Spring:1944 dev and testing

[Warlord Zsinj]

I think the German infantry are on the whole quite good. The british models aren't bad, they just need a once-over texturing, especially their faces.

The main scale issues I noticed were the size of the British armoured cars. Maybe they really were that small, but they seem absolutely tiny when next to your infantry. The tanks all seem a little too small too, but that might just be because I'm used to seeing them up close in FPS's.

Also, I believe the upsizing in Upspring breaks all the normals for shading. Gnome has a method for getting around that while resizing. I've forgotten exactly what it was - something like adding a new blank object, merging things into that, resizing that parent object, saving, opening and then removing the embedded things from that parent and deleting. I might've got that wrong, so check with Gnome.

[DZHIBRISH]

just a suggestion..
In real life tanks are very strong and flexible compared to just troops.
They are much more mobile,have huge ranges and do massive dmg.
their disadvantage is that u cant have so many because you are limited by:
1)fuel
2)costs
3)production time
so i suggest the next gameplay concept:
Make troops cost only energy(maybe a tiny symbolic metal price to make it feel more realistic),make them cheap,and make widgets so they can be easily transported by planes or by vehicles without having to micro them heavily.
Make tanks cost alote of metal and be built slowly,make them need refueling.
What you think?that way you can make it feel very close to life..you have limited planes and tanks but masses of soldiers...

Its important to make tanks/air and soldiers need different types of resources.that way you can overcome the fact tanks are so powerfull and u dont need to choose between building tanks units or planes cause they need different res.i think it will make it more tactical,you have front lines of soldiers and limited amounts of tanks and planes,maybe make converter economy very hard...that way only on maps wioth certain amounts of metal we will see heavy tanks and planes just like t2 and t3 in ota based games.

Yeah, LOL, that's essentially exactly how it is. Infantry are dead cheap and, with a few exceptions, incredibly numerous (low buildtimes) compared to tanks. You can have 100 infantry running around and maybe 5 tanks, a few light vehicles, etc.

The problem with scaling up dramatically is that it changes gameplay. Maps become "smaller", and less "epic". Like the others have said, icons are important. On small maps you can keep zoomed in, on large maps its best to quickly zoom out to see the icons and back in if you need to select anyone specific.

No,its not.if infantry dont cost metal and tanks dont cost energy what u get is a mixed play where tanks and infantry dont compete for resources,thats the whole point of it..thats how it is in real life and i ithnk its a great concept.
imho units should be made bigger,thats just my opinion but i dont like playing using icons if you dont share my views dont change it.(by the way maybe make signs under units for each role like rectangle for smg,circles for snipers and so on).

To me game seems a bit fast,would be more fun since u cant make units take covers and all that to make units have more life.. that way ull have cool front lines and will give time to maybe even trench in.maybe add a few defensive structures?seems that after u start losing there is no way to make a comback unless ur fow makes a real big mistake.

***edited***
forgot to add that resource seem irelevant.. the bars go up and down instantly.. no rela resource managment at all..u can just bring down the entire metal bar in an instant(that how it ment to be i personnaly dont like it).

[Argh]

SWS infantry are 1.7:1 with ours. I was considering scaling them up again (because everything is so small right now that we could afford a 50% increase or so without breaking pathfinding, ect), but Upspring can't resize things atm without making the models very dark. I have no idea why.

You just need to rebuild the normals- it's a smoothing issue. And if Gnome is really doing something that arcane, WZ, then he needs to read this, too- it's not that much work, trust me

In UpSpring, go to the following menu:



Select "all objects" or "selected objects", depending on what you need to fix (usually, I do "all objects" first, then apply selective smoothing to sub-objects that may not be perfect, like gun barrels).

It'll ask for an angle. Select between 35-45 for the "All objects" step, then play around with it. Keep lighting ON, so that you can see the real effect of the smoothing. With practice, you can greatly enhance how well your objects look in Spring by using this carefully. For a quick-and-dirty, though, I'd just use 35 degrees (enough to smooth most "rounded" stuff) on all objects. Then save, and voila, problem solved

[Gnomre]

Whowha, I don't mess with the S44 models. I know all about that function, I usually use it instead of doing it manually in the editor before importing to upspring

[Neddie]

If you could help us out by commenting on the S44 forum, lads, in separate threads for different topics, I think we could speed the process of digesting and considering your feedback. I know Nemo and Spiked are rather tired, and Felix is MIA, so there aren't as many people here to filter and incorporate.

[Pressure Line]

the Scott has dissapparated from the build menus... again.. maybe intentional? but it really hurts the US (although the greyhound is pretty good

[FLOZi]

Yeah, intentional. We didn't want it to be in the release without the proper model and tex. For now the US will have to make do with the packhow.

[Felix the Cat]

If you could help us out by commenting on the S44 forum, lads, in separate threads for different topics, I think we could speed the process of digesting and considering your feedback. I know Nemo and Spiked are rather tired, and Felix is MIA, so there aren't as many people here to filter and incorporate.

My computer is being a bitch. It's running exceptionally slow and I don't know why. The other night when we tried to have a game, Spring took about 10 minutes to load and then immediately crashed out... I've tried everything that I know to do to fix the slowness/improve performance, no results. I think it may be a hardware issue. In about a week and a half I'll be able to take it in to be repaired free of cost... hopefully I can get it repaired without losing any data!

[Nemo]

Bump kabump.

Version 0.15

Changelog:
*Fixed LuaCOB error spam and crashing (removed Lua indicators for suppression/pinning, so no more numbers telling you the fear level of the troops).
*Cut damage of all bullets vs infantry by half. (Yes, I'm serious - I'll PM you the rationale if you ask).

