Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.194 - Page 2

Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.194

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Forboding Angel
Evolution RTS Developer
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by Forboding Angel »

JK's. Also, It wasn't argh's. Don't give him credit for all that. It was Kloot's work. Argh only did minor edits.
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FLOZi
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by FLOZi »

It was my understanding that it was kloot's shader, argh's gadget, but you may well be right. 8)
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Wombat
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by Wombat »

- transporter is bit bugged - its especially visible while transporting heavy tank (turret appears on top of the trans), also its gun doesnt shoot :'

- like already mentioned, i also think fights last too long. main reasons are too much hp/too weak weapons and, what is most annoying, projectiles speed.

- is there any chance u could make the buildbar of ground units lab appear above the building, not hovering in the sky ?

- since you dont use nanos and constructors guarding lab always look bit dumb for me, u could try to create some building (or just power generators) that increase production speed when built just near the factory. something similar to BA targeting facility could be nice - effectiveness decreases with every next building u make (idea taken from w40k necron pylons)

- i think that MARS may have too big rate of fire, but since balance changes require playing some games, its just first impression.

- walkers plz ! :D

also, i took a look at medium tank, managed to remove around 300 triangles which are basicly useless. on the left is ingame one and on the right edited (dunno how about other models and dunno if u bother :D)
Image

small request - do u have all textures in png format ? im too lazy to play with the dds :D
LordMuffe
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by LordMuffe »

@Forbiding Angel: i have JK┬┤s normal mapping widget included in the current version. Wasn┬┤t it visible? I┬┤m not sure if i use it correctly, it seems to blur the textures a fair bit. Maybe because of my choice of .dds or texture resolution. Also, i┬┤m not sure that the GIMP plugin i use for .dds isn┬┤t messing up the texture.

Sadly i have no vector based image of the logo. I had a cad model of it once, but im afraid that wouldnt be of much help... and lost over the years...

tlc: yeah i hope i can give this project a bit of that. But looking back on ES it seems I┬┤m not very good in that :)

@smoth: On the part of colors, I want to give every side a identifying color. Narga: black, Dolgear: grey, Isaari: white.I┬┤m afraid that mixing that with some others and additionally with teamcolor would look very chaotic.
Regarding the "ONLY": Knowing your excellent work with textures and models, I highly value your opinion on that matter.

@Flozi: I think that is what i was looking for, thanks :)

@Wombat: I understand your hate for the current dropship-thing. Originally I wanted it to work a bit like in Groundcontrol 2: the player can create a order over a set of units-> units have to get paid instantly ( supcom2 style) -> it gets delivered in the same amount of time, no matter which units are ordered. Time wouldnt be the limiting factor, but if you have the resources. Big unit orders would net additional storage space, giving that building more strategic value. Players would have to choose between smal and steady unit stream, but with longer "buildtime" due to more delivering-flights.
Sadly i discovered soon that i couldnt create or modify existing code to work in that way, so TA like building it is.

I don┬┤t want to use other models than mine. Cremuss has created very cool models, but hat is also the part which i enjoy most in the modding process.

Yeah, transporters are unfinished to no end. Units visible while transporting, engines motionless while flying/landing, diving into the ground to unload, wrong parameters for the load capacity etc.
But hte gun doesnt shoot? Thats new, I will look into it.

I can change the buildbar for the next release.

On your idea for faster units building speed, while interesting, needs lua-> can┬┤t do. On the bit dumb part:I absolutly HATE nanoturrets, one of the main reasons i cant touch TA derivate mods.
As for now, if you want to increase your unit production, build more labs. I know that labs are not cheap, but i hope that i will be able to figure out how to get the morphing .lua to work soon. If so, the builder vehicle will be able to deploy into a lab, without extra costs or hp.

If i reduce the firing speed of the MARS, I would have to adjust the damge per shot in a way, so it would kill most light units with one shot. That is something i don┬┤t want, I┬┤m afraid it would make the buggy and the raidbike pretty useless in later stages of a game.

Since you and Forbiding Angle both seem annoyed by the high hp/low dmg, what if the hp of all units would be reduced by 20%? One reason why I┬┤m unsure about such a change in "speed" is the slow buildtime of new units. The early game phase could proof to be absolutely game-breaking: big map, wrong unit to start with -> loose all mexes-> end in just a few minutes.

