Many thanks for the zip link, x4000, it really is appreciated. Downloading now.
You bet!
Played through the beginner tutorials this evening.
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Zooming doesn’t feel very smooth, I’m thinking SUPCOM as a perfect implementation.
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When fully zoomed out I’d like to be able to see the entire solar system/sector
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Minimap doesn’t differentiate between resources, and while there are keys for this it’s a little annoying.
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Please don’t make me send my mobile builder to Urdor in the third tutorial, it’s a long way and a slow ship.
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Lacking shortcuts for building, if I have to do a lot of one offs this will be annoying.
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Mousing over an icon at full zoom gives you a description, however when you want to actually do something like build your harvester shield it requires pixel perfection.
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Music is a little harsh for a game advertising 10-12 hours per play, something more subtle would have been better.
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I need to capture factories and research facilities, yet my ships sat next to an enemy warp gate and didn’t fire at it until ordered. Is there some reason they shouldn’t fire on it when no other targets are present?
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Tutorials need a back button.
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I was confused by explanation of AI progress. Higher means more ships and better tech. Destroy something to lower this. However, and this is where I got confused, this only lowers the number of ships not their tech, surely now the AI progress number is meaningless? If I understand it correctly it sounds like there should be two numbers.
Tomorrow night I’ll try the tutorial campaign.
Hi Quitch, thanks very much for your thoughts. I’ll address them individually.
Yeah, I’m not really sure how they exactly did that, but you’re right that it was really good. Much better than CivIV, which was really floaty. Mine is very precise, but jerky like scrolling in a web browser. I’ll experiment around later tonight and see if I can’t make it any smoother, one possible idea for that just occurred to me, but I don’t know if it will make it too floaty.
Yeah, I see your point, but in testing we found that wasn’t too useful just because of the scale of everything. However, opinions on this will vary, so what I’ll do is make an option in the settings that will let it go all the way out, if that option is turned on. Will also be in a little prerelease version later tonight.
Hmm, usually you are going to take all resources on a planet pretty well immediately, so I’m not sure why that would be important. Also not sure how I would really differntiate them too much, since they are so tiny. I’ll look at that and see if I can make a difference in there, could be a nice subtle visual effect at least.
Wait, where did you build your mobile builder? If you build it right next to the Uboor warp gate, like it asks you to, then it takes only a second or two to get it to go through, if that. :)
There are 200 distinct ships in the game, there aren’t enough keys on the keyboard. The idea is to use the looping and such in the constructors like space docks, etc. For the fixed things that you build with the command stations, you really don’t wind up building those very often, except in occasional batches. No one has mentioned this as being an issue (although one beta tester also brought it up before he really got into the game, he changed his mind after really playing it). Let me know if you continue to feel like this is an issue, maybe it is something that can be addressed at least partially or something.
This is a great point about the exo shield, I’ll address that in tonight’s update. I don’t think many other ships really have this issue (aside from placing mines, etc, which there’s no real way around). Let me know if you run into this anywhere else that you feel it is an issue.
I think this boils down to taste, but thanks for registering your opinion. I have always admired the Warcraft II soundtrack and wanted something bombastic along those lines, rather than the quiet and forgettable stuff in a lot of recent games (SupCom, etc). But I think that, like with any other RTS game that you might play over a really extended period, ultimately you may wish to mute the music and play your own. Variety of sound and even of loudness, etc, was something that our composer put a lot of work into, so hopfully you will find that the music has more lasting appeal than a lot of other RTS games. But, again, some of that boils down to taste.
Yes, this was something requested by beta players, actually. Certain key ships that cause things like an AI Progress increase are not attacked automatically. This makes it so that you can go in and kill just the warp gate and not the command station, which is very useful and is is otherwise almost impossible if your ships auto-target ships of that sort. When you are playing in a full campaign, I think you will appreciate this a lot, actually.
