Happy New Year! Backer Surveys for AI War 2 are arriving today. :)
almost 8 years ago – Wed, Jan 04, 2017 at 10:32:05 PM

Chris here!  There are a few key pieces of information right up here at the top of this post, and then the rest is in more of an FAQ format that you can read as-needed.

Most Important: Surveys from BackerKit are coming today

You'll be getting an email from BackerKit, which if you're not familiar with them is a very common fulfillment-management tool that a lot of creators use in tandem with Kickstarter.

Please do answer that as soon as you can, and we can start getting your backer rewards to you asap after that point, depending on your tier level.  The questions in this survey are short and easy, and the whole thing will likely take you 2-5 minutes if you're really slow about it. ;)

What this survey does is let us get you properly situated so that we can start sending you game keys through backerkit, and so that we can directly email you any followup surveys we have IF you're in a creative reward tier where there's going to be that sort of questions (aka "what would you like to name your planet?" and so on).

Now that that's out of the way: Thank you!

Thank you for your incredible support during this kickstarter!

Now it's our turn to start making good on all the things we've talked about.  We're all extremely excited about it, and have been working quietly on it in bits during these weeks.  It's mostly a lot of fairly boring stuff for most people (that we find fun), but if you're interested in following along with the minutiae of what we're doing, the forums for the game are by far the best place.

Kickstarter Update Schedule

We'll do progress roundups here at minimum once or twice a month, but there's a limit to how frequently we want to bother folks via official updates.  We'll try to find a happy medium ground -- but if you want to control the flow of the information firehose yourself, visiting the forums is the best way to do that.

All that said, if you have specific ways you'd prefer to see more frequent updates, we're always open to ideas.  We're trying to hit a nice balance between not disappearing from public view (comments section and forums aside) and not cluttering up your inbox constantly if you're just waiting for the final product to release.

Pre-Orders/Late Backing

As you may have noticed at the top of the kickstarter page where there used to be a "Back This Project" button, there's a button that takes you to the BackerKit Preorder Store.  Here are some of what are likely to be the most common questions with that:

• If you were not already a kickstarter backer and you back the project via backerkit, you get exactly what it says there and nothing more (credit in the game aside).
• That means the various kickstarter incentives like copies of our other games, or the soundtrack, Stars Beyond Reach, etc, are not implicitly included in the pre-order store orders.
• Additionally, while we ARE still making progress toward more stretch goals during the pre-Early-Access period (more on that in a bit), each particular preorder-store item notes a specific percentage of its total that will be applied to the stretch goal progress.  In some cases it's 100%, in other rare cases it's as low as 10%.

The reasoning for the above things is that with the kickstarter itself we had a specific budget and were able to design out reward fulfillment and tiers to go along with that budget.  

With the backerkit preorders it is an entirely different structure and we have no idea what to expect, and so the budget for fulfillment of particular things purchased is built into the things that are purchased.  Whatever isn't going directly toward the cost of fulfillment of that item is instead applied toward the next stretch goal, whatever that is (right now the next stretch goal is solar systems, but if we hit that we'll add more).

TLDR: The BackerKit Preorders And Kickstarter Tiers Are Two Very Different Things

If it doesn't say something is the case (you get x item) on the backerkit side, then please don't assume that you do get it because of something on the kickstarter side.  When in doubt just ask, but in general they are two separate things.

How Long Will The BackerKit Preorder Page Be Around?

The BackerKit preorder page will likely stay live until we hit the first public Early Access release for the game in late May.  At that point, with the game being sold through Steam and Humble and hopefully some other locations as well, we'll discontinue the BackerKit page.  That will also mark the end of all of the "pre-funding" period of the game, and thus cap off whatever stretch goals there are.

Add-Ons For Kickstarter Backers!

There are some add-ons that we announced during the campaign itself, but we actually figured out a way to be a lot more inclusive with those instead and are now offering far more.  Basically anything you see in the backerkit preorder page is something that you can have as an addon to your kickstarter pledge.  You'll have that in addition to whatever you already selected during kickstarter.

Notes!

• In some cases an addon item may seem to be missing, but that's probably because you already have it from your core tier.  If you backed at $44 or up you already have the soundtrack, for instance, so it's not going to show you the soundtrack option in your add-ons list.
• There is a mild price discrepancy with one particular add-on (Personable AI) and kickstarter tier (same name) compared to everything else, because we underpriced that item.  That means you can get into some odd situations when that item is involved where it's cheaper to buy it one way than another.  Huge apologies for that, but we have it set up the best we can without breaking our word on any prior promises -- the link explains more.

Changing Tiers/Rewards For Kickstarter Backers!

To a limited extent, backerkit will let you increase or decrease your pledge level compared to what it was on kickstarter.  If you decrease your core pledge level, then you'll have extra funds that you already paid (via kickstarter) that you can apply toward different backerkit addons if you prefer.

Example:

• Let's say you have the Personable AI tier reward ($100) from kickstarter.
• For whatever reason, you decide you'd rather reduce your reward tier to just the standard Alpha Backer ($50).
• You now have $50 of credit on BackerKit that you can apply toward whatever.
• You could apply that toward the purchase of the Flagship Designer add-on (lowering the effective cost of that from $280 to $230 for you).
• Or you could use that to get 3 extra copies of the game at launch (exactly $50 cost).

