What exactly do current game developers want?

What exactly do current game developers want?

Various things about Spring that do not fit in any of the other forums listed below, including forum rules.

Moderator: Moderators

Super Mario
Posts: 823
Joined: 21 Oct 2008, 02:54

What exactly do current game developers want?

Post by Super Mario »

I created this thread because of this:
gajop wrote:Can we have some discussion about new engine features? Is anything planned/wanted? OpenGL restrictions are fine and all, but they seem pointless to enforce unless there are things using them (and even the GL4 decal system is unfinished the last I checked).
So let get started on this discussion. What do you as a game developer want from the engine? I am not a springrts game developer so I can't comment on that that.
gajop
Moderator
Posts: 3051
Joined: 05 Aug 2009, 20:42

Re: What exactly do current game developers want?

Post by gajop »

Please note that I didn't write that to ask users for a wish list.
User avatar
Forboding Angel
Evolution RTS Developer
Posts: 14673
Joined: 17 Nov 2005, 02:43

Re: What exactly do current game developers want?

Post by Forboding Angel »

Honestly chobby, followed by springboard top my list.

RPI dedicated server are up there, but the one build didn't seem to work so that's likely a dead dream.

Customizable executables so that starting spring directly can have write dir built in.

Updated custom unit shaders repo as the current is lol broken.

Ceg self illumination.

Ceg sprite rotation.

Ceg velocity and direction gained from unit it's emmitted from.
hokomoko
Spring Developer
Posts: 593
Joined: 02 Jun 2014, 00:46

Re: What exactly do current game developers want?

Post by hokomoko »

Image
Attachments
1212608.jpg
(45.44 KiB) Not downloaded yet
User avatar
Jools
XTA Developer
Posts: 2816
Joined: 23 Feb 2009, 16:29

Re: What exactly do current game developers want?

Post by Jools »

Fix path-finding and units getting stuck and 90% of the problems are gone.
Super Mario
Posts: 823
Joined: 21 Oct 2008, 02:54

Re: What exactly do current game developers want?

Post by Super Mario »

hokomoko wrote:*pic*
Do I need to add the "Serious" tile tag in the tile to stop with the jokes? I am trying to be constructive, but your altitude makes harder for me to do so. If want me to stop caring about this and leave this place, then by all means tell me up front about it instead being an ass about it.
hokomoko
Spring Developer
Posts: 593
Joined: 02 Jun 2014, 00:46

Re: What exactly do current game developers want?

Post by hokomoko »

Super Mario wrote:your altitude
730m give or take a few metres.
Super Mario wrote:Do I need to add the "Serious" tile tag in the tile to stop with the jokes? I am trying to be constructive, but your altitude makes harder for me to do so. If want me to stop caring about this and leave this place, then by all means tell me up front about it instead being an ass about it.
No need for being constructive, be productive instead.

In my short presence in this community your net effect has been negative (Almost every thread you make or participate in becomes a flame war).
Consider yourself told.
Google_Frog
Moderator
Posts: 2464
Joined: 12 Oct 2007, 09:24

Re: What exactly do current game developers want?

Post by Google_Frog »

I'm unsure. I think ZK is nearing release so I mostly want nothing to break. I would like it if some time was spent after the 104.0 release to fix lingering issues before rendering is overhauled and needs retesting. Alternately we could have a branch for the bugfixes while the new features are worked on in develop. Both of these requests are more work though.

In a more normal time I would like a focus on polishing core features, such as pathfinding/following. The pathfinding is technically decent but fails to give players a good experience. Godde complained that units would never take the optimal path, they would always oversteer and walk along the 8-directions of the pathfinder, and that he found this frustrating because he would feel forced to give them small move orders just to ensure they take the best path. I made a gadget to solve this (well, heavily modified and enabled a gadget from 2014) but it is a bit unreliable and only works for move commands. Putting it in the engine would be a lot more work as it would need to be compatible with everything. In general, the engine has many good features but there is a lot of work remaining to make them feel great when exposed to players.
gajop
Moderator
Posts: 3051
Joined: 05 Aug 2009, 20:42

Re: What exactly do current game developers want?

Post by gajop »

Interesting to see GoogleFrog's and Jool's thoughts. I would've thought that the lack of functionalities is a bigger issue than bugs and instability.
Forboding Angel wrote:Honestly chobby, followed by springboard top my list.
Customizable executables so that starting spring directly can have write dir built in.
Updated custom unit shaders repo as the current is lol broken.
So, you mostly want me to die from overwork? :cry:
raaar
Metal Factions Developer
Posts: 1094
Joined: 20 Feb 2010, 12:17

Re: What exactly do current game developers want?

Post by raaar »

in no particular order

1 - improved performance. But with the option to cap framerates at a maximum of 120/s or something. Spring seems to always require a cpu core at 100%. It shouldn't.

2 - improved pathfinding. As people said, units are still getting stuck by themselves often, and they should be able to walk in a straight line..

3 - Settings. Each should come with a short paragraph describing what it does and the range of reasonable values (sometimes people screw around with the settings and framerates drop because we changed something we barely notice, like /grounddetail 10000). Lobbies should show that. More reasonable settings packages (low end shouldn't have such low particle limits or hide gameplay relevant features when zooming out, for example, or show oversimplified trees).