*M8 PackHow range cut (from 2050 to 1600)
*Leig18 range cut to 1500 (from 2000 to 1500)
*Nerf ZiS-3 range (from 2765 to 2650)
*Nerf USSR Barracks buildtime (by 25%)
*Cheapened Sandbagged MGs by about 50% (from 1800m to 1200m)
*Cut observation and sniper infantry LoS (from 1250 to 1000 for observ, from 1100 to 850 for sniper).
*Doubled buildtime for observ of all nations.
*Added RPG-43 heavy anti-tank unit for Soviets.
*Increased grenade damage vs tanks and buildings.

Assorted bugfixes (Bazooka speaking german, buildpic for brit HQ engineer, firing sounds for sandbagged MGs, some missing icons)

[Guessmyname]

*wonders where the term 'Nerf' came from*

[Nemo]

you're making it soft and squishy, like a nerf (foam) toy.

Please direct feedback to our forum. Or just post here. But it'd be nice if you registered and posted there.

[Pressure Line]

*Since the release of the Lite Beta, there have been many players who have tried to "porc" up around their start position and try to fight a defensive war. While this may work in other mods, it does not work in Spring: 1944!.

[kiki]

i <3 porc

[SpikedHelmet]

Post where you want. Just don't expect us to notice or care if you do it here. :)

[Nemo]

V0.2 (link coming soonish)


Changelog:
-General-
*Disabling units not meant to be included in next release (Churchill, Tiger, KV-1, M10, Achilles, ISU-152).
*Bumping up brakerates for all tracked vehicles to 0.45 (from 0.25).

-Balance/Gameplay changes-
-Big-
*Removed Observation infantry, replaced them with a "Scout" with a small LoS. Also nerfed Sniper LoS significantly.
*Units that cloak while moving move rather slower.
This removes the "observ shielding" gameplay that was a problem.
It is much easier to manuever forces around enemy concentrations now that enemy LoS doesn't cover half the map.
*Equalized Riflemen ranges (In decending order of range: Britain - 810, Germany - 805, Soviets - 800, US - 785).
*Increased Garand rate of fire by 10%.
*Nerfed Soviet infantry HP to 40 (from 50), Partisans to 20 (from 25).

-Small-
*Cheapened trucks to 100m each
*Sniper rifle range greatly increased (+50%)
*Bringing down mobile MG cost for all but soviets (450m-->300m).
*Cheapened Leig/Packhow (from ~2000 to 1100, 1200m respectively).
*Lowering cost of APC halftracks by half (from ~1000 to 500).
*Lowering cost of ZiS-3, along with a range nerf (now that its not serving as mid-range arty as much, it can be more of a direct fire gun).
*Cheapened Stuart (2700->2500) and T-70 (2850->2750).
*Doubled mortar weapon reload time, keeping suppression weapon the same (they're less effective at killing now, mainly a pinning weapon)

-New units-
*Added ML-30 Howitzer for Soviets. (This is their "heavy" arty for the lite release)
*Added Dug-in AT Guns for all sides (directional + limited arc like the MGs - higher cost and HP than normal towed AT guns)
*Added Kangaroo Armored Infantry Transport - with only slightly less armor than a Sherman tank, this
transport allows British infantry to get past light defenses that would stop halftracks or trucks instantly.

-Bugfixes-
*Fixing mortars exploding in mid-air in SVN Spring.
*Fixing weaponID on ML-30 suppresssion weapon.
*Removing XP widget for now (until we have our own images) - fixes giant white squares
*Fixed HE shells and MGs damaging flags
*Removed +3 metal production from US veh yard.
*Removed a no-effect script error in mortars, sdkfz9 (double semicolon).

[Kixxe]

As i said before in chat, i really want a screenshot of the scouts units LOS and decloack radius so i can know how much of a micro issue it could become...

[Nemo]

Here:

[DZHIBRISH]

Hi,I have a question.
Is it possible to build groups?for example instead of building 1 unit
you build 3 or 4 of them but they are like one unit..they cant seperate,like in company of heroes.It might be easier to spot them like this.
It will be easier to spot them and will make it possible to hang small icos above each group to say what its in charge of instead of every soldier having an icon.

[SpikedHelmet]

It would be a LUA nightmare; first we'd have to have infantry build in groups, and then find a way to tie those guys together so that when you select one it automatically selects all in the group. Then other considerations come into play; what happens if the group gets seperated? Split up into different transports? What if most die and only one or two remains? It potentially causes more problems and doesn't really fix any.

More realistically, we can have infantry built in "platoons" and "teams", of which there would be many kinds (rifle platoons, machinegun teams, mortar teams, sniper+spotter, etc) but control would still be completely individual.

[Nemo]

Hopefully the last release for a little while (stupid bugs and 'sploitz...)
S:44 Lite Beta v0.21


Changelog from v0.2 to 0.21

--JAN 2nd, 2008 (SVN REV 773)--
*brought rifle ranges on average back up to 900 (maintained differences, just not to the extreme that they were).
*fixed russian truck costing 400m.
*fixed flags being used by AIs for energy

*fixed SMG/rifle movecloak (this was a rather large exploit, and the main reason for YET ANOTHER update. - rifles and SMGs could be set to hold fire and cloaked and moved around totally invisible).

*removed MG from german bunker
*added new FX for 20mm
*fixed ML-30 lacking an armor.txt entry
*bumped AP mine cost back up a touch since there are basically no counters to it atm (except tanks)
*bumped up bazooka/PIAT/RPG-43 damage to 8500, 'faust to 5500
*changed the weaponID on a few of the bigger arty pieces so they don't get read as AP weapons.
*Cut damage of vehicle and tank corpses by half (so now clearing a path with arty is more viable)
*Fixed high mass of M-30 preventing towage