Difference between revisions of "AI War:Current 4.0 Beta"

Revision as of 11:36, 23 September 2010

AI War version 3.189 converted to the Unity 3D engine. Only new features since 3.189 are mentioned here.

The game no longer uses GDI+, so it is no longer at all dependent on system fonts, and programs like FRAPS are able to record the menus as well as the actual gameplay.

Thanks largely to the removal of the GDI+ components, the game application itself opens markedly faster now.

The draw-framerate is now independent from the simulation-framerate.
- This is a huge benefit, because now the draw framerate automatically drops under serious load (like a big battle), which lets the actual simulation speed stay at 100% during play in many cases.
  - Thus the game doesn't slow down to a crawl during big battles (it just gets briefly choppy, if that), which passes much more quickly and is markedly less frustrating.
  - Also, if one player has a slightly underpowered machine during a network game, it is less likely to slow down the simulation for the other players, which is also excellent.

The keyboard bindings are now able to be edited. The editing interface is on the settings menu, and the bindings themselves are stored in inputbindings.dat, separate from all other settings for ease of sharing, etc.

In-game textures are now streamed into the game in a queue, rather than loaded-all-at-once when first encountered. This avoids choppiness and momentary lag when loading savegames and similar. This does cause images to be invisible and then pop-in during that same time, but that's much preferable in the main.

Added "Blitz" combat style which is like Fast and Dangerous but the ship speed is doubled again. Also, "Normal" has been renamed to Epic/4X-like and "Fast and Dangerous" has been renamed to "Normal".

The little row of ship icons below each planet has been removed from the galaxy map, as that was useless clutter that made the galaxy map harder to read and which most people didn't notice anyway.

Flares are now shown on top of player ships, rather than under them. This is a longstanding request from players who found them too hard to see when under ships.

A new and better-looking game HUD visual style is now in place. This new visual style is also intended to improve readability while also increasing performance.

The Unit Relative strengths is no longer compiled into the game itself, but is now in a UnitRelative.dat file that is in the RuntimeData folder. This lets players update the relativestrengths file if they are so inclined (sometimes it takes us a while to do it).

The GUI for the game no longer uses bordered text -- this both aids in readability for some players, as well as improving performance, and with the higher-contrast window backgrounds this is more readable than ever.

(note: the above changes reflect our work-in-progress build that has not yet been released)

@@ Line 14: / Line 14: @@
 *** Also, if one player has a slightly underpowered machine during a network game, it is less likely to slow down the simulation for the other players, which is also excellent.
-* The keyboard bindings are now able to be edited.
+* The keyboard bindings are now able to be edited.  The editing interface is on the settings menu, and the bindings themselves are stored in inputbindings.dat, separate from all other settings for ease of sharing, etc.
 * In-game textures are now streamed into the game in a queue, rather than loaded-all-at-once when first encountered.  This avoids choppiness and momentary lag when loading savegames and similar.  This does cause images to be invisible and then pop-in during that same time, but that's much preferable in the main.