Hmm, this would be fairly difficult to do (and in fact in some cases it could lead to you getting “stuck” and having to restart the tutorial). Most other recent RTS games that I have seen also have a one-way tutorials like this, if my recollection is correct. Was this a big issue for you?
Oh, thank you very much for bringing this to my attention, that part of the explantion was out of date. That used to be true, but in the beta we determined that was a bit too complicated (and a bit pointless), so we removed the functionality. In the new version, that explanation will be fixed – the AI Progress is just that one number, and having it go up or down affects both the number of ships built and the tech level of them. Sorry for the confusion there, but good catch on that.
Excellent! Thanks for all the great notes, I’ll let you know when a new prerelease version is out.
Now that’s developer interaction! I know what I’m doing with the next $20 burning a hole in my pocket.
Yeah, think I’m pretty much sold, too.
Thanks :)
I kinda agree on the system at a glance mode, full zoom out would be nice if contained entire system. Also on mini map warships vs resource items, should have diff color or something.
40 system map, now I think that’s good, it makes it a bit easier to keep track of things for beginners I believe.
Regards
Janster
Haha, thanks guys – and if you have any ideas or suggestions as you play, feel free to drop me a line here, on the arcen forums, via email, whatever. :)
You bet! And, glad to hear that the system at a glance thing will also be useful for more people, too.
Currnetly on the minimap the unclaimed resources are shown as white… oh, but you’re meaning resources that have been captured, I bet. Hmm, that’s an interesting thought – I really like it. Good timing with that comment, I’ll add that to the 1.005B version that I’m working on.
Awesome that the 40 planet map is a hit, once upon a time the game supported maps that small, but I was worried about the exploration element taking a hit. The size of the galaxy being overwhelming for beginners hadn’t really occurred to me until you brought it up, but it makes perfect sense.
Okay Quitch, here’s a new prerelease version that has the changes you had suggested above: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1005B.zip
That version is an upgrade from version 1.004, so you have to already have 1.004 installed. Just unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else). Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.
What’s new in this version (in addition to the new stuff from Janster’s 1005A version):
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The AI Progress explanation in basic tutorial 3 is fixed.
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The zoom is now smoother, although I had to rewrite basically the whole zooming system to get this to work. It is reasonably well tested (what I would refer to as “unit testing” with business software), but little integration/acceptance testing has been done with this yet. In other words, I’ve tested the heck out of the feature by itself, but something else might arise through gameplay – so if you find any bugs with this, please do let me know. I’ll be doing more integration/acceptance testing with this over the course of the week, leading up to next week’s official release, too.
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You didn’t ask for this, but with the other zoom changes this seemed necessary: holding the Shift key now makes the zoom go twice as fast (this was already the case for panning, anyway, so it fits nicely).
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In the settings for the game, there is a new “Allow Very Far Zoom” option. When turned on, you can zoom out way further than before. Since the planetary bounding area is a square, and the view window is a rectangle of varying dimensions (16:9 or 4:3 presumably), you can’t see quite the entire map all at once, but it’s very close. I know that SupCom lets you zoom out further than the entire map, but that would cause clipping problems here that will be a challenge to overcome (it won’t look very good, no matter what I do with that, most likely). So let me know what you think of it as it is, hopefully that works for your purposes. Also, anyone who has a widescreen monitor who downloads this update, can you confirm that this works okay with it? A couple of my alpha testers have widescreen, but I won’t be testing with them until the weekend.
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It’s now a lot easier to place harvester exoshields, although the position distance is not quite identical to the hover distance.
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The blips for the metal and crystal deposits and/or harvesters are now distinctly different from all the other blips. They are basically like vertical crescents, with Metal being the one that looks like an M, and crystal being the one that is the opposite. That’s definitely an improvement, it definitely conveys a bit of extra info when you are looking at a minimap.
That’s all for this version. As always, if anything else comes up, let me know!
