CARBON!
FULL STOP
NOW USE A PARAGRAPH PLEASE
New mod gives OTA a slew of new features
Moderator: Moderators
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Boogalizer
- Posts: 6
- Joined: 20 Apr 2007, 06:38
First off, I'm glad to see my mod getting some attention in the Spring forums! Sadly, I do not plan on ever making a Spring version (though if anyone ever wants to convert it, or even just take parts of it to integrate into their own mods, feel free... I truly do not mind folks borrowing ideas off me)
If anyone wants to try it out, head down to TAUniverse and poke around til you find it (I apparently can't post links cause I'm a new user)
Also, had to quickly respond to TRO's list of issues
To respond to TRO's specific points:
1) Lag: One thing I feel fully comfortable taking credit for in the Detection scripts I use is that I spent a significant amount of time optimizing them, and then creating a version that creates as little lag as possible.
Original detect scripts did have to cycle through thousands of unit ids every couple seconds to get the desired result. My script cycles through every unit once every 30 seconds or so, until it finds a captain. Cycling through every 30 seconds is not a burden on the system. Once it finds a captain, it stops cycling, and focuses only on that unit, and then cycles the script much faster. The result is that there is no added lag to the game; I have played extensively in single player and have had a bunch of multiplayer games and have not experienced any slowdown whatsoever.
2) Magic Upgrades: Unrealistic? Perhaps it isn't entirely realistic, though I am not that concerned with realism in such a game, and I don't think most players are either. On that note, I have to point out that buildable upgrades (like the Commander Upgrades in Talon) are just as magical. That is not the issue though, the issue is if the upgrades are intuitive, so as not to confuse a new player- and so that you get what you expect to get. I feel that these upgrades are intuitive.
3) Convoluted Startup: I really disagree that there is anything wrong with building startup (of course, it is my mod). Again, your problem is that it isn't realistic. That isn't the real issue, I can explain a simple story to explain the building situation: The motherships send down a deployment scout, the deployment scout specifies an area for the gate to be deployed, and then when the gate is deployed the scout is teleported back up to the ship. The gate then teleports down a Commander. Unrealistic? Of course... but not any more unrealistic than the rest of the game. Unintuitive? I have yet to see anyone screw up the deployment at the beginning of the game, and I have not had to hold anyone's hands to explain it either- you don't really have any choice except to do it properly, there just aren't other options.
If anyone wants to try it out, head down to TAUniverse and poke around til you find it (I apparently can't post links cause I'm a new user)
Also, had to quickly respond to TRO's list of issues
Honestly, the code that makes Captains possible has been around for a little while, but I don't think those reasons listed are entirely accurate for why Captains haven't been created. The reason I think people haven't made Captains in their mods before is because it requires you to edit every single unit you want to respond to the Captains rather extensively. It takes a LOT of work. The reason this is optimal for Devolution is that Devolution has fewer units to begin with than just about any other mod (that may be a bad thing for some people, but its actually one of the main points of the mod). For those reasons, even if people have had the idea of Captain units before (which I see no evidence of... though its not exactly an original idea- think Heroes in Warcraft 3), they would have quickly written their idea off as impossible or too difficult to implement.TheRegisteredOne wrote:yes, it is ota only.
as for why captains are not found in other mods. Firstly, there are several inconvenient issues with the captain idea:
1. it lags when units have to constantly cycle through 5000 unit ids and checks the height of the unit to detect the presence of captains, it lags even more when you have 200 of such units on the map.
2. it makes little sense for the units near the captain's presense to magically gain bonuses or for captains to magically gain upgrades through killing enemy units. It would make more sense for player to build upgrades instead
3. convoluted starting build pattern: Not only does it make very little sense for the magical stuff that happens to your starting units (instabuild command center absorbes the recon scout, builds commander etc), it is also makes it hard for the ai to perform, and when push comes to shove, mods are more likely to be singleplayer than multiplayer.
To respond to TRO's specific points:
1) Lag: One thing I feel fully comfortable taking credit for in the Detection scripts I use is that I spent a significant amount of time optimizing them, and then creating a version that creates as little lag as possible.