An example going the other direction:

• Let's again say you have the Personable AI tier reward ($100) from kickstarter.
• You could just do a straight upgrade of that in backerkit to Star Reacher ($260 normally, so an added $160 for you), and nab all the new rewards from that (including Stars Beyond Reach).

Or, frankly, in most cases I imagine you'll just stick exactly where you're at!  But if you want to add funds, or reallocate funds you already spent, you can do so.  

The cutoff date for these changes is Valentine's Day this year (February 14th, 2017).

Ongoing Stretch Goal Progress!

This is what we're working on right now:

Where can you see what our progress is toward this goal?  Weelll... that's hard, even though it feels like it shouldn't be.  

• The big number at the top of the kickstarter page is $97,205, but that's not the whole picture because it misses the paypal pledges.
• The preorder page on backer kit shows (as of this moment) $802.00 raised in backerkit, but that also doesn't include the paypal pledges.  It also doesn't include any fulfillment cost removals from that number (though at the moment I think it's 100% to the stretch goals).
• The paypal total is $443 as of this particular moment, but that changes on an ongoing basis, too.

So overall the total stretch goal progress right now is somewhere about $98,500, but there's no central place for us to show you that... yet.

What we're going to do is set up some spreadsheets that auto-calculate this stuff for us based off of exports from kickstarter and backerkit, and then we'll periodically update "the big progress number" somewhere TBD that is appropriately visible.

Why Are Add-Ons And Pre-Order Store Items More À la carte Than The Kickstarter Was?

Simple answer: 

We've tied fulfillment costs directly to the items being purchased.  So we never wind up hosing ourselves (or the project) with fulfillment costs that we don't have funds to cover.

Longer answer:

The Kickstarter and Backerkit processes have two very different goals.

• With Kickstarter, the chief concern was "let's make AI War 2 at all."  Then, once that was assured, "let's make AI War 2 bigger without overextending ourselves."
• With Backerkit, the sole concern from a project standpoint is "let's make AI War 2 bigger without overextending ourselves." (The secondary concern being, of course, "let's let people who missed the Kickstarter still get in on it before we hit Early Access.")

Backing up and looking at the budget during kickstarter:

During the kickstarter we had to plan in various buffers into our budget for things like failed pledges, fees, as well as an uncertain degree of fulfillment costs.  That gets rather fuzzy rather fast, though, because you can over-budget by quite a bit to be safe, and thus not reach your goals, or you can under-budget and find yourself in a pile of trouble later on (which happens to a lot of developers).

With the kickstarter, we actually hit it pretty close to dead on, based on luck and lots of prep reading.  After dropped pledges, kickstarter fees, backerkit fees, and payment processor fees, and adding in paypal pledges, we wound up with a total of $87,049.48, aka 89.14% of the $97,648.00 raised through those platforms.

We had conservatively been estimating 15% losses (which we knew was high), and so the actual losses of 10.86% gave us some nice buffer.  Specifically $6,847.01, which we are currently sitting on as unallocated buffer.  That money will be used for AI War 2 in some fashion, but we're not yet sure how.  Either it will go toward extra polish time, minor extra features for 1.0, or (least-excitingly) backer reward fulfillment overages or other speedbumps. 

In the ideal case we don't have to dip into that at all until we get close to 1.0, and then we use it for just generally improving the game for everyone in some manner that is TBD.  Until then it's a safety net.

Now looking at how backerkit impacts that budget:

• Backerkit gives the game a new source of pre-Early-Access funding -- yay!  This is something we're very excited to be able to put toward the stretch goals.
• However, to a hugely varying degree, those backerkit add-ons have associated fulfillment costs with them.
• We could have chosen to just not offer the high-fulfillment-cost line items, but then that would be a real disappointment I think.  For instance, the ability to have a custom music track by Pablo that gets added to the soundtrack for everyone is pretty freaking epic; it was something we couldn't offer in the base kickstarter this time because it was too big of a wildcard in fulfillment cost.
• That wildcard nature of fulfillment costs makes any meaningful budget planning for backerkit funds impossible, because we don't know what people will choose to buy, if anything.
• The simplest safe way to handle that would be to just say "stretch goals are over," but that would be a big disappointment to us (we want to see the game grow!) as well as folks here, I know.
• Our middle-ground way is just as safe, but as you note from above it's not simple to calculate without us dumping the data into excel periodically.  Basically where each add-on/pre-order item has its fulfillment cost tied directly to it, and thus contributes to the stretch goals to a varying degree.
• This also answers the question of "why can we do things in an À la carte fashion now."

TLDR on the whole À la carte Thing

Basically the budget and cost structures on kickstarter and backerkit are entirely different, and we tried to match our offerings as best to each platform and our goals with that platform as possible.

In some cases that may wind up with some edge cases where "thing x is a better deal if you do this this and this" either during the kickstarter or backerkit periods.  If any of those cause anyone frustration, we sincerely apologize for that, but hopefully it will be reasonably smooth sailing.

Overall we've done our best to try and please all of the people all the time, which as we know is impossible to do.  I'm already braced for someone being upset about something, and the worst part is I'm sure it will be a completely rational grievance, but hopefully the above longwinded explanation shows how and why we've laid things out this way.