Your work on the medium tank scares me a bit. I try to clean my models up, before i put them in the game. 300 tirs on a 1200 tris model is quite a bad thing. Would you mind telling me where you found the dispensable tris? I assure you, it does bother me that I was working so sloppy in that department.

I┬┤m afraid there are only .tga files of the textures. The .dds in the modfile are only the normalmap.dds for the models.


Story wise, walkers are a Narga and Issari thing, so I┬┤m afraid you will have to be a bit patient :)
i have some drafts for walkers and this early model for the second side shown below. Those models are by no means finished and may change completely before i implement them. For example, the legs, feats and cockpit of the light Walker will get a overhaul.

ImageImageImage
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Wombat
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by Wombat »

its not that i hate them. its great idea (heh, i downloaded ground control 2 few days ago so i know what u mean :D). problem is it currently works simply bad and kills the gameplay. and why it doesnt work ? cant u just set buildtime to 1 ? :D

@models - ye i understand that, but it would be nice to play polished game sometime soon :D

@nano - ye i get ur point :P u could always try to ask for help if u cant handle this particular lua.

@mars - hmm, i actually tohught that mars is supposed to be anti-building and extremely fragile to light units :'

i still think u could brainstorm a bit more @ projectile speed. its pretty annoying how majority of rockets miss coz of ridicuously slow speed

@ tank - first of all, i removed the wheels, 'closed' side of the tracks, removed quite a lot of faces from bottom parts of the tank. basicly, everything that is invisible ingame (if u ever planned to make animated wheels inside tracks, there is much easier way)
LordMuffe
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by LordMuffe »

FLOZi wrote:
The script in question is public domain and kdr_11k wrote it:

Gadget: http://pastebin.com/aHzhWCeh

Example Defs: http://pastebin.com/1Ak5TB6h
ok, i┬┤m afraid i can┬┤t figure this out:

in the second file, the units which should be used as the drop-ship model get defined (?) and the first one does... generate some functions which get used in the .cob-script of the unit that gets build or the building unit? If so, whats the functions name? or am I totally wrong ?

I would really appreciate any hints and help with this :)
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Forboding Angel
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by Forboding Angel »

Stop using dds for unit textures. What tiny performance gain you might get isn't even remotely worth the trouble that it causes.
LordMuffe
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by LordMuffe »

i only use .dds for the normelmap texture.


@wombat: the morph/dropship-thing doesn┬┤t work because i have no idea how to use it.

Yes, the mars is a classic anti building artillery unit, but it is also useful to prevent enemies to clump there armies. And a way to counter that is to use the fast and hp-low units, which would have a hard time to reach the mars if they could get killed by one hit.

Are you referring to all missile weapons or only the raid bike┬┤s and the Mars┬┤s weapons? If that would be the case, they are mainly against slow moving units and buildings.

About the tank: can you upload your revised version? I┬┤m curious which faces you removed at the bottom.

Atm, i┬┤m editing a version where all units health is reduced by 20% and most projectiles are faster, to see how it changes the gameplay.
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Forboding Angel
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by Forboding Angel »

LordMuffe wrote:i only use .dds for the normelmap texture.
Why? That's just odd.
LordMuffe
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by LordMuffe »

it was my understanding that it was necessary... it isn┬┤t? can us e tga instead?
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knorke
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by knorke »

somebody set this texture mess straight for once http://springrts.com/wiki/Units:Textures
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PicassoCT
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by PicassoCT »

Its texmex, something wikkid this way comes.
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FLOZi
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by FLOZi »

Forboding Angel wrote:Stop using dds for unit textures. What tiny performance gain you might get isn't even remotely worth the trouble that it causes.
Disagree, thoroughly.

It's not even so much about performance as control over your mips. So long as you are using sensible compression options artefacting won't be an issue.

FWIW S44 uses DXT5 for diffuse textures, DXT1C for normals which iirc is the same as CA/ZK. There's quite a lot of options for generating normalmaps to play around with to get a good balance of depth vs clarity.