Original detect scripts did have to cycle through thousands of unit ids every couple seconds to get the desired result. My script cycles through every unit once every 30 seconds or so, until it finds a captain. Cycling through every 30 seconds is not a burden on the system. Once it finds a captain, it stops cycling, and focuses only on that unit, and then cycles the script much faster. The result is that there is no added lag to the game; I have played extensively in single player and have had a bunch of multiplayer games and have not experienced any slowdown whatsoever.
2) Magic Upgrades: Unrealistic? Perhaps it isn't entirely realistic, though I am not that concerned with realism in such a game, and I don't think most players are either. On that note, I have to point out that buildable upgrades (like the Commander Upgrades in Talon) are just as magical. That is not the issue though, the issue is if the upgrades are intuitive, so as not to confuse a new player- and so that you get what you expect to get. I feel that these upgrades are intuitive.
3) Convoluted Startup: I really disagree that there is anything wrong with building startup (of course, it is my mod
). Again, your problem is that it isn't realistic. That isn't the real issue, I can explain a simple story to explain the building situation: The motherships send down a deployment scout, the deployment scout specifies an area for the gate to be deployed, and then when the gate is deployed the scout is teleported back up to the ship. The gate then teleports down a Commander. Unrealistic? Of course... but not any more unrealistic than the rest of the game. Unintuitive? I have yet to see anyone screw up the deployment at the beginning of the game, and I have not had to hold anyone's hands to explain it either- you don't really have any choice except to do it properly, there just aren't other options.Devolution 4Boogalizer wrote:If anyone wants to try it out, head down to TAUniverse and poke around til you find it (I apparently can't post links cause I'm a new user)
It's a shame you're never thinking of converting it to Spring; there are a lot of interesting mods for TA which I wish I could play with an updated engine and UI. Trying to play TA now makes me frustrated with the limitations of the interface.
Smoth: Bah, I had not trouble reading carbon text. I don't know if you have ever opened a novel, you know, that thing made of lots of paper sheets printed with nothing but black ink, but in those relic of the pasts called books it sometimes happen to have a paragraph of half a page without a new line!
TheRegisteredOne: I contest all of your points:
1) It doesn't lag as long as it's correctly optimised. First, you don't have to check the script detection every frame, depending on the unit something like once per 30s can do it. Secondly, if you take care to only check the 500 unit of player and not the 5000 units of all player, if you take care to perform first the test that are less costly and eliminate most ID, it also help greatly. I remember that for SWTA we found the adjancency bonus was no trouble even when used by hundreds of infantry units.
2) Duh, are you saying the whole basis of RPG and MMORPG makes little sense and don't attract people? I'm pretty sure by now every gamer is accustomed to the idea of gaining xp & money at each kill. TA & Spring themselves have veterancy upgrade, just they are so tame they're almost not noticeable, while Boogie made them more important. As for the gaining upgrade by proximity, it still makes loads more sense that for instance metal flowing instantly and invisibly from mexx to cons the other side of the maps. RTS such as WarcraftIII are filled with unit giving area bonus and gaining new abilities through killcount, and became quite popular.
3) With proper animation, start scout deploying into a command center can look pretty cool. It's also commonplace in RTS since the days of Dune II and C&C. The AI argument is maybe the only one that holds, although I haven't really tested and am sure that proper fiddling (like, high enough weigh, maybe some tag on the commander center so the AI like them enough to start with) will make the AI works fine. And if it really has to come to that, it wouldn't be hard to give the AI AI-only units to appease it with a more tradionnal buildtree.
As for why we don't see any other mod using such upgrade, it's pretty simple:
- Few people look beyond TA->UH->AA breedline. Anything different gets ignored, if not put down.
- The majority of modders don't know anything beyond tweaking FBI stats. There's few modders who can do their own models. Amongst them, even less do know scripting. For people making their own TC, race, etc.., most simply recopy scripts without understanding half of it. People who can write new scripts are very rare. And amongst them, most are just writing new animations inside the standard template. Near no ones dare to wanders out of Cavedog's templates. So people who are able to write complex script, such as detection of another unit, can be counted with a single hand. Hmm well ok maybe one hand and a half actually.
There's something I don't really get here, since there's loads of modders who know programming in Python, PHP, Java, even C++, but somehow the much easier bos language scares and dumbify people. I've seen people able to code in C argue me the if(TRUE){ } of Cavedog walkscripts couldn't be removed.
