What do you want to see more of in CA? - Page 6

What do you want to see more of in CA?

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SirArtturi
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by SirArtturi »

Pxtl wrote: Why does the "lobby" need to run through Spring.EXE? Do you mean just sweapping filenames around? Or re-skinning the lobby to look like a game-app instead of a productivity app?
Something in between those two... You know what I mean. It should be like in all commercial games.
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Pxtl
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Pxtl »

Most commercial games have the lobby built into the game. That means re-implementing the whole lobby in Lua.

You're welcome to get started on that.

I'll agree that, for the single-player campaign it should be all integrated seamlessly... but for skirmish and multiplayer, the stand-alone lobby app works well and is frankly better for multitasking anyways.
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Licho
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Licho »

Nah dont bother, much easier and much more powerfull to have separate lobby. Its becoming norm for latest games (non-console ports) as its more convenient for the user.

The run "spring.exe" thingie is irrelevant, it can be renamed to "enginestuff.dat" or whatever we want in the installer.
Saktoth
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Saktoth »

knorke wrote:But would the average gamer bother to set up spring (imo its still a little confusing compared to commercial games) to play some casual chicken style game?
Obviously, install and setup needs to be simple and seamless.
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zwzsg
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by zwzsg »

Spring.exe for single player.
SpringLobby.exe for multiplayer.
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Licho
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Licho »

Why should it start using different exe? "Game" should allow you to pick what you want to do and spring.exe should not even be runnable independently, because it only adds confusion.

Thats how I plan CA release.

"Lobby" can easilly update content to latest version, show website with help etc. Trying to put everything into engine is step back.
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zwzsg
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by zwzsg »

The issue with lobby is that while they're very powerful, they're also intimidating and confusing. Even myself sometimes get lost between all the tabs and windows of autoupdaters and springlobby, so I imagine it could scare noobs away. This is why I prefer to cover single player with a simplistic ingame frontend.

It also wouldn't be easy to integrate an external lobby with the ingame GUI, and I feel it's nice to have the menu to restart a game, load a save or mission, surimposed over an ongoing game. When I play Daw of War or Wacraft III the menu to start a campaign is full screen, with custom bitmaps button over a 3D animated scene of an orc or space marine next to the menu, and it feels more like I'm about to play a cool game than the greyish bland windows form that I get with Spring Lobby (though I heard there was some koshi effort to make SpringLobby show a simplified menu over of mod-chosen picture). Again, this is for single player only. When multiplaying, a full screen 3D rendered lobby would soon become irritating and very limited, and I much prefer a powerful IRC-like interface like Spring lobbies now have.

Anyway, the CA way was never about simplicity and n00b friendless, but about showcasing super advanced features. So I'll just wish you the best of luck with your endeavor with missions managed by a feature rich complex external lobby, while I'll keep on using my own basic ingame single player frontend. You will have the advantage of multiplayer mission, planet wars, and believing you can force your players to update. Meanwhile I'll enjoy easy to use interface, offline play, and GUI of level close to commercial games.

But please stop talking about removing, renaming, moving or hiding Spring.exe mkay? Maybe you're not using it in your single player implementation, but I find it very useful for my own.
jeykey
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by jeykey »

More turtle-shell feeling like in BA ... therefore units and buildings should have more hp... maybe implement as modifier - like the speedmodifier...
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Licho
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Licho »

CA aims to be nub friendly and simple, it was never meant as "showcase".

I agree that current lobbies are complex and confusing.
I don't plan to use any of existing lobbies for release, I will code very simple one for that purpose, thats why I talk about quickmatching and similar features.

And rename spring executable too if it causes problems.

I'm not talking about engine's release, CA will have independent one eventually.
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Licho
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Licho »

jeykey wrote:More turtle-shell feeling like in BA ... therefore units and buildings should have more hp... maybe implement as modifier - like the speedmodifier...
There is modifier to do it - !setoptions damagemult=0.5
for 50% damage on all units.
jeykey
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by jeykey »

Licho wrote:
jeykey wrote:More turtle-shell feeling like in BA ... therefore units and buildings should have more hp... maybe implement as modifier - like the speedmodifier...
There is modifier to do it - !setoptions damagemult=0.5
for 50% damage on all units.
cool didnt know that
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zwzsg
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by zwzsg »

Licho wrote:I agree that current lobbies are complex and confusing.
I don't plan to use any of existing lobbies for release, I will code very simple one for that purpose, thats why I talk about quickmatching and similar features.
I thought quickmatching was evil? Don't all players hate it when they can't play in the same game as their friends and relative?

