Just a comment about me and CA

[Licho]

Its htere for ages ppl!!
Read before you post
http://files.caspring.org/
<- for direct download of ANY version

http://www.caspring.org/wiki/CaUpdater
<- for fast incremenetal (less data transferred) retrieval of ANY version

[malric]

For linux there is svn update script and beejayzed is fixing linux compatibility for CaDownloader now.

CaDownloader for linux would be nice .

[Saktoth]

How colossally lazy do you have to be to not use CA downloader, because the CA downloader is so easy to use and so built for lazy people that its even easier than going to UF to get a mod. Its a one time download, start it with your spring client and off you go. You're set. By the time you want to join a game, CA will have updated itself in the background.

CA is about innovation, about pushing the boundries of spring, new features and making a new game, not just another OTA mod or a rebalance of BA (Which is kinda redundant, BBA). The whole reason CA was created was because BA wasnt open to innovation (Though now CA has taken on its own design goals and character). Yes, we are taking BA and thus AA and thus OTA as a framework to build this new game, and yes, we are, in the meantime, endeavouring to have a perfectly playable product and playtest it all the way through its development. We update because we are still developing the mod though, not for PR. >_> Given that people complain about the frequent updates it would be counter-intuitive to do it just for PR! As for the devs hosting non-stable versions (and springie, which is lichos, IE a dev) well duh. We want to test our changes. We've discussed making the stables more regular, though, since the system obviously isnt working.

For what its worth, t1 is prettymuch done. Most of the work now is balance changes- which are very minor, vigorously debated, and given heavy scrutiny. Ive endeavoured to be as conservative as possible in my balancing of T1, with only minor tweaks here and there and plenty of time for any changes to settle in so everyone becomes used to the new dynamic. Yes it still has some way to go, but we arent going to be totally overhauling t1 vechs and kbots at this stage. Probably the biggest implication for those labs ATM is what ends up happening with amphibs and hovers (which have barely been touched in CA yet, and thus any changes we make to them wont be upsetting well-established balance).

There is still a lot of work to do to t2, and thats where most of this 'flat balancing' will take place.

[manored]

I wasnt complaining about not being able to play, just showing the irony of the thing: trying to play CA prevents me from doing so :)

What you mean with "flat balancing"?

[Smiff]

jesus, what a lot of whining.
CA is not only being constantly improved (yay). they've even written a very nice update utility which does nothing but update it, well.
i wish more mods did this (sharing the same utility pls).
now stop complaining, i don't want them stopping. remember plenty of people are playing this on LANs and not complaining.
if you have a LAN, write a little script with robocopy to spread those updates around rather than wasting bandwidth on each.

if this is all too difficult (it's not), i wonder how you can be smart enough to play the game...

[Saktoth]

I wasnt complaining about not being able to play, just showing the irony of the thing: trying to play CA prevents me from doing so :)

What you mean with "flat balancing"?

In most RTS's, as you get higher up the tech tree the units just get BETTER and obsolete or replace earlier versions. This is the reward for your investment in new techs. This encourages rushing techs and porcing over aggression or interaction, means a lot of units become redundant and means you have to balance every tech level separately.

Flat balancing is just that. Its flat. T2 units are just as good as t1 units, only, they are different. Even T3 units are just as good as T2 and T1, just different. Equally, there are no longer the huge overheads required to access these units- because you arent paying for better units, just different ones.

Its about applications, new factories open up new strategic avenues of attack (All terrain, EMP, longer ranged artillery, heavier assault options, mobile shields etc). They dont replace or make redundant t1 units, but augment your arsenal. Most of this is in the theory stage ATM but we've laid some solid groundwork.

[manored]

Cool! Thats how I always tough that mods should be :) It was like that In the old original TA also.

[LOrDo]

Ok, It takes me serveral seconds to download the latest CA with the updater and Im on freaking dial up. If your complaining about the frequency of updates that is just sad. Zipping dosnt take like any time either, and my computer is a cheap Athlon +3800, not even dual core.

[LordMatt]

Cool! Thats how I always tough that mods should be :) It was like that In the old original TA also.

Wrong.

[Krathi]

This is why you're supposed to download the latest commit, THEN start up spring

[SwiftSpear]

How colossally lazy do you have to be to not use CA downloader, because the CA downloader is so easy to use and so built for lazy people that its even easier than going to UF to get a mod. Its a one time download, start it with your spring client and off you go. You're set. By the time you want to join a game, CA will have updated itself in the background.

