Spring RTS Engine

el_matarife wrote:AA2.11 is still viewed as the golden age of Spring by me and a bunch of my buddies. I'd say a lot of people still remember.

but its not the mod, its just the time when lots of cool players were around and spring was at the ideal middle point between being new + interesting and polished + working. if you loaded up AA2.11 now you would probably be appalled at the bugginess and balance in comparison to current BA- everyone switched to BA for a reason. I agree that everything had a much cooler feel back then though (and cadyrs 'wheel of balance' was a good lol)

BA fixed 1 or 2 basic things, and left a whole buttload ignored.

Caydr at least explored and investigated nerf/buff issues and didn't turn a blind eye when the community said something was wrong.

Come back to us Caydr.

MR.D wrote:and didn't turn a blind eye when the community said something was wrong.

Elaborate pls

I think he's referring to the usual "Nerf X buff Y nerf Z buff A fix D buff Q" posts.

There are lots of ways that BA could be a lot more fun... but right now it *works*. Almost every unit has a role to play. If you stopped fiddling with the balance tomorrow, it would be a worthwhile game.

Now, obviously, there are about a million things we each hate about BA, but none of them can be changed carelessly, like many people request.

A good example is the Guardian. The unit is stupidly overpriced compared to going L2 and building mobile artillery or a pop-up plasma... but if its price were cut, then the Guardian would start appearing in normal L1 gameplay and could completely change the face of the game.

Pxtl wrote:A good example is the Guardian. The unit is stupidly overpriced compared to going L2 and building mobile artillery or a pop-up plasma... but if its price were cut, then the Guardian would start appearing in normal L1 gameplay and could completely change the face of the game.

No, its quite cheap compared to going t2 and getting that artillery. Its expensive compared to t1 units. A small price cut - say 10%, less than it costs to make a single stumpy for example, shouldnt make it too much more usable than it currently is.

Heres a tip Caydr, how about you play or spec some games? Really helps to see how its doing.

Or even better, you could post a thread on your new upcoming megaproject mod; we kinda miss those threads.

Mr D: If you want experimental shit and rebalancing every few minutes, go play CA. Im ok with the rock solid gameplay BA offers. At least you dont have to relearn the game every few revisions.

Caydr, BA has not brought anything truly innovative to the AA scene except for a playable balance scheme and taking advantage of certain conveniences that have been afforded as the engine has evolved.

What they are probably referring to is the amount of active discussion AA enjoyed. For instance:

AA Thread 1: http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2633
AA Thread 2: http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=3893
AA Thread 3: http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=5091
AA Thread 4: http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=5449
AA Thread 5: http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=7406

...Plus virtually the entire mod forum and help forum... and general forum, to some extent, were AA-related.

"Playable balance schemes"? I had, like, at least 3 of those. At some point. Not at the same time.

Beherith wrote:Heres a tip Caydr, how about you play or spec some games? Really helps to see how its doing.

Or even better, you could post a thread on your new upcoming megaproject mod; we kinda miss those threads.

Mr D: If you want experimental shit and rebalancing every few minutes, go play CA. Im ok with the rock solid gameplay BA offers. At least you dont have to relearn the game every few revisions.

I don't have time to play/spec, and I don't want my ideas to be molded by BA's gameplay intentionally or unintentionally. I haven't played or even downloaded CA/BA, ever. I'm really just curious about how the mod has progressed in my absence.

Anyways, I won't be working on AA anytime soon. As the entire internet has pointed out, there are a lot of other projects I need to work on, maybe even finish one or two.

Beherith wrote:Or even better, you could post a thread on your new upcoming megaproject mod; we kinda miss those threads.

Next time I make a thread like that, it will be in that mod's own forum.

If you don't have time to play, you don't have time to mod. You're already planning your next ultra-mega-release that will never materialize.

Seriously, what was apparent in the last AA versions was that you stopped playing and started exclusively modding. That's no position to make a game - if you don't play, you don't feel how it really *works*.

Try CA. It's not nearly as unforgiving to pick up as BA is (your buffing of vehicles in AA2 abruptly converted AA from the porciest spring game to the fastest, most break-neck panic Spring game).

Give them a game or two, or at least spec a game or two. You can't design if you don't play.

Mmm... you make a lot of sense. Maybe I will sometime soon. I didn't realize it was so easily visible that I had gone exclusively into modding and stopped playing.

