I haven't had time / mental energy to address
everything, but I must sleep now.
Stuff that's dealt with:
1. Heavy Mech's been nerfed on DPS. Dunno whether it's been nerfed enough, that's just going to take some playtesting.
2. Tank / MBT have both seen hitpoints raised, to make them more "tanklike". May have to nerf DPS now, dunno.
3. Issues with Ion Laser have been dealt with (lowered range considerably, raised reload time fixed issues with Interceptors, etc.).
May end up being too much of a nerf, but we'll just have to see. I found out, among other things, that the CruiseAlts weren't all standardized... and that aircraft on different CruiseAlts apparently don't detect each other as potential targets properly
4. Most of the turrets have had their build times double.
5. MetalMakers were basically totally screwed up by the grep process I used to make the numbers more "noob friendly". They're back to the way they say they are, on the tin- 300 Power buys you 5 Materials. Not 30 Power for 5 Materials. Major problem there, eh? No wonder people were complaining about that one...
6. Built two graphics for the factions, so that they look all right in TASClient.
7. Made the theme music a Widget, so that you can turn it off. You can turn it back on, will start right back up. Volume adjustment later, when I have time.
8. Overmind Commander got a substantial hitpoint boost.
9. Repair speeds lowered for all units except for the Overmind commander. Repair is now half build speed... let me know if that's too much of a nerf, but it should be all right.
10. Found errors in the auto-repairs for most units... fixed them. Another grep problem that went un-noticed, units are supposed to auto-heal if they're not hit by anything after awhile, and that wasn't working at all. Now it is. It helps defenses that aren't getting hit constantly, but also allows you to pull forces back and get them healed before attacking again, and this feature was broken ever since the noob-number fix, but I didn't spot it until now
11. Boosted Power costs for all Units by 2X, to make the Energy curve a bit less easy. I'm not changing Materials output curves at this time- if you're playing this game correctly, you should never, ever have spare Materials unless you've pretty much won anyhow.
Soooo.... other than the issues imbazcek pointed out (some of which, I should say right now, aren't really solvable- I can't do anything about Heavy Troopers flying about, they're aircraft when they fly, it's just how things are, short of doing some uber-complex MoveCtrl solution)... meh, I think that's it, other than vague stuff about specific unit balance / roles.
Sooooo... I have one stupid question, for now: if I make multiple desktop icons that start Spring and invoke different files that have game scripts in them, will that work? I.E., "game1.txt, game2.txt", etc.? That would allow me to deploy more "mission" like things for now, until TASClient has something a bit more ready-ready in terms of that- Satirik's working on that, but it's not done quite yet.
As for the team-display issues... meh, I'll go look at what the state of that Widget is. Last time I checked, it was in the wrong corner, wasn't adjustable, wasn't optimized and wasn't really up to the level of polish we're trying to achieve here, short of me taking a couple of hours to clean it all up.
That said, it's probably a
lot better now, as I simply haven't had time to look it over lately, so I'll take another look at that.
Meh. I've said some stuff in various places, and I *think* that tomorrow, AM'ish even, I may be able to get a GZIP of the game files ready for Linux users... and make a fairly-close-to-damn-well-working version of Spring part of the installer, getting things cleaned up enough for RC2.
What does everybody think? Are there other major issues that I need to hit first, or is that list about it for the major goofs and balance problems? I've gotta sleep now (it's like, 3AM) but needless to say, I want to get RC2 wrapped up ASAP, while the going is good.
Also... I read various muttering about gameplay videos... where are they? Even loose AVIs that I could edit down with MovieMaker really quick is better than nothing, folks...
[EDIT]
Stupid Lua questions:
1. How the heck do I change the words "Energy" and "Metal" to "Power" and "Materials" like it should be, in the Tooltip displays?
2. Has anybody been able to find the time to try and look at the LockLuaUI.txt issues in regards to this game yet? I have not been able to get it to work, and would like it to... and obviously must be doing it wrong, but I couldn't replicate Lurker's results.
3. I would like to have a custom way of doing two graphical effects, which I need some help with. If anybody with OpenGL experience is interested in the problem and what I'd like to do, PM me. It's not anything terribly complex, I just don't have time.
More Stuff:
I would like to "hire" a mapper or five, to do some custom work. I've tossed around doing World Builder conversions, but that's probably just not a good way to go about things- I want some stuff that nobody's really done before, frankly.
GMN(and for that matter, anybody else who feels like it)... if you have time... I think that the most serious need that the project has right now is getting more World Builder stuff built / skinned, so that more demo maps can get made. The code side's not really hard, on my end, but content's the killer right now.
Probably need to start a thread for this topic... please, don't clutter up this thread with "is this model OK" stuff, people- the answer is that if it's below 1000 triangles and looks good, then YES, SKIN IT REALISTICALLY AND WE'LL USE IT, or try to drum up enthusiasm to get it unwrapped and skinned. If it's above 1K tris... it'll have to get reviewed. If you don't know, don't submit
If you want a laundry list, I can get into detail, but for now... here are ideas:
1. Greebly technological things. Buildings, small generation stations, ruined machines, stuff like forklifts, barrels, machinery. Moving parts are fine, just label it clearly, or explain it.
2. More plants.
Need a cluster of jungle foliage- 4-6 different bushes and other stuff, all on the SAME UVMAP. IOW, 4-6 different objects... just like a tank, or whatever, as
separate objects, not just one mesh like static Features. Look at the .S3Os for World Builder stuff, if you're still clueless.
Need desert plants.
Need higher quality trees of all types. Mine suck, SpikedHelmet's are better on polycount, but aren't quite up to what I think that we should have in an ideal world. TBH, so long as polycount for a cluster of 6 trees (6 is the number- that's important) isn't over 1000, it's just fine, so don't skimp, it's not vital. I think I have one Wolf-In-Exile made sitting around somewhere, haven't had time to really do much with it.
Ideally... submissions would be S3O, properly set up, and would closely resemble the S3Os in World Builder in terms of model setups and scale. Please, don't waste my time by sending me raw meshes or whatever.
3. "Atmosphere" stuff. Street lights, where maybe we could even set up fake lights through Lua or something, or just some simple CEG stuff. Rocks that look really pro- not just low-poly blobs, but preshaded stuff that really feels good, including some big, detailed pieces that could be used on a map to lend a lot to the feel. Industrial objects, such as pipeline sections, walls/fence sections, etc.
etc.
Ok... now I'm definitely going to bed! I'll check back here in the morning...ish...