Ultimately we've learned a lot about running kickstarters since doing this one, and we'd probably do a few things a bit differently if we did it again.  I'm not sure precisely what we'd do differently at the moment, but there are some tweaks that we'd make in order to further reduce the discrepancy between the kickstarter fundraising period and the backerkit fundraising period.

When Do Stretch Goals Stop?

So here's the calendar of events:

• Today: BackerKit surveys go out.
• Between now and February 14th: you folks get said surveys back to us, and we get you the earliest rewards asap after you do.
• Sometime in February: if you backed at an alpha tier ($44 early bird) or higher, you'll get your game key for AI War 2 itself.  Same if you pre-order the alpha add-on.
• From now until late May: funds raised from backerkit and paypal will be applied to the stretch goals based on the percentages stated on each item (see above for explanation).  Let's see if we can get solar systems!
• Very Late May: The game will arrive on Early Access for anyone to purchase on Steam and Humble for $30, and the Early Access backers ($26 Early Bird and up) will get their keys at this time.  Also at this time the backerkit store and the paypal store will be taken down, and the pre-release funding period (and progress toward stretch goals) will be officially over.
• From June Through October: The game will be selling in Early Access for $30 during this time, and the funds raised from this will not be applied to stretch goals.  I've put in a few tens of thousands of dollars into AI War 2 already, and will put in probably at least another $10k between now and 1.0 launch, so this EA period may help recoup some of that, or at least offset it.  If it sells like hotcakes and we have just piles of money sitting around (haha) then we'll have to figure out how to deal with that, but that's an unlikely problem for a future date.
• Sometime in October: At this point the game will hit 1.0 / launch status, and leave Early Access.  Its price will drop to $20 at this time, and all of the people who backed at a launch tier ($16 early bird) will get their keys at this time.
• After that: We'll have post-release support of course, but then as far as large stretch-goal-style additions go, we'll have to see how we go about funding those sorts of things.  In the past we did it with paid DLC expansions for AI War Classic, and we may do that again.  We may return to kickstarter for those.  Right now there are too many unknowns, but we do plan on making the game much bigger via whatever the best means are when we get there.

TLDR: The current style of stretch goal funding ends in late May, when the game enters public Early Access.

Other Questions?

We have a subforum about kickstarter reward questions, which may already answer your question or which we're happy to answer questions in.  But you can also post comments here, or message us, or email us, or whatever you need to do.

Thank you so much for your ongoing support!

Chris

AI War 2 is a GO! Thank you! Here's what happens next.
about 8 years ago – Mon, Dec 19, 2016 at 06:34:13 PM

Chris here!  On behalf of Keith and the rest of us: you folks seriously rock.  We're grateful for all the support you've shown us and this project, which has really brightened the end of a hard year.

Now for some housekeeping and general timeline information.  This is a long post broken into sections, so feel free to skip around if you don't care about the minutiae of the release schedule.  Some bits are more relevant for some backers than others.

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What Happens Next?

Right Now: Two Quiet Weeks

First, there's a two-week period where kickstarter collects funds and makes sure that any failed pledges get resolved if they can be.  This lasts until the very start of January, at which time they'll release funds to us.

This actually works out really well, because it's right over the Christmas and New Years holiday weeks.  We'd normally be quiet during that period anyhow, spending time with our friends and families, and I imagine a fair number of you will be doing the same.

During this time we'll mostly be interacting with you either in the comments section here, or on our forums for the game -- which we encourage you to join!  Updates-wise it will be pretty quiet, but we'll still be around and you can talk to us as easily as ever.

January 2017: BackerKit Surveys

BackerKit is basically a symbiotic logistics platform that works with Kickstarter to make Keith's and my lives way easier.  It does all the organization that we'd otherwise have to do in spreadsheets, and will save us literally days (if not weeks) of time in getting keys and other backer rewards to you.

For a lot of the higher pledge tiers there are extra things that we need to ask you, because there was something creative that you get to design.  So there will be questions about those bits when relevant, and we'll get the process started with each of those.

These surveys can't go out until the funds close from kickstarter, since we won't be 100% certain who has a failed pledge until then.  But I'm working on the survey design this week (and started it last week).

I'll give you a heads up prior to these going out so that you know to expect them, but they should arrive in the first or second week of January.

Boring but important details:

• You will not need to create a BackerKit account to answer your survey.
• The invitation email will contain a link to your personal survey. It is important to submit your responses as quickly as you reasonably can since we need this information to process your rewards.
• If you need to change your survey responses, or add or remove add-ons, you can click on the link in your survey email again or request your survey link under "Lost your survey?" on our BackerKit project page. (This page will only start working after we send the surveys out.)
• You can just message/email us and give us your information... but answering your survey will help us get your rewards out to you quicker and let us spend more time making the game (hint, hint).
• If you used Facebook to log into your Kickstarter account, the BackerKit survey link will be sent to the email you used for your Facebook account. If you have another email address that you'd prefer to use, please message us.

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February 2017: Alpha Keys Get Sent Out

We don't have exact dates on this set up yet, but basically if you backed at a tier that gets you alpha access (or add that as an add-on on backerkit later), then you'll be getting a Steam key for the game during February.

