So in terms of gameplay...Where does Evo shine?
Everyone has their favorite stage, but I think my most favorite is the raiding stage, which generally lasts the entire game in one form or another. Being raided on a front that isn't protected sucks, but when you're the one hiotting the weak spot, it's actually quite satisfying
How is it constructed?Will there be several labs per faction?only one lab?any labs at all?will they be static?
Currently there is one faction, and 4 techtrees in said faction. You start with the hoverplant, but have the option to go with air, amphib, or all-terrain (or all of the above). Amphib is 1 unit away from being initially complete, but I have to balance them with the rest of the units before I add them in with the rest of the game, and all-terrian is still in the process of being built.
What kind of units?the usual ones seen in OTA?
Quite a bit different actually. Each tech tree focuses on a few different weapon types. For example, hovers use mainly lightning, projectiles, and missiles. Amphib uses mainly lasers and homing plasma projectiles. All-terrain, uses more of a mix types, but generally extremely fast projectiles.
What about the economy system?Like in OTA?
It is based in metal and energy, yes. However, all unit costs are 1/1/1. What that means is if lets say I want to build a structure that costs 60e/m/bt. If I have a single con building that structure, it will take 60 seconds for that con to finish building the structure. There are various forms of building speedup, the most common of which is the ORB, which is similar to a FARK but 50x cooler and 90% more jawsome.
How did you go about balancing the units?
That's a really loaded question and you should know it, but I'll attempt to answer. Every category of units has a base HP and damage rating. Using that base is where I derrive the weapon damage and hp of a particular unit as well as other things such as speed and maneuverability. It's rather complex, but easy once you understand the system. I put a lot of forethought into it and it has panned out better than I could ahve ever hoped.
What about the visual effects?I rememeber last time i tried evo some of them were a bit over the top..is that still the style?
Yes, the effects are still very much entertaining to look at, and it's one of the reasons many people like the game. No one (much less myself) wants to play a game that is uninteresting to watch. In fact, I love spectating games
because the effects make them very entertaining to watch.
What are your takes on widgets?
Err, the more the merrier? I include all of the widgets that I find absolutely necessary to play any game in spring and I keep them updated. My lua loader thingy is set up so that the mod's lua loads before the user's lua (which is opposite of the default behavior).
Are there any special game altering gadgets that do not exist anywhere else?or a different combination of existing ones?
There aren't too many, but the ones that are there are fairly important to the metagame. A few that pop into my head atm are:
1/1 continuous resources. THis is so that your income is always 1/1 regardless of whether you lose your "Commander" or not.
100/100 minimum resource storage. Same reason as above. SO that no matter what happens, your minimum resource storage amount is never less than 100.
Drone spawner. This gadget allows engineers to spawn gunship drones from ammoboxes. THe drones are fast, with practically no HP and very little damage, but if you spawn a bunch of them and send them in a pack, they are beautiful for raiding resource buildings and various other uses.
Give me some mind candy...Last time i played it,it was a not so well balanced OTA clone with different models...
Did that change?
How am I supposed to answer that? It was never an OTA clone, It was never balanced around OTA principles, and jsut because a game resembles things in another game, doesn't mean that there is anything in common.
Btw, the very question (and the attempt at a buried statement) was very rude.
The people playing your mod will mostly be people experienced with BA or other games/mods that have a lot of unit depth how will evo compensate for its lower unit quantity?How will you create as much flexibility and depth?
There are ways of compensating for lower unit amount but have you even considered this issue?and if so how will you go about it?
I wouldn't worry about it. Evo has quite a few units available, and more are in the works/planned. The learning curve in Evo is very gentle, and anyone who has half a clue in BA/SA/NOTA will feel right at home in Evo after 1 or 2 games.
I suppose I should mention that the 2 aren't really similar, but the structure is such that it isn't a jarring transition and everything is very easy to understand.
Perhaps you intend to draw in players with some elaborate and engaging campaign or even a co-op campaign?
http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=20400 << It's a long read, but it covers most of the basics.
If you have not thought through these issues i suggest you do not release even if you really want to.
You will just scare people away and leave a bad impression that will need 10x more work to revert.
You can already play the prealpha... It's been around for quite some time now. The onyl reason I'm forcing it to remain in Pre-Alpha status is because I want to have all the tech trees implemented before going further in the release cycle. As it is the game is quite full, very playable and a lot of fun.
