A cold, having just been mugged feeling.

Steam sale is over. (Well in a few hours it will be.)

The spoils of war: You now own Garry’s Mod, Defense Grid: The Awakening, Defense Grid: Borderlands DLC, Worms Reloaded Retro Pack, Spectromancer, Spectromancer: League of Heroes, Spectromancer: Truth & Beauty, X3: Reunion, X3: Terran Conflict, X3: Terran Conflict, Star Ruler, The Wonderful End of the World, Sanctum, RUSH, Atom Zombie Smasher, Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood, BIT.TRIP RUNNER, Jamestown, Fortix 2, R.U.S.E, R.U.S.E DLC2, R.U.S.E DLC3, Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition, Victoria II: Interwar Artillery Sprite Pack, Victoria II: Interwar Planes Sprite Pack, Victoria II: Old Victoria DLC, A.R.E.S., HOARD, Dwarfs!?, Hamilton’s Great Adventure, Winter Voices, Winter Voices: Those who have no name, Toki Tori, Swords and Soldiers HD.

Hear that? It’s my bank account crying quietly in the corner and applying soothing cream to its apertures.

 

But, hey: at least the achievement hunt is over. Time to stop buying games and actually get down to playing them.

Oh, hey; hi.

Hello, tender internets.

We haven’t really talked for a while. If I could still feel feelings, I’d feel something you might call “bad” about that. But after all this murder simulating I’ve been doing since I was a small person, I don’t feel too much of anything these days except for a deep and abiding hatred of prostitutes. Which, yeah, I’ll admit, it’s actually unfair. After all, aren’t they people too?

Of course I’m kidding. Nobody’s a real actual person anymore.

I mean, I have excuses. I could even give you a few reasonable explanations. I could say something like, “I was working and also taking a course and now I’m waiting to hear back on (more) grad studies.”

The truth? Yeah, that might be the truth. But isn’t that a tooth-grindingly boring truth? I mean, if the government ever decides to let me have kids and those wet, overripe fruits of my loins ask how they were, ah, formed, I could give them the clinical, scientific answer. The kind of answer that would help them pass a sixth-grade health test. Probably I would tell them about the weltering fleshvats on the dread saltplains of Alberta. I’d tell them of the musk-apertures that vented pure racism from the sickened colon of the very earth itself. I’d remind them that I walked for fifteen kilometres wearing a facemask made entirely of furious squirrels just to wrench their chitinous nourishing pod from the mewling claws of a moistened ghast and trudge through the waist-deep filth to bury them in my garden for six months as I intermittently fornicated and frotted with a variety of fowl atop the still-smoking soil.

So, in explanation for my protracted absence: a beholder did it.

Thank you, wizards.com

No really. I was at the bar, minding my own business when this drunk-ass beholder hovers in, whinging about the Canucks. Straight up zapping fools everywhere he looked. When the clerics at the local hospital finally got around to jabbing me with the antidote to the beholder’s paralyzing gazevenom, it was June.
I’m back now, with something of a state of the union for this clearly indispensible internet fief.

Things That Are Happening

– Looks like I’m going to be published. A short story of mine is going to be printed in a collection entitled Warmed and Bound: A Velvet Anthology. My story is shit, but you should certainly consider the rest of that book. It sprung up from a pretty strange web community that’s based around 3 of the best authors writing – in my objective opinion – Stephen Graham Jones, Craig Clevenger and Will Christopher Baer. Stephen Graham Jones and Craig Clevenger deigned to each toss a juicy morsel of story at the collection and some smart motherfuckers convinced Brian Evenson to hack off a vestigial bit of narrative, while Steve Erickson writes a wonderful foreword. If you haven’t heard of/read those guys, do yourself a favour and check ‘em out. Especially if you’re into so-called “literary writing”, neo-noir and/or well-handled horror.

– That AI War write-up isn’t dead. In fact, it was the source of more than a few pangs of guilt during my hiatus. Soon as I can get my head straight, I’ll be coming back to that. Hopefully before the next expansion hits later this summer.

– A third thing I’m not quite sure about. Consider it a kind of meta-AAR, or an examination of the history of AARs as they pertain to video games. Expect stupid academic nonsense to be thrown in alongside my more pedestrian nonsense. An After-After-Action Reports Report, of sorts.

Somehow, between hyperventilating and self-flagellation, I played some games. A game or two. Or seven. Some I’d like to spend a lot more time with.
In no particular order:

– Academagia – The Making of Mages. The game’s aggressive cheerfulness only belies the brain-melting depth this behemoth contains. Still, I feel the need to listen to Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds while playing it, just to remind me that no matter how cheerful things appear on the surface, the world probably hates me and may want me dead.