4 - more information about the performance costs of certain features, options and settings. Warn if features require newer hardware/drivers.

5 - improved CEG options, like height modifiers for groundflashes, radius and color parameters, non-linear blast sphere expansion rates (drag) and actual glow.

6 - add a few more unit and weapon properties (unitDefs and/or dynamic attributes accesible through lua) to control unit behavior for aircraft movement, min/max range, aim frequency for weapons, etc.

7 - keep the compatibility with bos/cob, 3do, etc. even tdfs! To avoid creating unnecessary work for existing TA-derived games and the potential TA modding fanbase out there that's eager to migrate to spring but just doesn't know it yet..

8 - stability: don't crash! If you do, do it gracefully: show more informative error popups, auto-upload the infolog and show the link.

9 - options for graceful degradation under heavy load. This can be CEG options to differentiate between "mandatory" and optional components which could be discarded under heavy load.

10 - Allow games to have distinct settings and key bindings while sharing the same installation directory for maps and engines.
Google_Frog
Moderator
Posts: 2464
Joined: 12 Oct 2007, 09:24

Re: What exactly do current game developers want?

Post by Google_Frog »

Actually there is one thing I would really like. I want a way to unbind the scroll speed modification that occurs when you hold Shift or Ctrl. I think I can hack a solution by detecting whether the mod key is held and change the scroll speed via lua to counteract it on the fly. That would not be ideal.
sprunk
Posts: 100
Joined: 29 Jun 2015, 07:36

Re: What exactly do current game developers want?

Post by sprunk »

^

unbind movefast and moveslow?

Edit: actually that only affects scrolling, zooming would require https://springrts.com/mantis/view.php?id=3405
User avatar
zwzsg
Kernel Panic Co-Developer
Posts: 7049
Joined: 16 Nov 2004, 13:08

Re: What exactly do current game developers want?

Post by zwzsg »

Frozen featureset! :o

Or at least more regards for backward compatibility. Add, but don't remove or break API.

Spring will never be hot again, and I find it sad old mods won't work in new engines.

Would be so nice if EE, SWIW, SimBæse, GRTS, all of KDR_11k production, etc... worked within a single lobby and engine.
gajop
Moderator
Posts: 3051
Joined: 05 Aug 2009, 20:42

Re: What exactly do current game developers want?

Post by gajop »

Unmaintained games should just use older engines.
User avatar
zwzsg
Kernel Panic Co-Developer
Posts: 7049
Joined: 16 Nov 2004, 13:08

Re: What exactly do current game developers want?

Post by zwzsg »

It's fiddly to coordinate multiple unspecified engines from a single battle server.
gajop
Moderator
Posts: 3051
Joined: 05 Aug 2009, 20:42

Re: What exactly do current game developers want?

Post by gajop »

zwzsg wrote:It's fiddly to coordinate multiple unspecified engines from a single battle server.
?
Each battle contains a parameter specifying the engine version which can be downloaded using pr-downloader.
There is no fiddlyness anymore really.
User avatar
azaremoth
Cursed Developer
Posts: 549
Joined: 17 Feb 2005, 22:05

Re: What exactly do current game developers want?

Post by azaremoth »

1) Chobby
2) sexy map format supporting sexy slopes. Easy integration of feature like meshes might help.
3) normal mapping for features and ground decals (not sure - may be already possible in lua) with decent performance
4) still dreaming of IK from time to time
5) improved particle system
User avatar
code_man
Posts: 260
Joined: 19 Jan 2014, 13:10

Re: What exactly do current game developers want?

Post by code_man »

I cant think of any particular new feature i would need.
However the pathfinding, collision and targetting is so atrocious its neigh unplayable for me.
I have had laser units trying to fire trough two layers of terrain, units moving back and forth between spots and worst of all i have my armies form huge clumps then chain react when one gets to fire and they explode.
With an engine like this i would have to either micromange every single move or override all of this trough lua, but this is ridiculous.

Another major issue the fact that i have trouble loading and unloading units, this amplified by the fact that my game heavely depends on this.
I asked and complained about this in the past much, but i really want my game to be playable with 104.
I tried Spring.UnitAttach and co in all sorts of combos and whatnot but no effect.

Besides that there are a number of minor discrepancies in the engine that i would like to see resolved, for example Spring.MoveCtrl.SetGroundMoveTypeData does not to my knowledge have an equivalent to read out movement data.
And some other minor things that could be improved, ill leave this for later.

Otherwise things go pretty smooth in general so no complains there.
EDIT: also want me some flac support for spring.
User avatar
Forboding Angel
Evolution RTS Developer
Posts: 14673
Joined: 17 Nov 2005, 02:43

Re: What exactly do current game developers want?

Post by Forboding Angel »

Transportation desperately needs to be moved to Lua. The engine implementation is broken in 1 of 6 ways every version, and in each version, it's a different way than last version. Moving it to Lua would stop that altogether.
User avatar
smoth
Posts: 22309
Joined: 13 Jan 2005, 00:46

Re: What exactly do current game developers want?

Post by smoth »

mesh deformation and skeletal support where the bones can be treated like objects as far as scripting goes.
Post Reply

Return to “General Discussion”