Snooky's Weekly QA Report - April 29th, 2005

[Snooky]

This is my first weekly bug report based on actual testing. I verified, confirmed many bugs already cited, but listed them here for consistency as well. I will produce a report weekly (or more) base on actual tested results. Since I have not played multi-player yet (tomorrow), my focus is strictly in game at this point.



***Bugs***
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Radar rings continue to display even when radar is turned off. Jammers unconfirmed at this time.

Sea Plane Plant builds units under water. Plant does not submerge when completed/finished building.

Stockpile units can stockpile weapons before unit itself is completed.

Stockpile weapon resumes from point left off when switched off and back on again (not sure if bug, but I like this, you can put your nuke on 'hold' if you run out of energy).

Range for most weapons unlimited when in FPS mode.

Units can target within their own footprint.

Units can harm themselves.

Ships and subs can easily become trapped on shore.

Units can be 'buried' when moved into a crater and covered over by a con bot using the restore function.

Capture does not work/is not available.

Resurrection does not work/is not available.

Stunning does not work/is not available.

Floating DTs disappear when completed.

Some unit begin animations while being built (Hammer). Likely need to use while get 17 from create script or requeststate.

Blank textures show up as black in the game (and cast shadows).

Depthcharges work very poorly in shallow water (and can harm unit that is firing them).

Self destruct units (roach, invader) do not auto destruct when attacking a target.

Some units (hovers?) will spin in circles when move order completed.




***Ideas/Issues***
------------------

Interactive mini-map needed as per OTA. Scouting and movement hinder without this.

Terrain far too easily destroyed. Allow host to set terrain deformity rate from high, low, or none. Default to very low (1/10current) or none at all.

Create FBI tag for high trajectory fire (with degree/barrel angle?) so that only specific units may utilize this function. Example would be HIGHTRAJECTORY=n; (where n=1 or 0) MAXBARRELANLGLE=n; (where n=0 to 90 degrees). Only ballistic units should have this.

Increase map size allowance to at least 16384x16384 (TA 32x32). 20480x20480 (40x40) would be even better.

Implement range rings for all units or at least long range units. Ring would equal the radius of the unit's maximum range and would show up on radar as a colored ring (white?). on the game map itself, a faint ring would also be cool along with a cusor change when cursor is mover beyond a units range.

Create FBI tag for units indicate if they can knock down trees. Example would be CLEARTREES=n; (where n=1 or 0).

Create FBI tags for unit's transport capacity value. Small units like an A.K. might be 1 where a Goliath might be 2 or 3. This waytransports could only carry a few of the larger units and more of the smaller.

create toogle switch (i.e. '~') to allow players to turn off resource bars (just like recorder).

Display unit kills (with toggle on/off option) for each unit (just like recorder).

Display cloak radius while pressing shift (but also for non-moving units).

Increase LOS relative to altitude vs ground. This way units on the high ground or planes have more LOS (just like TA:K).

Create a repair radius option like load/unload/restore circles.

4 way or more rotate option for plants and, if possible, defenses.

Allow use of custom GUIs, including large stockpile GUI buttons (i.e UH, Bugfix) and sub-GAF buttons (UH and SWTA Multi-Directional Factories).

Add space bar feature from TA.

Command bar too large. Place on bottom like TA.

Auto raise unit(s) when restore applied to terrain.



***Other (need to test or verified no problems)***
--------------------------------------------------

Is the sonar jamming cloaking bug from TA still a problem in Spring?

Can subs fire vlaunch weapons while under water?

Shadows work fine on my PC

Commanders fire laser fine on my PC (in FPS it only fire DGUN but not sure if you get a choice or not)





***Notes***
-----------

*System Specs*

Windows XP SP2
P4 3.2GHz
1GB RAM
NVidia 6800 GT /256MB
SoundBlaster Live 6:1


*Game Specs*

1280x768 Windowed
All grphics options enabled
Shadow map size 2048
Unit texture quality 2xHQ
All sliders set to 50%

[zwzsg]

Create FBI tag for high trajectory fire (with degree/barrel angle?) so that only specific units may utilize this function. Example would be HIGHTRAJECTORY=n; (where n=1 or 0) MAXBARRELANLGLE=n; (where n=0 to 90 degrees). Only ballistic units should have this.

No, simply use the already existing tag ballistic=1;

Create FBI tags for unit's transport capacity value. Small units like an A.K. might be 1 where a Goliath might be 2 or 3. This waytransports could only carry a few of the larger units and more of the smaller.

The old TA engine use the footprint to determine unit size when transporting. AK have a 1x1 footpring and Goliath a 3x3 footprint. However in the old TA engine footprint is used only to determine only if a unit can be lifted or not, only the number of unit is used to determine if the tranport is full. For instance the Arm Tranporst ship has: transportsize=3;//cannot load anything bigger than a goliath transportmaxunits=20;// can load up to 20 units. It could make sense to allow more little units and less big units, but anyway in the old TA transport were nearly never used, so it's not a problem if in Spring transport can load the same number of every unit as well.

