Midgame team-joining concept discusison

[code_man]

The patience required for rts matches is a bit problematic, in contrast to fps games where you can mostly just join and leave at your desire.
I was thinking about this idea, that players can join "mid-game" and get some kind of force.
Obviously this would hard, if not impssible to balance in regualr rts games, but i suppose real time tactics games on spring, such as spring tanks for example might benefit of this.
Chicken defence might be in intersting candite for this aswell, i suppose a force prortional to the current wave might actually work out.
I dont know if such a thing has been attemped or if even possible.
Im curious if this could be done on spring.
Also id like to hear which ideas and input you guys have on this on this concept.

[SinbadEV]

You wouldn't need to re-balance anything if when a new player joins they would start with no units and it would be up to the other players to share units with them.

[CarRepairer]

Can it be done currently without using /cheat?

[Jools]

You can give units with a gadget, but can you alter the status of a player from spectator to player?

[PicassoCT]

Alternativly, you could hold a stock of ghost players..

[AF]

I see players joining and leaving regularly and being given new forces and taking their old forces as an alternative to simply building them

[Silentwings]

So I was curious and this seemed like an easy project:

https://github.com/silentwings/spring/c ... c4daf3c367

Could someone look at this and pull if it's good (in particular, I have no clue how to tell if its sync safe).

Also, git is a NIGHTMARE.

[Jools]

That looks nice, but it also needs some kind of a callin to lua. Most widgets/gadgets get player/team/allylist at start of game and assume it doesn't change.

[Beherith]

What if spectators could control chickens? Seems like a fun addition... Great stuff Silentwings :)

[Silentwings]

also needs some kind of a callin to lua

https://github.com/spring/spring/blob/6 ... r.cpp#L137

[SinbadEV]

That looks nice, but it also needs some kind of a callin to lua. Most widgets/gadgets get player/team/allylist at start of game and assume it doesn't change.

Right. But a game that wanted to support this feature would need to implement it anyways and it would be relatively trivial to update the cached list on player's joining... certainly might break some widgets though...

[Silentwings]

If you bothered to the read code I linked too, PlayerChanged would be called. Also

Most widgets/gadgets get player/team/allylist at start of game and assume it doesn't change.

is completely wrong, every player list I ever saw uses PlayerChanged (e.g. when a player dies, leaves, changes team using /cheat...).

[Silentwings]

In any case - jK says player data is not synced (although we don't know why not) so this needs more thought...

[smoth]

If this shit is added allow us to disable it at the mod rules level. I don't want this crap in my game

[Silentwings]

Since it would be a synced call, you could just not call it...

[gajop]

I don't want this crap in my game

So don't invoke it? I don't like the OP's idea gameplay wise, but the function silentwings wrote I actually find useful (seems very similar to /team, just proper synced Lua instead silliness with /cheat).

[smoth]

And players will join wondering why mid game join doesn't work. I will have to add ui popups and stuff. Because I can bet the lobbies will have a 'join match in progress' button. I don't mind rejoin or specs joining but I have legitimate fear about features being forced on me

[smoth]

I don't want this crap in my game

So don't invoke it? I don't like the OP's idea gameplay wise, but the function silentwings wrote I actually find useful (seems very similar to /team, just proper synced Lua instead silliness with /cheat).

Yeah just the whole spring is a game mentality se players have maybe it won't be so bad but I want to voice my concerns is all

[Silentwings]

Yes, I agree that this is completely unsuitable for midgame join. The reason I wanted it was to allow a player who failed to connect to be replaced (when the game starts) by a spectator.

@smoth: I understand your concerns & in fact I share them, but (as you know ) adding a synced callout doesn't force anything on anyone.

[gajop]

This is not a feature like Unicode. It's not something most games should just be expected to support, very few will probably. Gamers will not expect your game to have this, as it's something nearly no popular (commercial) RTS has.

However, if you look at the code presented it provides a pretty neat feature: being able to (re)assign teams to players. I can easily imagine it being quite useful for things completely unrelated to the OP, and this is just stuff for me:
1. Scenario Editor: Ability to take control of a certain team, in both edit and test mode. Pretty useful if you can switch teams around to get a better idea how things will look to players.
2. Scenarios/Missions: It's pretty easy to imagine scenarios in which you as a player would change team (instead of just changing the teamID value of a whole lot of units). Example: A mission where the "main" character gets compromised (psychologically,chemically, etc.) and changes sides.