Better Support For Gaia. Long.

[Argh]

Ok, for the TLDR folks:

Gaia units in Spring are not well supported yet. They're an experimental area that needs more work.

For everybody else:

Gaia is something I'm starting to play with, and I've found a few things that, with minimal work, could result in big improvements in Spring's handling of them. Here are the features I think might really help Gaia become less-clunky and useful in Spring:

1. IgnoreNeutral(boolean), CollideNeutral(boolean): just like Ignore / Collide Friendly... if the aiming code has a Unit that has been set to Neutral by Spring, weapons should ignore it as a valid target, and shots should be able to pass through them, if CollideNeutral == 1.

2. Captureable(boolean): In OTA, there was a variable that apparently prevented capture. There seems to be a function in Spring that prevents Commanders from being captured, but it cannot be applied to other Units. I'd like Captureable == 1 to make it so that that the CAI no longer allows these units to be captured, nor allows attempts to capture. Not allowing this means that neutral Units that shouldn't ever be captured, like random buildings, etc., have to be set to Commander=1 right now, which is lame.

3. CreateNeutral(boolean): if 1, then the Unit, when created, is automatically made neutral. Among other things, this could mean the end of Features, through item 4. This can currently be done via LUA- why can't it be done through a TDF tag as well?

4. FeatureDead should allow valid Units to be used, if named, as well as Features. If item 3 was implemented, this means we could transform dead Units into neutral Units, among other things. Or we could have zombies that transform into skeletons when they die, giving them a second life. Or whatever. Sure, we can do this with LUA, but why not just put that into the engine- it has a ton of useful side-uses.

5. LockWeaponsIfNeutral(boolean): Would keep weapons on the Unit from getting called until the Unit was no longer Neutral. Again, something I've already implemented through LUA, but it seems like it could just as well be a TDF tag- and because of item 6, it probably should be.

6. Lastly, there is a Gaia boolean, but it doesn't appear that there's any real use for it. We need a way that this can be communicated to AIs, so that they know that a unit is Gaia. Handling the behavior past that should be up to the AI developers, but it'd probably help their work immensely if when they got the value of Gaia, it also told them the value of LockWeaponsIfGaia. Then AIs would know that a given Unit was hostile, and could take appropriate actions. It'd probably really help the AI folks with these issues.

[Argh]

Um, I hate to whine, but can somebody please, please please write Captureable and commit it? I have a map demo pretty much done, showing off a lot of this conceptual stuff, and it's ready to use... if that one thing was available, it'd all work perfectly. The rest of this laundry-list can wait, it's all using LUA and COB tricks for now.

Sorry to beg for something so minor, but it'll be worth it, the GPL'd map-changer demo's neat...

[Argh]

Thanks, Kloot! I will put out the GPL'd demo sometime over the next 24 hours, just need to clean up some textures and do some final code work.