Spring RTS Engine

smoth wrote:

klapmongool wrote:After playing some games I think it is much better than the past few spring versions. Still some situations in which units do some weird stuff but nothing major.

such as?

Jazz those bits and bobs are what I was wondering about. In prior threads you expressed great consternation in attempting to run the new spring

Such as a flea thinking he should be able to run in between two closely placed solars but just ending up trying and trying.

ba, xta?

BA

smoth wrote: Jazz those bits and bobs are what I was wondering about. In prior threads you expressed great consternation in attempting to run the new spring

Actually that was more a statement of all the times I've had trouble in the past. It's better now, but there's still certain things which annoy me.

One thing is the new binds creator which is now in Spring Settings. Some how, it always manages to overwrite my binds, even when I try my hardest to make it not do so. Good job I always backup my uikeys every release

Another, is MT-Spring support. I'm never too sure whether this works or not. In general, I use it with BA and don't use it with anything else. But I'm still not sure when the official position is on this.

TASClient is behaving now, just had to change a few options. There's some weird bug atm where every now and then it just shows black where the minimap should be in the battle screen though. Also the dl link for TASClient is down.

Oh and outdated widgets. Where's the best place to go for widgets these days? TASClient has a widget manager, there's VBS' stand-alone widget manager, the widget database, SpringFiles, the forums etc. Not quite sure where I should go to update my widgets.

It's working much better on my desktop here at home than it was on my laptop at uni though. On my laptop I was crashing all the time once ingame :s

I think widget db is usually the most up to date. If someone knows differently please speak up.

Put this into your uikeys.txt to prevent springsettings to do anything with it: Maybe this line should be documented in the default uikeys.txt?

Also feel free to give proper information about your actual problem if you want it fixed. While I am not sure if you actually encountered a bug though.

I do not really maintain the widgetDB at the moment as it did not seem that the majority of people found use in it. Some people do update widgets from time to time though.
Actually the WidgetManager-GUI and the website are the same, its just another frontend.

I am currently trying to put the most important widgets into BA so at one point there is hopefully no need anymore for players to hunt for widgets themselfs.

very_bad_soldier wrote:Put this into your uikeys.txt to prevent springsettings to do anything with it:

Code: Select all

//SPRINGSETTINGS DO NOT TOUCH

Maybe this line should be documented in the default uikeys.txt?

Sa'll good, just set the file to read only

very_bad_soldier wrote: I am currently trying to put the most important widgets into BA so at one point there is hopefully no need anymore for players to hunt for widgets themselfs.

Tbh, this is the exact reason I got so frustrated with ZK's widgets. Please just put the bare necessary widgets in and include anything extra as either an optional setting somewhere or a separately download.

I appreciate that all your problems are solving themselfs as soon as someone offers a solution. I am sure you will get quickly comfortable with the included widgets in BA in the same way.

very_bad_soldier wrote:I appreciate that all your problems are solving themselfs as soon as someone offers a solution. I am sure you will get quickly comfortable with the included widgets in BA in the same way.

¬_¬

By far most of the widgets currently in BA are gameplay enhancing, thus good choices for widgets. It thus seems as if it is a good idea to include as many 'often used' widgets in BA as possible in order to, as vbs states, arrive at a point where there is hopefully no need anymore for players to hunt for widgets themselves.

I don't agree though. Too many widgets were included that are downright annoying. I think it is far better to include a limited set of widgets in the mod itself and let the players add additional widgets if they want to.

What widgets should be in? Widgets that are so damn handy that they are almost cheats: customformations, ghostbuilding/units, immobile builders, bomber control, initial queue, easyfacing, etc.

What should not be in? Blobby shadows, that thing that puts your factories queues and shit on the right, auto/heal/reclaim/assist, keybinds, UI's and many more.


Why? Because there is a point on the 'widget-handiness-scale' where necessary additions change into customisation.

Include the stuff with the mod, but don't have it on by default.

Building keybinds should be on by default though I think, because it really is shitty to play without, even if people will want to customize them later. They're much more essential than extraneous stuff like easyfacing or initial queue.

Johannes wrote:Include the stuff with the mod, but don't have it on by default.

+1

Also: The widgets that are included in the official BA distribution get "official support": better testing, quicker fixes, inter-widget-conflict-resolution.

It reminds me of Linux: the drivers that are included in vanilla-Linux work best and work at release-time, while the out-of-tree-modules are slower to pick up changes and have less people feeling responsible for them.

Agree with the posts above.

Anything that can be classed as a personal preference should be disabled by default. By this I mean things likes widgets that set states of units automatically such as setting factories to auto-repeat, units to hold-position, cons to auto-repair etc.

Yea, disabled by default would be fine by me.

Jazcash wrote:Agree with the posts above.

Anything that can be classed as a personal preference should be disabled by default. By this I mean things likes widgets that set states of units automatically such as setting factories to auto-repeat, units to hold-position, cons to auto-repair etc.

I don't agree, better to have options like that ON for noobs and have the pros like yourself turn them off.

smoth wrote:

Jazcash wrote:Agree with the posts above.

Anything that can be classed as a personal preference should be disabled by default. By this I mean things likes widgets that set states of units automatically such as setting factories to auto-repeat, units to hold-position, cons to auto-repair etc.

I don't agree, better to have options like that ON for noobs and have the pros like yourself turn them off.

Not all these widgets are beneficial in that sort of way. A player who grows up on BA relying on these kind of widgets is gonna have a bad time.

Jazcash wrote:Oh and outdated widgets. Where's the best place to go for widgets these days?

I think the best is to tell gamedevs about it (in specific game subforum) until they include it. Otherwise you will have the same problem again in a few months.

Jazcash wrote:Not all these widgets are beneficial in that sort of way. A player who grows up on BA relying on these kind of widgets is gonna have a bad time.

You are trying to raise a strong nfl athlete and will be disappointed when your BA child doesn't make junior varsity in highschool.

smoth wrote:

Jazcash wrote:Agree with the posts above.

Anything that can be classed as a personal preference should be disabled by default. By this I mean things likes widgets that set states of units automatically such as setting factories to auto-repeat, units to hold-position, cons to auto-repair etc.

I don't agree, better to have options like that ON for noobs and have the pros like yourself turn them off.

Because factories on repeat are intuitive?

Cons on auto-repair sounds nice but in practice means that you have to watch your cons/comm closely so they don't walk into the enemy fire range.

units to hold position? Only nice if you are a pro that knows how and when to move your groups.

Well I have the feeling we pretty much agree here now. The good widgets go into BA to be available for everyone out of the box.
The only problem is that we have some widgets where it is debatable if they should default to on or off. I am sure we can discuss individual widgets endless here.
But as said in the other thread I try to get a good default configuration that is targeted at noobs. So pretty much what smoth said.
I expect "Pros" to know what a widget is and how to disable/enable them. So they are supposed to go through the widget list themselfs and decide for every single widget if they want it or not.
So, tbh, when discussing if a widget should be on or off the only relevant argument would be if it is good or bad for noobs.

Jazcash wrote:

smoth wrote: I don't agree, better to have options like that ON for noobs and have the pros like yourself turn them off.

Not all these widgets are beneficial in that sort of way. A player who grows up on BA relying on these kind of widgets is gonna have a bad time.

A bit more specfic please? How will players that use for example auto-repeat have "a bad time" later? I am using auto-repeat since about my very first BA game. You think thats the reason why I am a bad player?