is that Arcen is a multi-person company, and everybody’s amount of work relating to this project does not take the same amount of time. This is nothing new to us -- typically artists and designers move to a new project while programming, QA, and balance/refinement finish.

Other remarks:

With AI War 2, based on the core 1.0 budget, Blue and Chris (artist and designer/interface) are scheduled to move most of their working hours to a separate, currently-unannounced project a bit after we hit Early Access. They’ll still be part-time on AI War 2 after that point, but in order to keep costs low there’s no point in having people on an individual project for longer than they actually have meaningful work to do. Keith, the lead programmer, will of course be on the project fulltime the entire time.
The takeaway -- and we’ll be super clear about this when it happens -- is that when Blue and Chris start working on that other project alongside AI War after 5-6 months, we don’t want anyone to think we’re using funds from this project to do that. In fact, that’s how we were able to make the core 1.0 costs as low as they are -- Chris spent far more out of his own pocket on various past projects, and it’s dangerous to assume you can raise that much through crowdfunding.

Hu, what ?
This is awkwardly written. I think the points you're trying to make is that the budget for 1.0 ain't enough for 3 people full-time, so you'll have side activities which ain't paid by the kickstarter. Am I right ? Because if so, I think it's better to state it more clearly.


PS:
Looking forward to how it goes =).

[Cinth]

Typos:
Code: [Select]

organic development carried out over hal a decade

Fixed