Looking through new design doc and it reminded me of the prior Kickstarter. I realize the design doc discussion isn't meant to be part of this thread, but it ties back into what was in the KS video and what could be in the new KS vid.
Our first purpose here is to go back and use that experience to "build it that way from the ground up" to fully support multithreading, 3D graphics, and modding.
Our second purpose here is to take this opportunity to "do it right" for the user interface, and to build a robust tutorial scripting system
These are both cool things for AIWC players, but even with a reduced scope for AIW2 and a funding goal that can be met almost entirely from Arcen/AIW fans (ie. those who hit Pledge the moment we saw it was up) please don't fall into the trap of forgetting to sell AIW to people. Yes, this a sequel, yes the changes are cool, but what makes AIW cool isn't now that it is no longer merely functional.
Nested tooltips? New tutorials? Better UI? Do I care about those things if I bounced off of AIW before? Not really. I never figured out
why AIW was cool thanks to the poor playability. So it's cool that the game is more playable, but it doesn't excite me to buy a
new game. Frankly, these are things people expect from a sequel and are likely not terribly hot selling points.
Show, don't tell. I play against the AI in all my sp games. Why is this any different? How is playing this game different than me mowing down people in the latest Call of Duty campaign or whatever? (Hint: CoD has terrible AI, while a game like Halo has good AI.)
What does one do in AIW? Do I build bases? Can I turtle? Must I zerg? Customize units? Oh, all of the above?!? Cool.
Don't be afraid to show off a unit like you did with the Spire in the first video, except this time show/tell why that would be cool. (I know the Spire aren't a playable race in the new KS, just using it as an example.) The first video pretty much told me they had bigger ships and I guess bigger is better...? What can I
do with the different ships or units? Heck, the video said "game flow is quite different" with the Spire. What in the what does that mean??
The first KS video says the "AI plays a board game like Risk" while "you're playing a grand strategic RTS". That is a LOAD of info to process in the five seconds it takes to say that. Shortly thereafter the video says "If you've played the first AI War, well, you know all that" and immediately follows up with "Well, what's new?" Record scratch. What if I didn't play it? Especially if I owned it but didn't play it?!? New features are cool, but I never fired the game up after getting it for super cheap on a Steam sale. Remind me what is cool about all this.
A personal touch to the video will go a long way, but if you can't get comfortable in front of the camera and act naturally then scrap filming yourself.
