Art suggestion

[sakana]

I have played Total Annihilation, Balance Annihilation, and now Complete Annihilation, and I have some suggestions:

- The explosion: The model unit when explosed SHOULD NOT be teared off in 3D geographical object (triangle, polygon),
it looks unnatural. Instead, each part of an unit should be taked apart, example, a cannon of
a tank should fly away when it blow off, together with flash fire, and then dark smoke, and finally
the remain body of the tank become darken. This look very natural, and nice, and this is the case in
Original Total Annihilation. This rule should apply to all unit. Deciding how to tear an unit into part
is up to its physical structure. Example, The arm of robot, the leg, the body; the gun of the tank, it body,
its wheel chain. Because these seperated part in real are losed connected, and easily took apart.
And, the unit after destroyed, they should not instanly disappear even it has been attacked by a heavy dammage,
it's bad, it should blow off into parts, or melting off into dark metal (in the last shape when it still alive).
The shape, state of an unit before dead (dark metal shape) and when it dead must be the same, it will have a natural feeling.

- Explosion type: Depend on the weapon type, if a robot being attack by a heavy plasma cannon, it should break out
into parts due to the explosion of the weapon. If a robot being attack by a laser turret, it should be melt off into
wreck, it's more natural. Some time a unit could be self-explode due to its own energy when dead. Like a nuclear power plant,
a energy storage...


- Gravity affect: All the unit should be heavier, more weight. This keep the unit stable in the ground,
not eaily moving when it is pushed by other unit. In CA, when alot of unit moving near each other, they pushed
other unit and cause a chao scence, unnatural, and stupid!! This affect should only use with the heavy one,
and careful to give a cool affect. The sucess of Total Annihilation, Balance annihilation is its accuracy in physical
effect: The gravity effect is good, give us a feeling of weight of each unit. In CA, when an unit fly away due to the
effect of an explosion, it fly the same a balloon, in fact, it a block of heavily metal !!

- The wreck in this game is not perfectly. Wreck of this unit is use for other unit, like the "Brawler" flane.
The small wreck (small amount of metal) should not in square pattern, it should has random pattern. If possible,
it should have a pattern according to it previously explosion state.

- The nanoturret can't point continuosly into a moving damage airplane to repair it. It's not smooth.
It should have the same effect like the "Banshee" laser beam.

- The skin of the unit (tank, turret,...) is too blur, it's look clear and ok in a short distance, but poorly in
a far distance. doesn't it ? !! (Goliath, Stinger, ...)


- The color of the flash explosion should be more brighter. In CA its color look like cartoon, not real (too yellow).

Physical emulation is the most important part in this game. So
All of these thing above should be done to make this game perfectly !!!



*The best thing in this game is laser gun (Fly fortress, laser turret, Bandit - raider bot).

[Jazcash]

I think I agree with a few of your points. Not all, but it's hard to tell with such grammar.

[luckywaldo7]

Good points, although many of them have been brought up already.

- The skin of the unit (tank, turret,...) is too blur, it's look clear and ok in a short distance, but poorly in
a far distance. doesn't it ? !! (Goliath, Stinger, ...)

This is because of how the engine handles s3o textures, see this thread for more information.

Gravity affect: All the unit should be heavier, more weight. This keep the unit stable in the ground,
not eaily moving when it is pushed by other unit. In CA, when alot of unit moving near each other, they pushed
other unit and cause a chao scence, unnatural, and stupid!! This affect should only use with the heavy one,
and careful to give a cool affect. The sucess of Total Annihilation, Balance annihilation is its accuracy in physical
effect: The gravity effect is good, give us a feeling of weight of each unit. In CA, when an unit fly away due to the
effect of an explosion, it fly the same a balloon, in fact, it a block of heavily metal !!

Another engine problem, see this thread for more details.

- The wreck in this game is not perfectly. Wreck of this unit is use for other unit, like the "Brawler" flane.
The small wreck (small amount of metal) should not in square pattern, it should has random pattern. If possible,
it should have a pattern according to it previously explosion state.