– Pride of Nations – This is a curious one, for me. Having studied post-colonial literature over the years, it’s so jarring to see a straight-faced historical strategy game that unapologetically includes colonialism as a primary gameplay mechanic. There’ll be more on either this or Victoria II in the coming weeks/months, methinks.

– Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup – No explanation needed. I dig roguelikes, this one is a stupendous amount of fun. Admittedly, this is a stopgap until QCF Design finally finishes Desktop Dungeons. Which they need to do like yesterday.

– Hearts of Iron III – For the Motherland – The Hearts of Iron series has always been a source of competing urges for me. On the one hand, there’s the overcompensatory nerd who looks at everything in terms of hack value and just wants to do difficult things for the sake of saying he’s done them. On the other hand there’s my general disinterest in World War II, except so far as my morbid fascination with Russia goes. So, I figure this is as prime a moment as any to drown myself in HoI’s strange, strange world of stats and fascism.

– Terraria – Old news now. I vastly prefer Terraria to Minecraft, but that’s just me. I won’t say much beyond that because I think we’re reaching the word-death of the Internet when it comes to Terraria write-ups.

– Men of War – Assault Squad – I’d like to play this game in co-op. I enjoyed the hell out of the special mission they put together for that huge Steam summer sale. Reminds me of that secret level for Myth 2: A Long Awaited Drinking Party.

There are others, I’m sure. There are always waylaid mistresses whenever I compose these kinds of lists; subaltern wallflowers haunting the shadows of my steam library, waiting, breathlessly, for a kiss from my mouse cursor.

Ahh, and what of you fine folks? Have the past four months been kind? Have you seen an embarrassment of video games? Gotten around to that sex change yet? Read that book? Written that novel? Shot that movie? Punched your best friend for no reason whatever? What delight has diddled your grundles?

2011: An AI War Odyssey – Day 1

2011: An AI War Odyssey

If it’s your first time checking this blog out, here’s some backstory:

I’m writing a long-running diary of my time with AI War in an attempt to understand more clearly its inner workings and to prove to myself and others that it’s not as impenetrable as the non-initiated may believe. Note that I am not an expert and will be astonished if I manage to beat both level-7 AI opponents. I have activated all the minor factions in the core game and all the expansion packs released to date to achieve maximum chaos throughout the campaign. Here’s a more in-depth Day 0 entry. Also, barring some gamechanging update, I’ll be keeping up to date with all the beta changes Arcen may put out while I’m playing the game. If it becomes excessively frequent, I’ll start later blog posts with the version number in case anyone’s curious.

Kilaelfu, mamacita, I just wanna sing Radiohead songs to you.

[

Maybe it’s because I’ve been staring at this screen for at least a half hour, but I’m pretty sure I’d hit that. I know it’s just a static image to you, but the way that great green planet is orbiting like the Incredible Hulk let himself go and spent the rest of his days floating in a vat of pleasure fluid… It’s… I know ‘compelling’ should the word, but I keep gravitating to ‘xenophilic’. She’s so fucking special.

Admittedly, AI War has a pretty wire-thin art budget. We should probably count ourselves lucky that it isn’t all in ASCII. (Though, I have a fetish for ASCII. Chris Park, please include an ASCII mode soon.) Almost in spite of itself, there are nice little touches that are worth noting when you’re not panicking and BUILDING MORE DUDES. Which is to say, you have exactly the moment that you start the game until you pause it to take screenshots to enjoy the scenery.

I’m zoomed out just enough that the ships turn into reasonable facimiles of their fully-zoomed in and textured counterparts.

