Spring RTS Engine

About the 9-9 wind: the player is given a choice: Do you want slower building, large, easily raidable wind farm, for cheap, or solars. Now on tundra, there isnt much space for large wind farms, so the choice is given to the player to decide.

On charlie wind (10-25 in new version): The ralphie decided that he wanted his map to feature easily obtainable energy. Its just like having 2.5 mexes instead of 2.0 or 1.8 or whatever. He chose to enhance gameplay with this factor. It does not break the game, it doesnt make it unplayable, it just makes it slightly different. This is like SC maps with 2 gas on your main. Its a mappers choice and should be respected as such.

As for maps and mods touching, SpeedMetal and Green_Fields have been completely changing mods using nothing but the values available to them for years now.

And thats the whole point! These maps offer some special gameplay that others just dont. More variety, and noone is forcing you to play them.

Beherith wrote:About the 9-9 wind: the player is given a choice: Do you want slower building, large, easily raidable wind farm, for cheap, or solars. Now on tundra, there isnt much space for large wind farms, so the choice is given to the player to decide.

On charlie wind (10-25 in new version): The ralphie decided that he wanted his map to feature easily obtainable energy. Its just like having 2.5 mexes instead of 2.0 or 1.8 or whatever. He chose to enhance gameplay with this factor. It does not break the game, it doesnt make it unplayable, it just makes it slightly different. This is like SC maps with 2 gas on your main. Its a mappers choice and should be respected as such.

As for maps and mods touching, SpeedMetal and Green_Fields have been completely changing mods using nothing but the values available to them for years now.

And thats the whole point! These maps offer some special gameplay that others just dont. More variety, and noone is forcing you to play them.

ACK

To me, the problem is simple: if the mod is designed to have varied values for a certain feature, they should use it.

Maps and mods need to work together, and often they're not going to be a perfect mach. The mod, having a better idea of what works with it, is in the better position to close that gap. To me, that's all there is to it - the mod is in a better position to provide good gameplay out of a mismatch than the map is, so it's up to the mod to make the necessary changes.

Does anybody complain about Kernel Panic turning metal-patches into geovents? No.

Beherith wrote:No no no and no. This is a fallacious argument. Remember last time when I requested you to name maps that are "broken" cause of bad wind values? And noone named a single one?

A lot of maps are either wind maps or solar maps. What's the point of having 2 seperate energy sources if one is going to be plain better most of the time?

Please name me some decent maps that are unplayable in your selected mod because of gravity values.

None yet because we know certain changes to CA would make them unplayable. We're unable to balance impulse because of this and now we've got blastwings doing a lot of their damage with shrapenel, the distance it flies is affected by gravity. Variable gravity makes this unbalanceable too.

Previously it was requested to allow mods to ignore typemaps as well, yet there arent any maps that you dont play specifically because it has a "bad" typemap.

Maps with unit speed changing typemaps. They just remove about 1/2 the viable units. Centerrock and Xanteterra are the worst for this.

You already hinted at mex normalization. So one by one, in your great wisdom, you have decided to remove each and every tool a mapmaker can use to mix up a flat balance.

I don't think I did.

On charlie wind (10-25 in new version): The ralphie decided that he wanted his map to feature easily obtainable energy. Its just like having 2.5 mexes instead of 2.0 or 1.8 or whatever. He chose to enhance gameplay with this factor. It does not break the game, it doesnt make it unplayable, it just makes it slightly different. This is like SC maps with 2 gas on your main. Its a mappers choice and should be respected as such.

It might not break BA but the excessive wind made CA silly.

Why are you guys even arguing about this, instead of just including a customized version of MapHelper in your games, that fixes these problems? Doesn't that work as an override? I guess I'll have to test this, but it seems like that's where to override borked settings, etc., and clamp them to values that make sense, if they cause serious gameplay issues, imo.

Beherith wrote:Ok, on the hardness bit, I agree, that can break it. (With typemap I meant unitspeeds)

It's not a hardness problem ... you don't play CA it seems ...
The typemap of Azure disallows to move on the terraformed bridges.

Mod can't override map.

Google_Frog wrote:

Beherith wrote:No no no and no. This is a fallacious argument. Remember last time when I requested you to name maps that are "broken" cause of bad wind values? And noone named a single one?

A lot of maps are either wind maps or solar maps. What's the point of having 2 seperate energy sources if one is going to be plain better most of the time?

tanks vs hover

Previously it was requested to allow mods to ignore typemaps as well, yet there arent any maps that you dont play specifically because it has a "bad" typemap.

