Converting/Porting a Total Annihilation mod over to Spring..

[AF]

hmmm deja vu

[Twilight]

did you try any Spring mods yet? for example BA?
if you would like BA except balance, then it might really be worth to start with that.

Well, the problem is that it's been 5 years since I diverged from AA, and I've made a lot of changes since then, mostly, but certainly not only, unit and weapon stats.

I did try... let's see, maybe it was XTA about 3 or 4 years ago on Spring, but there were some issues, and I was busy with TA:T, and I didn't really get back to trying it again until recently.

If it really is that close, maybe I should try taking BA as the baseline, and altering from there. It's just that since I already have a current version of the TA version of TA:T, I had hoped to just start from there.

Any particular reason why you do not want to work from ba as a base? 90% of the two will probably be similar outside of the handful of units which are purloined from unit universe?

See the above paragraph. If it ends up being less work, and assuming no one would get bent out of shape about it, using BA as a baseline might be a good idea, depending on how much I'd have to re-do or change.

Your balance you talk about, be ready to throw that away. This isn't TA and the maps have fairly different resource values.

How different, I wonder? The balance is more based around the units compared to each other, their roles, etc, although some of it is based on certain resource assumptions. Any radical change to resources, such as a metal map, will of course alter the gameplay flow to a large extent.

I guess I won't know until I try it out on some of the maps and see. <shrug>

Expect everyone to compare it to AA which was your base so the ba comparisons are not unjustified

Sure, that's fair enough. I just don't know if it will be 95% similar, or more like 60-70% similar. I recognize a lot of the BA unit names, but as far as the way the speeds, armor, ranges, and so forth have been altered by me, compared to BA, who can say? (Someone who has played both, I suppose, but that's not me as of yet)

Are you ready to devote years to a project that will be marginalized due to saturation of the very small player base who already has a TA fix.

No offense, but to some extent I have been doing something very similar to what you describe for the last 5-7 years. I've seen TA:T with dozens of players playing multiple 3v3 or bigger games every night, and I've seen it with hardly a game or two every few weeks, and everywhere in between.

I have no delusions about TA:T being the greatest thing ever, or hordes of adoring fans following me everywhere, chanting my name, and throwing their delicious fruit of choice to me. I work on this mod because I wanted to make a game that I would find really fun, and I hope that others do as well. However, even when it's just something I play with a handful of other people, it is something I enjoy. I love the game, and I really like working on making it better, whether that's for hundreds of other people, or just for myself and a couple of friends.

I do appreciate the reality check, as it were, though. :)

Have you tried the other spring projects to see what this engine can do? I am not talking only the TA variants

Only in the smallest amounts. As I work on porting TA:Twilight over to Spring, I intend to do just that. Part of the allure of Spring for me was continuing to bump into the limits of the TA engine, and what it was capable of, time after time, and wishing I could find a way around it. And, while I have utilized some very clever work-arounds (A few by me, many by others), it would be nice to have more than 3 weapons per unit, or more than 510 or so different types of units, or be able to control how fast a unit is captured, or have have units easily set to repeatedly transport others to a certain spot, or have a unit that can build another unit, or a mobile factory, or...well, you get the idea.

Not trying to be mean just putting that out there
Gl hf

No, I very much appreciate what you've said. It's good to know what you're getting into, or at least have an idea. In short, I've run TA:Twilight close to as far as I can with the TA engine, both regarding technical engine limitations, and playerbase (TA is over 13 years old). I'm hoping that Spring, with its new engine, (Which is still being updated! So nice compared to working without source code on the TA engine so long) will let me do things with the mod I've only wished for previously.

Sorry for the rambling, but I'm optimistic for the new possibilities that I hope will open up.

Most importantly you have a thick skin.

Welcome to Spring.

I try to avoid taking offense, and I like to think that occasionally, I succeed. :)

TWIIIILIIIIGHT!
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

Troll Successful.

I do sometimes get flak from people about my username, but I've been using it since the late 1990's, and it has nothing to do with the book/movie series. My apologies if that disappoints anyone, or ruins their visions of just what my mod was about. :) I just happen to like the lighting at that time of day, among other things.

[smoth]

The 90% comment is about what content was actually different.

- Models are the same, scripts are the same.
- unitdefs are altered that is nothing really as far as carry over
- you have a few units that will not be in the origonal line up, that is going
- to be a bit of work but if you have the ba stuff you can hack those up to make the "new" unit scripts compatible where needed.

gameplay or balance is all in the unit and weapons defs.

So 90% was generous. Which is why I said you should take ba as a base. It is the closest to what you have and will be the easiest to adapt.

5-7 years of tweaking units in notepad. Spring is going to require much more from you than that. You will eventually start delving into lua. you sound like a smart guy so I assume you can code. BOS is deprecated lua unit scripts are the way to go. Most of the cool features the really cool shit is going to NOT be in BA or XTA and honestly none of the lua we have now was around 4 years ago. BA and XTA are closer to ta because that is what they are. If you want to really go beyond ta...