I tried to label everything I understand so far.
1. Orbital Command Station – Build Turrets, Engineer Drones, Support Ships and Constructor Ships from here. Basically your MCV from C&C. Just with less M. Like, approaching zero M.
2. Space Dock – Build your pewpewpews from here. Unlock higher tiers with your Science Ships.
3. Mercenary Space Dock – Build sexier pewpewpews from here at an inflated cost.
4. Starship Constructor – Build hulking space monstrosities from here. They all look tremendously appealing, but, of course, with a longer construction time.
5. Manufactories – Alternative methods to generating crystal and/or metal if your harvesters run out. While resource gathering is something to be concerned about, from the few games I’ve played, it’s not as all-consuming as, say, a Starcraft II macro game.
6. Energy Reactors – Energy is generally needed to build and power ships. The larger your fleet, the larger the footprint.
7. Human Cryogenic Pods/Settlements – These guys produce a little extra resources in exchange for being under the umbrella of your mighty fleet. Though, if they get got, there’s some hell to pay in the form of AI Progress.
8. Resources/Planet name – From left to right: Metal, Crystal, Knowledge and Power.
9. Journal Entry – The kickoff communique for the Fallen Spire campaign. More about this below.
10. AI Progress – Probably the most terrifying stat on the screen. This number increases in inverse proportion to my likelihood of surviving the next wave.
11. Shortcuts – If I really need to click on my home base and I’m away from Kilaelfu, I should be able to click on the ships along the bottom and check in on my Orbital Command center.
12. Ships on this planet – A great way to get a quick glimpse of what I’ve got hovering around the planet. Also handy for checking out enemy composition when/if AI ships flood the planet.
13. Science Ship/Force Field Generator – Knowledge is harvested by science ships. It’s also the most finite resource in the game. If ever you need an impetus to expand and take AI-controlled worlds, the chance to harvest more research to get faster and better toys is that impulse. Since, not only does the AI outnumber you, they probably have much better ships, especially at the later stages on the game. From what I gather, competently upgrading ships is the dividing line between the pretenders the AI picks their heat sinks with and the “Made of 90% Brain Instead of Water” crowd that routinely stomps the AI into submission and nursery rhyme recitation.

After taking a mental inventory of all the stats on the main screen, I have to take a knee for a while. I have to lie down for a while. I have to hide in a closet, wrap my head in a towel and quietly wet myself for a while. Then I remember my guiding light. Of the Spire. Well, “Fallen Spire” is the technical term for the campaign added by Light of the Spire. I just. I like to pun. I um. Fuck it.
I open my journal to see what the hubub is.

E-MAIL

Dear Dr. Michael Davidson,
I know you know, I mean, I hope you know. Like, how could you not, right? But I just hope, y’know, for your sake, that you know, y’know, that WE’RE AT WAR. WITH AIs. I GOTTA BUILD MORE MARINES. What, you think I can just call down some MULEs and magic that extra iron from my rearquarters?
Plus, you didn’t even proofread your email before you sent it. It’s not like you’re sending LOLcats to your grad students here. I’m the fucking COMMANDER. I can’t talk “street” like you hippies in academia. “We recommending constructing”? What kind of talk is that? No kind of talk I want coming from the mouths and fingertips of the LAST REMNANTS OF THE HUMAN GODDAMN RACE. You have a PhD, man. At least act like you earned it.

Look. I like you, Mike. Can I call you Mike? I’m gonna call you Mike, Mike. I’ll build your Survey ship. I’m just saying, y’know. I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’. Feel?

TTYL,
Commander SPACE BEAR ATTACK.

Mike seems like a nice enough gent. I know I just gave him a hard time and all. Comes with being Commander. Familiarity breeds contempt and all that. I can’t have gramatically inferior statements circulate all willy-nilly. I know it’s Science Fiction Post-Apocalypse, which is clearly the worst. Absolute worst. Worst taken to its end-logic. This is still no excuse for laxness in proofreading skills. On the plus side, he didn’t make any cracks about my name. Oh, the ribbing I endured as young SPACE ATTACK BEAR Jr. You think kids can be cruel? Try growing up in some shoddy outpost, constantly worrying ourselves to death about the machines. The machines? The Christing MACHINES. Crabs in a fucking bucket, we were. Now I’m Commander and your fate is in my hands, Stephen Jeffries! Who’s the underpants eater now, huh?

So, a quick trip to my Orbital Command Center. The Survey Ship is under my ECON tab. For good measure, I also build a couple extra engineering drones to speed things along.
Right. I’m still paused because I’m frightened. Most of my attempts at defenses for my home planet have failed in the past because the AI is a better man than I am. I know the rough guideline for starting defenses is 1 tractor beam turret with 5 others. I build a tractor beam turret, plus about 10 others (varying mix of missile, standard and flak) as well as a couple mine fields. It won’t do. It never will, but it’s a start.

Time to drone up.

First, I research Scout Drone Mk II. This’ll give me access to extra scout drones. I’m going to try to scout as far ahead as possible into my maze of chokeholds. Also, given how many weird minor factions I have skittering around the galaxy, it’s best for all involved if I can pin down at least a few of them.
As a holdover from my Starcraft II days (or day, really. Until I realized that watching it on gomTV was more fun than actually playing it.) I get panicky looking at all them resources. So I start churning out the dudes. I build all the scouts. All of them – for a grand total of 28. This basically means I should be able to push out a respectable distance, assuming minimal losses. It also assumes I don’t run into anything too psychotic in the process, which almost never happens. I also build 50 Space Planes, but I’m not going to send them on scouting missions. Keith helpfully pointed out that sending out ships with guns on a scouting mission is tantamount to dry humping a hornet’s nest in the blurry days of early September.

