Spring RTS Engine

You really exaggerate things to silly levels.

I have some critism of starcraft turns into me hating the game.

Thinking some mechanic would be better off automated or removed because it doesn't add much is now wanting to see nothing but 2 AI's fight.

Looking forward to Planetary Annihilation means I think it is the second coming.

You have had little to add except to make a caricature out of everything. I realize you might be a bit sore that not everyone fawns over starcraft, but I'm not sure what you expected when you entered a thread called 'Starcrap 2 APM".

Johannes wrote:SCBW had the unit selection limit, because they wanted to emphazise using good tactics instead of just massing a huge amount of units and sending those to the enemy killing everything. Of course it didn't really work to that effect in the end, but that was the idea.

Hm did you read that somewhere or is it your interpretation?
Maybe they wanted to decrease cpu and network use (its 1996) by having less move units start to move at the same time.
Or they simply wanted to have this unitselectionbox for graphical design reasons.

Cheesecan wrote:Well the simple fact is SC:BW and SC2 multiplayer are heavily designed for esports and competitive play in general.

I doubt during development anyone at Blizzard already had an idea that years later Broodwar would become this:

luckywaldo7 wrote:About 'autopilot', modern jet planes still require a human pilot

Ever heard of drones?

zwzsg wrote:

luckywaldo7 wrote:About 'autopilot', modern jet planes still require a human pilot

Ever heard of drones?

Yeah and there is a lot of difference between drones and fighter jets. In the physics involved and the investment risk.

I mean, I can pilot an rc copter, but if you give me control of a fighter jet I hope you aren't going to need it later.

I mean, I can pilot an rc copter, but if you give me control of a fighter jet I hope you aren't going to need it later.

you are an autopilot?

knorke wrote:

I mean, I can pilot an rc copter, but if you give me control of a fighter jet I hope you aren't going to need it later.

you are an autopilot?

You never knew? Waldo is AF's final AI program, the one which will eventually replace him.

luckywaldo7 wrote:

zwzsg wrote:

luckywaldo7 wrote:About 'autopilot', modern jet planes still require a human pilot

Ever heard of drones?

Yeah and there is a lot of difference between drones and fighter jets. In the physics involved and the investment risk.

I mean, I can pilot an rc copter, but if you give me control of a fighter jet I hope you aren't going to need it later.

If you can pilot a RC helicopter, you can fly a fighter jet just fine.

All RC flying is MUCH harder than flying the real deal. Helicopters are much harder than fixed wing aircraft. This is totally off topic so i won't go into the details if you won't insist

I speak with authority when I say that Evolution RTS is God's gift to rts gaming.

knorke wrote:

Johannes wrote:SCBW had the unit selection limit, because they wanted to emphazise using good tactics instead of just massing a huge amount of units and sending those to the enemy killing everything. Of course it didn't really work to that effect in the end, but that was the idea.

Hm did you read that somewhere or is it your interpretation?

Read it somewhere.

Cheesecan wrote:Well the simple fact is SC:BW and SC2 multiplayer are heavily designed for esports and competitive play in general.

I doubt during development anyone at Blizzard already had an idea that years later Broodwar would become this:

Yup, how could a game be designed for esports when there was no esports when it came out. And there's a huge difference in how the game was played in 1999, 2002, or 2010.

Ever heard of Doom and Quake?

Even Starcraft had Battle.net and a ladder system when it came out. Brood War was very much about boosting the competitive play. They even tried releasing Warcraft II again with Battle.net support added.

As for the random Koreans that suddenly filled Battle.net with unintelligble game room names, that I don't think even the Koreans themselves expected.

When SupCom was released 10 years later me and my friends could barely sit through a whole LAN game on 100 mbit without it lagging balls and randomly crashing.

So much for that. Time for me to go play some Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm. Engineered to multiplayer perfection. Have fun repeating the same BA-DSD game over and over again. Because you're right, that is obviously the epitome of strategy to set your factories on repeat and let nanos spam units. 10 Actions per minute should suffice, so much time to think about where to place that advanced fusion...but somehow it always seems to end up smack dab in the middle of the base.

varikonniemi wrote:

luckywaldo7 wrote: Yeah and there is a lot of difference between drones and fighter jets. In the physics involved and the investment risk.

I mean, I can pilot an rc copter, but if you give me control of a fighter jet I hope you aren't going to need it later.

If you can pilot a RC helicopter, you can fly a fighter jet just fine.

All RC flying is MUCH harder than flying the real deal. Helicopters are much harder than fixed wing aircraft. This is totally off topic so i won't go into the details if you won't insist

You made my day, I can't stop chuckling.

At a theoretical level, you have a point. After all, abstracted interfaces and third person control are always cognitive nightmares. At a real level though, there is a different set of skills, a different context for the common skills, much higher physical investment and cost...