Again FWIW, S44 normal.bat:

Code: Select all

start nvdxt.exe -quality_highest -sinc -file *.png -append _normals.dds -dxt1c -sinc -n3x3 -colorspace -scale -12
Diffuse is just -dxt5 -sinc.

Cue jK explaining why I am only half right. :P
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Forboding Angel
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by Forboding Angel »

Flozi, dds is quite blurry compared to png. Also, spring's mipmapping isn't anything to be proud of.
LordMuffe wrote:it was my understanding that it was necessary... it isn┬┤t? can us e tga instead?
Arugh, why the heck would anyone use some shit format like targa? Seriously, where do you guys come up with this stuff?

TGA is occasionally useful for colormapped CEG effects, BUT THAT'S IT!

For everything else, use png. You can also use dds if you like blurryness, really inaccurate mipmapping, and a serious pain in the dick of use. Also, normalmaps need to be fairly strong.

As an example, this is evo's normalmap.

Image
LordMuffe
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by LordMuffe »

there is a very simple reason why i like targa: it just works... Want to make a png? sure, just set 7 different options just right or else spring wont do shit with it...

If you really think .png is much better, then please tell me how i make one with gimp which works with the normal mapping lua. ( Interlacing y/n, Background-color, gamma factor, compressionfactor etc...)

And believe me, i am not fond of dds, and if possible would like to avoid using it.
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Wombat
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by Wombat »

since i see some advantages of the dds, profits are rather minor and silly compared to the time that is needed to create it.
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Forboding Angel
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by Forboding Angel »

Options for png... why on earth... Proof of why photoshop is superior, sigh.
LordMuffe wrote:If you really think .png is much better, then please tell me how i make one with gimp which works with the normal mapping lua. ( Interlacing y/n, Background-color, gamma factor, compressionfactor etc...)
Default png options should be fine. Interlacing no, bg color transparent, gamma factor (wtf?) leave it at default), compression level 6 (more or less normal), etc.

You're using a pretty old version of jk's normalmap shader...

Just looked...

Wow, ok you're doing it totally wrong. It's no wonder you're having so much trouble.

From an evo unit:

Code: Select all

  customParams = {
	twokhotkey = 'e',
    dronespawner = "1",
	armortype   = "lightarmor",
	[b]normaltex = "unittextures/con_legonormal.png",[/b] 
	helptext = [[The Erector can build new structures, reclaim features, turn energy cores into gunship drones, and capture enemy units. Upon it's death, it emits a wave of nanoparticles that will repair 100 hitpoints to any units in proximity]],
  },
The bolded line is relevant to your interests. Add custom params to your units, and add the normaltex line and tell it what to look for.

Or, if you don't care so much about "doin it rite", you could change like 77 of "customShaders_config.lua"
from:

Code: Select all

        local normaltex = basefilename .. "_normals.dds"
to

Code: Select all

        local normaltex = basefilename .. "_normals.png"
But that will cause all of your normalmaps to stop working until you convert them to png.

Additionally, you should really move to lua unitdefs. There is a converter somewhere around here. They are about 10x less of a pain in the cock to deal with than fbi unitdefs.
LordMuffe
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by LordMuffe »

thank you :) i will look into it when i get some spare time
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FLOZi
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by FLOZi »

Flozi, dds is quite blurry compared to png. Also, spring's mipmapping isn't anything to be proud of.
Image

The mips which Spring builds for those formats which don't include there own are nothing to be proud of. That was precisely my point. If you are using dds, you have total control over the mips, you can get much sharper results with the simplest of filters applied just by adding a command line argument.

The quality again depends on the tool and the settings you are using. S44 textures, at base 512x512 are indistinguishable by eye between dxt5 and the original png.
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Forboding Angel
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Re: Eternal Struggle: Landing Operations 0.186

Post by Forboding Angel »

Using png disables the mips. I was under the impression that you knew that already.

That explains a little bit.

But also:
Wombat wrote:since i see some advantages of the dds, profits are rather minor and silly compared to the time that is needed to create it.
^^ this. Dds = aids. (of course this is my own opinion, but I do not form that opinion from misinformation)

Also, I prefer being able to load the texture directly into photoshop instead of having to go through a silly plugin.
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