In short: I build a lot of things. I believe this will bring me good fortune.

It sends my economy into a tailspin.

And then, this:

Wait, WHAT?

WHOA WHOA WHOA.

Hang on here. What did. How did? Why the. What is this I don’t. AI Progress just doubled. DOUBLED.
Okay, it doubled from 10, which isn’t that bad. But it doubled!

I furiously look up what Spire Civilian Leaders are. I mean, come on, guys. I’m trying to save your asses. Does my boy Mike “Dr. Michael Davidson” Davidson know what you asshats are doing?
Right. Those 10 colonies of Spire Civilians scattered throughout the galaxy. Every hour, they bump up the AI’s progress for every one still under the control of the AI.This being hour 1, I suppose.

Priority 1: Build that goddamn survey ship and see what Mike wants.
Priority 2: Find all those civilians and assess whether I can rescue ‘em.
Priority 3: Find more iron.
Priority 4: DON’T DIE.
Priority 5: Locate data centres. Not to nix them immediately, but as insurance in case I need to reduce AI progress quick.

Godspeed, little scouts.

NEXT: The post in which I maybe kill something or otherwise get to the exciting bits.

2011: An AI War Odyssey – The Setup

2011, An AI War Odyssey

I have decided to do a long-running playthrough of AI War in an attempt to get at its juicy inside bits. I am not good at this game. I’m not good at many games.

I’m just not good at games.

As I mentioned in the Day 0 entry, I think Arcen is a pretty cool company and that AI War sounds incredible, but routinely frightens me with sudden movements and loud noises.

The game has a comprehensive tutorial system that oughtn’t scare anybody off, but, like I said, I’m bad at games and afraid of new things like the outside world and most forms of eye contact. This is not a diary for the experts. This is for the normal bumpkins that have difficulty masticating Dentyne and playing hopscotch. (You shouldn’t do that, by the way. Serious choking hazard.)

I click the “host new campaign” button and get this:

More like GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALAAAAAAAAAXY!

Really, what I get is a panic attack. I breathe into the paper bag until the palpitations subside. That’s what a galaxy looks like, sure. But does it have to be so brain-explodingly galaxian? And this is “simple” style? What the fuck, guys?

Okay, so that’s a galaxy and it looks galaxy-ish and all my other games started in galaxies that looked like galaxies ended in horrible emasculating failure and this JUST WILL NOT DO.

I hear tell things are a lot more manageable if you have choke points. That makes sense in theory. Less avenues of attack makes entrenching yourself a little easier. I make a couple adjustments to the map style.

So, so much better.

Ahh. Much better. At this point, I imagine AI War veterans screaming at the screen. The female players lounging on silk divans, being fed plump, juicy grapes by musclebound cabana boys (or girls) as they solve global warming with their minds; the males clad in tweed jackets, looking up from their dissertations to see this nonsense, eye bulging behind their monocle even as their svelte servants enter through bejewelled archways for their daily hot yoga session and sponge bath followed by a dodo omelette.

This is, generally, not how the game should be played. Adding a vaguely linear structure to the galaxy encourages That Which Must Be Avoided At All Costs. Which is to say: playing AI War like a normal conquer-the-other-dude’s-dudes-with-your-dudes RTS. Though, if you’re way into playing along with these kinds of things, here’s the map seed: 1458984375. That seed contains the starting conditions of my current game. If I keep using that seed, it’ll be the same starting out each time. It won’t let me drop that number in myself, though, but there must be some kind of voodoo that you do to monkeywrench that stuff in.

Since I haven’t explicitly said yet, is that AI War is inherently imbalanced. If you try to go toe-to-toe with every AI-controlled planet, you are going to lose. The purpose of the game is to engender exactly the same kind of run-and-gun desperation that showed up in that re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica, just without the AI getting all Frankenstein’s Monster and demanding that we give meaning to its life: The AI has already killed most of our civilization; we’re just the crumbs. They probably know we’re out there, but exactly where isn’t worth the effort. We’re hobbled. We’re the underdogs. Every time we kill an AI-controlled planet, “kill the humans” gets bumped a little higher on the AI’s to-do list. Unless, I have been informed, you make the right choices during the Fallen Spire campaign, but more on that later.

Bearstar Galattacktica

The key, then, is to manage this huge range of ships to pick your way through the galaxy, crushing specific targets that will either further your cause, or reduce the AI’s ability to detect you.