- Then, the overwhelming majority of people are unable to think new unit concepts. They can only imagine "like a bulldog, but bigger", or "a lightning weapon mounted on a tower", but to think about something that isn't a modification of what's already been done is plain impossible for most people. Units that aren't kbot/tank/ship/etc.. ? Ressources not given by metal extractor and power generator? Weapons that aren't fired by guns? That's too alien to even get such ideas.
So we'll see more mods using upgrade when people will understand modding isn't just about changing FBI stats of the same 5 years olds units. I don't expect people to ever start being able to think about new concepts, but at least when people will start to acknowledge TA and Spring engine can handle way more than Cavedog scripts, that'll also help. I did my part trying hard to show how versatile modding and scripting can be, and attempting to infiltrate big mods with my scripts, but the resistance to change and fear of novelty was too strong so I only got limited sucess.
Beside, don't you know? Whenever a mod has cool looking units or innovative scripting, it immediatly imply the gameplay sucks. Don't even bother checking. Someone able to code and model obviously cannot have any idea about balancing, duh!
Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy your monthly "brand new revolutionnary mod, based on BA, but faster weasels so OMG it's a whole new gameplay".
TheRegisteredOne: I contest all of your points:
1) It doesn't lag as long as it's correctly optimised. First, you don't have to check the script detection every frame, depending on the unit something like once per 30s can do it. Secondly, if you take care to only check the 500 unit of player and not the 5000 units of all player, if you take care to perform first the test that are less costly and eliminate most ID, it also help greatly. I remember that for SWTA we found the adjancency bonus was no trouble even when used by hundreds of infantry units.
2) Duh, are you saying the whole basis of RPG and MMORPG makes little sense and don't attract people? I'm pretty sure by now every gamer is accustomed to the idea of gaining xp & money at each kill. TA & Spring themselves have veterancy upgrade, just they are so tame they're almost not noticeable, while Boogie made them more important. As for the gaining upgrade by proximity, it still makes loads more sense that for instance metal flowing instantly and invisibly from mexx to cons the other side of the maps. RTS such as WarcraftIII are filled with unit giving area bonus and gaining new abilities through killcount, and became quite popular.
3) With proper animation, start scout deploying into a command center can look pretty cool. It's also commonplace in RTS since the days of Dune II and C&C. The AI argument is maybe the only one that holds, although I haven't really tested and am sure that proper fiddling (like, high enough weigh, maybe some tag on the commander center so the AI like them enough to start with) will make the AI works fine. And if it really has to come to that, it wouldn't be hard to give the AI AI-only units to appease it with a more tradionnal buildtree.
As for why we don't see any other mod using such upgrade, it's pretty simple:
- Few people look beyond TA->UH->AA breedline. Anything different gets ignored, if not put down.
- The majority of modders don't know anything beyond tweaking FBI stats. There's few modders who can do their own models. Amongst them, even less do know scripting. For people making their own TC, race, etc.., most simply recopy scripts without understanding half of it. People who can write new scripts are very rare. And amongst them, most are just writing new animations inside the standard template. Near no ones dare to wanders out of Cavedog's templates. So people who are able to write complex script, such as detection of another unit, can be counted with a single hand. Hmm well ok maybe one hand and a half actually.
There's something I don't really get here, since there's loads of modders who know programming in Python, PHP, Java, even C++, but somehow the much easier bos language scares and dumbify people. I've seen people able to code in C argue me the if(TRUE){ } of Cavedog walkscripts couldn't be removed.
- Then, the overwhelming majority of people are unable to think new unit concepts. They can only imagine "like a bulldog, but bigger", or "a lightning weapon mounted on a tower", but to think about something that isn't a modification of what's already been done is plain impossible for most people. Units that aren't kbot/tank/ship/etc.. ? Ressources not given by metal extractor and power generator? Weapons that aren't fired by guns? That's too alien to even get such ideas.
So we'll see more mods using upgrade when people will understand modding isn't just about changing FBI stats of the same 5 years olds units. I don't expect people to ever start being able to think about new concepts, but at least when people will start to acknowledge TA and Spring engine can handle way more than Cavedog scripts, that'll also help. I did my part trying hard to show how versatile modding and scripting can be, and attempting to infiltrate big mods with my scripts, but the resistance to change and fear of novelty was too strong so I only got limited sucess.
