Which TA - OTA, XTA, or something else?

Doomweaver · Post by **Doomweaver** » 29 Apr 2005, 10:04

I must say I don't really like XTA. If possible, we should use OTA with some adjustments I reckon. Very minor adjustments...

Increase AK damage by 20%
Increase radar coverage by 100%
Increase sonar coverage by 50%
Increase advanced radar coverage by 100%
Metal makers should use 80 energy, not 60.

And that's all. That should be the default mod, labelled 'Tweaked OTA'. Then we need a way of selecting mods, and having them displayed next to the game we are joining.

Vehementi · Post by **Vehementi** » 29 Apr 2005, 10:06

Been out of the scene for a long time, but isn't uberhack still good?

[K.B.] Napalm Cobra · Post by **[K.B.] Napalm Cobra** » 29 Apr 2005, 10:47

http://www.planetannihilation.com/aa

Redfish · Post by **Redfish** » 29 Apr 2005, 11:58

I think OTA needs slightly more adjustment. Because all ppl ever do is build defenders flashes and samsons. And go BB eventually or Nuke. Most units are just crap and not used by players who know the game.

Storm · Post by **Storm** » 29 Apr 2005, 14:27

OTA definitely needs changes, but IMO, XTA is just not the way to do it.

Not AA either.

zwzsg · Post by **zwzsg** » 29 Apr 2005, 14:39

Doomweaver wrote:I must say I don't really like XTA. If possible, we should use OTA with some adjustments I reckon.

I made a patch to revert Spring from XTA to good old TA.

You can download it here:
http://www.fileuniverse.com/?page=listing&ID=90 (0.5MB)

All players in the game must have it, or else you won't see other player's units save for the commander.

Liam · Post by **Liam** » 29 Apr 2005, 14:43

maybe people should name their battles with a prefix depending on what they're playing, like OTAnamehere or XTAname AAname etc.

Storm · Post by **Storm** » 29 Apr 2005, 14:53

Uh, we already do.

Mars Keeper · Post by **Mars Keeper** » 29 Apr 2005, 14:55

AA was nice.

Wingflier · Post by **Wingflier** » 29 Apr 2005, 17:31

Well XTA is probably a better choice than OTA. Since in XTA at least, all units are worth building whereas in OTA half of them were never used. I will admit that there are a few things about XTA that could probably be tweaked, but at least the system has no bugs whereas OTA has a few major ones.

Another option is the AA mod, which is pretty balanced and adds a lot of cool units, but as of now has a few bugs itself.

Probably the best mod too use at the moment as far as balance, stability, and lack of bugs would be the UberHack mod. Unfortunately nobody has made the UberHack mod playable for Spring.

It's a cruel world.

Gabba · Post by **Gabba** » 29 Apr 2005, 18:26

AA is based on Uberhack, so if AA can be adapted, Uberhack can. If nobody more talented does it, I will. I'm drooling at the perspective of using the UH Spider pack - it'll look awesome in-game. (Yeah I know paralysers don't work, but precisely the Spider Pack adds all kinds of spider units).

Webbie · Post by **Webbie** » 29 Apr 2005, 18:39

I'd argue the fact that units are never used in OTA.

Most people will use the same set of units game after game - this can make building some of the other units a surprise for your enemy. I think OTA is great as is.

Besides, some of the units in XTA are just rediculous, such as the goliath. Building that thing should be a war crime.

PauloMorfeo · Post by **PauloMorfeo** » 29 Apr 2005, 20:57

Webbie wrote:...
Most people will use the same set of units game after game - this can make building some of the other units a surprise for your enemy. ...

Indeed. If you show up at your enemies door with a bunch of Mobile Artileries or Lugers he will be shocked right before he will start laughing.

Storm wrote:OTA definitely needs changes, but IMO, XTA is just not the way to do it.

Not AA either.

Exactly... The unit set of the o.TA will not work. XTA also seems to not be working at least as far as many people's enjoyement is concerned.

Most people want the original unit set of TA but since it has severe unbalances, what can we do? Balance it? That way it would not be the OTA units set anymore. If we change the OTA units set, we must call it something else. And that's exactly what XTA is.