That key will remain live permanently, but the game itself won't be purchase-able on the storefront at that point.

Leading Up To Late May 2017: Alpha Period

During this alpha period the game is in no way feature complete, it will have all sorts of bugs and in-progress bits, and so forth.

• Some folks backed at an alpha level just to give us more financial support, and probably don't intend to actually play during the alpha period.  That's fine!  Your key won't expire if you hang onto it, or you can go ahead and register the key with Steam and not play it until Early Access or later.
• For a lot of the others who backed at this level, we know you're looking to get in "earlier than early" to start giving us feedback things as they are going through their embryonic stages and taking form.  So that process starts in February, essentially.  It's an exceedingly incomplete product during this time, but you can help us refine individual pieces with your feedback, and our design document lays out exactly where we're headed.

During this period we'll have updates to the Steam version of the game that range from a few times of day at one extreme to once a week on the other extreme.  Most of the time it's every few days, as you know if you've followed any of our past titles in similar time periods.

May 2017: Early Access Keys Go Out

At this point, the core of the game is feature-complete.  Every last feature from stretch goals in particular won't be in at this time, but the game is playable from end-to-end and hopefully has a lot of things polished up from the alpha backers' commentary.  I expect lots of open tickets still in our bug tracker at that point, though, and that's fine.

This is the time that the game will also appear for public sale on Steam and Humble, for $30 at that time.  So we should be getting a much wider array of feedback from then on.

Leading Up To October 2017: Early Access (Beta) Period

Then it's a matter of finishing the last features, having a ton of polish work, lots of testing, and so on.  A lot of the creative collaborative bits with other high-tier backers will happen during this time period.

October 2017: 1.0 Launch Keys Go Out!

The price for the game will drop to $20, and the game leaves Early Access at this time. This is also when the keys for all the launch backers go out.

If you like what you see during Early Access so much that you just can't wait until this point, then there should be a way for you to upgrade your pledge on BackerKit without you having to buy a whole second copy of the game or something.  We'll take care of you!

November 2017 and onward: Post-1.0

What exactly happens here is hard to predict at this point, but we know we'll still be at it in some fashion.  

Some of the highest-tier creative rewards will likely be fulfilled in this period, so that those folks can see the full initial game release as they choose what they want to add with their creative tier bit.

We'll also be into general post-release support, of course.  And hopefully we'll be expanding this further with some post-1.0 stretch goals that we can still reach via BackerKit.  

We may then look to further crowdfunding or DLC to start adding massive expansions to the game, or who knows.  It's pretty early to say on that at this point, and we'll be consulting with players heavily on that.  We want to do something that makes the most sense for everyone, and that people are happy with.  Our focus right now is on 1.0, so we'll revisit this question late next year.

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Who's Working On This, And When?

This is a recap of things that we stated in the main kickstarter page, the FAQ, the Risks and Challenges section, and in comments and updates in response to various backer questions.  So hopefully you already know this, but it's worth reiterating here just so that there are no surprises down the line.

Keith LaMothe is the lead designer and lead programmer, and you're going to be hearing from him a whole lot more than me during this whole process.  You're in super good hands with him, as you probably know by now if you've been reading his updates.

Chris Park (that's me).  I'm acting as the producer on this one, and doing various front-end programming and graphical work.  I will not be working on this project on a daily basis for nearly so long as Keith.  That was never built into the funding, isn't needed, and won't be affecting anything on the timetable negatively.  Keith is your man: you don't want or need two cooks in the kitchen.

For my own part, I'll be doing my AI War 2 work to support Keith, and then with the rest of my time I'll have to do something else.  As strange as it may sound, I'm actually going to be working on VR titles supporting both the Rift and Vive.  That's a whole other story, though -- but when you see that happening, please don't be surprised.

As stated repeatedly on this campaign, there will be no mixing of funds, no usage of AI War 2 funds for anything unrelated to it, and so on.  We've done simultaneous projects at multiple points in our 7 year history as a company, and it's worked out really well for us.  Any questions on this, we're always happy to answer them.  Some other developers have done some seriously shady stuff in this area, and we want to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.

Daniette "Blue" Mann is our art director, and is doing most of the art for the game.  Things like the special effects are not her, and I'm doing most of the animating this time (not that she can't do it, but the division works well), and I'm doing a few things like normal maps and the shader code and tuning and lighting and post-processing effects, etc.

But when it comes to ship and icon modeling, texture work, GUI art, and so on, that's all Blue.  The actual GUI design itself is a tag-team effort between her, myself, and Keith.  Balancing attractiveness, readability, organization, and functionality with each of us representing different aspects of that.  And actually players representing a pretty fair stake in that, too, particularly during the alpha period.

She also won't be needed on AI War 2 nearly as long as Keith, but she will be involved on it for longer stretches than me.  There's a lot of modeling and texturing to do!  Some of the higher backer tier folks will be working with her at various points to do custom Ark variants and things like that, too.

Pablo Vega returns as composer thanks to our first stretch goal being hit, and his wife Hunter is already featured in the vocals of at least one track (that one was originally for Stars Beyond Reach).  His involvement is as a contractor for a very specific set of work, and so he'll be around to do that work and then will focus on other things.

