Hi all,
As you know, we have been experiencing issues with Endless Space 2 update 1, and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.
It has been difficult to fix these for two reasons: it is a complex problem, and we are working in parallel in fixing update 1 and developing update 2. We have completely changed the way AI works in Endless Space 2 (compared to our previous games), and the technological aspect of this new AI is harder to maintain / develop.
When we started the project, the AI team looked for other architectures / ways of implementing an AI, and came up with an architecture working in a module separate from the main game. This offered lots of interesting possibilities, such as the AI using its own memory mapping without interfering with the game data, which was one of the limits of our previous AIs. We have also worked a lot on graphical tools to visualize (and debug!) what the AI is doing. The one technical issue with this AI, is that is has to interact with the game to synchronize its data, to make sure it makes educated decisions based on fresh information.
In recent months after the AI architecture was laid down, we implemented a lot of features to allow the AI to play the game, but we have not worked as much on the technical performance of the AI. The status we had at early access was "ok but a bit slow" for the AI, which we deemed acceptable. However, when we added content and features for Update 1, it brought up multiple issues in terms of memory use & multi-threading stability. We set out to fix all these only to be mired in side-effects: performance issues, lags, various bugs and blockers. Sorting these out proved long and challenging, but with the help of the Unity support teams we got the situation under control. There are still a few non-blocking issues at play that we will hunt down, but we feel confident that the patch we are releasing today will help immensely and allow you to get back into the game. Complete patch notes for today’s patch are [here].
Moving forward, for update 2 we have some interesting things coming up. The revamped tech tree, which has been a much requested improvement, should be coming with update 2. Below is a preview of what it will look like (keep in mind a fair bit of it is placeholder). Some of the other prominent features coming to update 2 are: the new major faction, space battle improvements, implementation of other victory conditions, planet grid and terraformation revamp, maybe even a (very rough) multiplayer.
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With Early Access development, roadblocks are to be expected. This time around, we hit all of them at once. Things got hectic, but we hope the worst is behind us now.
Thank you for sticking with us.
AmpliMath