CA is about innovation, about pushing the boundries of spring, new features and making a new game, not just another OTA mod or a rebalance of BA (Which is kinda redundant, BBA). The whole reason CA was created was because BA wasnt open to innovation (Though now CA has taken on its own design goals and character). Yes, we are taking BA and thus AA and thus OTA as a framework to build this new game, and yes, we are, in the meantime, endeavouring to have a perfectly playable product and playtest it all the way through its development. We update because we are still developing the mod though, not for PR. >_> Given that people complain about the frequent updates it would be counter-intuitive to do it just for PR! As for the devs hosting non-stable versions (and springie, which is lichos, IE a dev) well duh. We want to test our changes. We've discussed making the stables more regular, though, since the system obviously isnt working.

For what its worth, t1 is prettymuch done. Most of the work now is balance changes- which are very minor, vigorously debated, and given heavy scrutiny. Ive endeavoured to be as conservative as possible in my balancing of T1, with only minor tweaks here and there and plenty of time for any changes to settle in so everyone becomes used to the new dynamic. Yes it still has some way to go, but we arent going to be totally overhauling t1 vechs and kbots at this stage. Probably the biggest implication for those labs ATM is what ends up happening with amphibs and hovers (which have barely been touched in CA yet, and thus any changes we make to them wont be upsetting well-established balance).

There is still a lot of work to do to t2, and thats where most of this 'flat balancing' will take place.

The problem with the CA updater, is for all the things it does right, fundamentally it does nothing for me if it isn't open. For me this is no problem, since I leave my computer on 24/7 so CA updater only ever closes once in a blue moon. But for your average spring player, the steps for downloading any other mod are basically "doubleclick in spring > click download > select mod directory" Where as CA updater is "start menu > CaUpdater > CaUpdater > Wait for login > click download latest version". Basically it doesn't acctually improve the amount of actions required to start a CA game as opposed to any other undownloaded mod, it just makes getting CA a less standard action than getting some other mod. So ultimately, the CA updater helps nothing at all, and having to update the mod every 3 days is still just as huge a hassle as it would be if UF was being updated every 3 days.

Granted the CA updater gives you the tools to MAKE the process less painful, if the tools aren't being used (who can really be assed to make the CA updater auto startup every time they boot the PC?) then it really isn't less painful. Another thing... If I click the X button at the corner of the CA downloader it should minimize to the task bar, not kill the process completely. If I want to kill the process completely it should be good enough to be able to do it from the task bar.

[Otherside]

What about adding 2 links?


one private for developers, generated after every commit and one public generated every 20 or 30 changes.

u mean stable and development

there is a stable CA... it happens quite rarely but people seem to always want to play the latest version so you cant blame the mod its what the people want and the people want newer stuff u can always play stable ofc as every1 has a copy of stable just moa people will play development

[manored]

Cool! Thats how I always tough that mods should be :) It was like that In the old original TA also.

Wrong.

Tech 2 lacked too many important units to subistitute tech 2, for example it didnt had any defense smaller than the big blue laser. This makes me think that if tech 2 and tech 1 arent complementary they were meant to.

[Saktoth]

stuff

For CA its actually just Open Downloader. You dont even really need to click 'get stable', it will update when your PC is idle if you have auto-update checked... Perhaps we need a 'start on startup' or 'start when you start the lobby' option or something.

CA is a mod under development. BA and XTA have the rare privilege of having been in development for many years and having final stable static feature-complete release, with their main goals being bugfixes and small balance tweaks. Most mods (s44, SWS, PURE, Evo, etc etc) simply arent complete, there are dozens upon dozens of mods for spring for which a feature complete release isnt even on the horizon. Among those mods, CA has managed to set up a system by which playing it is relatively painless, despite its very heavy development.

And if CA wasnt under heavy development it would just be BA and there would be no reason to play it (And if we just closed shop and didnt release playable versions like most mods do we'd quickly lose motivation and get caught up in grand theory with little application).

[HeavyLancer]

Integrating a downloader widget with the lobby would be perfect. Therefore, any mod that updates regularly could use it.

[zwARREN69]

Integrating a downloader widget with the lobby would be perfect. Therefore, any mod that updates regularly could use it.

Add that to feature request. =P

[Acidd_UK]

yeah i also press "dont ever ask for updates again" no matter what program it is... i hate updating programs daily... or even weekly.

You don't like security updates? Are you on crack?

[ZellSF]

Security updates are so overrated. Once the WMF exploit was discovered, I didn't patch Windows, guess how long it took for me to actually get in trouble for it? 8 months. And it took me thirty minutes to fix.

[Licho]

Remember blaster? It took just days before PC without update started to reboot :)

[Saktoth]

Most of these games, including CA, arent finished. Even BA is updated. Hell the ENGINE still gets semi-regular updates (often overhauling large portions of the game). You wouldnt be able to play spring at all if not for the fact you are 'getting updates'- it just wouldnt have been 'released' yet because its not finished.

This is the INTERNET people, and its also open source. Throw away your internalized hard-copy proprietary distribution model- it is not applicable.