Release notes here.

The entire soundtrack for the game has been completed, although only the first half of it has been mastered so far. That half is now in place in the game, comprising 6 new tracks. Overall the new soundtrack pieces are about an hour in length, adding to something like 15 minutes of music that was originally for Stars Beyond Reach, and 4.5 hours of music that was from the original AI War and has just been very lightly retouched.

These new pieces are some of Pablo’s best work, I have to say. He notes that there’s a lot of inspiration in there from his two young kids — both in the calmer pieces, and the more hectic ones. If someone wants to poke him and get him talking about the technical and compositional aspects of the new pieces, I know he’ll be happy to. :)

Beyond that, the other big new thing is that Badger is taking the Human Marauders to a new level, with them setting up little camps if you don’t swat them away appropriately, and then upgrading their camps if you keep ignoring them. Something that was just a minor pest in the first game can now be a full-on menace if you let it sit and fester.

There are a couple of bugfixes in there from me, and a mild performance improvement in music playback and loading. The startup speed of the game is still way too slow, and it needs a loading screen or something, but one thing at a time — there are bigger fish to fry in the short term. Things are moving along!

Repeating myself from last release, and probably for the next few releases: behind the scenes Keith is still working away on the first wave of the pivot. None of that is in this release, but it’s coming along. :)

As a reminder, we’re running a deep discount on the original AI War and its expansions. If you don’t already have that game, now’s a super good time to pick it up. If you haven’t got the sequel yet (via kickstarter/backerkit), then now is also a super good time to wishlist the sequel. If you wishlist it, you’ll be notified when it goes to Early Access and when it goes to 1.0.

Enjoy!

Chris