Beside, don't you know? Whenever a mod has cool looking units or innovative scripting, it immediatly imply the gameplay sucks. Don't even bother checking. Someone able to code and model obviously cannot have any idea about balancing, duh!
Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy your monthly "brand new revolutionnary mod, based on BA, but faster weasels so OMG it's a whole new gameplay".
HA HA HA I love the post zwzsg! I cannot say how agitating the hackish "moders" who are little more then guys who edit text and consider it a big deal. It is ok though man, when the LUA scripts are available, I am certain we will some at least one or two innovative things in this community.
The whole issue with this community is that like Nixa told me. If a mod does not have "LOL GAETOR SPAM!" then we get complaining from players that the mods do not make sense. Half of the people on this forum do not even know about all the fantastic TA units on the unit universe site! CHRIST! I want the fatshrew IN MY SPRING! Seriously, don't waste your breath Z, it is lost on a lot of the spring player base
.
I think at the moment as far as scripting in this community goes KDR has done some clever things. I personally have only bothered with stuff I need to work on, although I try to do some neat stuff. However, you must admit that you are a good bit more skilled and familiar with the cob language. One of the things that I find MOST disturbing is the lack of TAU guys who know stuff on this forum. It is like the PA/TAU schism all over again. I would love to see TALON in spring! Or a proper port of M3g's TLL... and what ever happened to paintie's O.P. mod!?!?! I was sure that mod would be wildly popular because of the modern-ish setting.
I personally will tell you that I have no need for the sort of unit identification scripts so sorry that you do not see me use your work. Also, I CAN READ! *reads* Rou... rou... roun.. round... *pretends to understand the letters* Round the ragged rocks, the ragged rascal ran *jumps up like he accomplishes something* SEE!
Cheer up man, if there is ANYONE I respect as a scripter it is you! Please do not let the community here get to you man! If you need to vent, please pm me, I'll listen!
The whole issue with this community is that like Nixa told me. If a mod does not have "LOL GAETOR SPAM!" then we get complaining from players that the mods do not make sense. Half of the people on this forum do not even know about all the fantastic TA units on the unit universe site! CHRIST! I want the fatshrew IN MY SPRING! Seriously, don't waste your breath Z, it is lost on a lot of the spring player base
.I think at the moment as far as scripting in this community goes KDR has done some clever things. I personally have only bothered with stuff I need to work on, although I try to do some neat stuff. However, you must admit that you are a good bit more skilled and familiar with the cob language. One of the things that I find MOST disturbing is the lack of TAU guys who know stuff on this forum. It is like the PA/TAU schism all over again. I would love to see TALON in spring! Or a proper port of M3g's TLL... and what ever happened to paintie's O.P. mod!?!?! I was sure that mod would be wildly popular because of the modern-ish setting.
I personally will tell you that I have no need for the sort of unit identification scripts so sorry that you do not see me use your work. Also, I CAN READ! *reads* Rou... rou... roun.. round... *pretends to understand the letters* Round the ragged rocks, the ragged rascal ran *jumps up like he accomplishes something* SEE!
Cheer up man, if there is ANYONE I respect as a scripter it is you! Please do not let the community here get to you man! If you need to vent, please pm me, I'll listen!
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TheRegisteredOne
- Posts: 398
- Joined: 10 Dec 2005, 21:39
zwzsg wrote:Smoth: Bah, I had not trouble reading carbon text. I don't know if you have ever opened a novel, you know, that thing made of lots of paper sheets printed with nothing but black ink, but in those relic of the pasts called books it sometimes happen to have a paragraph of half a page without a new line!
TheRegisteredOne: I contest all of your points:
1) It doesn't lag as long as it's correctly optimised. First, you don't have to check the script detection every frame, depending on the unit something like once per 30s can do it. Secondly, if you take care to only check the 500 unit of player and not the 5000 units of all player, if you take care to perform first the test that are less costly and eliminate most ID, it also help greatly. I remember that for SWTA we found the adjancency bonus was no trouble even when used by hundreds of infantry units.
