A.I. Wars (The Insect Mind) — BattleShell v1.0.0

A.I. Wars BattleShell allows you to conduct a large-scale Cybug war. This is an add-on to A.I. Wars (The Insect Mind) v5 and requires the registered version — it will not work with the shareware version.

Download BattleShell

Download BattleShell Source Code

Operational Notes

Installation: It is recommended that you not change the default install path. If you do, install BattleShell to a directory path that does not contain spaces or periods in directory path names. You may install it into the same directory as your existing A.I. Wars program.

BattleShell takes advantage of the command-line options in A.I. Wars to launch its battles. It will use some of the saved display settings in A.I. Wars such as which view mode the battles launch in (FollowCam, BirdsEye or Text mode — 3D will cause problems). Other settings are configured in the BattleShell menus.

It is best to set the 2D music setting to Off to avoid buffer overflows and system crashes on large-scale battles.

When A.I. Wars is launched to conduct a battle, note that changing view modes will reset the battle.

Battles are launched with the Fuel To Point bonus setting enabled, giving larger armies an instant advantage over smaller ones — though in longer battles this advantage diminishes as Cybugs burn their allotted fuel.

Custom Maps

The .AIM files are the map files used by the game. You can create your own with any text editor using these guidelines:

• If your map has squares on both the far left and right edges on the same or adjacent horizontal planes, computer-controlled armies can jump across them.
• Use the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 for the five terrain types and the letters A–J (uppercase) to define army starting positions.
• The map must have the same number of columns as rows — any size works as long as they match.

Other Features

You can switch all armies to computer control. Combined with the Save snapshot of battle image after each turn (Snap) option, you could point a web page with a refresh tag at the image and allow users to view battles live!

You can also point the image background setting to any BMP file — feel free to create and distribute custom backgrounds, maps, saved games and configuration files.

This add-on was inspired by the Maneuvers tournament hosted by Devon Ellis in 1998. Devon was the author of 'Mantis2.ai' — the first Cybug to strike terror in the hearts of Cybug developers everywhere!