Actually part of the reason I stopped playing was because you guys were so much better than me

REVENGE wrote:Caydr, BA has not brought anything truly innovative to the AA scene except for a playable balance scheme and taking advantage of certain conveniences that have been afforded as the engine has evolved.

edit: Had to come back and add this. I will never endorse a lot of the "conveniences" that have become available. First thing I do, if I ever make a new version of AA, will be disabling and banning that idiotic metal maker AI. "wahh wahh I can't manage an economy it's too hard, someone make an ai"...

Try CA. Despite the fact that it makes use of many, many more special magic powers than BA does (more stun units, jump-jet units, impulse units, incendiary units, tractor-beam units, mine-bomb-dropping-units, etc) it also is much more newb-friendly. As you finally left it, BA is quite possibly the most brutal RTS I've ever seen - defenses are nearly useless in the vehicle game, and vehicles are very fast, so the game is incredibly frantic... and at the same time, you have to balance in constant economic expansion with buildings made of paper. It's vicious. For hardcore gamers with a lot of time on their hands, this is ideal. For guys like you and me who are never going to be able to put in more than a few hours a week, this is just nasty.

CA is far more forgiving. LLTs are powerful enough and extractors are tough enough to slow down the raiding game, and instead of metal-makers, surplus energy boosts the efficiency of all your metal extractors with diminishing returns. The comm is nothing special - pretty much a walking heavily-armored LLT, so the comm-cheese game is nearly gone (the comm starts with 1000 metal of "boost" that can do a little cheese with, but that's it). Reclaiming is slower so it's less about snatching the resources out from the battlefield and more about securing old battle sites. MTs shoot air and land so the only way a sudden air attack will pwn you is if you've been really asleep and he's had time to mass a game-ending force.

Pxtl wrote:Reclaiming is slower so it's less about snatching the resources out from the battlefield and more about securing old battle sites.

*adds to list of ideas-to-be-stolen

That's actually a shockingly good idea. Why didn't I come up with that?

REVENGE wrote:Caydr, BA has not brought anything truly innovative to the AA scene except for a playable balance scheme and taking advantage of certain conveniences that have been afforded as the engine has evolved.

Also BA's goal was not to be innovative, so I guess BA does a good job then

'sup NOiZE

Certainly it must be reasonably balanced if there are so many people playing it in preference to other mods. Any other explanation is just reality-denial.

Don't get me wrong if I seem to be down on BA, regardless of what shape the mod's taken (I wouldn't know, I haven't played it yet), I'm certain proud it's still as popular as the day I left. I just happen to be prone to troll and a compulsive liar. (see discussion of my "mods")

There are clearly smart people at the helm - they're just not as frustratingly inclined to risk making crazy changes as I was. 99% of the time I think most people would prefer it that way. I believe about 2/3 of the discussion in the threads I posted above would probably be found to be people trying to talk me out of doing irrational things.

Maybe there should be a "Randomly changed BA" version of BA =)

NOiZE wrote:Maybe there should be a "Randomly changed BA" version of BA =)

I am actually collecting crazy ideas which probably wouldn't pass in real BA so hopefully these can be tested in a experimental release and anything that works well could copied, should be releasing something like this soon

caydr probalby hasnt seen the new customformations widget

one of the coolest parts of spring imo

TheFatController wrote:

NOiZE wrote:Maybe there should be a "Randomly changed BA" version of BA =)

I am actually collecting crazy ideas which probably wouldn't pass in real BA so hopefully these can be tested in a experimental release and anything that works well could copied, should be releasing something like this soon

You should not have spoken that aloud. Now all us freaks who kill time by contemplating how we'd change a game but shut up because we know we're just stupid and annoying people...

Now we know somebody is actually paying attention.

BA made a lot of pretty significant changes even early on. Mostly to the economy, which effects the flow of the rest of the game.

Solars not costing E, uberbuffing Metalmakers, buffing tidals, bot con BT increase to match vech.

Then there is the kind of rare batshit stuff like putting LLT's on corvettes (and keeping the LLT bonus vs com and energy drain) then also nerfing the DPS because Noize didnt know about laser range damage falloff. Though, the vette thing didnt effect 90% of the game since nobody plays sea and was eventually fixed when the vette was re-buffed back to near its old DPS (can you tell this is a pet peeve :D).

Then LOL stuff like the Krog/Jugger superbuffs (not that they really matter).

There is also the Juno changes. They kills mines now (verymuch needed, mines were a pain) and are much more cost effecient. I dont know if they feature much in games though.

A lot of the changes have been 'balance', but the balance has changed a lot in some places, mostly for the better.

Still, its nothing like CA, which is virtually unrecognisable (and was always intended to be). Dunno what Pxtl is talking about though, i find CA much faster and less forgiving than BA (Which isnt praise, honestly BA is a hard enough game to begin with).