Dave "Dio" Sperandio has been doing the mastering for a lot of our music during the last year or so, and boy does he bring out the best in Pablo's music.  He'll be involved in the briefest way of all of us, but will basically crank up the quality of Pablo's music to 11.  He does the same for Pentatonix and Lindsey Sterling, so he's, uh... quite good. ;)

Erik Johnson handles PR, marketing, press, and a lot of general business development work for Arcen, and he's going to be doing the same here (and already has been).  He's consistently invaluable, and frees up a lot of time for Keith and I as well as opening doors and increasing visibility in general.

His amount of day to day involvement fluctuates heavily based on what is going on with the project at the time.  For the next while he gets a breather, after a hard couple of months of kickstarter work. :)

"Cinth" has worked with us as a contractor on a variety of projects, most notably Starward Rogue and In Case of Emergency, Release Raptor.  He has a variety of talents ranging from balance work and unit design to "technical art" skills such as taking models from Blue and making sure that they have the lowest possible poly counts (Maya does strange things sometimes that he's then able to straighten out with tools in Unity or by hand).

A lot of the model optimization is going to fall to him, which saves Blue and I a ton of time.  We'll still be using LODs and all that jazz, but making sure that all of it is as efficient as possible is one of the things he's able to focus on.  And then beyond that he's able to save Keith a fair bit of time with help on numbers-crunching for balance work, and organizing/collating feedback on that sort of thing from forum-folk.  He does the odd bit of coding now and then, too.

Ben Mcauley is the main voice actor that we'll be working with, although we may expand the roster some.  I may do a bit myself, we'll see -- I've had some success with that in the past with voice modifiers on to be an evil presence.  Ben can be heard throughout In Case of Emergency, Release Raptor as a variety of robots, and he's also the voiceover in the original kickstarter's trailer.  (Reminder: that trailer talks about things from the first kickstarter, NOT this one -- things like solar systems, tech upgrades, etc, are not here... yet!)

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When Can You Expect To See Progress Updates?

During these next two weeks it will probably be pretty quiet, but we're happy to answer questions on the forums or in the comments.

After we hit January and are past the holiday period, we'll keep doing updates that explain some features and what we are up to.  Not the epic written updates that Keith was doing during the campaign (those took a lot of time for him to write!), but we'll do random showcases of things in video and written form.

With a few exceptions to that. :)  Keith is planning to continue the AI series, maybe one post every two weeks, until he's covered everything from the overview post.

After we hit alpha, then we'll be posting incredi-detailed release notes with every build.  Those get overwhelming fast if you're not following along with each one, so we'll be posting roundup summaries every couple of weeks or whatever people most prefer.  I'll pepper in some videos there, too.

There won't be any shortage of you being able to find out what is going on -- instead it really depends how far down that rabbit hole you want to go. ;)

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Now Back To Work!

We've made some good progress on the game during this kickstarter, but overall our progress has been slow because of having so much kickstarter-related work to do.  Now we actually get to go back to Making The Game, which is our favorite part.  (It's kinda why we're here.)

Thank you again everybody SO much.  It means a ton to all of us.

Best,

Chris

Interplanetary Weapons: Who Needs Engines When You've Got Guns?
about 8 years ago – Sat, Dec 17, 2016 at 09:09:34 PM

Keith here.

Wow! You hit the Nemesis goal!

(ominous hum as all the reactors in a moon-sized machine start spinning up)

... What have we done?

Thanks again for all the support, it's a great encouragement. Now hopefully we can survive the result.

Maybe some of those ancient Galactic Artillery Batteries over there will give us a chance.

What's that? Arms race? Me? Never.

No Gun Is Too Large

Short story: a long time ago other races built big guns. They broke. You find big guns. You fix them. Enemy mad. You fire them. No good. You sad. Then you try aiming first. You fire again. Enemy really mad, but broke now. You smile.

Long story:

For some reason, when galactic empires build enormous weapons of unprecedented power they do a terrible job of cleaning up after themselves and putting the sharp things where younger empires can't reach them. So, among the other derelicts you're finding here and there throughout the galaxy (some small old reactors, some large old fortresses, etc), you'll find a few ridiculously big guns. No engines, either. Didn't need 'em. To re-aim the weapon, the gunners got out and pushed (ok, not really, they have some maneuvering thrusters).

(note: you choose to enable or disable these pre-game, since they're superweapons)

Now, the AI isn't stupid, so it isn't going to let you just waltz in and take control of these weapons. On the other hand it apparently has plans for the weapons itself, since it hasn't tried to destroy them. Galactic overlords often have such difficult dilemmas. Nonetheless, expect these to be well guarded.

Furthermore, they're broken. They broke one day after their warranty expired and that was a long time ago. Repairing one is going to take a lot of resources.

Did I mention the AI won't like it when you start repairing one? Yea. It really won't like that. Expect visitors.

To further complicate matters: the weapon itself will take so much power to operate that you won't be able to keep it armed and also have much in the way of static defense in the same system. You can turn it off and fortify, but when you turn it back on it has to go through the full reloading process again.

But what if you do find one, and you do capture it, and you do repair it, and you do power it up, and you do keep the AI from killing it (or you) long enough to do all those things?

Then it's time to get the party started.

The Sky. It's Burning.