Best,
Chris
A few suggestions to consider…
MINI-MAP representations
Good call on the different mini-map representations for resources, because I was often having to max zoom out, click on a blob just to see if it was a fleet of ships or a metal extractor. Is there also a possibility to make warp gates much more distinct at the mini-map view? When you stack a bunch of tractor beams, turrets, mines and what not at a warp gate, it starts to look similar to your large fleets.
GALACTIC MAP information
Another consideration, in the galactic map, when you hover over your recently discovered planetary systems, there is an information box that displays the contents of the system. Is it possible to configure this info as a vertical list rather than a comma delimited list, its much easier to visually detect key strategic structures and targets when scanning a vertical list of items than when reading a delimited line of text. Perhaps valuable structures such as Data Centers or Advanced Research stations could be displayed as an icon of some sort to immediately stand out? Perhaps use the icons from the main planetary display, and if they are recognisable enough it would behoove players to become familiar with them (as well as providing text for those who are not as familiar with them).
Automatic Priority processing of scouting information
I like the manual priority system you have provided for players to tag those systems that are important to them, but coupled with the more visual method for identifying these structures, there could be an auto-flag of systems with key structures? Perhaps fill in some check boxes denoting the structures you want your command CPU to search for, and then it tags those scouted systems with a Priority marker for attention? Not necessarily grading the priorities, like you do manually, but just bringing your attention to the planetary system… in an automated way. Justification wise, it would be part of your command consoles automatic scout and search mechanism to process the incoming information from your scouts.
Fleet formation pace - IGNORE THIS ONE - its already in the game!!! Silly me!
I’ve noticed that setting up a large fleet composed of many ship types, when I send them on a maneuovre, they move at different speeds, and often the speedier fighters will arrive at a different time to the bigger support ships. Is there a way to set up a hotkeyed fleet and have them move at the speed of the slowest ship, so they essentially stay together and can make assaults as a fleet, and not a disparate scrabble of ships coming in dependant upon their engine speed? For defensive situations perhaps this can be extended to ships in the fleet recieving a toggle command to remain in formation, or to fly under their own steam at their own engine pace? So its an option you choose when giving an order.
Patrol Paths
Not sure whether this already exists, but I’d like to assign fleets a patrol path in a system, so they are on a Attack-Move command, but in a series of waypoints, in order to patrol multiple warp gates or defensive structures. At the moment I tend to end up with static fleets awaiting my attention in a system, and I have to hunt them out, to move them to a potential threat, it would be nice to have a patrolling fleet that might have a chance to intercept the problem. I’d be able to set up good defensive coverage with a couple of fleets on patrol as opposed to static groups awaiting direction.
Well, I managed to have my first proper game, after about 2 hours of duking it out, I had in the 40 star system on medium setting with 6 ai bonus, managed to take about 10 of them , destroying 2 cpu’s and gaining a few new shiptypes.
At this point ,the AI would send scattered ships to attack me, or not at all, so it became a rinse and repeat, so I think I will start a new game on harder, and see what that brings me :)
Awesome! You might also try playing on larger maps, I think the constraints of the smaller maps will make it significantly easier, too. I’ve not done much testing to see the balance there, so you might have to play on a higher difficulty than you otherwise would on an 80 planet map (for one thing, there is much less chance for the AI Progress to go up, and more enemy planets are likely to have good stuff – Advanced Factories and Research Stations – so that makes it easier right in and of itself).
No worries about that, play however you like, but all I’m saying is that the difficulty of the AI is balanced for 80 and up.
These I’m going to respond to on the thread you created on the arcen forums, since you posted at both: http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php?topic=45.0
:)
Just wanted to say I’m watching this thread avidly and seriously thinking about a purchase. All this dev interaction is good stuff.
Thanks! That’s much appreciated. Have you had a chance to try the demo?
Oops, my bad, still thinking like a standard RTS.
You would use a visual key system
e.g. B - F1 - 1
Constructor - CONST - First item on CONST menu
This expands regardless of number of ships. But like I said, I haven’t played a proper game so I don’t know how much APM stuff there is.