What we need to do is keep XTA and rebalance/modify it into a unit set that blends well in this new engine. I don't know if XTA is already in a version system but if not, it's about time to get a version.
The best the comunity has to do, is upgrading to new versions of XTA!!!

Doomweaver · Post by **Doomweaver** » 29 Apr 2005, 23:32

Okay, well could we at least have a little sidebar naming the mod? Because how can we ever know which game to join that will work with whatever we have installed?
And in the next few versions, make it so that If you don't have the mod, it downloads off the people who do, like in Warcraft III. That was an awsome system.
Also, a note on structuring mods, they should have their own folder, 'Mods', and in it their should be folder, i.e. XTA. By putting the mod in there you have an easy way for Spring to identify the mods name and for modders to work out exactly what the hell is going on!

jouninkomiko · Post by **jouninkomiko** » 30 Apr 2005, 02:29

im adding it in. Right now, i just finished unit syncing, which was part one and should be released in the morning. the next release will prevent you from logging into a battle room in which the game is in progress, and potentially include mod selection and spectator limiting.

Future features in mind:
Battle room hosting "capability check". if the main server can't connect to your battle room, i doubt anyone else could, so itll be closed and never added to the battle room list.
PM-ing
Better error handling. then you won't get any annoying confusing pop-ups when an exception is thrown...
Possibly a countdown when the host clicks start

knoid · Post by **knoid** » 30 Apr 2005, 02:55

Mod integration should definitely be rethought for Spring - one of my biggest gripes with TA mods was that they were a complete pain in the wotsit to manage - you had to switch files in and out to enable/disable mods, and they were fully integrated with the TA filebase rather than being kept in a seperate directory a la Half-Life.

It would be very nice to be able to have several mods installed at once and be able to select one from a list at game start. Ideally only the host would have to specify the mod - it would be autoselected for any clients joining that game, and those clients that don't have the mod should be denied access to the game - downloading from clients that already have it would be ideal, but would take more work and it would likely take longer to get a game started.

Doomweaver · Post by **Doomweaver** » 30 Apr 2005, 04:14

go jounokimoko!

Caydr · Post by **Caydr** » 30 Apr 2005, 04:30

Regarding the AA:Spring bugs... If you could post them here, even as a guest, it would really help speed up the stable spring version. So far the only bug I'm aware of is that the Core Inferno pyrotower crashes the game upon being fired.

These are actually Spring bugs - AA is 100% stable on regular TA - but I will try to find workarounds if you can show me any errors you find.

Error reporting topic: http://www.forumplanet.com/planetannihi ... id=1645951

Thanks

Buggi · Post by **Buggi** » 30 Apr 2005, 05:15

Actually I found a bug with AA...

With Legend Heavy Plasma Hover the barrel of one of the turrets goes flying off the ship after firing. I've seen this with a couple other items too.

As for unit syncing... this is a monster job as it requires megs and megs of transfer. I'm sure a nice CRC32 system will eventually arise to check for file changes. Everything'll have to be CRC'd @.@;;

Caydr · Post by **Caydr** » 30 Apr 2005, 06:47

Yeah, I had to remove a couple of the units that "barrel flying off" bug was too ridiculous on. I think this is probably high on SY's list of things to fix, since many different units are affected.

I'd be willing to port Uberhack over and make any adjustments that are necessary... the question is, what version? Personally, I enjoyed 3.1.6 the most, as most of the other versions had things that were rather unbalanced. Even 3.1.6 had a few of those, but at least they weren't too outrageous. The other problem is that AA is based heavily upon uberhack. The problems that afflict my mod will probably be there in UH, too.

[color=blue]S[/color][color=red]t[/color][color=orange]o[/color][color=purple]r[/color][color=yellow]m[/color] wrote:Not AA either.

I agree. Let's play Storm's mod instead. I think you can find it here.

Spring RTS Engine

Which TA - OTA, XTA, or something else?

Which TA - OTA, XTA, or something else?

Re: Which TA - OTA, XTA, or something else?