Anyway, the complexity of lobbies should not be interpreted as a defect. For their purpose, they have to be complex. Supporting every kind of games and answering every contradicting feature request and player complaints can only result in powerful and versatile lobbies of increasing complexity.

Just, maybe one size fits-all lobbies are not the anser to everything? Maybe there's also some room for simple frontends customised for specific game and purpose? While it would add some extra maintenance work (having to maintain a whole family of apps instaed of one), I hope that ingame Lua lobby could allow deeper customisation. Almost every Spring game/mods developper can code Lua, or at least hackjob it. But very few can modify the source of SpringLobby.

Of course I could be wrong:
- No one seem interested by my frontend despite my promo effort. And the only person to have looked at its code found it so complicated he prefered to rewrite one from scratch. So maybe there won't be an explosion of lua frontend customised for each game like I'd have hoped.
- Satirik added some great smooth looking single player interface to TASClient, entirely customiseable, supporting missions, campaigns and skirmish, etc... Not a single person used it. koshi also coded something for SpringLobby. So those "complex multiplayer lobbies" can also be customised into simple and pretty single player full screen front ends.

And rename spring executable too if it causes problems.
For me, it causes solutions.
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Licho
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Licho »

Yes lobby interface is complex because features are complex.
So simple interface -> less features.

Also quickmatching isn't evil, you can play with friends, you can do arranged teams of course. There is thread in lobby forum about it, I would like to emulate LoL quickmatching.

There are lots of features nobody uses. Quantum made fairly powerful graphical mission editor which automatically uploads missions to server repository and anyone can play them, rank, comment.

Yet after brief period of interest nobody is making new missions. People are just not motivated enough I guess and quantum is not motivated enough to fix editor every time new engine release breaks it.
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knorke
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by knorke »

I would make missions if the editor was fixed.
and maybe some stuff was added to it/ca.
Most of which would be really simple:
-some invisible units that explode directly after being spawned.
->so you can do something like create unit "medium explosion" in the editor
-invisible units that do nothing but emit some smoke, electric lighting or whatever for various effects
-some units to mark areas: like flags or a pole with a light or just a circle on the ground. The default spring markers are ugly and can get deleted by the player.

Even better make it so that these "event units" are mutated into every mod the editor is used with automagically so they work in all games.

But more important is that stuff does not break down all the time.
The second mission I started (escort the hatched babymonsters to the swamp they live in) I couldnt continue because the editor was updated and it wouldnt load anymore. Then the version of CA it was done with suddendly did graphic errors after spring was updated so it all was too gay to bother with.

Also add the unitnames to http://trac.caspring.org/wiki/UnitGuide so in the editor you know which one is actually the one ingame. Like there were 3 different peewee versions or something and even more commanders.
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CarRepairer
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by CarRepairer »

knorke wrote:Also add the unitnames to http://trac.caspring.org/wiki/UnitGuide so in the editor you know which one is actually the one ingame. Like there were 3 different peewee versions or something and even more commanders.
To help out, I just modified the unitguide so that you can hover your mouse over the buildpic to see the buildpic name (which should ideally be the same as the unit name but no guarantee).
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Licho
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Licho »

Anyway we will need maintainer for mission editor if you want to make missions/campaign.
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triton
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by triton »

I want to see a dedicated server for 1vs1
Saktoth
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Saktoth »

For what its worth, zwzsg i agree we need a graphical frontend for both singleplayer and lobby play. Whether thats a new lobby or ingame is another matter.

Though i'd rather have a good frontend (and good gui) now than wait another year for winter.
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Licho
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Licho »

It wont take year, it will take like 2 weeks but i must first get into period of year when i have time for such side projects.
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Tribulex
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Tribulex »

I want to see more lua gadgetry. Teleporters, midair acrobatics, grappling hooks, guis, psycoanalysis, everything. I cant stand playing ca, but the lua makes the project important to the spring community.

EDIT: I also want to see more portability of code. I want to see a chiliui that can be ported to the local widgets or to other mods without copying ca's entire luaui directory. This is the biggest problem with ca atm is the portability (and the artwork).
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