If we wanted to make Medieval style mod...

[Doomweaver]

Are farms, and their interecations with, civilians possible? So for example.

In the civilians build menu, there is 'unit' called food. You can't build it, but its value can get increased under certain conditions, i.e. while farming.

Then when the civilian has ten or so, whatever the limit is, he walks back to a storage area of some sought and drops the food there; the structure now has the food.

If so, is it possible to have hin consume 1 food every ten seconds or so (not as in have it animated, just of it can happen.) And have a consequence such as reduced stamina if he doesn't?

thanks is advanced

[Lindir The Green]

Why Would You Want That!

The whole reason tht TA is so great is because of its reasource system, and you want to revert to the crappy age of empires system!

Just play age of empires or some non TA game if you want that!

If you want a TA style game, have the metal be the fertility of the soil, and replace metal extractors with farms, and metal with food.

[SinbadEV]

I think, for arguments sake, that this type of functionality should be included in the Spring engine. Almost every other RTS out there uses this system and a lot of people like it. So if your project is to create an RTS that can be adapted to any kind of game people want to play then this should be an option. Weather it should be implemented into TA:Spring is an entirely different issue. Personally, I like how in WarCraft 3 the wisps could pull out lumber constantly like in TA, and how the undead needed to produce corpses to bring to life... so I think that having the functionality available to modders to add new resources that are gained or lost in different ways would add new dynamics to possible mod. Don't get me wrong, I think the TA way is the main reason I always come back to it, but resource gathering, and blockading, and killing peons is a good part of the gameplay in all those other games.

You could even come up with a new resource collection method, like the creep in StarCraft still being necessary for building on, but also producing electricity like solar cells, but only to those units on the creep, so you would need normal resource collectors to get energy for units traveling off the creep... or maybe powerlines that would connect to new buildings, and you would need booster stations. Or maybe contruction units would have to go back to base to pick up a load of metal before going out to build more buildings... I think that the more options, in developement of mods, the better. but TA is TA is TA, which means resources work the way they always did... but a mod is a mod so you should be able to do whatever you want.

[Doomweaver]

What i'm saying is, resources aren't globalised like in TA - units hold them. Is that possible?

[AF]

Spring must be able to support common and general forms of rts system, otherwise we will be the onyl people to benefit fro spring and we shall never delivber salvation tot he poor souls on commercial engiens such as Warcraft or Age ofempires... They're the 3rd world of the RTS genre and we need to give them aid.......

[zwzsg]

Can't you wait to have an actual mod needing that system before asking for it?

[SinbadEV]

zwzsg: Can't you wait to have an actual mod needing that system before asking for it?

That's crazy talk and you know it... if it's not a possibility in the engine than what's the point in creating a mod that implements it?

[RightField]

Point is that the sourcecode is public and free, and if you want to make a mod, you are free to modify it to work with your mod.

[zwzsg]

Point is you shouldn't try to force the Swedish Yankspankers to waste time on codding something without having the need for it first. They can't just program all and every possible RTS mechanism. It's much more efficient to wait for a modder to actually need something precise, than to trying to guess what in a far future what a modder might need.

[Storm]

A medieval TA version? Wow, go play TA:Kingdoms... never heard of it?

[SinbadEV]

Did TA Kingdoms use simmilar enough file formats that it could be supported in spring? I've never played it, and from what I understand I'm not missing anything... but it would be cool to see how it looked.

[Doomweaver]

guys, stop ignoring what i'm saying. I'm not asking them to implement it, i'm just asking if its supported. And also, I have been thinking about a mod that would need at least 1 resource to be held by units.

What I was thinking is that maybe we can replace something like energy generation to the actual amount of energy the unit is holding.

What i'm saying is, we don't need to change the file format, just give us the power to choose whether a unit having +50 energy means you get 50 energy per second, as in OTA, or if it just means nothing other than what a modder would like to do with it. (I assume you can use script to take into account the amount of energy a unit is generating?)

[Frog]

I can actually remember the SY´s talking about a feature similair to the one your asking about. They called it energy web, and said it wouldn´t be implemented for TA, but they were thinking about it for added strategic depth in the Game they eventually want to make Spring into. It was something like every unit has a "battery" which can hold a certain amount of energy, and units inside the energy web automatically get their battery charged.

[Warlord Zsinj]

Doomweaver, it may be possible through things that the SY's have already put in.

You could make it that when a unit reclaims something on the map (like gold, or lumber or something), then it automatically builds a unit next to itself and then automatically loads it, so that effectively, your unit has "loaded" a lumber unit, which it then has to carry back to somewhere to load it, etc.

It has some issues that I can see, but I'm sure using some scripting and the extra features that Spring already affords you could work a way around it...