You might hate kickstarter, and I hate preorders, but I hope you'll love this project on its own merits. The original AI War is something that RPS called one of the best strategy games ever made, and which is widely regarded as having some of the best and most interesting AI ever seen in a game.
Why a sequel?
The original was designed in a different time, under completely different design goals. We're finally creating a sequel that is being rebuilt from the ground up using a whole bunch of new tricks and tech that we've acquired over the last few years.
The trickiest core technical improvements -- ranging from highly efficient 3D graphics to a multithreaded main-simulation to mod support -- are already complete.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLtDdZRq4Bk
Why trust us?
We’re not kidding around in our approach to this: we’ve made a massive 160+ page design document, because it was basically the only way we were comfortable doing a kickstarter campaign for this sequel.
We can't stand vague or overblown promises, so our goal has been to be as explicit and clear as possible. We did a massive AMA on reddit where we wrote more than 50 pages of responses, and we're happy to answer even more questions.
That said, this project is huge, and we've been having a rough time in the crowded New Steam Market (so to speak). Please consider backing the project if you can! It's very hard to reach customers nowadays, and we don't have a good way to fund this without your help. There are a few alternatives to kickstarter that we've worked out, but none of them give us the full creative freedom that working directly with our fans does.
Improvements at a glance:
- GUI Clarity and usability!
- Sane learning curve.
- Better graphics.
- Better performance.
- Moddability.
- More varied strategic landscape.
- Streamlined out repetitive tasks.
- Way, way more.
Even if you can't or don't want to back, please spread the word!
Whether or not you're able and willing to personally back the project, please consider forwarding this campaign's link to any friends (Steam or otherwise) that might have an interest in this sort of thing.
If you personally want to take a "wait and see" attitude toward this project, we totally respect that. But we are having trouble reaching our own existing customers, and so any help you can give us in spreading the word we would be incredibly grateful for.