Precisely what will happen then depends on the specific weapon. In all cases you select the weapon and push a button to enter targeting mode, which takes you to the galactic map.

The Very Large Ion Cannon Array - An artillery weapon. You pick an angle to fire at. After a delay based on galactic distance, each of the systems along that line will suffer about thirty seconds of bombardment by large ionized plasma bolts (the closer a system is to the Array, the denser the bombardment). Any smaller ships hit by one of those bolts will probably be vaporized or at least severely damaged. Anything that survives will wish it had not, will be completely disabled for some time, and then will have to rebuild their engines practically from scratch in order to actually move at a decent speed again.

The Pulsar Device - A wide cone disabling weapon. You pick an angle to fire a cone-shaped blast. All units in all systems within that cone will suffer EMP damage and be temporarily disabled. Systems closer to the Device, and systems closer to the center of the cone, will experience greater effect.

The Interplanetary Assault Cannon - A ship catapult. You pick a single system within range. After a delay based on galactic distance, swarms and swarms of explosive rockets pepper the entire system and damage anything they hit. Then swarms and swarms of drone-pods hit the system and deploy tons of drone fighters, bombers, etc. You can't directly control those, and they run out of fuel and self-destruct after a short time, but they can really wreak some havoc.

The Galactic Mass Driver - A bouncing planet wrecking death shot. You pick an angle to fire at. A large projectile is fired from the Driver's system and travels across the map. If it strikes a planet, everything on the planet takes damage from a large explosion (the closer to the planet, the greater the damage). If the projectile still has enough momentum (that is, if the projectile didn't have to travel too far) it will wreck the planet itself and most/all of the resources on it, and then ricochet away on a trajectory based on the angle at which it hit the planet. The explosion will renew the projectile's momentum, so in theory it can chain-hit. In practice, why would you do that? Oh, nevermind, I forgot who I was talking to.

The Photon Lance - A penetrating beam weapon. Emphasis on the definite article. You pick an angle to fire at. An immense beam sweeps across each of the systems on that line, doing heavy damage to anything it touches (more damage in systems closer to the Lance). Units that survive will protect the targets behind them, but the beam will punch through anything else.

But The Physics! They're Weeping!

Yes, I know all of the above examples are flatly ludicrous. I thought it best to not even try to explain how they don't totally violate physics. But they're fun! So I suggest learning to stop worrying and love the bomb. I'm aiming to have them fit within the same suspension of disbelief as the rest of the game, though.

The Future

But what if we annihilate this goal too? Then it's time for Solar Systems, which we can implement at the $112,500 mark ($15k for the goal itself). Why leave the stars in the background, when we can make them part of the war?

(Sees you looking at the stars, and then at the Galactic Artillery Batteries, and then back at the stars)

I should've known...

From the new stretch goal description below:

You'll be able to generate galaxies with whole interrelated solar systems instead of individual planets. The stars themselves will be special locations with different rules, resources, and challenges. Surgeon General's Warning: do NOT annoy the Sun.

Onward! And thanks again, very much.

Final Kickstarter Video Dev Diary -- and music track!
about 8 years ago – Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 10:56:56 PM

Chris here -- our kickstarter is in its last 3 days!  Hard to believe, on this end. :)  We've been working on pretty much nothing but AI War 2 kickstarter-prep and prototyping and so on since early September.  That's... intense.

I'm really glad to be moving into a period where Keith and I can just chat with you daily and show you things that are in progress on the forums, and in something like weekly or biweekly roundups for kickstarter updates.

At any rate, this is the last video I'm doing prior to the end of the kickstarter, but this is by no means the last video for AI War 2!  We're just getting started. :)  I won't be doing them weekly anymore, but I will have more to show in each video, partly because of that.

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Music: For The Fallen

If you don't want to hear me blather on about technical bits and showing off visual details, that's fine.  No offense taken here!  But you owe it to yourself to check out this part of the video, which features the music track "For The Fallen."  Music and lyrics by Pablo Vega, and lead vocals by his wife Hunter.

There was the wee smallest tease of part of that track in the video I did for promoting our first kickstarter. Somebody asked me about that bit of song, so I figured I'd put the whole thing in here for this final video! It's probably my favorite track of theirs, and almost nobody has heard it in the last year since it was completed, which is practically criminal.

Galaxy Map!

I'm really glad that folks enjoyed the last two videos (one, two), both of which were focused on combat. This video does show off a tiny bit of combat (a bit has changed, though not much), but the main focus here is on other visual changes we've made... and the galaxy map!

This is the first time that we've shown an actual view of the galaxy map (prototypes aside) in AI War 2. The first kickstarter showed some views that included what solar systems would look like in theory, but this one brings us back to a more AI War Classic style of galaxy map... but on steroids, in essence.

It's barebones in terms of the interface part of it right now, but it's gorgeous in terms of how it actually shows all the planets in their full glory. 

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Art Updates!

Blue (Daniette Mann) has also been hard at work on the Light Capital Ship and Space Dock models, among others, and I show those off. I've made some improvements to my shaders to help accentuate her models better, and we've both made some improvements to our illumination maps for the models, and I've made some other post-processing shifts that help improve things. 

