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[Zai]

I have no idea what AI Wars is, but it sounds horrible. It looks even more horrible than it sounds. I'm into strategy games and AI and glorious mass war stuff, but it doesn't sound like AI Wars has any of that, so I don't have any urge to even know what it's about.

At first I thought you were being sarcastic right there, but now I realize you're being serious.

While I'm not sure about the "glorious mass war stuff" (I don't know what you mean by that) or the real depth of the "strategy," there is undoubtedly developed AI.

[Carrion]

I think this thread's topic is actually out of date as of the time it was posted, as last I heard they were doing a bit better. It was about a month ago that I heard they were in financial trouble.

The OP's link to the PC Gamer article is dated Sept. 30.  While article concurs that Arcen has been doing a little better since the first words of financial difficulties, given the numbers, it is hard to imagine that they are out of the red at this point.

[ductape]

they have a couple really cool sounding games planned, i hope they stick with it.

[Sowelu]

While I'm not sure about the "glorious mass war stuff" (I don't know what you mean by that) or the real depth of the "strategy," there is undoubtedly developed AI.

Eeeh.  It's a totally different creature than what most people think of when they think "AI".  Or maybe it's just me?  See, when I think "AI", I think of computer enemies that play on a level playing field with humans, and play very intelligently:  no bonus resources, and not taking advantage of enormous CPM + infinite attention to detail.  But in AI War, it's a completely asymmetrical battle.  I mean, hey, that's kind of cool.  I like asymmetrical fights, and games have a long history of them being awesome, from Space Invaders to Doom, plus that's the basis for basically every RTS's campaign mode ever.

But you have to acknowledge that "AI" here is more of a thematic element.  The computer player flat-out refuses to pay you much attention, because it has so many other irons in the fire.  Hell, in some ways it reminds me of leveling in Oblivion: If you advance too fast, or colonize worlds in the wrong way, you'll accidentally power up your enemy.  The whole game is a stealth mission basically.  If the AI really had any brains, it would go send a fleet of core-level ships and crush you in the first five minutes.  I kinda don't understand why it doesn't, honestly; it has all these defensive fleets in every freaking system, and the players are the only threat it faces.

[Grishnak]

That sucks, I bought AI war as well, and I rarely buy games. Hopefully they make it out of it.

[Neonivek]

Well AI is a developed term

Originally when the term AI first started being used it actually meant "Artificial intelligence" as in a learning computer.

However now AI is mostly watered down and refers to how the computer reacts to the players.

Which sort of makes me sad whenever I hear someone mention AI, because I always go back to the days where hearing "This game has AI" would have been met with wonder and joy.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

So kind of like "decimate" huh?  I mean, besides the joy.

[n9103]

IMO, RE:AI Wars:
The units play like Supreme Commander in space, though with limited unlocking.
The CPU, indeed, felt like something out of Oblivion-style.

Haven't decided if it's my thing or not.

[Journier]

AI wars has a terrible UI and the gameplay really is like Supreme Commander in space. really.

hopefully his next version will be better somehow.

I remember back early on the game had fighters which acted like bombers, and bombers that were good against fighters...

wait wut? why the....

I liked the AI though, seemed intense. but god damn the gameplay felt like no strategy at all, omg build massive pile of ships, fly them off to a new system, kill AI buildings in system, go to next system, kill AI in that system. then when you got the AI down to its last few systems it would start really throwing attacks at you.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Supreme Commander in space or Supreme Commander on a totally two dimensional surface with spacey textures on it that technically makes the game less 3 dimensional that the game that isn't supposedly taking place in an infinite 3 dimensional vacuum?

[Cheese]

Apparently CoN has done fairly well. Even though Arcen is donating all of the proceeds, it might spread some awareness about the company. I think it also proves that they need to return to their strategy fanbase, as burningpet said. They should at least satisfy the AI war fans for a while and make some money from that fanbase before going off dreaming about revolutionising other genres. The update to Unity may make it look flashy enough to get off some impressive media.

