AI War: Fleet Command

Chris Park on the Three Moves Ahead podcast. No rabbit though

I'm only about 1/3 of the way through the podcast, but Chris seems very thoughtful, intelligent, and passionate about his game. Tom and Troy ask some great questions as well. I (almost) can't wait for my commute tomorrow to hear the rest of it.

I am a little ashamed that I haven't played more than a tiny bit of the demo, I really think this is the sort of game I should support with my wallet.

Thanks for the kind words, Nightmare. I'm glad you are enjoying the podcast, as well.

An epic Interview I did with Chris (x4000), the developer of AI War.. (long juicy read)
http://blog.theclawproject.net/?p=77

x4000 wrote:

Thanks for the kind words, Nightmare. I'm glad you are enjoying the podcast, as well. :)

Chris - thanks for being accessible and for going after your dream. Even though I haven't (yet) played more than a little of your game, seeing an independent developer be successful (as you certainly seem to be or at least well on your way) is gratifying to see. Reading and listening about what you did in the game and why you did it is extremely interesting. As a frustrated game developer myself (frustrated in the sense that I have a lot of ideas bit no time to develop them), it is nice to see someone like yourself, who is so obviously passionate about what he is doing, get the reaction that you have. Please keep it up!

spelk: thanks for the link to that interview

Just bought this game last night. Excellent job and extremely fun to play.

Thanks, Nightmare -- I can certainly relate. I was a frustrated aspiring novelist for years before I really focused on game development as anything but a hobby. And even after AI War was first out, success was not immediate and was all extremely hard-won. If anything, I'm proud to be an example that indies can start out unsuccessful, and then claw their way up to the top tier of sales without being an overnight smash hit. There's still a lot of challenges ahead of me and Arcen, but I'm feeling really good about riding out to meet them. If I can do it, so can other indies! There's more market share to be had than people realize, I think, it just takes a while to really find it.

And darrenl, glad you're enjoying it so much, and thanks for your support!

Just to let you guys know, the game and the expansion preorder are both on sale for 25% off this weekend direct through our site. Good time to pick up one or both if you're interested but have been waiting for a discount sale!

Hmm. Guess I'll have to try this out, thanks for visiting us Chris! You know we do have a fair number of devs who either lurk or post here, right? It's a good community.

Oh yeah, I've really enjoyed being both here and at Quarter to Three; both seem to be great communities with a lot of cross-ties and with a lot of devs in both. Happy to be here!

Hey jakeleg,

We will definitely be selling TZR through Steam, but presently Valve is not planning on offering preorders for TZR until maybe early January. Impulse is going to be offering beta downloads of TZR with the preorders, same as we do through our site, so they are doing it early. However, GamersGate is also now offering preorders minus the beta (but I think they will be distributing beta license keys for people who want to download from our site), so I'm going to talk to Valve and Direct2Drive next week about potentially doing something similar.

It will depend on their schedules and practices as to whether they decide to go ahead or wait until closer to the official release, I think, but I've had a number of people asking about the expansion on Steam, so I think they probably would want to capture that business rather than losing preorders to competitors who then register their expansion keys on Steam after release, for instance. So hopefully that will be an incentive for them to do it sooner than later.

Hi Chris, I'm looking forward to Zenith Remnant. Are you going to be selling it through Steam? I see it is up for pre-order on Impulse already.

If there are any GWJ'ers who want to give co-op a go, I still have a standing invitation open.

Finally gave this game a try over the past couple days after having it "in the pile" for a while. All I can say for now is that I was a fool to do so. Everything just feels like it has been carefully considered and intelligently implemented, coming together for a product makes that me look forward to playing. Additionally, there are so many interesting decisions and ideas in the game that it really makes the initial discovery phase even more exciting. Thanks Chris, and great work!

One question about the upcoming expansion. I currently have the game on Impulse but would like to get this and future expansions directly through the Arcen site if possible (especially because of the 25% off sale in effect). Would this be pretty painless integration wise? I read somewhere that there is a way to make it work, so my question is mainly just about the level of potential hassle down the road if, say, I want to reinstall everything and don't remember the intricacies of a workaround anymore. If I not I see it is up on Impulse too and will just get it there -- no biggie.

@jakeleg
I might actually take you up on the co-op offer some time. I'd like to maybe get a bit more experience under my belt and sadly exams are looming on the horizon so it may be a little while, but definitely color me interested.

I'd be up for a co-op game ... maybe we can organize something on the GWJ Vent on evening?

OK, so I picked this up this weekend (thank you $15 dollar sale) and I must admit, I am intimidated. This game intimidates me. I played through the tutorials and I am scared to get into this. I know this will pass once I play through a couple of games and learn the mechanics but the sheer number of units and stuff to keep track just seems, well, intimidating.