TENS OF THOUSANDS OF SHIPS, indeed. But most of them are controlled by the bad guys.

Also, see that little red point in the upper-left quadrant of the map? That’s my home world. It’s where I start: Kilaelfu. Hiding in a corner like a goddamn warbling baby.

Now, when I hover over that planet (or any planet with a ship over it) I see what must some kind of bonus ship design unique to that location. Here’s mine:

SPACE PLANE

SPACE PLANE! Mr. Park, you’re on your way to redeeming yourself. I’ll call off the Prototype Space Attack Bears, for now.

So the top line is the base cost of the ship, which is nearly immaterial, considering I’ll need to pump any ship out by the metric fuckton to get anywhere. I don’t know much about the ammo, I guess the attack is base damage. Interestingly, it can shoot further than its dampening range which feels like it would be tremendously frustrating for the AI to counter. Rate of fire isn’t stupendous, though.

Those attack multipliers, though, I have no idea.

This seems pretty useful. Essentially it’s a fightery scout-style ship. I imagine the health on this one is probably better than a scout drone, too. Maybe I can send these as an escort on some far-ranging scouting missions to find planets actually worth attacking.

Ideally, I want my first crack at this to have only one entrance to my homeworld. So, while it’s tempting to take other points along the maze (The Vampire Claw ship sounds pretty interesting, too, and I see a few other Spire-related ships) if I were to choose another location, chances are I’d wind up sandwiched between two AI-controlled planets, which requires me to start conquering the spaces around me just to get some peace of mind and inevitably escalate much sooner than I’d like, given my newness to the game. In a real game of AI War, you likely have to deal with multiple paths heading directly to your home planet, which can get ugly if you piss off the AI too soon and don’t have proper defences in place.

Point of inquiry, though: if I don’t pick those starting designs, do I still get them if I conquer those planets? I don’t know. I also kind of doubt it, but imagine they can be researched.

I should say something about the AI details on the right of that screencap, too.

Previously, I was a sissyface and wouldn’t go above difficulty level 4. Even then, I didn’t fare too well, even with general assurances that I’d need to keep a towel handy to make sure the AI didn’t drool all over itself. Scaling things up past 7 is just asking for trouble.

There’s also different AI types that will have a dramatic influence on the way they perform, what units they use, etc. etc. I don’t have any particular preferences so I’m going with Random Moderate. Although a Zenith Virus Enthusiast has a wonderfully mad doctor tone to it.

Then there’s me. I’ll be flying the pink guys. Shut up. I’m comfortable with that.

You can have friends join the game and play alongside you. I imagine this makes things a lot more interesting, but everyone I know is busy or not cool enough to want to give this game a shot. Or dating me, and heaven knows she puts up with enough of my nonsense that she doesn’t need to hear me lament (even more) about the lack of Space Attack Bears in AI War (I’ve already complained about reality’s lack of attack bears when we go out for dinner, to the mall, to visit friends. She once convinced me to go to her parents’ place for a weekend on the promise that there MIGHT be bears there. At a safe distance. Fighting people that wouldn’t be me.) Obviously, expecting everybody to sit around and play a game for 7 hours is one of the strangest hostage situations I’ve ever been a part of, so you can save and exit if you’re exhausted and want to pick things up the next night.

There’s a pretty excellent community attached to the Arcen Games site, though. If I were hungry for a game, I could probably get someone on board from there. Given the fly-by-night nature of this current operation, that’s not really in the cards. Someday, though, someday.

Let’s check out those other tabs and GET THIS BITCH ON THE FUCKING ROAD.

I picked Complex ship types, just because I haven’t had a good migraine in a while. There’s two sides to this, I guess. On one hand, I can build pretty much anything, so long as it gets researched or otherwise unlocked. On the other hand, I believe it means the AI will have access to more complex ships, meaning I’m going to have to deal with seven shades of bullshit once this little kid starts pissing on the big kid’s porch.

Game options are pretty straightforward. This is where you can enable or disable cheats. For a good time: enable cheats and just start spawning golems like robotic bunnies and watch all the power warnings pop up.

AI Options is where shit gets bananas. You can enable minor factions that aren’t related to the AI but can either help, hinder or otherwise include a measure of utter chaos.

These are probably the options you want to think long and hard about before enabling if you’re new to the game, since they add significant changes to an already pretty deep game.

Which is why I’m starting with pretty much all of them enabled. Give me the Wild Wasteland, honkies.

