Well, I dabble in game programming, and I have a large intrest in AI, espically after reading your blog. I have only written EXTREMELY basic FSM's for toying around with a game called Grobots, which is a small little programming game where you program robots. I also really enjoy looking at code. If you have any good resources on AI programming and or theory I would gladly accept them.
Cool stuff! The main resource that I used when familiarizing myself with AI basics was the O'Reilly book AI for Game Developers. It covered a lot of topics at just the right depth to let me evaluate them and then mostly do my own thing. There's also always a lot of good articles and content over at aigamedev.net, as well as a lot of people (professional developers, indie developers, academics, and hobbyists) there who are discussing AI of all sorts. Pretty cool community.
As for the game its self, the tutorial is great, gives a pretty good feeling of the overall game. The whole one hour for the demo feels a bit short though to be honest. Espically after reading up on alot of the game. I played a few of the campaigs and 1 hour barely gives enough time to mass a decent defence fleet in your home base and take over a planet. Mebey a slightly extended time period would be a bit better to hook people in. Something like 2 hours, so you can get rooted in a bit more, and experience something that makes you go "WOW" even in the demo. In the one hour you can play it doesnt seem likely that you would get that.
Did you play the intermediate tutorial? It's a similated campaign that lets you play for 3+ hours, and I get a lot of emails with people going "WOW" not about the AI, but just about how fun the game is from that. For a demo, we actually have a pretty extreme amount of content, but that's mostly through the intermediate tutorial.
But regardless, I am so intrested in the AI and how it will play out in longer games, that Im going to probably buy a key on monday. Which is a big thing for me, as I RARELY buy games, because most are not worth it. The last pc game I bought was Halflife 2 and Episode 1 something like 3 years ago.
Episodes 2 and 3 are also very much worth it. And Portal, if you have not played that, is an absolute must. The Orange Box is a steal these days, frankly. But point taken, glad you're so into the game, and thanks for your support!
I also registered on the forums, but I figure since Im already writing a rather large post here, I might as well ask this:
Do you have any plans for any user submitted art? That might help out on the whole "game has no feeling" problems people have. You could end up getting alot of style from various people, and possibly have whole "faction" looking ships and such. I ask cause if you do, I do some pretty awesome pixel art, and would be willing to lend a hand. 
We do have some user submitted art already in place, actually -- the explosions and one of the starfields. We also have an artist on staff now, who is busily revamping, well, about everything, which just takes time. If you look at the 1.201 prereleases versus the 1.013 release (or look at the older 1.010 release), you can see an extremely striking difference in those jumps. We're basically working up towards a bit "2.0" release in a month or so where visually it's going to be like a whole new game. There are also a number of players who have been doing little art mods of various things, and floating them on our forums to see what others think. Some of those have made it into the official game, with the permission of the creators. I can't promise that every mod will make it into the game, but if you're interested doing that sort of thing, it's certainly always welcome! Thanks again for your interest!
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Topic: Its called "AI War: Fleet Command" (Read 88851 times)