Any ideas on how to get started on this with a real game? The Arcen forums have a couple of ideas but I didn't find any real definitive "next steps" to take beyond the tutorials.

Nightmare wrote:

OK, so I picked this up this weekend (thank you $15 dollar sale) and I must admit, I am intimidated. This game intimidates me. I played through the tutorials and I am scared to get into this. I know this will pass once I play through a couple of games and learn the mechanics but the sheer number of units and stuff to keep track just seems, well, intimidating.

Any ideas on how to get started on this with a real game? The Arcen forums have a couple of ideas but I didn't find any real definitive "next steps" to take beyond the tutorials.

The wiki was a godsend! http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/inde...

Andon wrote:
Nightmare wrote:

OK, so I picked this up this weekend (thank you $15 dollar sale) and I must admit, I am intimidated. This game intimidates me. I played through the tutorials and I am scared to get into this. I know this will pass once I play through a couple of games and learn the mechanics but the sheer number of units and stuff to keep track just seems, well, intimidating.

Any ideas on how to get started on this with a real game? The Arcen forums have a couple of ideas but I didn't find any real definitive "next steps" to take beyond the tutorials.

The wiki was a godsend! http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/inde...

Thanks for that, that looks extremely helpful!

Nightmare wrote:

OK, so I picked this up this weekend (thank you $15 dollar sale) and I must admit, I am intimidated. This game intimidates me. I played through the tutorials and I am scared to get into this. I know this will pass once I play through a couple of games and learn the mechanics but the sheer number of units and stuff to keep track just seems, well, intimidating.

Any ideas on how to get started on this with a real game? The Arcen forums have a couple of ideas but I didn't find any real definitive "next steps" to take beyond the tutorials.

We should get a "learning" co-op game going with some easy-moderate AIs. It is a good way to get some "real" game time in and learn the ropes.

jakeleg wrote:
Nightmare wrote:

OK, so I picked this up this weekend (thank you $15 dollar sale) and I must admit, I am intimidated. This game intimidates me. I played through the tutorials and I am scared to get into this. I know this will pass once I play through a couple of games and learn the mechanics but the sheer number of units and stuff to keep track just seems, well, intimidating.

Any ideas on how to get started on this with a real game? The Arcen forums have a couple of ideas but I didn't find any real definitive "next steps" to take beyond the tutorials.

We should get a "learning" co-op game going with some easy-moderate AIs. It is a good way to get some "real" game time in and learn the ropes.

I'm game. I've only played a Diff:5 game myself, and never finished off a core world. One Evening this week maybe? I'm EST zone.

Gunner wrote:

Finally gave this game a try over the past couple days after having it "in the pile" for a while. All I can say for now is that I was a fool to do so. Everything just feels like it has been carefully considered and intelligently implemented, coming together for a product makes that me look forward to playing. Additionally, there are so many interesting decisions and ideas in the game that it really makes the initial discovery phase even more exciting. Thanks Chris, and great work!

Many thanks, I'm glad you are enjoying the game now. As for the initial discovery phase, that was definitely something I wanted to maximize -- the goal with the content is for every campaign to have some sort of new discovery for 100+ hours. Of course that's not all "initial discovery," but that sense of exploration and finding unique situations and units is something I personally really love in certain games.

Gunner wrote:

One question about the upcoming expansion. I currently have the game on Impulse but would like to get this and future expansions directly through the Arcen site if possible (especially because of the 25% off sale in effect). Would this be pretty painless integration wise? I read somewhere that there is a way to make it work, so my question is mainly just about the level of potential hassle down the road if, say, I want to reinstall everything and don't remember the intricacies of a workaround anymore. If I not I see it is up on Impulse too and will just get it there -- no biggie. :)

The license keys from all of our versions are cross-compatible, so no worries there. For using the expansion with the Impulse version, you can simply unpack the beta expansion files on top of the Impulse official files, and you're all set. Or, if you prefer, you can install the demo off of our site separately from the Impulse version, use your Impulse license key to unlock that demo into the full version, and then use the expansion through there. Either way works quite easily! Please let me know if you have any more questions on that, but in general you can buy from whatever vendor you want for AI War and its expansions without being "locked in" to the version from that specific vendor.

jakeleg wrote:

We should get a "learning" co-op game going with some easy-moderate AIs. It is a good way to get some "real" game time in and learn the ropes.

