Release notes here!
During the development cycle of various AIWC expansions I reached a phase where I started naming the releases “Sanding Machine”, “Mk2 Sanding Machine”, and so on. It was a polish phase, albeit a violent sort of polishing.
We’re not to the sanding stage yet here, but “Grinding” or maybe “Crushing”, like this: https://youtu.be/0bSmO9N25Yk?t=1m32s
Tons of changes in this version. I almost named the release “Plasma Siege Cannon”, after my favorite change (Plasma Torpedoes are now AOE with an awesome explosion animation), but the visual improvements are much broader than that. Probably most of those are from volunteer BadgerBadger, and they’ve made a MASSIVE difference.
There’s also a neat gameplay change: when I took the shield off the Ark, I unintentionally made the game a lot more annoying as that led to your Ark being pushed around by any enemy shields (previously it could usually push them around, having the bigger shield). That’s a legitimate behavior: when an enemy shield touches a unit, the unit gets pushed out of the way.
But the Ark now has the “is_chuck_norris” flag (not actually called that): when an enemy shield touches the Ark, the _shield_ gets pushed out of the way.
This allows for interesting, daring, and probably foolhardy tactics for busting up enemy turret balls much faster than normal: turn your Ark into a bowling ball and deprive the turrets of their cover. Never mind the fact that you just threw your King in amongst all the enemy pieces.
Enjoy!
Keith
