New AI War 2 build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.595_Deprotect

This one has a mix of fixes and improvements from Dismiss, and Sidekicks updates from Badger. The biggest changes in here are things to help with memory usage in extreme scenarios (think thousands of Dark Zenith in battle at once, that sort of thing).

Enjoy!

Heart of the Machine private testing will resume in... "soon" amount of time! I am goin gto go out on a limb and say that it may be within the next 3 weeks for real this time. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/ Feel free to go to our discord https://discord.gg/arcengames and post here: ⁠⁠https://discord.com/channels/240637654717300736/1225940358052188252 if you're interested in being a part of one of the phases of testing in the future. There is now a direct signup form here: https://forms.gle/sYj9hH3Bh2TJ2Hbx5

New AI War 2 build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.593_Devourest

This one is entirely from Dismiss. It has a lot of backlog of minor approved fixes and tweaks to things to fix a few bugs, and to make a few new things possible for coders in a non-regression-likely way. It also includes some mod updates, and a new mod called the Devourest Golem, which basically makes that existing faction more interesting and dangerous.

Enjoy!

Heart of the Machine private testing will resume in... "soon" amount of time! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/ Feel free to go to our discord https://discord.gg/arcengames and post here: ⁠https://discord.com/channels/240637654717300736/1212790205824639027 if you're interested in being a part of one of the phases of testing in the future. A few things are taking me a bit longer than expected, leading to testing having been pushed back a bit again, but it's creeping asymptotically closer. There is now a direct signup form here: https://forms.gle/sYj9hH3Bh2TJ2Hbx5

New AI War 2 build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.591_Exception_Tidying

This one is various bits of tidying and mod updates.

Enjoy!

Heart of the Machine private testing will resume in 1-2 weeks! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/ Feel free to go to our discord https://discord.gg/arcengames and post here: ⁠End of Feb update on testing if you're interested in being a part of one of the phases of testing in the future. There is now a direct signup form here: https://forms.gle/sYj9hH3Bh2TJ2Hbx5

New AI War 2 build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.590_Informative_Quickstarts

This one adds more tweaks to the Sidekicks mod, and also adds more information on the quickstarts screen. It also fixes a regression in the prior build where the savegame folders were not in the most-recently-used order.

Enjoy!

Heart of the Machine private testing will resume in about 2 weeks! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/ Feel free to go to our discord https://discord.gg/arcengames and post here: ⁠End of Feb update on testing if you're interested in being a part of one of the phases of testing in the future. There is now a direct signup form here: https://forms.gle/sYj9hH3Bh2TJ2Hbx5

New AI War 2 build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.589_Lone_Zombie.2C_Progressive_Quickstart

This one fixes a few bugs in last weeks' build, like the fact that double-the-zombies were being generated most of the time. There was also a multiplayer-specific regression with an exception in general.

Quickstarts are being reorganized and expanded a bit by Strategic Sage. Previously, there was a progressive flow of easier-to-harder for the base game, but the DLC quickstarts weren't really organized in that way. Now they are, alongside other improvements to them.

There are also more to the Sidekicks mod.

Enjoy!

Heart of the Machine private testing will resume in about 2-3 weeks! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/ Feel free to go to our discord https://discord.gg/arcengames and post here: https://discord.com/channels/240637654717300736/1212790205824639027 if you're interested in being a part of one of the phases of testing in the future. There is now a direct signup form here: https://forms.gle/sYj9hH3Bh2TJ2Hbx5

New AI War 2 build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.588_Zenith_Consistency

This one has a number of smallish improvements. The most notable of these is a fix to on-death effects from Dismiss, which should lead to more consistent results that you would expect when you're zombifying enemies.

There are a large number of updates from Strategic Sage to the quickstarts; improving descriptions, tweaking balance, and adding a few new ones.

There are also a few tweaks to the Sidekicks mod.

Enjoy!

Heart of the Machine private testing will resume sometime in March! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/ Feel free to go to our discord https://discord.gg/arcengames and post here: https://discordapp.com/channels/240637654717300736/1086679572373848244 if you're interested in being a part of one of the phases of testing in the future. There is now a direct signup form here: https://forms.gle/sYj9hH3Bh2TJ2Hbx5

New AI War 2 build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.587_Deguardianing

This is a small one that is basically a dewormer but for giant guardian spacecraft. A fix in the prior build to a 5-year-old bug caused massive shifts in balance that were unintended. Fixes are nice, but giant shifts in balance are not; aside from opening the floodgates to too many guardians, the game balance was just as desired without the fix, so we simply reverted it. In some respects not my preferred solution, but at the same time with a game this complex, we would have been chasing unintended consequences to AI types for months. So in this case, a particular bug which is bad math is actually working as intended. Hmm.

There are also a few tweaks to the Sidekicks mod.

Enjoy!

Heart of the Machine private testing will resume sometime in March! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/ Feel free to go to our discord https://discord.gg/arcengames and post here: https://discordapp.com/channels/240637654717300736/1086679572373848244 if you're interested in being a part of one of the phases of testing in the future. There is now a direct signup form here: https://forms.gle/sYj9hH3Bh2TJ2Hbx5

New AI War 2 build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.586_More_Polish

This is another small one, mostly bugfixes. This also includes several mods like Classic Fusion becoming functional again. And more updates to Sidekicks.

Enjoy!

Heart of the Machine private testing will resume sometime in March! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/ Feel free to go to our discord https://discord.gg/arcengames and post here: https://discordapp.com/channels/240637654717300736/1086679572373848244 if you're interested in being a part of one of the phases of testing in the future. There is now a direct signup form here: https://forms.gle/sYj9hH3Bh2TJ2Hbx5

New AI War 2 build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.585_Sidekick_Updates

This is a pretty small one, with mainly updates to the Sidekicks mod, by Badger.

This also suppresses an occasional error about memory leaks that is very much a false positive (it usually is indicative of a thread being a bit slow, not an actual memory leak). Rather than being up in your face with a scary message about what seems to be a major bug, it just logs a silent warning instead. This really only is a tool for modders; if they see a log flooded with those, then they should know they are doing something wrong and be able to fix whatever their issue is. But regular players, often not even using mods, would occasionally get one or two of these and think there was a much larger problem, when in reality it was just kind of a burp of one background thread being a bit slower to give something back than ideally is the case.

The network improvements from the prior build are reportedly really helping the game a lot in multiplayer, so I'm very glad to hear that.

Enjoy!

Regarding Heart of the Machine, if you've been following our discord, then you know that the testing on that got pushed back some. Testing will likely resume in March. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/ It's really nice to be able to give the game the amount of development time it truly deserves, but thanks for your patience with the repeated delays on it. Feel free to go to our discord https://discord.gg/arcengames and post here: https://discordapp.com/channels/240637654717300736/1086679572373848244 if you're interested in being a part of one of the phases of testing in the future. There is now a direct signup form here: https://forms.gle/sYj9hH3Bh2TJ2Hbx5