No.
I’ll give the update a try, I have a widescreen monitor.
EDIT: Combine the release notes into one document ;)
Haha, no worries.
OH. That’s very clever, I had not thought of that. It seems like mostly the looping is more relevant, though, and that usually means you need to queue or dequeue multiple ships at once (holding Shift to add/remove 5 at a time is most common). It seems like it would be hard to select your dock with D, then hit F1, then hit Shift+1.
I wonder if it would make sense to just reassign the number keys while in the command station or dock menus, though. But, then that could get confusing. And there is also the issue that some of those menus can get up to 15 entries wide, too long for the number keys. And there are the categories themselves (the function keys are pretty much already used for other stuff).
Something along these lines might work, but I’m still not seeing a clear solution just yet.
Awesome.
For the release notes, how about I integrate those into the game as one big combined list that you can access through the settings screen? The patching system actually keys off of the individual release notes files, so it would be difficult to change those into one big file without doing that AND having them separate (which I guess I could do, if its needed). But I’m not sure how serious that suggestion was.
Some quick thoughts during my tutorial campaign while I remember them:
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Why do I see IV next to Ceanul but nothing next to the other AI planets?
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Option to permanently enable system names. Perhaps this gets less practical with more sectors but with the current spacing there’s tons of room.
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Going through wormholes in the planet map is a pain because you’re zoomed out and your defences block the route. Perhaps when you have ships selected the wormhole overrides everything else in the region? Still, from even this brief stint I see you’re going to do the movement on the galaxy map.
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Zoom keys go in to the centre of the screen not where the mouse is.
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Smooth zoom is nice but my real problem is that the sensitivity is too low. It takes too long to zoom in and out, I shouldn’t need more than one movement of the scroll wheel to move from extreme to extreme. I’d like the option to flip the shift behaviour so I get the shift effect by default and using shift slows zoom (and shift isn’t fast enough IMO).
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With ultra-zoom the change in zoom levels between E and R is quite jarring.
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If I’m going to populate all resources almost immediately all the time, is there a reason the game needs me to do it? How about a “Populate resources in this region” button or key?
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Why does the game have a system tray icon?
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Game seems to lose the scroll wheel to other apps. For example I had GNotifier pop-up a new e-mail and the scroll wheel stopped working in the game until I alt-tab out and back. I had used alt-tab prior to the notification which may be why it was able to show up at all.
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My release notes suggestion was simply because when you’re catching up on multiple patches one document is much easier than lots of little ones. Certainly I prefer such notes external to the game.
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Is there an auto-scout feature?
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Ultra zoom out on widescreen
The space starts on the right, if you try and scroll it flicks wildly from left to right. View is bloody handy though.
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I hear the sound of shooting but there’s no hotkey to zoom to it, if there are multiple enemy ships in the system I don’t know which is firing, nor is there any indication of which of my units is being shot. Flash their icon when zoomed out or something? Again, perhaps this isn’t important when the scale gets larger.
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Was low producing extractors explained in the economy tutorial?
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It might be handy to have an income view on the galaxy map (so you can see where your income is coming from and which sectors are the ones worth defending) in addition to a resource view which simply shows number of metal and crystal (separately) per sector for that quick glance “I need more metal, what’s the best target?” moment.
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Button to disable rally flag. Right-clicking building does this, but at zoom out this is tricky at best.
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I built 5 scouts but my metal income +#/s didn’t change. Eh?
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Launching the online videos needs to mute the game music.
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YouTube has an HQ option for videos now, would be useful for the tutorial videos. EDIT: I see the final video uses this at least. Owing to the smaller space of embedded video perhaps some direct links to the videos on youtube underneath them?
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Option in galaxy map to display “Last scouted” time for every planet so I know where my/our intel is weak.
Oh, and I’ve bought the game via Impulse. Anyone who’s trying to do new stuff with AI in gaming deserves my money.