Gameplay concept : Objective based skirmish

[sunspot]

Hey people,

As you can see I'm new here, but I've been following Spring over several years allready. I have some vacation comming up and I was reflecting on maybe spending some time on this engine. I'm a professional java developer in a business oriented environment. I have no experience in gaming programming and like to get my feet wet a bit. Spring sounds to me a nice step into it, I used to make units for the original TA (pre CC even) and maybe I still have some skills there.

For the game I have in mind, I'm reflecting about following specs. Maybe you guys can tell me if things are possible or just to far fetched ?

Playpieces

- no factories, only one stealthable unit able to build other units not destroyable
- just 3 base units to prove the concept, weak fast short range kbot, though slow medium range tank, average normal speed long range artillery. Two special units (fighter aircraft, bomber aircraft). Three defense structures (fast firing short range tower, AA tower, slow medium range hard hitting tower) with undestructable wrecks
- 25 units , unit limit for each player
- 5 objective locations with a gimmick : radar, jammer, big bertha, 5 rocket silo group, aircraft builder (max 5) all not destroyable
- 8 resource generator structures not destroyable
- 4 tickers from 0 to 500 (4 teams)

Objective

The goal is to capture as many objective locations as possible for your team and keep them to get your ticker from 0 to 500. I'm thinking of 1 point extra each second for each objective you own, easly tweaked by makeing it configurable in some properties file. You can keep rebuilding your army when your units die if you got the resources. You always have a constant stream of resources of +10 or something, and with each resource generator you capture you get +2 or +5 more income each second. The idea is never to be without an army but punish the player if he is reckless with his (limited) units by letting him wait for his resource pool to (slowly) replenish. Objectives are reinforced with neutral deactivated (wrecked ?) defensive structures that can be captured/repaired by the players to keep an objective relative save after capture.

So thats about it, it's not that complicated and I probably missed some important gameplay balancing things I need to look at. But is this kind of design possible with the Spring engine ?

[FLOZi]

Welcome to Spring.

Yes, all possible and not even especially difficult to achieve.

Just one example gadget which spawns different capturable 'objective' units and has a per-allyteam ticket system

As usual I invite you to join #lua and #moddev on the lobby to discuss with other game (as opposed to engine - they hang out in #sy) developers. You should also register on the Spring Q&A site, a good way of getting answers to specific technical questions from both game and engine devs.

Are you interested only in making your own game or also in contributing to the engine code?

[sunspot]

Hey thnx for the welcome, I'm currently at work so can't go into much detail. But my programming experience lies in JAVA EE programming with tools like Spring, Camel, Hibernate, JIBX, JMX and others. I've never had any education on C++, just a bit of ANSI C. I believe C++ is just on step to high to scale though, in Java I don't have to worry (much) about memory managment , since I have a garbadge collector, from what I know thats not the case with C++. So I rather not dabble in the engine code unless it is absolutly needed :).

I have 2 weeks of vacation where I can work on this pet project as a prove of concept. If I can get something decent in gameplay going, I release the project source for people to build further on, make more units, better balance/rules etc...

Still have 2 weeks of work though , but I tend to do some research on Spring in the following evenings.

[FLOZi]

Well, engine modification is absolutely not 'needed' unless you are wanting to help out long term.

Time to start reading up on Spring's Lua API.

[smoth]

Oh god you went there...
"I believe C++ is just on step to high to scale though" c# saying high to my less mature half brother java btw...

Just an FYI c++ having memory managment makes it a lower level language. If you don't know about a subject it is better to not geek out about it as it has the effect of making you look dumb not smart. Lanuage is just a tool it is best to not favor one tool for every job

Either way, lua is what you would use so yeah....

[Beherith]

I would like to see some kind of tactical play. If you are interested - and I dont mean to plug my own stuff - please feel free to use my KBot models. They are all PD.

[sunspot]

I would like to see some kind of tactical play. If you are interested - and I dont mean to plug my own stuff - please feel free to use my KBot models. They are all PD.

Thanks I'll take a look at what is availabe, once I have an environment setup. I was first thinking on reusing the peewee, stumpy and arty but I'm not against using other models :).

I'll setup a development environment once I get home with an empty game demo project to build on. I wonder if there is a LUA plugin for eclipse somewhere with code completion.

[smoth]

You don't need a IDE or anything tool you will need:
Upspring
Notepad++
7zip
Maybe an image editor

[knorke]

Your plan is definately doable. (When was the last time a thread was made where one could say that?)