Youtube fuzzes out some of the really fine details, but if you watch it in full HD you can see some of them. Either way, fine details or no, it's looking pretty awesome.  I redid the wormhole effects, too, which were bugging the heck out of me.

This is the new space dock:

And this is the new space dock sitting next to one of the old temp-style buildings.  What a difference!

Here are a couple of views of the new light capital ship:

Below is the ship from the first game that the light capital ship is based on (it was the light starship, back then):

That itself was originally a sprite from Tyrian, which the ever-awesome Daniel Cook released the art from as free assets, and which AI War Classic made heavy use of before I had literally any budget on that project. Some of his free art wound up staying around permanently in Classic, because we all liked it and got used to it.  Now we've been remodeling it with our own flair in AI War 2, where relevant. :)

And then the old wormhole design of mine from AI War 2 as recently as last video (I cringe at it):

Versus the updated one you can see in motion in this video(it looks even better in motion):

Though do be careful with that one, it appears to lead to the Sudan somehow.

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That's All For Today!

I just want to say thank you one last time to all our backers. We're really excited to bring this the rest of the way to life with you!  Monday at 10am EST is the official end of the kickstarter, and then we'll start updating you on what steps come next.

VERY next for us at Arcen is mostly going to be some time off with family for the holidays.  From the 23rd through the 1st we'll be closed (we do that every year), so things will be pretty quiet.  Right around the time we get back the kickstarter money will be finishing its collection/escrow period, and we start kicking things into gear to make sure those alpha backers get their early copies in February as early as possible.

If you're a launch or early access backer, there's always time to up your pledge and get the game earlier... ;)

Again: thanks to all of you from all of us here.  It's been a rough 2016, but 2017 looks like it's going to be awesome.

Best,

Chris

The Nemesis: Doom Doom Doooooom...
about 8 years ago – Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 09:40:46 PM

Keith here.

Woo! You have reached the Spire stretch goal! Thank you!

Our current kickstarter projection monkey says that we are {tomato sauce}% likely to make the next stretch goal with a margin of error of 3 grapefruits. (Keith’s note: find new projection monkey).

If we do, well… Let’s let an old friend tell us what will happen...

(this is a picture of the Devourer Golem from AIW Classic)

Devourer here.

So. Looks like the Spire will be crashing the neighborhood again, and I've got you to thank for it.

(munch, munch, munch. Bits of planetoid-sized chocolate chip cookies are flying everywhere)

Oh well, we mostly leave each other alone nowadays. Though I still eat the small ones. I love spicey rock candy. But Dreadnoughts give me horrid indigestion.

(note from Keith: Again, thank you so much for reaching the Spire goal!)

That's not why I'm here.

I’m here because I was promised popcorn for services rendered…  (takes offered bag of mixed celestial bodies with Ark ships seasoning bits) 

Warning: Devious Enemy Approaching

Actually, I'm here to warn you. If you reach the next stretch goal it's all gonna hit the fan, because the programmer wants to bring my cousin into this.

How does a golem have a cousin? Don't worry about it. I'm not even really a golem like the oth- oh, nevermind. Just trust me, I know this guy. You don't want to mess with him. All the other World Eaters made fun of him on the playground. They're not around anymore. Neither is the playground.

I know you always include me in your games, so you know I'm pretty laid back as cosmic menaces go. If your fleet gets in my way, I eat it. But I eat at least as many AI ships, and occasionally I bail you out by wandering into the middle of a big CPA (Cross Planet Attack) or exo or whatever. Fun times.

Not the Nemesis. Oh no. He doesn't wander. He also holds a grudge. And you just happen to have antagonized him, perhaps because you keep playing that new fangled rock music too loudly in the same universe.

He'll find out where you live and he is going to come for you. This isn’t a casual meandering into your neighborhood sorta coming for you either. This is a he knows your address, your favorite color, and that you keep your wallet under your mattress. He's going to come up with a plan to turn you into an asteroid belt. And he’s going to commit to this plan. Best case scenario is that he happens to miscalculate and you manage to destroy him. You could even do so well that he ends up just a whisp of space dust.

But it isn’t enough.

Did I mention he can regenerate from space dust and that self-immolation is an acceptable result of the first phase of a plan?

Now you might say, “Sure, AI will also suffer his wrath and get in his way, so it isn’t that bad.” Well, bad news, he vacuums up AI ships, sure. But he then redeploys them to fight you, or renders them down to their component atoms and rebuilds them into nasty modules or structures. So anything he consumes will end up arrayed against you.

Let's face it: to the AI you're not a big deal. It'll come after you if you're fool enough to draw attention, but you can get away with a lot if you're careful. But that doesn't work on my cousin.

You have made him mad.

It’s personal.

And if you include him in your game (why would you do that, anyway?) you'll be the only thing on his menu.

How bad can it be you ask? Oh, let me tell you...

There was this one time in a game... we called the player "Mr. Turret's Syndrome" (we're not very mature) because he had ALL the turrets. At least, all the ones he could power. We had to hand it to him, the AI couldn't get through at all. But with all those turrets he couldn't power much of a tachyon (anti-cloaking) grid. So my cousin, he rips off his guns and installs a bunch of super-cloaking modules, then grabs all the cloaking AI ships he can find (and a few strays from the human fleet too). After a while, he sends a bunch of other ships to clog the human chokepoint, and then heads in with his cloakers. He lost some to detection, but made it through to the next wormhole and snuck into the player's backfield.

