Spring RTS Engine

We three old comrades hopped on mumble to chat about a particularly nifty MCL match last night. FLOZi had recently done some economy tweaking, and as a result this match saw heavy usage of everyone's favorite heavy assault mech, the Atlas. Check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJBkAzt0AoY

(apologies for the futzing with /specfullview and some widget trouble)

Very cool game. I am pleased to see how far you two have come.

two questions:

1) how can I get go about getting the svn since you have moved it

2) is there any help you guys need with further development? It seems like you got coding and artistry covered pretty well.

there was something else I was going to ask also but I forgot after watching that game.

1. https://github.com/SpringMCLegacy/Sprin ... its/master

2. How's your texturing? CEG work? LUPS?

We're using Github and usually play rapid versions, you can pop in #s44 or #battletech we're usually around

As for what we need, can you shine shoes? Because we need some POLISH. Things like better graphics, LUPS, animations and textures, UI. These are all things we are starting to need to focus on.

So if you can do literally anything visual that would be awesome.

Please pick a camera height and stay that that height while using screen edge and minimap to move the camera around. Like watching an rts in shakeycam. There were a lot of things I wanted to see but you jerk the camera around so much I can't tell shit of what is going on, quite frustrating actually.

As far as the game itself, looks good and interesting, thumbs up!

Is it possible to order your units to target legs, arms or just torso? Would be situationally useful if you just wanted to slow them, disable their damage or just destroy them. Maybe depend on pilot skills and stuff?
Also what about "keep short/medium/long range" that existed in some MC games?

No, it's not possible. Things simply move too fast for this to really be viable, especially given how tiny the selection/interaction area of the units. It's hard enough simply giving a general attack order on a unit.

I thought that maybe you could change the state of your units and tell them to aim at legs instead (basically switch your units to the "cripple enemies" mode).

Oh now I remembered my third question!

There were a lot of dead mechs by the end of that game, and it got me thinking maybe a recovery vehicle could be used to reclaim corpse for cbills? But maybe that would be too much? So are mechs ever going to do the fall over and die with possibility of a critical chunky explosion or is the game design for the mechs to die in a frozen state?

edit:
Also I'm not great with lups, I've played a bit with CEGs to make my own way back when, and I'm 'okay' at texturing.
But I think it is important to advertise for openings for help since others are probably more experienced and willing.

Are you going to have unique textures for each faction? Also for factions how do you prevent opponents from both choosing the same house/clans since it seems like team color are not the way to go?

I'm not sure what was the verdict on the possibility of integrating the advanced superior animation technology ninja sorcerous weapon ability technique into MCL, but if it was, then spamming cool death anims would be a no-brainer.

I thought that maybe you could change the state of your units and tell them to aim at legs instead (basically switch your units to the "cripple enemies" mode).

We thought about this early on but this method seems counter-intuitive and kinda clunky.

There were a lot of dead mechs by the end of that game, and it got me thinking maybe a recovery vehicle could be used to reclaim corpse for cbills? But maybe that would be too much?

This is actually the plan, we're still juggling on how to implement it. I think we'll probably have a Beacon Upgrade "Salvage Facility" that spawns AI vehicles that go out and salvage stuff for you.

So are mechs ever going to do the fall over and die with possibility of a critical chunky explosion or is the game design for the mechs to die in a frozen state?

The static frozen thing is temporary until we decide on/implement a corpse system. We want to do animations and proper death poses. Also, "fusion core meltdown explosion" is in the game, it happens when Mechs overheat to death.

Are you going to have unique textures for each faction? Also for factions how do you prevent opponents from both choosing the same house/clans since it seems like team color are not the way to go?

Yeah each faction will get slightly different textures in line with their "lore" colours, but I'm not too keen on having bright yellow and purple Mechs or red/white/blue things running around, so they'll be more subdued and subtle in their differences. Clans will be more outrageously coloured than the others.

I don't understand the last question? We won't prevent players choosing the same faction, no need to. If players want to have a Federated Suns vs Federated Suns fight, so be it.

'm not sure what was the verdict on the possibility of integrating the advanced superior animation technology ninja sorcerous weapon ability technique into MCL, but if it was, then spamming cool death anims would be a no-brainer.