Spring Tanks is a bit similiar to your idea and the first playable version was made in 2-3 weeks or so. (with most stuff done on a few days)
Others did similiar "small" games in similiar time frames.

I used to make units for the original TA (pre CC even) and maybe I still have some skills there.

This might be of interesst: http://springrts.com/wiki/Animation-CobLuaDifferences

Writing c++ is not needed but being able to read it can be helpful. (ie see http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... 2&start=39)
Otherwise you have to base your work on rumors ("i once tried this 2 years ago but i forgot how and it did not work") and a half-finished wiki which will get you frustrated in no time

empty game demo project

haha i am spamming mah link:
http://springrts.com/wiki/SpringTutorialGame
http://springrts.com/wiki/Simple_Mod_Tutorial

[sunspot]

Well I've put up a dev environment yesterday evening and got something more or less working.

The lobby didn't work though, I'll have to load by spring.exe and load in the empty mod and chess map to get something started. I also downloaded BA TA where I'm gonna take the peewee, stumpy, arty and support structures from, not to waste to much time on unit building yet and focus on the game mechanics.

Tried the map editor, but it was a nerve wrecking experience, controls are really counterintiutive and the display of the map is very bizzar. I wonder if I could use the old TA editor (TAMEC or something was it called) and then convert to spring maps. I'll have to investigate.

Lua seems to be a straight forward language and shouldn't pose me to much probs I hope. One thing I noticed in all the spring games though, the GUI is kinda attrocious, big buttons, big text, I wonder if there is a way to create a streamlined gui like in old TA. But thats something to think about all the way in the end of the process I suppose.

[hoijui]

it is very sane to try to stay away from C++!
if all devs would do that, C++ would die out, and we'd end up in a better world.
don't expect to be able to get a dev environment as nice as for Java though, even if you stick to Lua. syntax highlighting may have to do.

welcome! and i wish you success!

[knorke]

Tried the map editor, but it was a nerve wrecking experience

It is more a map "compiler with preview" then a real editor. Most maps are made with photoshop and terrain software like worldmaschine, terragen etc.

use the old TA editor (TAMEC or something was it called) and then convert to spring maps.

There are some ported maps but it seems to be more trouble then its worth and the results are pretty poor.
For start just use some maps from http://springfiles.com/spring/spring-maps that are similiar to what you want.

[smoth]

it is very sane to try to stay away from C++!
if all devs would do that, C++ would die out, and we'd end up in a better world.
don't expect to be able to get a dev environment as nice as for Java though, even if you stick to Lua. syntax highlighting may have to do.

welcome! and i wish you success!

This is why I groaned about him going there.. you know hoi, I hear cobol NEVER gets used anymore. All software has been updated to modern high level oo languages.

[knorke]

haha a language discussion

[sunspot]

Well I have programmed in Cobol and Ansi C in the past. The languages are still being used especially in mainframe environments like banks. But I really really don't want to write in any low level language anymore. The memory management and pointer arithmetics are to much of a hinderance, if you are used to writing in a higher level language. Yes they are faster , and yes the force the programmer to be more carefull, but I just don't like it anymore.

I'll let my virtual machine or other environment take care of the boring memory management and just make sure I don't load to much data in memory at every one time. I'll get away with being a bit sloppy from time to time.

[smoth]

Higher level languages have issues like relying on vms, the clr etc.. But none of this has to do with what you want to do which is entirely lua

[very_bad_soldier]

it is very sane to try to stay away from C++!
if all devs would do that, C++ would die out, and we'd end up in a better world.

What is your proposed alternative to C++?

[PicassoCT]

Great... i was already to post my standard coment. But you really have a clue, you know what you want and you go directly for good gameplay. Wish you everything good. Take knorkes rootmod (he already posted it, i see) and enjoy those two weeks.

This is so unusual, somebody willing to do something, knowing what he wants, demanding nothing more. You sure you aint trollin?

[smoth]

I think he is serious. Probably senior/junior year in college with some spare summer post spring semester time.

[hoijui]

What is your proposed alternative to C++?

depends what you mean with alternative. either it is: going to prison and getting raped for 20 years
or:
pretty much any computer-language.
or a bit more serious:
a higher level language like java, python or C# (or even higher level ones), eventually combined with a low level one like C, D, Go, assembler.