Spring RTS Engine

Argh wrote:stuff

makes me interested to see what the Resistance vs Resistance and OM vs OM dynamic is.

Resistance vs. Resistance, at least in the games I played, seems to be a dance of counter vs. counter. It's usually over pretty quickly, especially if somebody forgets to build AA and gets hit in their base by Heavy Troopers early on. It's basically a game of climbing the tech tree and survival.

OM vs. OM is brutal giant slugfests involving huge amounts of spam, siege tactics, and gradual turret-creep. Air is hard to neutralize entirely, though, so usually one side's defensive line gets a chink, Assault Shells and UltraAssaults get inside, and Bad Things happen.

Fun, if you like WWI, which I do.

At any rate, that's how things should be working, ideally. Not actually, I know- the mistakes made with the economic output for Resistance pretty much trashed the way it plays. Meh, that was 11th-hour coding, and it's just how it goes.

But basically... the two sides aren't supposed to play like each other- they're not "balanced" in the sense of being equivalent, the objective is to balance them in terms of players' chances in a real game, or at least get close enough.

I'll put out the mutator later on, let people give it a go and let me know if it makes things more / less fun, though. Ivory_King's point about the speed of unit death making things un-fun may be important enough to warrant keeping the change, but I'd like to hear some testing feedback before committing to it.

i got the RC3 and was unable to build the Res's air factory, but i could spawn it ingame. and where are the other buildings for the Res? such as the megafusion and the advanced defense turret.

i got the RC3 and was unable to build the Res's air factory, but i could spawn it ingame.

Build a MegaConstructor. It builds AirFactories.

and where are the other buildings for the Res? such as the megafusion and the advanced defense turret.

Resistance doesn't currently have those units, although a large turret of some kind is still in the plans.

argh, also look at this
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=16884

i think PURE is a great idea, so +1 for giving it to us.
i think that the Res needs a flying troop carrier or more amphib units.

To solve the problem of going to the backup server, you just need to move the P.U.R.E. game files to an installation of 0.77b5. Move PURE.sdz and WORLD_BUILDER_CONTENT.sdz to your regular Spring directory.

Since it's not certain when 0.77b6 will be out, or if we're just going to 0.78b next, RC4 will be built to be installed with 0.77b5 for release here and Linux folks (with a full installer for people who want the full experience).

I did the first step already. i just want to play it with other people

Then, er... play it with other people, it's just like anything else that isn't BA, you'll just have to see if you can find another player

Come get your RC3 bugfix / gameplay test here. Please let me know if this was more fun, less fun, whatever. I'm going to be working on the new maps for RC4 later today, so I'll be around if people want to talk about it.

It features a nerf on the Rocket Platform, fix for the MetalMaker / MetalCreator, nerfed output for Ancient Facilities (although, I should note, that is not the final intended balance- the real balance will involve other factors, so consider it a hack) double hitpoints for everybody and half the current build-time. There are lots of other "little things" in terms of bug-fixes in RC4, but this gives everybody a chance to try out the basic balance, see if it feels all right or still needs serious pushing one way or another.

Just a little demonstration of the power that World Builder's Editor gives people to make whatever kind of maps they want, fast:




The roads, city layout, etc. took less than an hour. It's not Done Yet- I need to make some lightpoles, signs, and other little details, make more efficient road sections, etc., etc.

Argh wrote:make more efficient road sections

waitwaitwait... the roads are World Builder MODELS?!? I thought they were drawn onto the map!

Yeah, they're models. Performance is fine, they're low-poly, and all of the roads you see share one 256 skin.

I have no interest in doing that sort of thing as a map texture, though- imagine how long it would take, to paint up the roadways, and how nasty it would be, if you wanted to change stuff later With this, you just erase the stuff you don't want, put down new stuff, and voila, new street layout. I see roads as just another item that you put into a city, re-arrange, etc., now that World Builder is a full-fledged editing environment, not just a way to procedurally populate worlds.

lol you could make a simcity mod with world builder :p

Otherside wrote:lol you could make a simcity mod with world builder :p

SimBase 2000?

Heh, yeah. Ok, done with lightpoles and utility poles, I'll do some signs and a dumpster and call it a day. Tomorrow I need to whip out some industrial crap and a water-tower, because that's just one of those things that says, "small town" to me.

The more detailed the little town gets, the more excited I am about this concept.

Has anybody played the rebal mutator yet? Any comments on that?

Looks pretty cool Argh, i am getting more and more excited about the release of a stable version :D

Argh wrote:Yeah, they're models. Performance is fine, they're low-poly, and all of the roads you see share one 256 skin.

I have no interest in doing that sort of thing as a map texture, though- imagine how long it would take, to paint up the roadways, and how nasty it would be, if you wanted to change stuff later With this, you just erase the stuff you don't want, put down new stuff, and voila, new street layout. I see roads as just another item that you put into a city, re-arrange, etc., now that World Builder is a full-fledged editing environment, not just a way to procedurally populate worlds.

You can use DrawGroundQuad to plonk decals on the landscape. Models don't work on slopes, do they?

That's a good point. I mean, I can see the desire to have one mechanism for all your worldbuilder content, and having the schism between decals and models would be annoying... but besides the performance concerns, the ability to use roads on slopes is quite relevant. I mean, people are joking about SimCity, but even SimCity 2k allowed roads on slopes.

It's not a problem in terms of keeping everything based on the same model per se. I can use an invisible, non-blocking model to generate the decals.

It's just that the last time I tried out ground decals with this engine, horrible z-fighting ensued. I'll try it out again, if it works, great, if not it won't take much time to find out.

So, did halving the damage output and doubling production times make stuff more fun?

<tests>

It works. Needs ground decals on, though. I suppose that's not a huge price to pay. Screens when I have all of the current elements replaced.

Lights, roadsigns, roads using decals, etc. Click to enlarge, that second shot's really pretty, almost feels real, imo.