2) Duh, are you saying the whole basis of RPG and MMORPG makes little sense and don't attract people? I'm pretty sure by now every gamer is accustomed to the idea of gaining xp & money at each kill. TA & Spring themselves have veterancy upgrade, just they are so tame they're almost not noticeable, while Boogie made them more important. As for the gaining upgrade by proximity, it still makes loads more sense that for instance metal flowing instantly and invisibly from mexx to cons the other side of the maps. RTS such as WarcraftIII are filled with unit giving area bonus and gaining new abilities through killcount, and became quite popular.
3) With proper animation, start scout deploying into a command center can look pretty cool. It's also commonplace in RTS since the days of Dune II and C&C. The AI argument is maybe the only one that holds, although I haven't really tested and am sure that proper fiddling (like, high enough weigh, maybe some tag on the commander center so the AI like them enough to start with) will make the AI works fine. And if it really has to come to that, it wouldn't be hard to give the AI AI-only units to appease it with a more tradionnal buildtree.
As for why we don't see any other mod using such upgrade, it's pretty simple:
- Few people look beyond TA->UH->AA breedline. Anything different gets ignored, if not put down.
- The majority of modders don't know anything beyond tweaking FBI stats. There's few modders who can do their own models. Amongst them, even less do know scripting. For people making their own TC, race, etc.., most simply recopy scripts without understanding half of it. People who can write new scripts are very rare. And amongst them, most are just writing new animations inside the standard template. Near no ones dare to wanders out of Cavedog's templates. So people who are able to write complex script, such as detection of another unit, can be counted with a single hand. Hmm well ok maybe one hand and a half actually.
There's something I don't really get here, since there's loads of modders who know programming in Python, PHP, Java, even C++, but somehow the much easier bos language scares and dumbify people. I've seen people able to code in C argue me the if(TRUE){ } of Cavedog walkscripts couldn't be removed.
- Then, the overwhelming majority of people are unable to think new unit concepts. They can only imagine "like a bulldog, but bigger", or "a lightning weapon mounted on a tower", but to think about something that isn't a modification of what's already been done is plain impossible for most people. Units that aren't kbot/tank/ship/etc.. ? Ressources not given by metal extractor and power generator? Weapons that aren't fired by guns? That's too alien to even get such ideas.
So we'll see more mods using upgrade when people will understand modding isn't just about changing FBI stats of the same 5 years olds units. I don't expect people to ever start being able to think about new concepts, but at least when people will start to acknowledge TA and Spring engine can handle way more than Cavedog scripts, that'll also help. I did my part trying hard to show how versatile modding and scripting can be, and attempting to infiltrate big mods with my scripts, but the resistance to change and fear of novelty was too strong so I only got limited sucess.
Beside, don't you know? Whenever a mod has cool looking units or innovative scripting, it immediatly imply the gameplay sucks. Don't even bother checking. Someone able to code and model obviously cannot have any idea about balancing, duh!
Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy your monthly "brand new revolutionnary mod, based on BA, but faster weasels so OMG it's a whole new gameplay".
I agree with all of your explanations save the magical upgrades part. First of all, unlike other aspects of the game, these things costs no resources, and appear on the unit once a condition is set. But the question becomes, why aren't all units upgraded in the first place? Why don't have they have these advantages if the upgrades cost nothing at all?First off, I'm glad to see my mod getting some attention in the Spring forums! Sadly, I do not plan on ever making a Spring version (though if anyone ever wants to convert it, or even just take parts of it to integrate into their own mods, feel free... I truly do not mind folks borrowing ideas off me)
If anyone wants to try it out, head down to TAUniverse and poke around til you find it (I apparently can't post links cause I'm a new user)
Also, had to quickly respond to TRO's list of issues Razz
TheRegisteredOne wrote:
yes, it is ota only.
as for why captains are not found in other mods. Firstly, there are several inconvenient issues with the captain idea:
1. it lags when units have to constantly cycle through 5000 unit ids and checks the height of the unit to detect the presence of captains, it lags even more when you have 200 of such units on the map.
2. it makes little sense for the units near the captain's presense to magically gain bonuses or for captains to magically gain upgrades through killing enemy units. It would make more sense for player to build upgrades instead
3. convoluted starting build pattern: Not only does it make very little sense for the magical stuff that happens to your starting units (instabuild command center absorbes the recon scout, builds commander etc), it is also makes it hard for the ai to perform, and when push comes to shove, mods are more likely to be singleplayer than multiplayer.