[Fikes]

I think building a huge, complicated indy game generally (I said generally, damnit) spells trouble for a studio. Why would you target a niche market instead of just throwing something out there that instantly looks fun? 80% of the people who see AI war on steam go "That looks terrible/complicated" where as 80% of the people who see something like Recetear, or Puzzle Quest go "I could get my 20 bucks out of that".

I played the demo, but it seemed like one over those way to large/too little information strategy games. I only played the demo once.

[Muz]

I have no idea what AI Wars is, but it sounds horrible. It looks even more horrible than it sounds. I'm into strategy games and AI and glorious mass war stuff, but it doesn't sound like AI Wars has any of that, so I don't have any urge to even know what it's about.

At first I thought you were being sarcastic right there, but now I realize you're being serious.

While I'm not sure about the "glorious mass war stuff" (I don't know what you mean by that) or the real depth of the "strategy," there is undoubtedly developed AI.

Yeah, that's a bit of a problem, because it doesn't answer the question of why I shouldn't play any other game with "developed AI". "glorious mass war stuff" = lots of things blowing up. I took a closer look and the features list scare me off even more; it looks like a game showing off its technology rather than having any gameplay.

I think building a huge, complicated indy game generally (I said generally, damnit) spells trouble for a studio. Why would you target a niche market instead of just throwing something out there that instantly looks fun? 80% of the people who see AI war on steam go "That looks terrible/complicated" where as 80% of the people who see something like Recetear, or Puzzle Quest go "I could get my 20 bucks out of that".

Hey, niche markets are always great. But you do have to pull in people from that niche. The problem is that a lot of people use the niche market thing as an excuse to make boring looking games.

B12 makes fairly mainstream games and Spiderweb Software makes fairly niche games. DF is sort of like GTA with dwarves and construction - an open, procedurally generated world where you can do all sorts of things. Avernum is a generic dungeon crawler. One is far more polished and attractive looking than the other.

[Fikes]

I think building a huge, complicated indy game generally (I said generally, damnit) spells trouble for a studio. Why would you target a niche market instead of just throwing something out there that instantly looks fun? 80% of the people who see AI war on steam go "That looks terrible/complicated" where as 80% of the people who see something like Recetear, or Puzzle Quest go "I could get my 20 bucks out of that".

Hey, niche markets are always great. But you do have to pull in people from that niche. The problem is that a lot of people use the niche market thing as an excuse to make boring looking games.

This is the whole problem. It is like the developer says "If I say you can build 10 billion ships, the niche market will want to play and won't care how bad everything else is". That is the exact feeling I got from the demo.

Huge numbers aren't enough to make me want to do anything. Quite the opposite infact. A simplified, but decent, MOO2 clone would have sold me in a second, instead you have an epic scale space game from an indy company. Epic scale requires a good interface. I do not trust indie studios to make good interfaces.

Actually, I don't trust anyone to make an interface good enough to handle more than 100 units. SupCom came pretty close...

[Sowelu]

Huge numbers aren't enough to make me want to do anything. Quite the opposite infact. A simplified, but decent, MOO2 clone would have sold me in a second, instead you have an epic scale space game from an indy company. Epic scale requires a good interface. I do not trust indie studios to make good interfaces.

After the travesty that was Elemental, I don't trust indie companies to do much of anything anymore.  Back in the good old days when small teams were the norm, indie games were also pretty awful, but companies that made that extra push into professionalism were pretty darn great.  The world needs more companies like, oh, Apogee.  And I guess Microprose but that goes without saying (otoh, their games were creative and epic in scope but their quality was not the highest.  Creative, high-quality, and epic, choose any two:  Sorry, epic, it's time to go.  And seriously, do we really need genre-busters any more?  If we ask for a MOM/MOO/X-Com clone, it's because we know exactly what we want; let's throw "creative" out the window and start ripping off proven-good concepts wholesale...but I'm digressing into one of the age-old whinefests that we get every fifth topic here, so I'll stop...)