Implement range rings for all units or at least long range units. Ring would equal the radius of the unit's maximum range and would show up on radar as a colored ring (white?). on the game map itself, a faint ring would also be cool along with a cusor change when cursor is mover beyond a units range.

In TA when you type +showranges the screen becomes very cluttered and messy. If something to show range rings is to implemeted in spring, it must be toggleable independently of any view toggle.

Range for most weapons unlimited when in FPS mode.

I played with FPS mode with varied units, and the range wasn't limited. Hawks missile fall down after some distance, EMG disappear in the air quickly, etc.. Maybe the range was a bit longer than without FPS, but not much. (And having a longer range was possible in OTA with the fire-at-your-feet trick, and having a tiny advantage when in FPS mode isn't bad)

Terrain far too easily destroyed. Allow host to set terrain deformity rate from high, low, or none. Default to very low (1/10current) or none at all.

Am I the only one who think current terrain deformity is fine? Is it because XTA units damage the terrain more than the OTA units I'm using in Spring? But sure having the choice is good.

Otherwise I agree.

[Torrasque]

Having a key to see where your unit can fire and where it can't.
Cause it's annoying when one turret don't fire and you don't know why.

(I think it can be implemented like the los, but only for the selected unit. And your unit hide the trajectorie too.)

[Dwarden]

using shift and hover cursor over unit (or select) u can see range of weapon ... i think

[Torrasque]

I know but you will not know if one of your unit is in the trajectorie. Because in Spring, unit don't fire if they are friendly unit in fornt of him.

[Sean Mirrsen]

In response to the list:

Blank textures show up black - this is a double-glitch, based on both a feature and a bug. The feature is the double-sided faces for everything in the game. The bug, actually unrelated to Spring, is that certain people like to have textures on their groundplates and stuff. While this did work in TA, it will not work in Spring. If any non-textured face shows up black, you need the PALETTE.PAL file from the XTA archive.

Self Destruct works in a funny way, only when the kamikaze unit and the target unit move away from each other while in range. This was done to implement mines, so as to maximize damage (when the target entered range, and started to go away from the mine, it's probably the best time to blow up). I'll work on improving this.

I added a function to toggle health bars on units - is this what you ask?

There already are reclaim circles, didn't try with repair.

[PauloMorfeo]

...
Self Destruct works in a funny way, only when the kamikaze unit and the target unit move away from each other while in range. This was done to implement mines, so as to maximize damage (when the target entered range, and started to go away from the mine, it's probably the best time to blow up). I'll work on improving this. ...

Ho!? That is very cool. Don't change that (unless maybe to enable triggering of the auto-destruct when enemy is close enough).

If that means that the enemy will have time to destroy the mine/roach, it will explode any way.

If that means that the enemy may stop his unit after seeing the mine/roach, it is actually cool. It sounds like a soldiers that has stepped on a land mine and it must wait for his friends to come rescue him.

[Buggi]

Lets not forget the barrels of some units flying off the unit... interesting bug.

I *LOVE* "high trajectory"... with the buzzsaw you can litterally make it rain plasma, not very accurate, but to any on-coming army it would be sweet.

I like terrain deformation, we just need to tweak it a little. On "metal" maps it should be turned off and the "ground" is actually a strucure. On earthy, marsy, moony maps with dirt, deformation rules. We just need units that can both dig trenches and restore quickly. Sort of like a "bridge builder". A unit to go ahead of your army and smooth out the terrain of a given diameter and do so very fast (think "street sweeper"). Pathfinding should account for this and apply low priority of nasty terrain and use smooth.

I'm VERY anxious to see a lava map... *evil grin* A whole new set of physics there.

I'd like to see a sort of "fog of war"... unless it's already in there. It would help with LOS a ton.

I have a feature idea for units that I'll post in the development forum.

My $.02

-Buggi

[Liam]

I'd like to see a sort of "fog of war"... unless it's already in there. It would help with LOS a ton.

you basically can, press "L"

[Snooky]

zwzsg

Regarding the footprint size as the transport point value makes way more sense - good call on that one.

Using only the ballistic tag would mean all ballistic weapons have a high trajectory, inluding torpedos, flamethrowers, etc. Some weapons should not have this, but no big deal.

In FPS mode, there is no place on the maps my LRPCs could not reach. Also torpedos can fire across the entire sea - kind of fun watching them take a minute or two to reach a target on the horizon.

Regarding other comments about terrain...

My concern about deforming terrain echoes Storm. I don't want to play earth moving with tractors and ditches all day - I want classic combat! I agree about the real/cool factor with deforming terrain, but keep at a minimum with only minor impact on game play, if any.

[Sean Mirrsen]

LRPCs and torpedoes reaching across the map is entirely an XTA problem, I play OTA.