Maps with unit speed changing typemaps. They just remove about 1/2 the viable units. Centerrock and Xanteterra are the worst for this.

They don't remove anything. They just move at a different speed.

lurker wrote:Mod can't override map.

Balladium Annihilating

Google_Frog wrote:

Previously it was requested to allow mods to ignore typemaps as well, yet there arent any maps that you dont play specifically because it has a "bad" typemap.

Maps with unit speed changing typemaps. They just remove about 1/2 the viable units. Centerrock and Xanteterra are the worst for this.

DWorld and Mearth would suck without speedchanging typemaps.

Mods should be able to override map in every way, even to disallow map from overriding mod.

Mod can't override map.

Really? So just including a modified MapHelper isn't enough to address this? Why? Just the order in which the lua's getting read? Seems like it should be very easy to fix. If nothing else, stand-alone installer versions of games could do this by including a fixed version of base.

And on the subject of typemaps... meh... let Lua write / alter them, and voila...

Google_Frog wrote:

Beherith wrote:No no no and no. This is a fallacious argument. Remember last time when I requested you to name maps that are "broken" cause of bad wind values? And noone named a single one?

A lot of maps are either wind maps or solar maps. What's the point of having 2 seperate energy sources if one is going to be plain better most of the time?

So your throwing out buildtime, space requirement, raidability in favor of cost based balance? Very complete.

Please name me some decent maps that are unplayable in your selected mod because of gravity values.

None yet because we know certain changes to CA would make them unplayable. We're unable to balance impulse because of this and now we've got blastwings doing a lot of their damage with shrapenel, the distance it flies is affected by gravity. Variable gravity makes this unbalanceable too.

Its not imbalance, its variation in gameplay. Gameplay should vary from map to map, even if its just a little bit. What maps give you trouble with gravity btw? I dont recall any maps with wacky gravity besides muck.

Previously it was requested to allow mods to ignore typemaps as well, yet there arent any maps that you dont play specifically because it has a "bad" typemap.

Maps with unit speed changing typemaps. They just remove about 1/2 the viable units. Centerrock and Xanteterra are the worst for this.

Again, do you really want to play the rest of CA on CCR? Call it slippery slopes: no all terrain. And for xanthe: its already a pretty bad map to begin with (metal layout, passability map, horrible fog), why anyone would want to play on it despite there being tons of other good ones is beyond me.

You already hinted at mex normalization. So one by one, in your great wisdom, you have decided to remove each and every tool a mapmaker can use to mix up a flat balance.

I don't think I did.

I hate how english doesnt have a second person plural that doesnt make me sound like a hillbilly. You know who the plural refers to.

TL;DR version:
If a map doesnt play like you want it in a mod, then dont play on it.

Beherith wrote:If a map doesnt play like you want it in a mod, then dont play on it. Stop forcing your will over mappers.

Nobody is forcing you to make maps for a game that overrides gravity/wind etc.

Games have to control what actually happens in games. If a game maker chooses to let some aspect of the game to be map-dependent then there's nothing wrong with that, but when a game maker can't choose not to let map decide certain things then something is wrong with the engine.

Argh wrote:fix

I don't think that word means what you think it means. Letting mods overwrite files that are part of the map sounds like it would be a bug to me.

lurker wrote:

Argh wrote:fix

I don't think that word means what you think it means. Letting mods overwrite files that are part of the map sounds like it would be a bug to me.

Games have to control what actually happens in games. If a game maker chooses to let some aspect of the game to be map-dependent then there's nothing wrong with that, but when a game maker can't choose not to let map decide certain things then something is wrong with the engine.

Apparently there is no such thing as too explicit.

Letting mods overwrite files that are part of the map sounds like it would be a bug to me.

Letting mods overwrite files

Behaviors are an issue I did not touch in that post, but if a mod can overwrite map files you have a recipe for disaster.

I agree, overwriting files is bad, behaviors not so bad. Still want to overwrite the typemap, though, I have specific uses for that.

Google_Frog wrote:It might not break BA but the excessive wind made CA silly.

Are you sure everybody disliked playing silly CA?

SirMaverick wrote:

Previously it was requested to allow mods to ignore typemaps as well, yet there arent any maps that you dont play specifically because it has a "bad" typemap.

Maps with unit speed changing typemaps. They just remove about 1/2 the viable units. Centerrock and Xanteterra are the worst for this.

They don't remove anything. They just move at a different speed.

Yes and in the case of centerrock, that different speed is 0 through cliffs, which removes the ability of all terrain. Removing the all terrain ability from one faction while the other still has its mirror -the jumpjets - is bad.