Your impression is correct. The Cantharans' income is multiplied by 3 on that mission. This is the largest factor in the game. Usually it's around 1.5 to 2. I recommend flying around assassinating their transports, assault transports, and engineering pods. This increases the odds that they'll build more.

Wow, I hadn't been looking into Antares, I didn't realize that the singleplayer campagin was totally playable. This is awesome.

@nms, on 06 February 2011 - 01:59 PM, said in Antares Releases:

Your impression is correct. The Cantharans' income is multiplied by 3 on that mission. This is the largest factor in the game. Usually it's around 1.5 to 2. I recommend flying around assassinating their transports, assault transports, and engineering pods. This increases the odds that they'll build more.

Jeeze, my impression was scarily accurate. Maybe my memory is hazy, or it may be that my Performa had a somewhat out of date version of Ares, but I don't remember them building that fast.

Also, I'm updating my ancient Ares FAQ from a long time ago. It doesn't contain ship and weapon stats at all and I'd like to get my hands on them. Unfortunately, I don't have access to Classic to open up Hera or the Ares Race Guide and I know zilch about programming to try cracking open source code to look. Is there anyway I can get this information for my guide?

@lord-commander-anic, on 25 January 2011 - 07:55 PM, said in Antares Releases:

@Pallas

EDIT:
Just been playing it.
Very nicely done.
I got Ares going recently through Fluffy Bunny — an update of Sheepshaver.
Antares gameplay is as good as on Fluffy Bunny, thought it crashed when I launched it initially and it couldn't find an internet connection to download its dependent files.

Can you please tell me where I can get my hands on Fluffy bunny?

I have "Chubby Bunny" installed & Ares was NOT playable at that point in the sheepshaver emulation...
Also, a google search on Fluffy bunny only returned one mention of it in conjunction with search term 'sheepshaver' and that site was warned as a malware site by my Google Chrome browser so i decided not to risk it... eeep!

Er oops.
It's Chubby Bunny I was using (just checked). There is no Fluffy bunny I'm afraid, I just remembered its name incorrectly
Version 4.01 — I had no issues at all with running Ares on it.
Antares however is actually better than running the game on Bunny. I've been comparing the two. So no more bunnies for me, for Ares anyway.

Hey there. I know this room isn't the right place for a comment like this, so feel free to delete, but... THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!! I have been waiting for this game to return for DECADES. I will sleep well tonight knowing that Ares didn't die. I'm a Ruby/Java dev but if there's any way I can help contribute to this project, please let me know!!

Cheers!
Anthony B

@nms, on 06 February 2011 - 01:59 PM, said in Antares Releases:

Your impression is correct. The Cantharans' income is multiplied by 3 on that mission. This is the largest factor in the game. Usually it's around 1.5 to 2. I recommend flying around assassinating their transports, assault transports, and engineering pods. This increases the odds that they'll build more.

They do? Heh, I always swam straight through that level, holding the bunkers with carrier fleets, gunships with cruiser escorts, and plowing down the Cantharan planet with heavy destroyers and kitchen sinks.

I think you're remembering wrong. You can only build carriers and HDs in mission 17 (and in my opinion it's not worth it). You do get an Obish battleship, which is basically a carrier without the fighters, if you protect the cargo ships.

Oh. Oh! That one.

Yeah, I do remember having a tough time with that mission, but the Obish destroyer made everything much easier if you know how to handle it.

"Make Way" — That's my favourite mission in the game. Took me ages to get past it first time round, er a decade ago or whenever it was!
Works just as well in Antares.

@Pallas
Btw — I did get a crash to OS in Mission 18 early on during a large battle, but it didn't replicate second and third times round so it may have been due to something local to my Mac.

I noticed another bug was marked fixed recently. How is the next release coming along?

@nms, on 12 June 2011 - 07:33 PM, said in Antares Releases:

I noticed another bug was marked fixed recently. How is the next release coming along?

It's certainly not "on schedule" but I don't think it should be long. Performance has improved and it's capable of running at a higher resolution now, though I have no interface to expose that other than changing some constants and recompiling.

@Pallas
Do you by any chance intend to add in the scenario "Space Race the Musical" in a future Antares release?

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Antares/com.biggerplanet.ares.json and add level 26 to the list.

Maybe that file could be used to set the resolution, at least temporarily?

This post has been edited by NMS : 29 June 2011 - 01:31 PM

@lord-commander-anic, on 29 June 2011 - 11:04 AM, said in Antares Releases:

@Pallas
Do you by any chance intend to add in the scenario "Space Race the Musical" in a future Antares release?

When Antares supports scenarios, that sounds like a good idea, but it's gated on that. NMS's workaround looks good for now.

@nms, on 29 June 2011 - 01:28 PM, said in Antares Releases:

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Antares/com.biggerplanet.ares.json and add level 26 to the list.

Maybe that file could be used to set the resolution, at least temporarily?

No, it's not the right place, ledgers are for things that are per-scenario, but this is game-wide. I guess if I start storing it in the game preferences, it will be possible to set it in the terminal with:

$ defaults write org.arescentral.antares ScreenWidth -integer 1280
$ defaults write org.arescentral.antares ScreenHeight -integer 800

The main issue is the order of loading things. The screen size has to be decided pretty early, and I don't currently load preferences or the ledger until later.

Note: "Ledger" is the term for the file "com.biggerplanet.ares.json". Ledgers store persistent, per-scenario state. For the time being, there is no such state other than which levels are unlocked, but the intent is to allow scenarios to store more later. For example, you could imagine a tower defense "Earth vs. Cantharan invasion" scenario that saves your best time and achievements, or even something where you could have a persistent character like EV.

Thanks for that guys.
I used to amuse myself with this scenario by transferring to a Heavy Cruiser, too easy with the HDD

Good to have it back in action.

I presume that extra third party scenarios could be made playable also...

Yeah, you have to screw up pretty badly to lose that mission. Jumping your HD and cruisers into the middle of the Gaitori gunships and leaving your carriers behind will do it though.

The multiplayer maps and a couple other scenarios are included in the data, and therefore in Antares, but I don't think you can play them without modification. They don't have any triggers and the multiplayer ones may crash the game or just not work right if loaded in single player. So Space Race is the only one that works reasonably well. Pallas is planning to implement plugins at some point though I think.

@nms, on 03 July 2011 - 10:59 PM, said in Antares Releases:

The multiplayer maps and a couple other scenarios are included in the data, and therefore in Antares, but I don't think you can play them without modification. They don't have any triggers and the multiplayer ones may crash the game or just not work right if loaded in single player. So Space Race is the only one that works reasonably well.

They do have triggers, but I wouldn't bet on them working.

@nms, on 03 July 2011 - 10:59 PM, said in Antares Releases:

Pallas is planning to implement plugins at some point though I think.

Yes. I could have sworn I've talked about this on the boards before, but it's Issue 4 on the tracker and I've put some notes up there, since it ought to be the canonical reference for my plans regarding plugins.