Before you get started you should play a few rounds of KP, evo, ca, s44 and gundam. Not because they are better or whatever(this statement is a preemptive counter-troll) but because you need to get an idea of how wide your ocean really is here. That way you don't spend a year building a raft when there are jet boats on the other side of the island with FREE painted on them :). Spring has advanced WAY beyond mere weapon and unit limits, you should get an idea of what is available to you.

[Wombat]

is it the moment when i suggest legos ?

[BaNa]

While I know nothing specific about modding, i do know that the AA and BA teams (and outside supporters) did a lot of work in bringing the old ta models and whatnot kicking and screaming into the new century.
I see no point in replicating their efforts, so I also recommend taking BA or XTA as a base, gutting their balance and putting your own in. Should be a much easier task than taking your mod for TA and then doing all the changes in models and scripts and lua and ect. that are needed.

[Twilight]

Spring has advanced WAY beyond mere weapon and unit limits, you should get an idea of what is available to you.

I agree, but I've got to start somewhere. I figured working with something I'm familiar with, and then extending out from there might be a good plan. I may be gravely mistaken, though.

- Add a gadget to spawn the start units

How do I do this, exactly? I've done everything else on the list, I think.

[Twilight]

While I know nothing specific about modding, i do know that the AA and BA teams (and outside supporters) did a lot of work in bringing the old ta models and whatnot kicking and screaming into the new century.
I see no point in replicating their efforts, so I also recommend taking BA or XTA as a base, gutting their balance and putting your own in. Should be a much easier task than taking your mod for TA and then doing all the changes in models and scripts and lua and ect. that are needed.

Hmmm, you make a very good point...

[FLOZi]

LuaRules/main.lua :

Code: Select all

VFS.Include("luagadgets/gadgets.lua",nil, VFS.BASE)

LuaRules/draw.lua :

Code: Select all

VFS.Include("luagadgets/gadgets.lua",nil, VFS.BASE)

LuaRules/Gadgets/game_spawn.lua

Code: Select all

return include("luagadgets/gadgets/game_spawn.lua")

[knorke]

Hi
in lobby, type /join moddev

Does your mod load in Spring yet?
Add this gagdet to spawn start units.
You can also use it as start for experimenting with Lua, like try making it spawn two commanders per player or something.

If the gadget Lua bla is too confusing at first, try if you can use these commands to spawn units by using cheats.
Should allow to test the units etc.

If there are problems, look into the infolog.txt file, should be next to spring.exe (and poste it via pastebin.com if you have a question)

I'm optimistic for the new possibilities that I hope will open up.

You wouldn't believe!

[Twilight]

Well, the first time I tried running it, I got a textures too many/big error:

http://pastebin.com/MRiFeRbF

And then the two times after that, Spring crashed:

http://pastebin.com/7B0sgEug

Ideas?

[AF]

hmmm will you be using the newer remodels where possible?

[knorke]

[f=0000000] Error parsing units/talgate.fbi: [string "gamedata/parse_tdf.lua"]:58: could not find value, missing ";" ? (units/talgate.fbi line 35) " YardMap=occccccco"

well, check if a ; is missing in that file on line 35
No idea about the other errors.

Just to make sure, can you play other games ie BA?

[FLOZi]

Too many textures is exactly what it says, so i guess you do have custom textures.

Oh! I think maybe it wasn't mentioned, animated textures are not supported, so remove all additional textures from frames after frame 0 of animated textures. That should save some room too.

[Pxtl]

I still think your best bet is to grab the last TheFatController BA and to try to convert BA's gameplay into Twilight by editing the FBI files using WinMerge or a similar merging utility. That will get you 90% of the way there.

[CarRepairer]

I agree with the others. Fork BA. Not only is it less work but you will start with something working and isolate your mistakes.

[Twilight]

OK, I've grabbed BA 7.50 as a sort of "baseline/foundation", and am substituting TA:T's values, etc, for each unit. It's slow going, and some units have more changes to make than others, but as suggested, this is probably the best way to proceed.

There are some units I'll need to add, but on a case by case basis that shouldn't be too bad, I hope.

[knorke]

you might find some third party units already converted in xta or tech annihilation. some only accessible by cheats but fully functional.

[Drone_Fragger]

Oh sweet, twilight if you port ta:twilight it might actually get me to play ta:spring again, fuck yeah, especially considering you took over OTA:AA when caydr left for works.

[Das Bruce]

Good to see you Twilight.

Remember, the simulation is different, everything will be broken.

[Saktoth]

Yeah, on the 'balance' front, nothing will work the same. Your finely honed balanced over years and years of work will not exist. Things you'll need to worry about include the flanking bonus (which can be disabled), target leading in regards to XP gain (which can almost replicate OTA functionality, i think?), completely and utterly different aircraft handling, slope tolerance and maps as well as metal distribution, automatic shooting at radar dots with the addition of radar wobble. The collidefriendly and avoidfriendly tags and so many other things.

If you're geniunely determined to try and preserve your balance, you should look at some of the 'direct ports' of OTA and what they did to achieve that (There were a bunch, zwzsg was working on one? Perhaps others can tell you). If your balance is as fine tuned as the years of effort may suggest, you cant expect to port it to a new engine. The best you can hope for is to use what you've learnt and the patterns you've developed and try and replicate them as best you can.