Cheesecan wrote:Ever heard of Doom and Quake?

Even Starcraft had Battle.net and a ladder system when it came out. Brood War was very much about boosting the competitive play. They even tried releasing Warcraft II again with Battle.net support added.

As for the random Koreans that suddenly filled Battle.net with unintelligble game room names, that I don't think even the Koreans themselves expected.

When SupCom was released 10 years later me and my friends could barely sit through a whole LAN game on 100 mbit without it lagging balls and randomly crashing.

So much for that. Time for me to go play some Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm. Engineered to multiplayer perfection. Have fun repeating the same BA-DSD game over and over again. Because you're right, that is obviously the epitome of strategy to set your factories on repeat and let nanos spam units. 10 Actions per minute should suffice, so much time to think about where to place that advanced fusion...but somehow it always seems to end up smack dab in the middle of the base.

I did try starcraft 2 but I couldn't stand the lack of control you have over your units as compared to Spring games. Spring spoiled me for other RTS's.

Comparing the two is fail. They are completely different.

Think of them as being in 2 different genres.

But they are the same genre.



I just don't get why people like SC2 so much outside of blizz drones and wannabe professionals. When there's the predecessor which does almost everything better than SC2...

Neddie wrote:

varikonniemi wrote:

luckywaldo7 wrote: Yeah and there is a lot of difference between drones and fighter jets. In the physics involved and the investment risk.

I mean, I can pilot an rc copter, but if you give me control of a fighter jet I hope you aren't going to need it later.

If you can pilot a RC helicopter, you can fly a fighter jet just fine.

All RC flying is MUCH harder than flying the real deal. Helicopters are much harder than fixed wing aircraft. This is totally off topic so i won't go into the details if you won't insist

You made my day, I can't stop chuckling.

At a theoretical level, you have a point. After all, abstracted interfaces and third person control are always cognitive nightmares. At a real level though, there is a different set of skills, a different context for the common skills, much higher physical investment and cost...

You are entirely correct, but why did you take cost etc. into the discussion? This was about waldo losing control of a jet while managing a RC copter

I know by first hand experience what i claim, i own a RC helicopter and am terrified to fly it every time since it is so close to crashing at any second. I have also piloted a military gas turbine plane, and it is quite easy. Its not quite a jet, but you get the picture.

Anyone can confirm this by trying out a simulator. Flying a fixed wing aircraft first person is easy, flying a helicopter 3rd person is frickin' hard.

Disregard everything I said; I'm playing the game wrong.

Games should be played like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Zejij9h714

Thread went from interesting ans uaeful discussion about rts design to opinion fight

Johannes wrote:I just don't get why people like SC2 so much outside of blizz drones and wannabe professionals. When there's the predecessor which does almost everything better than SC2...

Well... as I prefer to play co-op against AI's... it's much more challenging than spring was when I left...

I also kind of like that the game is more or less the same for all players, it's not like you are in a disadvantage because you are missing some widget which makes life easier... as far as I know, even the view screen is the same for all players (size vice)

That being said, I do miss some features from spring like the custom formations, repeat options and the ability to zoom out as far as you want :)

still some things can be learned from starcraft

First: It pays to play it to the lowtech corner. As in you have many people playing your stuff on daddys old work comp, instead of a selected few crew from the esport upper crust.

Second: This also applies to seeimingly unfit technology like smartphones. The truth is, that a team of multiple smartphone players could controll a spring team. (Offender, Defender, Basebuilder)

Third: A well told singleplayer story, even if told lowtech(spoken dialogue is the keypoint) gets a audience.

Fourth:You gotto advertise in countrys that are having a industrial boom currently, with lots of people getting up into the middleclass. Forget about southkorea, advertise in china, in vietnam, some african countrys getting up.

Fifth: Every generation seems to have a "ESPORT_STANDARD" title and to be honest, not even genre-taste seems to be the biggest decisive factor there. Its just the game, everybody has played, and can agree upon. Graphics are not that important (only as far as they keep players out) - more important seems to be have a not steep starter learning curve, or roles (TF-effect) for diffrent players. But im trailing off..

Sixth: You need to be lucky. And having many dices thrown by many gamblers increases the chance. So having a "full" engine with basic tanks, buildings, were its a childs game to insert code that manipulates the gameplay is raising this.
And no not the look in the zero-k trunk style- more the knorke tutorial game style.
Simple stuff, that can be fast tweaked into good gameplay. So little hardcoded stuff was a great idea. Kudos to the devs here for farsight.

when i saw the video of the geek guy at the typing contest, the only thing i could think of was... imagine this guy coding with vim!
he could rewrite spring into .. whatever, in a few days.