For reference purposes I have:

Human Colony Rebellions – So, the AI wasn’t as thorough as they thought they were when they excised the human tumors from the galaxy. Every now and then, these cats will rise up against the machines, aggravating the AI in the process. They’re doomed to fail unless you intervene. If you fail to save ’em, the AI decides that maybe organizing their porn folders isn’t as important as MUR-DER THE HU-MANS. If you save ‘em, they’ll make nice and build you some shiny ships you wouldn’t otherwise get hold of.

Human Marauders – Space pirates, basically. You’ll sometimes get raided (or the AI will) by these cats. They ain’t men.

Human Resistance Fighters – Small pockets of resistance, inspired by your luddite crusade. They’ll  sometimes give you a hand if you’re attacking an AI-controlled planet.

Broken Golems – Gargantuan space fighty platforms are scattered throughout the galaxy. I picked Moderate, since “Hard” difficulty lets the AI add them to the waves. Yeesh. Repairing them gives you one hell of a monstrosity, I’m told. But reactivating them takes a long time and will draw the attention of the AI in the process.

Zenith Devourer – A mobile monster ship that roams around the galaxy absorbing other ships to power and repair itself. I’m told it’s nigh-invulnerable. Seems like a nasty customer, but I don’t think it differentiates between AI and myself. Makes me feel a little better about this whole thing.

Zenith Dyson Sphere – a massive, awful golem that is already awake and cranky. It attacks everybody: AI and player. If you manage to wipe the AI off the planet, the golem makes nice and will fight on your side. If you set up a colony on that planet, it reverts back to being angry at you.

Zenith Miners – A massive stripmining golem shows up randomly every 4-ish hours to Galactus the fuck out of a planet.

Zenith Traders – Sets up a mercenary ship vendor on your planet. Grants access to some nicer (and pricy) ships.

Neinzul Preservation Wardens – Starhugging hippies, you ask me. They abhor the rapid removal of resources and use of nukes, and will respond to these things with ANGRY DEATH. Given my intent to GET OPPENHEIMER ON THEY FACES, I get the feeling we won’t get on too well.

Neinzul Roaming Enclaves – Roaming starships that might attack everything, or might ally with the AI. Already I’m thinking that enabling Neinzul stuff might not be a smart move on my part.

Neinzul Rocketry Corps – Old nuke silos left behind. Will sometimes fire at human planets. Yep. Neinzul are dicks.

Fallen Spire – Here’s the money shot. Here’s my guiding beacon in the midst of this weltering fuckball of madness I have brewing. It’s what I’ve been dying for since this game came out, really. An organizing principle for how I’m going to expand beyond my tiny mudball of Kilaelfu. Arcen says this about it. I don’t want to read too much, because, y’know, spoiler warning. I think.

Spire Civilians – 10 or so of these outposts are scattered throughout the galaxy, under the control of the AI and angrying up the AI at a rate of 1 per outpost per hour. I can apparently free them (which will then decrease AI Angry at a rate of 3 per hour) or kill them to be a dick for fun and profit.

Spirecraft – I gather this is where you can start giving the AI some back. You can start mining resources around the galaxy and produce Spirecraft ships, which are, to read the description, supremely stupendously awesomely amazing – capable of taking the fight to the AI.

So that’s the lie of things. I didn’t put any AI plots on. I figure the minor factions will cause enough havoc and I’m already tempting fate by going for random AI types.

Here goes nothing.

Next: Oh god. What have I done?

2011: An AI War Odyssey – Day 0

WHY I GIVE A SHIT ABOUT ARCEN GAMES AND WHY YOU SHOULD, TOO

Christopher Park seems like a solid dude. He’s the CEO and founder of Arcen games (that’s pronounced “Ar-ken”, according to their website) and so far as faceless Internetmen go, the words purportedly coming out his mouth have the same effect on me that a sleeping cat has.

If you’re not familiar with Mr. Park’s work, let me wash the filth of ignorance from you with a brief hosing down of history:

Arcen’s first game was released under the slightly inauspicious title AI War: Fleet Command in June of 2009. It performed well on Impulse and received a Steam release on October 16, 2009. It’s a sort of 4X RTS game that boasts dynamic AI opponents and TENS OF THOUSANDS OF SHIPS.

I remember seeing it hit the Steam store around the same time as Gratuitous Space Battles and often got the two mixed up. Gratuitous Space Battles is also a 2D kaboom-‘em-up (in SPAAAACE), but it’s a whole different kind of cool that I don’t have time to go into right now.

Rrrrrrrr.