Eventually the guy figured out what was going on and set up a big tachyon field on the planet where he was hiding his Ark. And then he turned on the tachyons. And there they were, the Eyebots. From wormhole to wormhole, the entire gravwell was filled with Eyebots. I think he just turned the tachyons back off and shut his eyes.

Oh man, we still laugh about that one. Last year we sent the guy a postcard with a bunch of Eyebots on it.

Then there was this game against the guy who really knew blitzkrieg. He wasn't all that well defended, but he sunk a ton of science into a huge fleet, and the way things were going it didn't look like the game was going to last long enough for the AI to capitalize on that. So my cousin grabs a bunch of ships off some backwater AI planets, and waits for the human fleet to attack again and get entangled in the special forces. Then he melts his ships down into metal, crashes the battle, plants a bunch of grav turrets along the human path of retreat, and proceeds to vacuum up most of the human fleet (and the special forces, too).

He then dumped his appropriated fleets into human territory, and that probably would have been the game. But I happened to fly through and eat it all. The poor human player didn't know what to think.

And then there was this game where I thought he was stumped. The player had this huge defense-in-depth thing going and it didn't matter if you steamrolled a few planets, you still weren't getting through to anything important. He coordinated with CPAs, he planted threat-producing factories on the unclaimed planets left behind, he tried different ship mixes, etc. He even tried the cloaking thing again but one of the defense layers had enough tachyons to light him up like a Christmas tree.

So he gathers a whole ton of ships (the special forces fortresses were pretty empty at the end, I'll just say) and waits for the next big CPA. With some encouragement, it punched several layers deep. Then, while the human was still cleaning up the attack at the backstop layer, my cousin melts down a huge pile of ships into a MkII nuclear bomb, and sails straight into that main defensive planet.

He didn't even wait to be fired upon, he just pushed the button. That planet, all its immediate neighbors, and all their resources and defenders, were wiped out in a moment.

He might have been able to fly away from a MkII detonation, too, but point-blank was too much. It took him a long time to re-form. But the next CPA found a huge, unrepairable gap in the human defenses.

And then there was this time...

(several hours later)

... You don't look dissuaded. I keep forgetting that you like absurdly chaotic ways of dying in a galactic fire. Oh well, gotta go then. People to see, places to eat.

So long, and thanks for all the ships.

Nuts and Bolts

Keith here (again). So, what does it all mean?

Short story: in the pre-game setup you check the box named Nemesis and in-game there'll be this sort of small-moon thing that prowls around the galaxy rallying AI ships against you, ambushing your attack fleets, countering your stonewall tactics, picking off your planets, and looking for an opening to end you.

Longer story:

• The Nemesis will be a completely independent, self-guided, and somewhat self-aware entity that wants you in its trophy case.
• It will be defined in the engine, in external C# code, and in XML entries.
• The game engine will contain the basic actions and mechanisms that the Nemesis will have access to. This will include logic for: custom galaxy-map-routing, modular armament, absorbing AI ships (and yours that it kills), redeploying ships, building stuff, and specific combat movement patterns.
• External C# code modes control how the Nemesis uses those actions and mechanisms.
• XML defines groups of those modes, each providing a distinct approach to what tactics it will use to turn you into a trophy.
• When you start a game with a Nemesis, the game randomly picks a mode-group from those you've allowed.
• Then periodically throughout the game, it may randomly pick a different mode for the Nemesis to use. Especially if it's been awhile since you made any progress towards being a trophy.

A few important implications of all that:

• You can mod in your own Nemesis modes and mode-groups.
• You can suppress Nemesis modes you personally don't want to deal with.
• You can put more than one Nemesis unit in a game, either with the same mode-groups or different ones.

Sounds Like I Need A Bigger Gun

Oh, sure, it can be hurt, but you would need massive firepower to actually take it down.

One reason you won't die immediately is that the Nemesis has played lots of RPGs and knows that humanity can always be expected to have at least one really nasty card up its sleeve. So even though it could take you right at the beginning of the game, it doesn't want to risk dying in some harebrained commander's idea of a farewell nuke. Not that a nuke would normally do enough damage for that, incidentally.

I'm sure some of you will figure out how to kill it, especially with Spire help. But you'll have to work for it. And finding a big enough wall to mount the head on will be its own challenge.

... And it eventually re-forms anyway. Still, a couple hours Nemesis-free might be enough.

The Future

So, what's the next stretch goal after this? We've considered a number of options, but one stands out to us both in awesomeness and feasibility.

Giant cannons that can fire across the galaxy map.

Yep, if we reach $97,500 (so $7,500 for this individual goal) we'll bring the cross-planet weapon idea back. We're still working on the update to the stretch goal graphic but the basic concept is to have a few massive derelicts in each game that, once repaired, can be used to "shell" any system in the galactic neighborhood with various payloads.

And no, the Nemesis would never think of reprogramming those cannons against you. What makes you think that?

I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

Up Next

Our plan is to post part 3 of the AI series Wednesday, and the next combat video Friday.

Until then, keep an eye on the sky and be sure to report any moons you don't recognize!