Yeah many models have been replaced, but there are still wrecks that need replacing. I think I remember jK talking about a wreck generator, but its just something that needs someone with the combined free time and expertise, and thats hard to find.

[Licho]

I agree with most stuff. However its very time consuming to make wrecks and create custom explosions/shattering.

Regarding impulse and lups nanos - we could reduce overal impulse and we could turn lups nanos off. Though its certainly possible to make them react in real time it means a bigger rewrite.

[sakana]

Adjust the robot moving speed to the accurate value, sothat when it ã░alk, it wont "slide" on the ground. When an airplane was destroyed, it should be broken into several physical part (wing, body, head ...), and
then disappear, do not let the remain metal slowly fell down.

An airplane (ex: Flying fortress) when flying over several mountians, hills, it should increase its altitude one time for all the mount below. Do not set the distances between the plane the ground below it to a constant value, it will move up and down repeatly, unnecessary, unnaturally ! If can, we give up a change to control the altitude of the plane.

[Licho]

Airplanes will be fixed in next spring version.
And animation speed - well lots of work fixing it.. you can try yourself if you want.

[sakana]

Can you give me the "link to the doc or tool "so i can try ?

[hoijui]

yes it does.

[Licho]

Not so much, it involes modifying existing code..

For example this is the script for mbot:

http://trac.caspring.org/browser/trunk/ ... /corak.bos

To make animation faster/slower one must modify speeds values.

And you can also see code for explosion there. SHATTER is what does triangles.

[sakana]

I found no "mbot:corak" Bot in CA.

[luckywaldo7]

I found no "mbot:corak" Bot in CA.

Ingame its called the bandit.

[sakana]

I think the Bandit's speed faster than its leg's movement speed. So when it step one foot on the ground, that foot seem to slide on that.

I found this page which have some tools, but I can't down them
http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3114

I see in the compress mod file ca-stable-6394.sdz folder scripts, and get the corak.bos.

Is there any other way to test the corak.bos rapidly ? Everytime I compile corak.bos -> corak.cob, I have to copy corak.cob to ca-stable-6394.sdz file, and start a new game, build ....

[Licho]

Yes, there is very simple way.

Follow instructions from here:

http://trac.caspring.org/wiki/SubversionRepository

Once you have your ca.sdd created with current sources, modify the cob and then use scriptor to create bos for test.

If you have troubles getting it work ask in #ca

[sakana]

Thanks for your help, I will try it.

[Saktoth]

Crosspost from CA forums:

- The explosion: We do it the same way OTA did it. The difference is our models are much higher detail, many more polygons. This means that instead of coming off in large, flat, square strips and chunks, we come off in tiny triangles- this is just because of what the model is made of.

Units are 'torn up' along the lines of how the model is separated into its moving parts. The turret, knee, leg, etc must rotate or move and are therefore different objects. These objects are the things that scatter as shrapnel when the unit is killed.

- Explosion type: Feasible only with lua, perhaps at some point well down the track (unlikely).

- Gravity affect: Sadly, the engine does not give us any control over a units impulse and gravity. We've been campaigning for an engine change for ages now. If it did allow this, we would fix it immediately, it is very frustrating to us. However, impulse is a big part of CA, and it would be sad to simply remove it now (You will find that BA has exactly the same problem when units start flying- its just harder to set them flying).

- The wrecks: We know. We also havent replaced all the models and all the models arent perfect either. This is a man-hours issue. If you'd like to help, then feel free to just chip in.

- The nanoturret: This is to save your CPU on the effect, and require less updates. Where we go in the future with lups nano effects (core/arm, something different) remains to be seen.

- The skin of the unit: See this: http://spring.bochs.info/phpbb/viewtopi ... 8f#p396535

- The color of the flash explosion: Flash? Flash as in Flashtank? Groundflash? What?