That sounds like an excellent idea to me -- should be fun for all. Working together is often the best way to learn something new, since you can each learn together much faster than alone, as everyone figures out different aspects first. Glad these forums have picked back up and you guys are organizing some games, I hope that goes really well for you.

x4000 wrote:

The license keys from all of our versions are cross-compatible, so no worries there. For using the expansion with the Impulse version, you can simply unpack the beta expansion files on top of the Impulse official files, and you're all set. Or, if you prefer, you can install the demo off of our site separately from the Impulse version, use your Impulse license key to unlock that demo into the full version, and then use the expansion through there. Either way works quite easily! Please let me know if you have any more questions on that, but in general you can buy from whatever vendor you want for AI War and its expansions without being "locked in" to the version from that specific vendor.

Thanks for the explanation. Looks like you've got a pretty slick system set up. I'll swing by and pre-order Zenith tomorrow.

Andon wrote:
jakeleg wrote:
Nightmare wrote:

OK, so I picked this up this weekend (thank you $15 dollar sale) and I must admit, I am intimidated. This game intimidates me. I played through the tutorials and I am scared to get into this. I know this will pass once I play through a couple of games and learn the mechanics but the sheer number of units and stuff to keep track just seems, well, intimidating.

Any ideas on how to get started on this with a real game? The Arcen forums have a couple of ideas but I didn't find any real definitive "next steps" to take beyond the tutorials.

We should get a "learning" co-op game going with some easy-moderate AIs. It is a good way to get some "real" game time in and learn the ropes.

I'm game. I've only played a Diff:5 game myself, and never finished off a core world. One Evening this week maybe? I'm EST zone.

That would be cool. What days/times? My schedule is a little up in the air right now, but I should be able to make something with a little creative planning.

Gunner wrote:

Thanks for the explanation. Looks like you've got a pretty slick system set up. I'll swing by and pre-order Zenith tomorrow.

Thanks for your support! We definitely tried to make it as easy as possible.

Awesome interview with Three Moves Ahead. I look forward to checking out the game.

Nightmare wrote:
Andon wrote:
jakeleg wrote:
Nightmare wrote:

OK, so I picked this up this weekend (thank you $15 dollar sale) and I must admit, I am intimidated. This game intimidates me. I played through the tutorials and I am scared to get into this. I know this will pass once I play through a couple of games and learn the mechanics but the sheer number of units and stuff to keep track just seems, well, intimidating.

Any ideas on how to get started on this with a real game? The Arcen forums have a couple of ideas but I didn't find any real definitive "next steps" to take beyond the tutorials.

We should get a "learning" co-op game going with some easy-moderate AIs. It is a good way to get some "real" game time in and learn the ropes.

I'm game. I've only played a Diff:5 game myself, and never finished off a core world. One Evening this week maybe? I'm EST zone.

That would be cool. What days/times? My schedule is a little up in the air right now, but I should be able to make something with a little creative planning.

The next few weeks are pretty busy for me until the holidays, but I could do a regular Friday night or weekend afternoon/evening session for 2-3 hours. Count on the game taking multiple sessions to complete.

It sounds like the coop system is flexible, you can join and leave and join in again while a game's going. Your teammates babysit your resources while you are gone. This would make coop games much easier to organize. Just join in when you get free.

Bullion Cube wrote:

It sounds like the coop system is flexible, you can join and leave and join in again while a game's going. Your teammates babysit your resources while you are gone. This would make coop games much easier to organize. Just join in when you get free.

Yes, quite so. If you play with the latest beta prereleases from our forums, the process is even smoother thanks to the addition of "home command station cores." Bear in mind that those are beta versions and so there are known bugs with them at the moment, but there are also a lot of enhancements that will later be wrapped into the official version of the game. And no, you don't have to buy the expansion to get those features!

Can I install these prerelease versions with Steam release? Also, how would a Steam customer get in on the 25% off sale for the expansion, cause I'm all in for that.

Andon wrote:

Can I install these prerelease versions with Steam release? Also, how would a Steam customer get in on the 25% off sale for the expansion, cause I'm all in for that.

My notes from above about the Impulse version also all hold true for the Steam version:

The license keys from all of our versions are cross-compatible, so no worries there. For using the expansion with the Steam version, you can simply unpack the beta expansion files on top of the Steam official files, and you're all set. Or, if you prefer, you can install the demo off of our site separately from the Steam version, use your Steam license key to unlock that demo into the full version, and then use the expansion through there. Either way works quite easily! Please let me know if you have any more questions on that, but in general you can buy from whatever vendor you want for AI War and its expansions without being "locked in" to the version from that specific vendor.

One note is that if you use the prereleases, then the Steamworks features won't function. But, those will be in place again by the time the expansion officially releases on Steam. Thanks for your interest in the game!

Picked up the game last night and I'm definately interested in some multiplayer, starting sometime next week.