Spring RTS Engine

I have a proposition for a Virus race to go with / against the CPU

Tojan - builds the virus units. Is mobile and cloakable, making it rather hard to catch. Things the Tojan can build:

Exploit - Airborne. A raiding unit for attacking kernels and sockets / bypassing or taking out artillery

Virus - Weaker (and smaller) but faster than the bit, but can be mass produced quite easily

Kludge - slow, tough and inelegant

Hack - weak and slow, but can capture units and clear wreckage

I've got a few models here for the above units:



from left to right - Hack, Exploit, Kludge, Virus, Trojan

Cool idea! :)

One problem I have noticed while playing KP on marble and mars is that it is very easy to spot where the sockets are installed. If there is no socket installed steam appears from the vents, but if it is installed you see no steam indicating a socket is present. This is not such a big problem on marble, but in future larger maps and Mars etc... it somewhat takes away the element of surprise.

I also like the idea of the virus team and those are some great models there. The whole idea kinda seems reminiscent of counter strike's terrorists and counter terrorists. I'm just worried that it might hurt the fun that is KP if it's isn't balanced correctly. Also, don't feel pressured to create another side Boirunner unless you are completely happy about the idea. I don't want to see you bullied about this with peer pressure

Edit: Also, I know Mars wasn't built for KP, but the pointer arty doesn't work very well on that map as it seems it's range has been reduced to less than that of a bit. (Haven't tested this on other maps)

Edit again: I think the bytes are just about perfect in terms of balancing them with the bits. Just one problem someone else cited, the bytes cannot shot bits that get too close. Was this a purposeful change to encourage mixing bits and bytes together or a bug?

-Hellcom

With all those advantages, the virus team probaly should be unable to increase its production power (but maybe make it possible for cpu teams to assist it).

Maybe I could make the virus a kamikase unit...

Pron spam trojan hax please. :)

I suggest a third race made entirely of MS apps being called "the magnificent system destabilizers" (or something more manly than that).

Guessmyname wrote:I have a proposition for a Virus race to go with / against the CPU

I like your suggestions, but it leads me to a bit of a problem. You see, I had meant for this mod to be as simple as at all possible. Three units, no resources, that's it. But if there were to be another side, introducing stealth and air and moveable commanders, the whole thing get's a lot more complex. I also have the feeling that the gameplay of KP is too fast and dynamic to really be able to use a stealth faction. What's to stop a CPU from just rushing? Adding air adds a whole different set of problems.

All in all, I have following suggestion. Let's finish KP first. It's far from done, it needs wreckage, mines, probably some sort of number-limited defence structure, sound, three or four more and larger maps, and a lot of balancing.

After KP 1.0 is out, and balanced, we can work on adding a second faction. Actually, I have an interesting Idea which might work perfectly together with this second faction. Anyway, I hope you don't misunderstand me. I love your ideas and models, I just think it's too early to add them to KP right now.

Relative wrote:One problem I have noticed while playing KP on marble and mars is that it is very easy to spot where the sockets are installed. If there is no socket installed steam appears from the vents, but if it is installed you see no steam indicating a socket is present. This is not such a big problem on marble, but in future larger maps and Mars etc... it somewhat takes away the element of surprise.

I noticed this too, but I don't think there is much we can do about it, as geovents are hardcoded into Spring afaik.

Edit: Also, I know Mars wasn't built for KP, but the pointer arty doesn't work very well on that map as it seems it's range has been reduced to less than that of a bit. (Haven't tested this on other maps)

Hmm, I can't test that right now. Possibly due to gravity? I'll look into it.

Edit again: I think the bytes are just about perfect in terms of balancing them with the bits. Just one problem someone else cited, the bytes cannot shot bits that get too close. Was this a purposeful change to encourage mixing bits and bytes together or a bug?

It was always like that, it's because the byte hovers above the ground. Anyway, I like it that way, because, as you say, it encourages bits and bytes to operate together.


By the way: I absolutely love all the help I'm getting from the community. This is seriously great! I started this as some cheap offshot of XTA, and now it has become so much more in so litte time.

Hm - personally I liked KP as a single-faction mod. It'll be nigh-impossible to balance as multifaction. What I'd do with the Hax faction is use them in some fun Lua scripts. Make some "missions" against the virii... or as a gaia faction in multiplayer.

edit: more unit ideas for Hax. Rootkit, Overflow, DDOS, and Bruteforce for starters.

Pxtl wrote:Hm - personally I liked KP as a single-faction mod. It'll be nigh-impossible to balance as multifaction. What I'd do with the Virus faction is use them in some fun Lua scripts. Make some "missions" against the virii... or as a gaia faction in multiplayer.

That might be fun :)

I wish I could help out, but I know nothing about coding or modding.

The byte aiming problem is a bug, I think it's caused by Spring's aiming code, once the enemy is closer than the gun's muzzle it gets confused.

KDR_11k wrote:The byte aiming problem is a bug, I think it's caused by Spring's aiming code, once the enemy is closer than the gun's muzzle it gets confused.

Well maybe it's a "bug" that can be fine tuned into a gameplay. If you restrict the range so the byte cannot fire at units in close range you create a weakness that stops people from just spamming bytes without accompanying bits.

Bytes are artybait anyway. In 6.2 you can blast a byte with two shots from a pointer.

Mines as in explodey mines or mines as in resource mines?

(I'm making a mine - of the exploding variety - now)

as in KABOOM

Excellent. I'm making a mine now

EDIT: Aw crap. I appear to have deleted the non-dev version of Spring.exe by accident. Reinstallation time

Kernel panic is a mod where only space, time and geovents are resources, so I dont think there is ever going to be any "resources mine".

I know.

Small problem with the explody mine - because they're cloaked (otherwise the enemy can see them and shoot them before they wander into a minefield), their s3o texture doesn't show up. This is a spring bug, so we'll have to wait for it to be fixed I suppose

EDIT: KP with a mine unit in, built by the assembler. Currently lacks a buildpic

http://spring.unknown-files.net/file/23 ... oi_runner/

Mines do not damage buildings, and with take out bits in one explosion. They do not chain-explode

I like it where it is. no other side please.

I think mines should be more like in the old Madness, i.e. huge blast radius but also a longer buildtime.

How well they work against Bytes? Because I dont think they should do well agaisnt Bytes.