Honestly, the code that makes Captains possible has been around for a little while, but I don't think those reasons listed are entirely accurate for why Captains haven't been created. The reason I think people haven't made Captains in their mods before is because it requires you to edit every single unit you want to respond to the Captains rather extensively. It takes a LOT of work. The reason this is optimal for Devolution is that Devolution has fewer units to begin with than just about any other mod (that may be a bad thing for some people, but its actually one of the main points of the mod). For those reasons, even if people have had the idea of Captain units before (which I see no evidence of... though its not exactly an original idea- think Heroes in Warcraft 3), they would have quickly written their idea off as impossible or too difficult to implement.
To respond to TRO's specific points:
1) Lag: One thing I feel fully comfortable taking credit for in the Detection scripts I use is that I spent a significant amount of time optimizing them, and then creating a version that creates as little lag as possible.
Original detect scripts did have to cycle through thousands of unit ids every couple seconds to get the desired result. My script cycles through every unit once every 30 seconds or so, until it finds a captain. Cycling through every 30 seconds is not a burden on the system. Once it finds a captain, it stops cycling, and focuses only on that unit, and then cycles the script much faster. The result is that there is no added lag to the game; I have played extensively in single player and have had a bunch of multiplayer games and have not experienced any slowdown whatsoever.
2) Magic Upgrades: Unrealistic? Perhaps it isn't entirely realistic, though I am not that concerned with realism in such a game, and I don't think most players are either. On that note, I have to point out that buildable upgrades (like the Commander Upgrades in Talon) are just as magical. That is not the issue though, the issue is if the upgrades are intuitive, so as not to confuse a new player- and so that you get what you expect to get. I feel that these upgrades are intuitive.
3) Convoluted Startup: I really disagree that there is anything wrong with building startup (of course, it is my mod Razz). Again, your problem is that it isn't realistic. That isn't the real issue, I can explain a simple story to explain the building situation: The motherships send down a deployment scout, the deployment scout specifies an area for the gate to be deployed, and then when the gate is deployed the scout is teleported back up to the ship. The gate then teleports down a Commander. Unrealistic? Of course... but not any more unrealistic than the rest of the game. Unintuitive? I have yet to see anyone screw up the deployment at the beginning of the game, and I have not had to hold anyone's hands to explain it either- you don't really have any choice except to do it properly, there just aren't other options.
of course, high command or central consciousness might think recruits are more likely to blow their feet off with a double barrel riot cannon or cut themselves with their shinier armour.
In every situation given equal odds there are always individuals who exceed or excel for no particular reason... consider them... field honors or battle promotions. If an individual has exceptional skill you tend to utilize that :) otherwise you give most of your troops similar equiment as they are typically best suited for one role.TheRegisteredOne wrote: First of all, unlike other aspects of the game, these things costs no resources, and appear on the unit once a condition is set. But the question becomes, why aren't all units upgraded in the first place?
I have thought about for some time with gundam having units once they live to level 1 gain a new weapon to reflect their new status as an ace.
About this I dont know, but the profile of the downloads of the last beta version of my mod is very diferent.smoth wrote: One of the things that I find MOST disturbing is the lack of TAU guys who know stuff on this forum. It is like the PA/TAU schism all over again.
In TAU the downloads of the Limited fuel and Ammo patch is near half of the d/ls of the last version that is compatible with this file(262/97).In Unknown-Files is 332/44!
Why?
Im very curious, because the next version "still" TA based of BattleFleet includes this feature as standart.
VonGratz
eerrrrrr...can you reword that vongratz? I cannot follow what you are trying to tell me.
What Im trying to explain is that the percentage of downloads with or without the patch Limited Ammo and Fuel is very diferent.
Because this, the patch changes a lot the gameplaying and it shows a very diferent player profile, being the "classic" TA ones more concentrated (four times % more patch d/ls in FU) out of UF than inside.....What is VERY curious for me.Patch resume
The planes wait landed to be refueled when pads are full, stop attacks when fuel is low, and the ammo balancing do not gave any trouble, because they fire all times that are needed. Now carriers and long range strategic bombers have a new role, very close to the reality.
A new balance also can be created utilizing range versus bomb payload.
VonGratz