I picked up AI War on a whim, completely forgetting that I’m largely shit at RTS games. I believe this is because I’m too single-minded. When I used to play Starcraft, my entire strategy revolved around building Carriers, because I thought they were neat. If a problem couldn’t be solved by more Carriers then it wasn’t worth solving. When I played Red Alert 3, my entire strategy hinged, it absolutely hinged on attack bears. It was a psychological thing. The thought of solving an international conflict by dropping hundreds of fucking BEARS on someone was crippling to me. I was utterly stonefaced while watching 2012 over the holidays. There’s absolutely no need to panic until the sky goes dark with a rain of bears.

I am also shit at Starcraft 2. My sense of unit composition is awful. I can’t micromanage for shit, so I can’t even BULD MOAR MARNIES TIL U WAN, as one of my opponents helpfully suggested.

First time I booted up AI War, I was hopelessly lost. I spent 5 minutes playing the game before I realized it played very differently from most any other RTS game I’d ever encountered. I then realized that I couldn’t build attack bears and found myself miffed at Christopher Park’s inability to create an RTS game that clearly understood the importance of attack bears in a post-RA3 society. You can’t just go back from attack bears without repercussions, Mr. Park.

Arcen’s next title was largely dismissed as a vanilla match-‘em-up. It was called Tidalis and in spite of terrific reviews, it was lost amid the brightly-coloured shovelware that comprises the majority of the genre.

It really is a shame, because Tidalis is a wonderful little game and you are all terrible, awful humans if you elected to not pick it up.

During this time, however, Arcen was steadily improving upon AI War’s core mechanics and expanding on the core game with DLC.

Now, I have a slight condition when it comes to DLC. For a while, if I owned the original game, I’d usually pick up the DLC without much question – whether I played that game or not. As AI War collected digital dust on my hard drive, it would occasionally get a nice brush off with the Zenith Remnant expansion and other updates. Admittedly, I was still holding out for space attack bears.

As time went on, there would be upswells of Internetmen and Internetwomen singing the praises of AI War. They’d say stuff like “AI War is like no other RTS you’ve played!” and I’d bitterly scream at my screen, “Well, of course it is. It doesn’t have attack bears.” Then I’d pout and draw pictures of Chris Park’s face being space attacked by space attack bears.

CHRIS PARK ATTACK BEAR ATTACK

The truth of the matter: I was scared. Every update added more things to the game. More stuff to be at least vaguely aware of. It all sounded kind of amazing, though. I didn’t know what a “Hive Golem” was supposed to be, but it sounded vaguely Carrier-ish. But after a little digging, I found that those things were usually limited to 1-per-game and needed to be found and repaired or something. What? An RTS where you FIND dudes instead of build them? I was afraid that if I booted the game up, it’d just kick me to my BIOS screen and tell me to take my pants off.

Then Arcen released Children of Neinzul to celebrate the birth of Chris’ son. The content list was full of impressive-sounding words that simultaneously excited and worried me. What’s more, the money didn’t even go to Arcen at all, but instead went directly to Child’s Play. It’s around this time that I started paying more attention to what Chris was saying in the press releases and hesitantly paused my meatspace Space Attack Bear development program at the prototyping stage.

See, Child’s Play is a charity run by the guys at Penny Arcade. Its main goal is to put video games in the hands of terminally ill children at hospitals all over the place. One of the registered beneficiaries is the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. I did a stint in that place when I was a wee one. I was holed up in an oxygen tent for a few days and by god, was it ever dull.

And then Arcen posted a pretty frank press release saying they were in rather dire financial straits. Mostly thanks to Tidalis not performing as they’d hoped (again: a shame. It’s a helluva game.) In spite of this, they maintained that Neinzul proceeds would still go to Child’s Play, which is a pretty classy move, if you ask me.

They also talked about AI War 4.0. See, all along the way, Arcen was putting out near-weekly updates of tweaks and balance changes and new ship types and responses to suggestions from the community in an act of transparency that is still baffling to this day. Baffling, but wonderful. Everybody likes the underdog, and Arcen knows this better than most, having made a game where you absolutely are the underest of dogs. I mean, you’d need to look up to see a Chihuahua’s nipples. I’ll get to that in a bit.

What was absolutely crazy about 4.0 was the fact that the whole game had changed engines from whatever they started with to Unity. None of this made a lot of sense to me, mostly because I don’t know the difference, but when I booted up 4.0 after nearly 6 months of forgetting it was on my hard drive, I was dumbfounded at the difference. The UI was a lot more streamlined and the game featured a more comprehensive tutorial system.

At this point, AI War has been out for over a year, with a stream of steady updates. I also signed up for the beta updates and committed myself to learning what its bits were all about. Barren as it was of bears.