Would love a system that a) works consistently b) can do better animations but from what I've seen this is pretty hard work to implement. At this stage we're going for easy implementation. We can polish later.

might forbo wrote:Please pick a camera height and stay that that height while using screen edge and minimap to move the camera around. Like watching an rts in shakeycam. There were a lot of things I wanted to see but you jerk the camera around so much I can't tell shit of what is going on, quite frustrating actually.

As far as the game itself, looks good and interesting, thumbs up!

Hehe, first thing Nemo always says is "I gotta stop zooming all over the place". Also thanks.

gajop wrote:I thought that maybe you could change the state of your units and tell them to aim at legs instead (basically switch your units to the "cripple enemies" mode).

Feasible but in our view undesirable.

There is a 'meta' way to target limbs through unit (weapon) choice though. SRMS tend to hit limbs and torso, LRMs raining in from above tend to blow off arms, LBX tend to take out legs.

Well for example, some of the battles looked really cool, but I couldn't enjoy them cause the moment I had a chance to focus on anything, next thing I know I'm looking at unit icons and the camera moving around.

Hearing how the game works was really cool, and I like what you guys have done.

Have you considered increasing the mech size say, 1.5x and keeping all the current stats? For the sake of maps and scaling, it might help. You're fairly dangerously hovering on the cliff of icon wars, or "zoomed out really really far so I can see things" wars. It feels like, to me, that increasing their physical size would be a nice way to combat that and maybe even make the game look nicer in the process.

The game looks great though.

Well, you should expect iconwars if it's a game made by s44 folk

I've been thinking of projectiles allowing special effects etc. And hurm, maybe just setting their ceg tag - something which you *totally* can do in a one-liner - is enough for the visuals? IIRC physics such as guidance strength are also settable this way.

You seem to get a lot more initial and over time C-Bills in the video than the default one gets by starting it from spring.exe.
I also always get overrun by the "Spawner" AI, it seems like it has a lot more resources.

'spawner' is 'cheating'

gajop wrote:You seem to get a lot more initial and over time C-Bills in the video than the default one gets by starting it from spring.exe.
I also always get overrun by the "Spawner" AI, it seems like it has a lot more resources.

The video was the first game with a 'rethink' of the economy which were set by the modoptions. Those changes have become the default modoptions but I didn't test carefully if they were the same via direct launch.

And yes, SpamBot cheats, _massively_, it was originally meant as a testing tool rather than a playable opponent. It's on my todo list to make a non-cheating difficulty mode.

edit: To clarify atm it has three levels
Default - Cbill cheats but not tonnage or C3 limit
'Athlete' - Only picks jump mechs, cheats Cbills and tonnage
'Direbolical' - Only picks assault mechs, cheats Cbills and tonnage

Wow it looks great! I didn't know that it was even playable yet. Congrats on huge popularity spike too btw (judging by the number of views on YouTube).

Bigger mechs or more limited camera would benefit the game greatly in my opinion. So would non stock Spring UI.

FLOZi wrote:The video was the first game with a 'rethink' of the economy which were set by the modoptions. Those changes have become the default modoptions but I didn't test carefully if they were the same via direct launch.

fwiw, I think these are definitely better defaults.

FLOZi wrote:

gajop wrote:You seem to get a lot more initial and over time C-Bills in the video than the default one gets by starting it from spring.exe.
I also always get overrun by the "Spawner" AI, it seems like it has a lot more resources.

The video was the first game with a 'rethink' of the economy which were set by the modoptions. Those changes have become the default modoptions but I didn't test carefully if they were the same via direct launch.

And yes, SpamBot cheats, _massively_, it was originally meant as a testing tool rather than a playable opponent. It's on my todo list to make a non-cheating difficulty mode.

edit: To clarify atm it has three levels
Default - Cbill cheats but not tonnage or C3 limit
'Athlete' - Only picks jump mechs, cheats Cbills and tonnage
'Direbolical' - Only picks assault mechs, cheats Cbills and tonnage

Related:

https://github.com/SpringMCLegacy/Sprin ... eec2d6e390
https://github.com/SpringMCLegacy/Sprin ... 6a76958761

tl;dr Spring.exe values now default to modoption defaults, SpamBot regular difficulty no longer resource cheats at all