New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:The_Great_Refactor#Beta_3.706_Expanded_Wormhole_Invasions_And_Raid_Engines
(Please note: this one again breaks savegames, and there's a known save corruption glitch from the prior version.)
Well! It's been a busy six days since the last release. This new build mainly has cool new things from Badger and SirLimbo, however, so let's talk about those things first. I tried to fix one bug that could cause a freeze on startup, but other than that I didn't contribute anything here.
First of all, Badger has added options for Wormhole Invasions in the lobby that make it so that you can have something more interesting than the old style of them. Specifically, you can have them just send waves (well, that's a bit different), OR you can have them... you know... drill through the fabric of reality, forge a link between one of your undefended planets and somewhere in deep enemy territory, and spawn several waves at your soft underbelly.
That last option might sound crazy, but it's not meant to be purely punitive. The cool thing about it is that it also changes the nature of the map so that you can now ALSO directly go attack the AI deep in its own territory. Yeah, sure, your underbelly just got exposed, but you also now have a direct link directly into potentially useful territory. If it suits you, you can just reinforce your empire on that side, and use it as a new launching-off point against the AI. Or if it doesn't suit you, you can protect your empire by destroying the projector to shave off that unwanted link.
Remember that you have to turn this option on in the lobby to give it a try. Right now, by default things still work how they did before. If this is popular, maybe this will become a default for some game mode, or maybe it will just stay a niche cool new option; it's hard to say, and we'd love feedback.
SirLimbo, meanwhile, has been expanding the concept of "raid engines" in general by adding a lot of new features that allow for the creation of Dire Guardian Lairs, which was a concept we had in the original game. This new implementation takes it to new levels, though, and the new units that will be involved will be part of DLC3, so I won't say too much about them yet.
For my part, I had two days where I was out of town, and then I've spent all weekend and the first two days of this week completely reworking Arcen's website. That thing was old and creaky, not mobile-friendly much at all, and really not... good at showing the important information. We also had two blogs, which I had started neglecting to update because of how much of a pain it was. I'm still not done with the makeover, but there's a lot of good stuff there, and hopefully it really enhances people's ability to find out what they want to know about Arcen as a company.
I also wrote a couple of blog posts as a response to some questions that some students sent me:
1: https://arcengames.com/what-are-the-different-phases-in-a-development-cycle-when-creating-an-indie-game/
2: https://arcengames.com/what-tools-do-developers-use-to-make-an-indie-game/
3: https://arcengames.com/have-you-noticed-a-change-in-the-way-a-game-is-developed-throughout-the-years/
I'll post a bit more about this tomorrow when I hopefully finish the last of my changes, and then I'll be back to my normal coding. For now, feel free to poke around the revamped site (the game pages have yet to be reworked; if anything seems temp-y or unfinished, it probably is).
More to come soon.
Enjoy!