Then, as seamless as it always is, I suffered a case of late-year dissociation from reality. The holidays hit, and I experienced reality from the perspective of a spaceman strapped into a shuttle and experiencing either one of the worst acid trips ever, or what happens after you crest an event horizon and then meet yourself as an old man in that vault from the end of Inception.

This brings us to 2011.

In what felt like a blink of an eye, we were suddenly at AI War 5.0, replete with a new expansion: Light of the Spire, which boasted a more directed campaign. (To further confuse things, Gratuitous Space Battles also recently received a single-player campaign of sorts. It’s also pretty neat.)

I’d at least kept a wary eye on the beta updates and would boot the game up intermittently. Even though a coherent tutorial system was provided for, I got the feeling it largely covered the vanilla game. So even if I find a Zenith Dyson Sphere, it probably won’t tell me what I need to do with it.

This brings me to now. Light of the Spire impacted Steam on Monday. It’d been out from Arcen and Impulse and some other places probably for a donkey’s age.

2011: An AI War Odyssey

All of this has agglomerated in my mind to make AI War as threatening as the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is on par with a metaphor for the technology that will inevitably destroy us, even as it allows us to survive as a dominant species: This game has changed engines, been the subject of patch notes that probably make Infinite Jest a little insecure and had countless new units and game styles added through THREE expansion packs.

I bet even HAL is a little freaked out by it.

Which means I’m going to do A Really Crazy Thing.

I’m going to play AI War. I’m going to prove to myself and everyone else that AI War is not the inscrutable slab of black rock jutting up from the RTS landscape. I am going to enable all 3 expansions, and with any luck, sample a wealth of the content contained therein. I will feast on its juicy innards like a proverbial attack bear.

Next: Of Panic Attacks and Galaxies.

Why indeed.

Oh, Nerd Shit.

Hello.

Not quite sure what this is going to be. Content will be fiddled with once this thing starts to take a bit more shape. I don’t do well without some self-imposed direction and currently I can’t seem to commit to anything along those lines.

Instead, here’s some shit I’m into at the moment:

1. Video Game Shit:

• 100%ing Super Meat Boy.
• Levelling up my Nurgle team, The Fighting Cephalopods, in Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition (and eventually playing the game online.)
• (Finally) finishing Dragon Age: Origins (and then Awakening.)
• Various odd/intense indie roguelikes: Dwarf Fortress, Rogue Survivor, Prospector. Really, anything that ends up with a great AAR.
• Beating Warhammer 40,000 – Dawn of War II on Primarch difficulty (so I can play through Chaos Rising on Primarch and hopefully hit up Retribution on Primarch if they’re allowing the transfer of save games.)
• Figuring out (and playing to completion) at least one round of Arcen Games’ AI War on a difficulty setting somewhere above “fucking embarrassing.”
• Starcraft 2: The getting better at, the beating campaign of, the watching GSL games of.
• Faffing about with iToy games: Infinity Blade, 100 Rogues.
• Various steam purchases: Recettear, Dead Rising 2, Napoleon: Total War, Bioshock 2, Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, Tidalis.
• Playing more of Killing Floor’s excellent Christmas update.
• Wii: No More Heroes II, Goldeneye and Monster Hunter Tri.

2. Nerdier Shit

• Playing more Munchkin: Cthulhu/Munchkin Bites/Munchkin Holiday Edition.
• Playing Space Hulk 3rd edition (Or, at least, trying to figure out how to play Space Hulk 3rd edition so I can teach others.)
• Learning to paint said Space Hulk pieces.
• Various PnP games: Deathwatch, Dark Heresy, Dragon Age.

3. Litnerd Shit

• Marcel O’Gorman’s studies on Necromedia
• Mikhail Bakhtin
• Friedrich Kittler
• Re-reading Don Quixote
• Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice
• Paul Auster’s City of Glass
• Highbrow pulp: Laird Barron, Stephen Graham Jones, Craig Clevenger, Will Christopher Baer

4. Writenerd Shit

• http://www.brokenpencil.com/deathmatch/
• Writing a short for the Velvet Anthology
• Maybe eventually NaNoWriMo-ing
• Getting back into reviewing

5. Music Shit (As changing as the tides, but, it’s a starting point.)

• Oceansize
• Sarah Slean
• Acid Witch
• Grinderman
• Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
• Mike Patton’s Mondo Cane
• Hot Water Music
• El-P
• Cage
• Electric Wizard
• Liquid Limbs
• Shining’s Blackjazz
• Trap Them

Other detritus is bound to drift ashore, I’m sure. In-character blog posts, bastardized Oulipo experiments, half-formed essays, Bizarro microcrits.